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Christopher Cheung Today The Tyee Christopher Cheung reports on urban issues for The Tyee. URL copied to clipboard! SHARE: 68 SHARES Christmas is barely over by the time the Yun family has to fire up the wok. Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners PuSh Is a Celebration of Audacious Live Art The 20th anniversary of the festival opens tonight and runs until Feb.
9. They run Pine House, a chain of Hong Kong-style bakeries with several locations on Chinese shopping streets and in suburban malls across Metro Vancouver. With the help of a small army of staff, they push out a painstaking repertoire of traditional Cantonese treats ahead of the Lunar New Year, their busiest season.
The work involves shredding taro, rolling dough, crimping sweet dumplings and cutting the thinnest pieces of cookie dough using a deli slicer. When the raw shapes are formed — some looking like bird’s nests, others like cow’s ears — they are not baked, but fried in a batch of oil in the wok. They must be kept at a mild temperature to avoid burning, and tossed gently to avoid bruising and ensure even cooking.
Their golden colour makes them a traditional treat for a holiday when people wish prosperity upon one another. They have common English names like “sesame balls,” “egg twists” and “taro crisps,” but lost in translation is the metaphorical fun and fortune behind their Chinese names — we’ll walk through five classics from Pine House later. “It’s all hands on deck,” says Steven Yun.
I’m speaking to him during a stop at their Kingsway branch, with the Lunar New Year fast approaching. In 2025, it falls on Jan. 29 of the Gregorian calendar.
Steven means what he says: there is no automation at Pine House. “We’re super traditional,” he says. “It’s all handmade, all intensive, hands-on work.
” At top, Steven Yun with a tray of five classic treats for the Lunar New Year. At centre, wu haa , crisps made of deep-fried taro shreds in the shape of a blooming flower. At bottom, Pine House treats all fried in-house.
Steven, 45, is part of the second generation of the family business. Eddie, his 75-year-old father, is the first, and still making the rounds. He rolls into Pine House’s Kingsway branch briefly with a cart of boxes before hurrying over to their Burnaby location at Crystal Mall.
Customers crowd their stores at this time every year to pick up snacks and steamed cakes for gifts and family gatherings. But Pine House is also producing them for Asian supermarket giants to sell in their stores: Pattison’s PriceSmart and Loblaw’s T&T, which ships them by truck as far as their Alberta locations. The family has developed an efficient operation, but the art of making these traditional Cantonese treats by hand takes time and labour, which are costly.
Some of Pine House’s staff start their shifts as early as 5:30 a.m. But with the seasonal treats to fry daily, it’s not unusual for them to stay until 11 p.
m. to meet the demand. In the final days before the new year, they might stay as late as 3 a.
m. Hustle is required to make their suite of staple products — “It’s a 24-7 thing. We don’t close on any days.
We’re 365,” says Steven — but even more is needed to fry up the foods in time for the festivities. A guide to the deep-fried Cantonese treats of the Lunar New Year There are numerous deep-fried treats in existence, with some ornate creations resembling coins or jewellery, while others are simply vegetable chips made of mushroom or sweet potato. While Metro Vancouver’s offerings are by no means exhaustive, the region’s Hong Kong-style bakeries have many of them in store.
They are incredibly nostalgic for customers who ate them as children and can share them with the next generation in turn. Pine House offers a box of assorted treats consisting of these five classics. 笑口棗 RELATED STORIES Grocery Tigers in the Year of the Dragon The Joy of Zongzi Often called “sesame ball” or “sesame cookie” in English, the literal translation from Chinese is “smiling dates.
” “You mix the dough and we roll it out into long strands like ropes,” says Steven. “Then we cut it up into small balls, soak it in water and then bathe them in sesame. That’s so that the sesame sticks.
We then put them through a plastic strainer [to shake off excess sesame].” The little balls of dough split open when knocked against each other in the frying oil, with a smile that makes the treat look a bit like the big-mouthed Pac-Man. A fitting treat for a happy season like the new year.
酥角, 油角, 炸角仔 You might have seen these called “fried dumplings” in English. This is close to one of the Chinese names for the treat, which refers to a specific type of savoury Cantonese dumpling with the same crescent shape and style of crimping. The other Chinese name translates to “pastry dumpling.
