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In Search of the Great Canadian Food Experience: Edmonton’s Green Onion Cakes

Outside of Edmonton’s Green Onion Cake Man restaurant, which opened in 2018, located on 118th Ave and 91st Street.

I was surfing the web reading about all the great Canadian cuisine. And then I thought of green onion cakes, made right here in Edmonton. So famous that there is an exhibit about them at the new Royal Alberta Museum. And so popular, it was suggested they be named the City’s official food. Then I checked Wikipedia only to find that green onion cakes were not listed on its Canadian Cuisine web page. How can that be?

I texted the recently opened Green Onion Cake Man restaurant in Edmonton and asked them for an interview. Maybe they knew why their highly popular Edmonton food, now found in many major cities in North America, was not on Wiki list of Canadian cuisine? Cuisine, from East Indian to Scottish food, and everything in between, was on those lists. Why not green onion cakes?

Fresh green onion cake, from the Green Onion Cake Man restaurant. When I tasted them, I wasn’t disappointed.

Green Onion Cakes: A Little History First

Chinese green onion pancakes, or Chong Yao Beng (green onion, oil pancake) is a unleavened flatbread folded with oil and finely minced green onion. It varies somewhat in ingredients and production, depending on where it is made. Traditionally a street food, it is now served in many restaurants in North America.

There are many green onion cake recipes and cakes out there to choose from. But I had to try the ones at the Green Onion Cake Man, and ask restaurant owner, Mr. Siu To, about their Edmonton origins. And, why wasn’t this cake adopted earlier in other North American cities as more Chinese people immigrated to Canada? It wasn’t long before I got some answers.

The Green Onion Cake Man Restaurant

Current research suggests that Siu To and his wife Yeenar were the founders of green onion cakes in Canada. They started making them soon after immigrating from Shandong Province, northern China in 1975. In northern China, traditional Mandarin cooking differs from southern Cantonese cooking. ‘More simple, less ingredients’, Mr. To explained to me. But Mr. To’s cooking has caught on. Recently the green onion cake story has been covered by many news outlets, especially after the opening the Green Onion Cake Man restaurant (CBC, Edmonton Sun, The Star, Jennifer Bain).

Siu To, now 79 years old, opened the Happy Garden and the Mongolian Food Experience restaurants in the late 1970s and 80s in Edmonton. His first customers were mostly Taiwanese who really liked his cakes, even though this was not typical southern Chinese fare. According to Edmonton’s historian laureate, Chris Chang-Yen Phillips, “It represents a bit of a shift in Chinese cuisine in Alberta from being a Cantonese-style cuisine to sort of experimenting with other food traditions in China.”

But it was Edmonton’s major festivals in the 1980s, Taste of Edmonton, Edmonton Folk Fest and the Fringe, that really put green onion cakes on the map. They were great festival food favorites and Siu cooked them right there.

My interview with Mr. Siu To, showing me two of his frozen products. Read on for more details below.

One of the first questions I asked Mr. To: ‘Why all the media attention in the last few years?’ He thought it was because people like genuine food being made fresh, right in front of them. That also explains why his cakes caught on at the festivals. Because he fried them right there. And they tasted great.

I entered the restaurant. It was a small, neat place, seating about twenty people, and the emphasis was all on food, not decor. Once in the door, you looked right into the kitchen and watched the cooks preparing your dishes. It reminded me of the original The Only restaurant on East Hastings Street, Vancouver, in the 1980s. Straightforward and simple. But, some of the best seafood I have ever tasted, anywhere.

Standing at the counter of the Green Onion Cake Man, I watched as Linda made fresh green onion cakes for me to take home.

I sat down with Mr. To, hoping to find out a little more about this simple, but delightful food. After only a few minutes of chatting, I already knew one reason why his cakes were so popular. This man was passionate about his cooking. And sharing it with other Canadians. As we talked, he explained that cooking was more than throwing a bunch of ingredients into a frying pan. It was an art and had to come from the heart. I couldn’t agree more.

I asked Mr. To whether the cakes he makes are like the traditional ones in northern China? Mostly, he said. But there was one major difference (which I had not read about before). He said, traditionally green onion cakes were leavened. He explained that he uses baking powder in his cakes, instead of yeast. With baking powder it was easier to control how high the dough rose.

We got around to talking about Edmonton’s numerous festivals. I asked why he choose green onion cakes for festival food, and not something more familiar to Canadians? Like Chow Mein, for example? And not surprisingly, one reason was, practicality. By preparing the green onion cake dough beforehand, he could then quickly flatten the dough balls into cakes and fry them on site. There were fewer ingredients to prepare, fewer pots and pans to carry, than cooking Chow Mein.

