Sylvia Mok’s short documentary Restaurant Kids is a charming, delightful look at multiple generations of families detailing the good and bad of revolving their lives around their family business.

Raised between dining rooms and take–out counters, the children of Halifax’s Chinese restaurateurs share stories of family, hard work and identity. Through intimate conversations and personal memories, Restaurant Kids celebrates a tight-knit community whose businesses became gathering places, livelihoods and second homes for a generation growing up between cultures.

The sense of belonging is not an easy one to find as someone who is an immigrant. Finding a place to start fresh and give your family a better life is never easy, so finding multiple Chinese families settling in a fairly remote city like Halifax is surprising, but at the same time, it feels shrewd. No one else is there who can relate to them, so why not create a little home through that wonderful thing called food? In Sylvia Mok’s doc Restaurant Kids, we not only learn what it was like for those immigrants, but what it’s been like for the generations that followed, and the warmth and heart it emits is fantastic.

The fact that the people in the Chinese restaurant community of Halifax have been able to persevere through a drastically different life, establish their own roots while paying to put their children through private school and piano, etc lessons is a testament to the never-give-up attitude that has built Canada into the country it is today. But as Mok gently asks, does that come at a price for the younger generation?

We see children of these families pulled in from a young age to take over and manage the restaurants while their parents take a back seat as they ease toward retirement, and have their parents’ efforts also curtailed their hopes and dreams? We see young Michael, who hopes to be something else far from restaurants, but will his mother, now running the restaurant, allow that? This sense of duty to keep their culture close-knitclose-knit is what makes Restaurant Kids such an interesting watch.

Yet as we find out as the documentary continues, the parents have made the sacrifice in establishing a strong financial base despite missing recitals and moments of their children’s lives. They are not just surviving in a new country; they are ensuring that they have the money to give their children the best education, etc possible. One generation’s work can give the next the freedom to choose a different path. It feels like the first generation set the stone; the second continues it to ensure that the third, like Michael, can experience the life that was the dream in the first place. It’s a common, simple story, but still wholly effective and heartwarming.

This is especially the case through Mok’s sensitive lens. Restaurant Kids is the type of short where, at a mere twelve minutes, you are desperate for more time with the subjects. They are so interesting, and you want to learn more about their experiences. She lets the subjects speak for themselves and share their experiences with comfort. It’s a portrait of two families that clearly scratches only the surface of their lives.

Ultimately, Restaurant Kids is a lovely reminder that home is not always where you are from, or even your own home. Sometimes it’s a restaurant, a place where your family is, where memories can be forged. Sure, there might be resentment here and there, but all families have that in some form, and the aim is to make your and your kids’ lives better. Well, sometimes that sacrifice is worth it.

No matter where we are, we need to be like the youngest interviewee, Michael and have our own little “Thinking Corner” to ponder life and the day.

★★★★

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