Memoir a delectable rumination on food, family and acceptance

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This article was published 26/04/2025 (521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wikipedia says “third culture kids” are “people who were raised in a culture other than their parents’ or the culture of their country of nationality.” Foreign and changing circumstances produce various advantages and challenges, including unrootedness and self-sufficiency.

Restaurant Kid, Canadian author Rachel Phan’s rollicking and thought-provoking first book, is a memoir which expresses many aspects of third-cultural individuals as well as the jumble of mini cultures she has lived as the youngest child of an Asian family growing up in Canada.

Phan’s parents are Hoa, of Chinese background, and had been living in Vietnam. In the late 1970s, government discrimination caused thousands to risk leaving in a second wave of boat people. Her mother and father met in a camp in China, and eventually emigrated to Canada.

When she is three, Phan’s parents open a restaurant in Kingville, Ont., which she introduces as “my replacement.” Her older brother and sister work there, but Phan never takes on particular responsibilities, and feel her parents focus on the business rather than on her. One of Phan’s identities was “the restaurant kid.”

Phan does well in school but stands out as different, experiencing both validation and racist dismissal. She grows somewhat resigned to some stereotypes: “This is how they see me, so this is who I am,” she writes.

Her parents’ separation — after years of fighting, gambling and working together — lead Phan to wonder what will happen to her identity, bound up with the restaurant, “our most annoying family member.” Their eventual reconciliation doesn’t manage to answer her questions about her place in the family, or in small-town Canada.

At university, Phan finds a group of “fast friends,” and her roommate becomes her best friend. However, she never details how these friendships developed, or what became of them. She’s more interested in chronicling her acceptance of often-demeaning stereotypes, especially with white men like Ethan, to whom she commits for years.

Classes focusing on gender and race help Phan understand her feelings. “I see myself in the course material… My discomfort grows with my understanding,” she writes. But she can’t communicate this to Ethan, and when she’s in grad school, their “relationship ends in a dramatic and hateful fashion.” Eventually she meets Michael, whom her sister describes as a “unicorn.” The author’s account of him agrees.

Her parents later take the family back to Vietnam for a visit, which positively impacts them all. Phan recognizes her parents have done their best to provide for the family. Her parents realize that going to Canada provided huge advantages over staying in Vietnam. Rachel and her siblings grow closer. Many family rifts seem to start toward healing.

Phan’s reminiscences never seem bitter or resentful toward those who deliberately or accidentally showed her racial or other discrimination. She always treats people as people, in spite of their belittling assumptions or stereotyping by skin or features.

While she learned the language of diversity and inclusion, Phan rarely uses it in her account. Rather than decrying systemic racism in Canada, Restaurant Kid’s personal and historical accounts primarily juxtapose discrimination and violence in China and Vietnam with opportunities found in an imperfect Canada.

Phan comes to a much healthier understanding of her parents’ seeming neglect. She acknowledges the memoir is her love letter to them.

Developing such a gracious attitude toward family, culture and other pressures makes Rachel Phan a role model, and Restaurant Kid provides an enjoyable pattern for turning a messy past into a strong, self-sufficient life.

Readers may approach their own backgrounds, perspectives and choices in more nuanced ways after reading Phan’s memoir.

As an American raised in Africa, and living in Canada, retired teacher Bill Rambo considers himself a well-adjusted third-culture “kid.”