My last questions dealt with the popularity and origins of green onion cakes in Canada. Mr. To explained that most Chinese immigrants to Canada came from southeast China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many Chinese Canadian restaurants focused on Cantonese cooking, and not so much northern Chinese cuisine. Lucky for us, Mr. To ended up in Edmonton.

And the reason for its almost instant popularity. Simple – easy to make, easy to cook, inexpensive, and very tasty. A hard combination to beat.

Have Green Onion Cakes Spread Beyond Edmonton?

After my interview, one question remained: After over forty years of existence in Edmonton, do all areas in Canada now have those yummy green onion cakes on their menus? (I asked my wife if we could do a road trip to all major North America cities to do the research. Still waiting for an answer.)

The faster, easier way to find answers was to check the web. I typed in “green onion cake restaurants in…..,” and then the name of the city. Before I get to Canada, surprisingly the few major American cities I checked some restaurants had green onion cakes listed on their menus (New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Diego, Los Vegas). And also, London, England and Paris, France. Certainly not like Mr. To’s originals, but something similar.

Next, I checked the major Canadian cities, especially the capitals of every province, and a few extras (i.e., Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, Saskatoon). Did any of their Chinese restaurant menus list green onion cakes? Restaurants in seven provinces (Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia) listed green onion cakes. No green onion cakes on menus of any restaurants in the other six provinces (Newfoundland/Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nunavut, Yukon and North West Territories). The four other cities listed above had at least one restaurant that served green onion cakes (a few had over ten).

Along with these facts, and further chats with some Facebook friends, living in less populated areas of Canada, two things became apparent: 1) restaurants in the provinces with the top seven highest Chinese populations listed green onion cakes; and, 2) once you leave the high population centers, even in Alberta, green onion cakes are still a relatively unknown fare for many Canadians. I really feel for you people.

But we still don’t know whether the green onion cake idea spread from Edmonton where it originated, or, was independently conceived by new Chinese arrivals in other cities. Which ever way they spread, it required a sufficiently high Chinese population first to support this food. And that only occurred in major Canadian cities.

And like many other foods and fashions, green onion cakes are being modified according to the tastes in a particular area. In one Toronto restaurant, you can order a folded green onion cake with a chive filling. In another, the green onion cakes are thinner, flatter and flakier than what Mr. To makes.

Called ‘Chive Pockets’ on their menu, these filled pancakes from the Golden Dumpling restaurant, Toronto, look like folded green onion cakes with a filling.
These thinner, flaky green onion cakes, from the Juicy Dumpling restaurant, Toronto, are similar to Mr. To’s, but with perhaps less baking powder in them.

What’s Next for the Green Onion Cake Man?

Although Mr. To isn’t exactly a spring chicken, he is still thinking of new ways to share his knowledge of northern Chinese cuisine with fellow Canadians. Now he has developed dishes for Edmontonians to cook at home.

During our interview, he brought out two samples of his frozen Chinese dishes: 1) Singapore Noodles; and, 2) Yaung Chow Fried Rice. Take them home, thaw them, cook briefly and enjoy. I can’t wait to try them.

Singapore Noodles with shrimp and a sauce to pour over the ingredients.
Yaung Chow Fried Rice bowl, frozen. Just warm it up and you’re ready for a great eating experience.

Siu has now developed six frozen dishes and three frozen soups that you can cook at home. But, it wouldn’t surprise me if there is more to come.

Nothing Like the Real Thing

I had to ask Siu whether he tried green onion cakes at other restaurants. Yes, he had, but they weren’t like his. Did other restaurant owners call him for advice or for his recipe? He said, very few had but he knew they came in and tried his cakes, without talking to him.

If you are ever in Edmonton, or somewhere near 118th Avenue, go grab some green onion cakes and those new frozen dishes that you can cook at home. Even though there may be other green onion cakes out there, there’s nothing like the real thing. Made by Canada’s original Green Onion Cake Man. Mr. Siu To.

Siu To, at the Green Onion Cake Man restaurant talking to his customers.

Note: My ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ research in this article is hardly state of the art. But, it’s the best I could do on short notice, without extensively traveling. There may be other places in Canada where you might find green onion cakes, that I missed. If so, please let me know.

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Fort La Jonquierre: The French Fort That Never Was? Or, Just Never Found?

