A Shining Star among Chinese Restaurants in Canada

--An Interview with Mr. Zheng Guo, Owner of Ningbo Seafood Restaurant

In downtown Richmond of Greater Vancouver, Canada, Chinese restaurants serving various tastes emerge one after another to vie for customers, with their richly oriental taste and charm attracting a lot of visitors. Ningbo Seafood Restaurant is a dark horse standing out among all the Chinese restaurants, now a shining star already.

Decoration: manifestation of national style
People would feel like entering a grand palace of art on entering Ningbo Seafood Restaurant, which bears an outstanding Ningbo style. With scientific design philosophy, the restaurant presents an overall design style characteristic of traditional Chinese food, embodying natural greatness in elegance and freshness amid luxuries. Covering a total construction area of nearly 500 square meters, the restaurant provides a banquet hall that can accommodate 200 diners at the same time; there’re also 10 top-grade boxes with chic names, and seats scattered around the hall with simplicity and elegance. The strong modern style is integrated with classical decorative beauty of Chinese nation, giving off mild yet impressive nostalgia. Thus, with great tastes from hometown and decorations of hometown style, the restaurant has become an ideal venue for overseas Chinese to miss and talk about their hometown.

The service of Ningbo Seafood Restaurant features customer orientation centered at the gentleness and considerateness of Ningbo people, aiming at creating an atmosphere of “service around”. The moment customers enter the restaurant, they will enjoy all-round care; with a slight gesture or even eye contact, customers will have service personnel around them to offer help. There they not only enjoy dining services but dignity and courtesy. Service is thus a specialty, too!

Dishes: reflection of uniqueness
Uniqueness is an open secret for a long-lasting restaurant, and the key to strengthening and enlarging it. In a market with fiercer and fiercer competition, there’s only one secret for Ningbo Seafood Restaurant: keeping an eye to what customers haven’t had and making the best of it with top grade. Since the restaurant was opened in Richmond, the boss Zheng Guo has been considering every day how to present unexpected delicacies to customers. Ningbo has been renowned for its seafood and most restaurants there are engaged in seafood making. Knowing it’s hard for Ningbo people in Richmond to have authentic dishes from their hometown, Zheng combined Ningbo cuisine and Shanghai cuisine to start with offering “crab stewed with tofu” and “home-made chicken stewed in pottery”, which are of bright colors, attractive appearance, smooth taste and fresh flavor, thus almost maintaining the original taste of seafood. The two dishes aroused great sensations among the local Chinese the moment they’re promoted, attracting a lot of Ningbo people who loved them so much. But Zheng didn’t stay content with that; he offered dishes like “poached eggs with fermented glutinous rice”, “original sea cucumber” and “shelled shrimps stir-fried with celeries” to create seafood dishes of his own style, adding to the attraction of his recipe. He summarized that competitive seafood dishes must be new, fresh and tender. “New” is to introduce new dishes often to give customers dining surprises; “fresh” is the essence of seafood that makes it seafood; “tender” is the core of seafood dishes, combined with “fresh” to achieve ultimate goodness of seafood dishes. To fulfill the “three-word recipe” abovementioned, Zheng spare no effort from purchasing food materials to their storage and to their cooking. As for kitchen running, he spent a lot hiring the best chefs of seafood from Ningbo and has discussed with chefs and tasted dishes until he’s fully satisfied. He believed to have customers love the dishes in his restaurant he must love them in the first place; he could only serve diners in his restaurant with dishes he’s content with. It’s just based on the philosophy that Ningbo Seafood Restaurant managed to make great success within a few years and is still rising till now.

Management: an attitude of being down-to-earth
Zheng used to take a lot of hardships in starting the business so that he’s painstaking and courageous today, as well as down-to-earth and efficiency-focused. Despite better and better businesses, he never forgets about of thrift and will roam around the hall and the kitchen every day to remind service personnel to turn off lights when leaving and advise chefs to turn off taps and gas when not in use to avoid unnecessary wastes. Due to high labor cost in Canada, he would make repeated calculations before employing any staff; it’s fair to say he shoulders many posts in the restaurant: the manger, the hall manager and the handyman. When there’s too many jobs for his staffs to do, he would clean indoors and outdoors in person. He’s also a security staff of the restaurant: during business hours, he has to take good care of safety protection in the kitchen and make sure of no incidents on customers; after business hours every day, he has to patrol around every corner of the restaurant in case of any hidden troubles. He’s a purchaser in the restaurant and he would pick, taste and seek each food material by himself; sometimes he would need to go around for finding the right one. He purchased everything by himself, such as dishes, knives and forks, tables and chairs, tablecloths and food materials and key equipment. He was once advised not to take care of every single matter personally, but he replied smilingly, “It’s not that I don’t trust my staff. Running a restaurant is like cooking dishes: both require carefulness.”

Achievements
Life never disappoints hard-working souls. For Zheng Guo and his Ningbo Seafood Restaurant, the recent two years have been full of achievements. In July 2015, in an activity of anonymous food trial planned and implemented by About Face, a famous company in the field, Ningbo Seafood Restaurant won 91.80, a high mark given by gastrosophs. The fairness and authoritativeness of anonymous food trial crowned Ningbo Seafood Restaurant with a top title in the trade. Then in Dec. 2015, Asia Star TV held a selection of “The Best Asian Food in Canada” to promote Ningbo Seafood Restaurant amid Top 5. Winning the honor symbolized that the reputation of Ningbo Seafood Restaurant was largely advanced; then in Feb. 2016, Ningbo Seafood Restaurant again won Healthy Eating Award Certificate granted by Healthy Dining, an int’l healthy dining accrediting body. Insiders reveal that so far in Canada, there’re very few Chinese restaurants awarded with the certificate, and winning it not only broadens the market for Ningbo Seafood Restaurant, but helps support its high overall strength and sets good examples for Chinese restaurants to enter Canadian market.

There’s little doubt that Ningbo Seafood Restaurant will embrace a brighter future!