Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging

A warm and poignant narrative about finding one’s self amidst the grind of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a daughter’s attempts to connect with parents who have always been just out of reach.

When she was three years old, Rachel Phan met her replacement. Instead of a new sibling, her mother and father’s time and attention were suddenly devoted entirely to their new family restaurant. For her parents—whose own families fled China during Japanese occupation and then survived bombs and starvation during the war in Vietnam—it was a dream come true. For Phan, it was something quite different. Overnight, she became a restaurant kid, living on the periphery of her own family and trying her best to stay out of the way.

As Phan grew up, the restaurant was the most stalwart and suffocating member of her family. For decades, it’s been both their crowning achievement and the origin of so much of their pain and suffering: screaming matches complete with smashed dishes; bodies worn down by long hours and repetitive strain; and tenuous relationships where the family loved one another deeply without ever really knowing each other.

In Restaurant Kid, Phan seeks to examine the way her life has been shaped by the rigid boxes placed around her. She had to be a “good daughter,” never asking questions, always being grateful. She had to be a “real Canadian,” watching hockey and speaking English so flawlessly that her tongue has since forgotten how to contort around Cantonese tones. As the only Chinese girl at school, she had to alternate between being the sidekick, geek, or Asian fetish, depending on whose gaze was on her.

Now, three decades after their restaurant first opened, Phan’s parents are cautiously talking about retirement. As an adult, Phan’s “good daughter” role demands something new of her—and a chance to get to know her parents away from the restaurant.

In Restaurant Kid, Phan deftly combines candour, wit and insight to craft a vibrant and important narrative on the strength and foibles of family, and how we come to understand ourselves.

“A heartfelt tale about a third-culture kid searching for identity, belonging and a sense of home. Phan tells the universal story of what it means to grow up in an immigrant family with surprisingly intimate details of depression and emotional turmoil as she builds her own path and finds both herself and her family in an unexpected place.”

“Restaurant Kid is a kaleidoscopic coming-of-age story that beautifully captures a young woman’s journey to understand her identity and her family’s history. Rachel Phan weaves a deeply personal narrative of growing up in the shadow of her parents’ restaurant—their hard-won livelihood and the source of both connection and tension. With grace and vulnerability, Phan explores the importance of reckoning with our roots, finding meaning in our family’s sacrifices, and coming to terms with the forces that shape who we are.”

“What do we inherit and how do we decide what to leave behind? In Restaurant Kid, Rachel Phan writes at once with brutal honesty and heartbreaking tenderness, expertly dissecting her own experience as an immigrant kid, and the question of what do we owe to those who sacrifice the most?”