By current estimates, there were over three-hundred fur trade posts built in Alberta alone (there are many more in the other prairie provinces). The location of over fifty-percent of the Alberta posts is unknown. Many, like the legendary Fort La Jonquierre, built in 1751, remain a mystery. Even for the folks (that’s all of us) at Wikipedia. Here’s what I know about this mysterious French fort (parts of which are remarkably similar in the Wiki version). If it was real, and had continued as a western settlement, it might have changed the course of western Canadian history.

This enigmatic fur trade post was once on my archaeological ‘bucket list‘. Long rumored to exist, but never searched for, it has baffled historians and archaeologists for over a century. For more details, you can read my online article in the Alberta Archaeological Review. Here is a slightly shorter version of my research.

Early 18th Century Exploration of Western Canada

The struggle for control of the western fur trade, and search for a route to the Pacific Ocean, between the French and English periodically ended with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Soon after, however, the French again pursued their dream – to be the first to find an inland route to the Pacific Ocean. They began to establish Postes de la Mer de l’ouest west (posts of the western Sea) to search for that route. They were ambitious, unlike their British counterparts who, as one trader later wrote, were “…content to remain asleep by the frozen sea (Hudson Bay).“

There was one major obstacle in this noble undertaking: No one really knew where exactly they were heading. Even by the 1740s, the Pacific Ocean was a mere blur, somewhere thousands of miles west, as the best available maps of the period show.

An 1740s map of the interior of western Canada and the Pacific Ocean drawn by the French Canadian Metis, Joseph La France for the Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Arthur Dobbs. Not only was distance and major geographic features of the Canadian west inaccurate, no one knew which river or pass led to the Pacific Ocean from the east side of the Rocky Mountains.

Most of La France’s information, and that of other French explorers such as Pierre Gualtier de La Verendrye, was collected from First Nations’ accounts of routes to the Pacific Ocean:

“It was there [forks of the Saskatchewan Rivers] that he [La Verendrye’s son] was in the spring at the meeting of all the Cree, and where he inquired minutely, according to his father’s orders, where the source of this great river was. They all replied with one voice that it came from very far, from a height of land where there were very lofty mountains; that they knew of a great lake on the other side of the mountains, the water of which was undrinkable.” (a French memoir, in Dugas 1905:487: brackets mine)

[Note: One historian thinks that the ‘lofty mountains’ in this account was the Missouri Coteau, and the great lake was Chaplin Lake (very salty), Saskatchewan. Even that chain of hills between Moose Jaw and Swift Current, is hardly ‘lofty’. And Chaplin Lake was not really that big.]

The Mysterious Fort La Jonquierre

In order to reach the Pacific, the French wanted to build a line of forts along the Saskatchewan River, including one at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. This was no easy undertaking. However, by 1751 they had established a fort (La Corne) at the forks of the Saskatchewan Rivers. According to Legardeur de St. Pierre, one of La Verendrye’s successors:

“I promised to all the tribes that M. de Niverville would go and create an establishment nine hundred miles farther up than that on the Paskoyac. I agreed with all the tribes that they should unite with me at that new trading post.” (from Dugas 1905:96)

Paskoyac refers to the present day The Pas, Manitoba, located along the Saskatchewan River. St. Pierre’s statement provides a distance and possible geographical landmark for the fort. And later St. Pierre wrote again:

“…was executed on 29th May, 1751. He sent off ten men in two canoes, who ascended the river Paskoya [Saskatchewan] as far as the Rocky Mountains, where they made a good fort, which I named Fort la Jonquierre….“

This quote refers to a slightly better landmark. The Saskatchewan River, or one of its forks (either the North Saskatchewan, the Bow River, or even the Red Deer River). But, even if we believe these entries (and I personally do), would there be any archaeological remains left? What exactly did they build? St. Pierre later wrote about La Jonquierre:

“…met with a nation loaded with beaver, who were going by a river which issues from the Rocky Mountains, to trade with the French, who had their first establishment on an island at a small distance from the land, where there is a large storehouse…”

Then in 1757, Louis-Antoine De Bougainville wrote: “The posts of the Western Sea includes St. Pierre, St. Charles, Bourbon, De la Rheine, Dauphin, Posakoiac and Des Prairies [De la Jonquierre?], all of which are built with palisades that can give protection only against the Indians.” The Des Prairies forts could also refer to St. Louis and La Corne. So, this reference is somewhat dubious.