” The finished product resembles a bulging purse. The wrappers are made in-house, says Steven, and so is the sweet roasted peanut and sesame filling. In the wok, “you gotta keep moving.
If not, only one side gets colour and the other side doesn’t. When it’s gold in colour, then we pull it out.” 芋蝦 Often called “taro crisp” or the unimaginative “deep-fried taro” in English, the literal translation from Chinese is “taro shrimp.
” It is said that they were invented to use up extra taro from harvest time. The taro shrimp of old were more elongated, with the taro shreds resembling shrimp legs and whiskers. But they were difficult to store without breaking and evolved into a hydrangea shape instead.
“We have a machine to shred it,” says Steven, the one shortcut of a much longer process. “Then you have to put it in the sesame and the flour and we mix it all up. We put it into the fryer, then curl it up into a ball.
” They’re a light product that requires many steps and are extra expensive to produce. Breaking them is inevitable, and so Pine House sells boxes of the tasty pieces for half the price. The word for shrimp, ha , also sounds like laughter, making real shrimp or this snack version popular for happy new year feasting.
蛋散 Commonly translated to “egg twist,” though I recently saw a Scarborough bakery labels these in English as “egg pastry.” The Chinese name translates more literally to “scattered egg,” though it is also used as impolite slang for “useless person.” “We mix [the dough up], put it through the roller, make it paper thin, then we fold it up and cut it into strands,” says Steven.
The final product can be sweet or seasoned with salt or garlic. Its simplicity comes from its humble origins. It is said that poor people who couldn’t afford to make treats with sugar, peanuts or sesame fried the dough they had on hand to invent this snack.
牛耶 These are called “cow’s ear cookies” for their shape. After rolling out the dough, a layer of red fermented bean curd is brushed on top. “Then we roll it all the way up,” says Steven.
“We put it into the freezer and the next we day we use one of those slicers for ham to shave it into small pieces.” This used to be done at Pine House by hand. The East-meets-West history of Hong Kong bakeries The bakeries of Hong Kong — with a history as a port city, a refugee city and a former colony with cosmopolitan consumers — have always served goods with a world of influences.
Russians who arrived in Hong Kong after fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution brought cakes decorated with ornate layers of cream. Chinese immigrants returned to Asia after racist hysteria in 1930s Mexico and brought with them the concha , which is generally named the “Mexican bun.” Japanese invaders during the Second World War, and their subsequent softer cultural invasion, introduced their own style of fusion baking from years of Portuguese and Dutch influence.
All of this collided in Hong Kong, a British colony with Cantonese roots, with its robust heritage of steamed baos and delightfully chewy treats made from glutinous rice. Walk into a Hong Kong bakery today, and you might find matcha breads and molten cheese tarts amongst the pineapple buns. There are always new additions to an island city that hasn’t stopped importing trends.
The same goes for Hong Kong-style bakeries in overseas communities like Vancouver, with a discerning foodie clientele who make frequent trips back to Asia and will turn their nose up if the offerings are dated or poorly made. Amidst all the invention and innovation, the Cantonese offerings of old take up less and less shelf space in contemporary bakeries. To make them means having the kitchen equipment for not only baking, but also steaming and frying.
Pine House, in addition to making cakes, pineapple buns and egg tarts, also regularly prepares a wide selection of Cantonese classics. Zi maa go , jet-black steamed cakes made with nutty black sesame. Siu beng , chewy, pan-grilled discs filled with red bean.
Pei daan so , flaky pastries with a lotus seed paste wrapped around a preserved egg. Inspired by western baking, these breads have become authentically Hong Kong. Pine House sells them alongside older Cantonese treats, as seen on the top shelf.
The fact that you can get old-school Cantonese cakes, pastries and snacks in Vancouver is a sign of a diaspora thriving amidst pressures to assimilate. These foods all play a part in keeping traditions alive, from faat go , a cake used for ancestor veneration, to the dowry cakes that have become less about an actual exchange but a wedding gift. Plus, they’re all incredibly delicious.
