Legendary greasy spoon
The Green Door
Does everyone have an iconic restaurant that comes to represent an entire decade? Certainly for me, the 1960s brings back memories the Green Door in Vancouver. This legendary cheap Chinese restaurant was a secret. Part of the joy of the place was you had to know it was there. My dad found it, along with hundreds of people before him.
I remember walking down Pender Street with my dad, who had promised to take me out for lunch. Pender Street was crowded with wonderful restaurants, highly-decorated with gold and red, expensive places where white tourists would go (what did I think I was?), and shops that sold more varieties of bamboo furniture and baskets than it seemed possible. Most stores that I poked my nose into were redolent with the smell of cone incense, and the clean straw musk of the room-sized mats that were popular then. They were inexpensive and charming.
There were Buddhas in shop front windows, silk jackets and sleeveless silk dresses on display in glorious colours of red, green, and peacock blue. There were butcher stores with whole chickens hanging in the windows and chicken feet, which were large and reptilian-looking. I hurried by those places.
So it was down this busy, delightful street that Dad led me, one our family had come to know well when we moved from Ottawa to Vancouver. We had walked around Chinatown a lot: we looked, we inhaled the wonderful different smells with pleasure. But this particular time, Dad turned right toward Hastings Street where even then, scary guys hung out. They muttered to themselves and sometimes at me.
But fortunately, we didn’t go as far as Hastings. Dad turned right again into an alley. The alley was, well . . . there were dumpsters. There was trash. Pavement. It was not a place I would’ve ventured to on my own. My heart sank. We walked down a little way and there was a green metal door. No sign. No street number—this was just an alley. The door had a foot-square steel panel around the lock; even I could figure out that it was to prevent the door from being jimmied. But Dad opened this door, and, quaking, I followed him. I was probably twelve when I first walked in.
The steam and the smells hit me first, an explosion of deliciousness: soy sauce, sauteeing onions, ginger and garlic. My mouth started to water. Beef and broccoli. Cashew chicken. Mmm, prawns with black bean sauce. The underlying calmness of jasmine rice. And the noise, the spatter as the cook slooshed oil from a giant bottle with a spout into a hot wok, the sizzle as he flung a handful of raw chicken into the wok.
It was theatre, this tiny greasy spoon, with the kitchen along a back wall, one counter with a four or five old-fashioned stools and a few tables and chairs. The diners watched the cook. When I first started coming, the restaurant was a family affair, with a husband, a wife waiting tables and several extraordinarily young children helping. Imagine a six-year-old coming out of the kitchen with a bowl of rice and reaching up up to the table to place it! And the boy was so proud. He beamed when we thanked him.
There was no natural light. The walls didn’t have scrolls with scenes of mountains and waterfalls and for sure, there were no calendars with red and gold. The Green Door was the most stripped-down restaurant I’d ever seen. That was alright, no one came for the décor. The menu was remarkably short. Which was fine. What kitchen turned out was fabulous and the prices were so cheap it was stunning.
One of the things my Mom always told me that was she’d know when I was grown up as I’d take her out for lunch. So at fourteen or fifteen, with my babysitting money, I proudly took her to the Green Door for lunch. By then, she and Dad had split up and she had no one to take her out for a nice meal. I guess in my mind, I must’ve been all grown up!
The Green Door was always busy. Once when I was there with Dad, he held up a hand and said, “Hear that?”
I’d never paid any attention before. “Clicking?” It was coming from behind. There was a corridor where the washrooms were.
Dad nodded. “It’s mah-jong tiles. This whole place is a front for a gambling joint. Mah-jong. Watch and see how many men come in the door. See, with a restaurant, no one’s going to question the coming and going.” And once he’d said it, I realized yes, there were more people slipping in than actually sat at the restaurant’s tables. It set up an uneasy undercurrent for me to know about the gambling; I didn’t like to think of people losing money.
A little while later, the Orange Door became fashionable. It was just along the alley from the Green Door. Because chefs come, chefs go. In Chinatown, they were always moving. The husband and wife and kids running the restaurant changed. Sometimes the Green Door was great, other times we’d desert it for the Jade Palace, which cost more but was consistently good.
But the Green Door cooked decent food for many years. I went there until I left Vancouver commercial fishing at the advanced age of seventeen. Went up north, as we said then, north being Powell River and then Prince Rupert. Always in my memories, the steam, the hissing of frying, the burst of savoury smells as we walked in the door. This was how my Dad kept in touch with us after the dissolution of his marriage with Mom. For me it was magic. One by one, he’d take us kids out for lunch and we’d visit over delicious garlicky food under industrial-strength lights where we did our best to strengthen the family ties that remained.
Is there a food haven that’s iconic for you? I’d love to hear the where and when.
Yvonne, so nice to hear from you! I'm really pleased that you, too, knew the Green Door and as you say, yummy food. Let's have tea next we run into one another; I'd love to hear about your days as a reporter!
Thanks, Joy! I'm still processing the yelling. Was this a Chinese restaurant? I'm trying to think if I ever had that experience, or whether I was so focused on I was with that I didn't notice. Maybe the higher-end Asian restaurants in Vancouver.
I can imagine prairie visitors being delighted with the meal adventure!