An old voyageur told Abbe Dugas in early 1900s that the fort was located above Calgary, on the Bow River. He claimed that when First Nations people passed the spot, they cast a stone on it, and, “….in truth there is a heap of stone there.” However, what exactly that heap of stone represented is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a fireplace from the fort but other options exist (burial, later fur trade post, farmer’s field rock collection, etc.).

The location and physical evidence of a fort would then consist of the following: 1) located near the foot of the Rocky mountains, on an island in a river (either Bow, Red Deer, or North Saskatchewan); 2) containing at least one building (perhaps with a cellar) and a possible palisade; and, 3) artifacts that represented the time period in question. Assuming the original location was undisturbed (and not swept away by the river), the archaeological record would consist of: 1) building wood foundation logs and maybe a cellar depression; 2) a palisade footer trench; and, 3) 18th century artifacts (hopefully a few with a short manufacturing period).

The map below shows roughly where nine-hundred miles west from Paskoyac places you on those rivers. The problem however, is that there are many islands on these rivers, as a piece of the Bow River above Calgary shows (below).

Approximate position of La Jonquierre on major rivers leading into the Rocky Mountains. This estimate would have had to be very general. Distance west (longitude) was very hard to accurately measure. And estimating distance along winding rivers, in varying currents, was even more difficult.
A section of the Bow River, above Calgary, Alberta. There are many islands in the Bow River. The problem is compounded because former islands are now part of the mainland and others simply eroded over time. Even if we could narrow the spot down to a few islands, finding those sparse fort physical features would still be very difficult (more on searching methods in a future article).

Here’s what a fort palisade footer trench and cellar depression would look like:

Palisade footer trenches and corner bastion, NWC Fort George (c.1792-1800). The trench, or ditch, was sometimes up to a metre deep, depending on the height of the palisade. It leaves a very visible footprint on and in the ground, even when the ground is disturbed (i.e., cultivated). At inland fur trade sites the palisade pales (vertical posts) are still preserved after remaining in the ground for over two-hundred years. I have walked along still visible (on the ground surface) fort palisade footer trench depressions, over two-hundred years old, in the dense undergrowth along the Peace River.
This large cellar depression at the NWC/HBC Fort Vermilion (c.1798-1830) is still nearly two metres deep, even after many flooding episodes of the lower terrace of the Peace River.

There are Skeptics

Not everyone agrees that the French built a fort this high on the Saskatchewan River, for various reasons: 1) questionable documents; neither St. Pierre or De Bougainville ever saw the fort; they just wrote about it; 2) traveling from The Pas, Manitoba, at ice-breakup on the Saskatchewan River to the Rocky Mountains, by the 29th of May was questionable; and, 3) no physical evidence of the fort was ever found. I won’t go into detail about these arguments, or counter-arguments. If interested, you can read more in my 2000 article.

Some Final Thoughts

I’m fairly convinced that Fort La Jonquierre existed and its remains, if not destroyed, lie somewhere in Alberta. No one has ever seriously looked for the fort, so the argument about the lack of physical evidence just doesn’t cut it.

If I were to ever look, I would start above Calgary and check all the major islands in the Bow River. Both on the ground and with Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) Imagery.

It’s interesting to think that if the fort had been built near Calgary, Alberta, and the French had prevailed before withdrawing from the west again after the Seven Years War (1756 – 1763), Calgary may have been named La Jonquierre.

“And the La Jonquierre Flammes win the Stanley Cup….”

On a final, somewhat more serious note, when I worked for the Government of Alberta, one of our branch mandates was to protect and manage our archaeological resources. That’s not easy to do if you don’t know where they are. The sometimes frustrating thing about historical archaeology, is that often there is an accompanying documentary record that suggests forts or other settlements existed. We just can’t find them. And the reason why? The physical obstacles are formidable when we search for these places.

In future blogs, I’ll give you some examples of just how tough it is to find a fort site after two-hundred years, and describe some new noninvasive methods we use to help make the task a little easier.

References Cited:

Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de. 1908. Memoir of Bougainville: 1757. In The French Regime in Wisconsin, edited by Reuban G. Thwaites, pp. 167-195. Wisconsin Historical Collections.

Dugas, Abbe. 1905. The Canadian West. Librairie Beauchemin, Montreal.

Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, Jacques Repeniguy. 1887. Memoir of Summary Journal of the Expedition of Jacques Repeniguy Legardeur de Saint-Pierre Charged with the Discovery of the Western Sea. In Report on Canadian Archives, 1886. Note C., pp.xiviii-clxix.