As for the traditional foods of the Lunar New Year, they’re part of starting the calendar on the right foot. Steamed cakes, called go , are the quintessential item, with sweet varieties made of coconut milk or water chestnut, and savoury varieties made of radish or taro. Pine House sells these too, but it is just as common for families to make their own.
The fried snacks, however, are fading from home kitchens. Some people simply don’t eat anything deep-fried. But for those who do, the traditional treats are a lot of work and require studying up if an elder is not around.
Pine House has preserved their preparation the old-fashioned way. This time of year, the woks usually used for dim sum items or cooking bread fillings like curry are redeployed for deep-frying action. Preserving the art of Cantonese pastries Eddie was a Coca-Cola salesman in Vancouver until a friend from Hong Kong in the bakery business asked if he was interested in partnering up.
Together, they opened the first Pine House together in Chinatown back in 1992. They would expand to three locations in East Vancouver, where their Victoria Drive location remains the busiest. From there, they followed the diaspora to open branches in the malls of the booming suburbs of Burnaby and Richmond, the latter of which is now being run by someone else.
With many offerings around two dollars, on any given day you can spot homemakers and seniors picking up items for sustenance. Steven had grown up in the family business, where there was no time for tomfoolery. “No running around,” he says, “mostly helping out.
” Grocery Tigers in the Year of the Dragon read more One might think that being raised in bakeries would come with the joy of eating whatever you wanted. But Steven says it’s too much. “Sometimes, I can’t even taste-test anymore.
” Steven started helping out formally in his mid-20s. He’s become an encyclopedia of recipes, learning from workers who have been with Pine House since he was a child. It’s rare to find young people interested in entering this work.
For those who do, it’s just as rare for them to stick around. Pine House has learned the hard way. “We’re actually paying them to learn,” says Steven.
“We have someone to teach them and are pretty much holding their hands, showing them how to do it. You get to the point where, two or three months later, they’re like, ‘Oh, this isn’t for me.’” Nowadays, it’s become rare to find anyone at all.
“Workers are harder to find,” he says. “They’re all at retirement age. That’s why it’s a dying art with Chinese pastries.
When one person leaves the company or retires, I have to learn it — so I can pass it on.” At top, Pine House’s logo at its Kingsway location, above the god of wealth. At centre, the bakery’s sesame balls are ready for delivery to supermarkets.
At bottom, a vast supply of fried treats at T&T Supermarket. A well-oiled operation The labour that goes into frying treats for the Lunar New Year is so specialized that even supermarkets like T&T and PriceSmart — both of which have their own bakery departments and in-house kitchens with an extensive array of items — rely on Pine House, slapping their own labels on the packaging. In places where there is a large Cantonese population but no one to make its specialty foods, stores might opt to import them from overseas instead.
One can find them sold in vacuum-sealed bags from China. The Joy of Zongzi read more “It’s just not the same,” says Steven. “It’s stale.
It’s been fried so long ago. It takes a month at the bare minimum to ship it over here, so you can imagine when it was made.” As in many other long-standing Hong Kong bakeries in the city, the family did try to have everything made in one central facility.
But with the headaches of machinery and logistics, they reversed course to have their individual branches make the products in-house. Eighteen years later, they’ve stuck by this. “I still find it a little bit better,” says Steven.
“Customers can come in and know it’s fresh.” That goes all the way down to fillings like red bean and lotus seed pastes. Coming out of the pandemic, inflation has been painful.
Take the price of cooking oil, which has shot up to $40 per 16 litres from $20. “Prices are through the roof, so we save where we can, picking things up like sugar and oil ourselves. That way, we can keep our prices down.
We’re still trying to run it like a mom-and-pop operation.” Snack trays and boxes this season are round, symbolizing togetherness as everyone gathers to enjoy. It’s work that never stops.
But many of Pine House’s customers have been with them from the very beginning, and they are aging. “It’s getting there!” says Steven. “Luckily, we have a lot of the products in the supermarket, so that keeps it alive in a way.
They have to carry everything.” The operation is literally a well-oiled machine. He surveys a large sheet of freshly fried taro crisps and clamshell containers of sesame balls that have just been packed into towers of cardboard boxes to be delivered.
“We try to do as much as we can, keep it as traditional as possible,” he says. “Hopefully, people appreciate it.” Read more: Food , Labour + Industry.
