**When I was young, **my family would fly from our farm in Kahuku, Hawaii, to Hong Kong to visit relatives during the holidays. That’s where I learned about si fong choy, which roughly translates to “private kitchens.” When a skilled Cantonese chef retires or shuts down their own restaurant—but still wants to cook—they sometimes take over a room or basement in an existing establishment and cook there. The concept lingered in the back of my head when I returned to Hong Kong for culinary training in 2009, and long after I moved to Canada in 2020. What a wonderful idea: a small room where you can cook exactly what you want, for exactly who you want.

I worked incredibly hard to get to the top of my industry, spending my first two years in Toronto as the executive chef of Momofuku’s Kōjin, followed by a short stint at Avling, a brewery in the city’s east end. But the bigger the restaurant, the greater the distance between me and the food. Everything shifted for me in March of 2022 during a late-night conversation with Colin Li, a restaurateur whose family owns Hong Shing, a Chinatown institution for more than 28 years. “Why don’t we host an experimental dinner every now and then, just for friends, right here at Hong Shing?” I said.

Pretty soon, Colin and I were buying proper cutlery, building a makeshift kitchen—free of open fires—in Hong Shing’s back corner and hanging a sign in place of an old TV. Yan Dining Room, our full-blown micro-restaurant, opened in October of 2024. We serve a rotating monthly tasting menu of farm-to-table neo-Chinese food—eight courses and 15 small bites—to as many as 26 patrons every Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening, all in a space the size of an apartment living room. As head chef, I prep, peel, cut, taste, cook and finish every dish. My si fong choy.

This micro-dining setup is novel and exciting, but it’s born of necessity. I think I speak for most Canadian restaurant owners when I say the goal of the past few years has been just to survive. Pre-pandemic, 10 per cent of restaurants were operating at a loss or barely able to break even; by 2024, that number had risen to 62 per cent. In the first two months of 2025, 121 restaurant and accommodations businesses in Canada went bankrupt. The bigger your restaurant is, the more seats you have to fill—and the more people you need to pay.

One happy result of all this struggle is a new wave of super-intimate kitchens across the country. Vancouver’s Burdock & Co., Canada’s OG three-chef, 30-seat micro-restaurant, has been joined by J’ai Feng, a four-seat Szechuan experience chef Anita Feng built inside a small Montreal general store. Affinity Fish, located in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighbourhood, now serves seafood-based omakases out of their shop, preparing Great Lakes catches using Japanese sushi and kaiseki techniques. One of the best meals I had last year was at No. 8 in Burlington, Ontario—a 35-seat spot where chefs typically run the dishes up to the guests. (My favourite was their perfectly seasoned “French toast,” with chicken-liver mousse and aged balsamic from Modena, Italy, on brioche.)

Ultimately, every trend depends on the economy; smaller dining establishments will keep popping up because all Canadians, chefs included, will be forced to get more creative with the resources they have. But micro-restaurants also serve another need: the post-COVID desire for real-life interaction. Larger spots with more staff have more efficient service, and some diners love the hustle and bustle of a big, crowded space. But, in my experience, true restaurant lovers tend to seek out intimate settings, not just transactional meals.

At Yan, I don’t usually have one-on-one conversations with guests. But I do address the room at the beginning of each meal, while my sous chef pours broth from a traditional Chinese soup tureen. I leave the kitchen just twice more to do some menu storytelling. For me, the intimacy is more on the ingredient side. When I worked at larger restaurants, I had to keep walking when I saw the aunties selling produce on the sidewalks of Chinatown. I couldn’t support them because they only had enough for two orders. Now, small is what I need. I have the pleasure of serving one lady’s choy on Friday and another lady’s choy on Saturday.

Of course, running a tight ship has its challenges. It can be hard to find workers who are up to par. Between 2022 and 2024, food and labour costs rose by 25 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively. And as of last year, there were almost 100,000 job vacancies across the Canadian food-service industry, resulting in a lack of sous chefs to mentor younger line cooks.

Right now at Yan, we only have three staff: myself, a sous chef and the senior chef de partie. Now that the only boss I answer to is myself, I sleep a bit better at night; the disadvantage is that, if I’m needed outside the restaurant for a night, Yan has to close. In general, I’d like to see more understanding from guests about these constraints. Micro means micro: sometimes these restaurants are situated in extremely old buildings or share bathrooms with another business. Sometimes our equipment is limited. Don’t come to Yan expecting coffee service or a bread basket.

In the coming years, Yan may very well stand on its own and add à la carte options to our monthly tasting menu. But for the next 12 months, I’m focused on perfecting our current setup. In 2025, I experimented with pop-ups, including an eight-course Italian-Chinese mash-up at No. 8. In 2026, I’m hoping to take Yan’s dishes on the road. I have a few collaborations planned around the States, including in New York. I expect micro-restaurants will start receiving more mainstream recognition, whether their food is Chinese, Filipino, Indian or Mexican. Small operations can push boundaries with unexpected flavour profiles because they’re not run by huge hospitality groups.

Right now, for example, Yan serves a play on eggplant parm. We roll up fragrant sliced eggplant and stuff it with a filling made from Chinese salted fish and sausage. We bake it with pecorino, then cover it with a Szechuan marinara sauce, grated cheese and a Thai basil crumb. It may look Italian but it makes your mouth tingle, so you know you’re eating Szechuan cuisine. Some Chinese elders would consider a dish like this absolutely forbidden, but our food can only grow when it’s not so focused on nostalgia. The same is true of restaurants. Hold on to memories, but push toward the future.