Growing up in a small town on the Canadian prairies in the 1960s, dinner out was reserved for special occasions. We celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and other family milestones at the only real dining establishment in town, a Chinese restaurant called The Cameo Café.
First opened in 1938, it changed hands a few times. In my day, the Cameo was run by the Tangs, one of only two Chinese families in town, and they spent more time working and socializing in the restaurant than they did in their living quarters. The very back table was reserved for the family, and the children often passed the less busy hours playing cards and gossiping.
Occasionally, Grandpa Tang would man the till, always an interesting occasion because rather than rely on the antique metal cash register, he would tally our bill using an even more traditional device, an abacus. The speed with which he would slide the abacus beads along their rods – clackety clack! – and arrive at our total was as fascinating to me as the exotic characters on the Chinese newspaper he invariably tucked in the pocket of his worn cardigan sweater.
A glass shelf behind the front counter held pyramid stacks of sundae bowls, two-piece contrivances with a bakelite bottom that supported a glass bowl.. Presumably, this approach was more efficient, since only the glass cup would need to be washed. I dimly recall being served a sundae called a ‘sputnik’, whose cherry was embedded inside the scoop of ice cream, symbolically representing Laika the space dog.
Each booth in the Cameo Café was equipped with a Wall-o-matic tabletop jukebox. A quarter would entitle you to leaf through the pages of songs by flipping a metal tab, and select three choices by pressing the bakelite buttons. Current hits from Frank Sinatra and The Assocaition were the order of the day, along with standards from Rosemary Clooney and Glenn Miller.
Red flocked wallpaper adorned the walls and the light fixtures possessed a vaguely Oriental theme, adding a touch of eastern exoticism to what was otherwise a rather homogenous small-town culture. Equally iconic in a small-town-Canada kind of way was the menu, whose first page offered glamorous, worldly fare such as Sweet’n’Sour Chicken Balls, Chicken Fried Rice, Beef Chop Suey, and Egg Foo-Yong. The second page featured entrees such as spaghetti and meat balls, rib-eye steak, hot turkey sandwiches with chips (not french fries!) and veal cutlets. “We Serve Chinese and Canadian Food” the menu proclaimed – accurately defining Canadian food culture years before the question of a national identity ever emerged.
The Cameo was our first licensed dining room, and as a special treat, my father would order a brandy Stinger to accompany his meal. The only problem was that not one other person in town ever ordered a drink that required white crème d menthe. The thrifty Tangs weren’t about to invest in an entire bottle for one customer, so my father had to make do with green crème de menthe, which he jovially complained reminded him of Scope mouthwash. As a result, my private nickname for my father’s drink choice was a ‘Green Hornet’.
My sister and I were also allowed a special beverage treat, a Shirley Temple. The mix of 7-Up and grenadine was almost too sickly sweet even for children, but the tall cocktail glass, the maraschino cherry and the umbrella made us feel very grown-up.
I am by no means the only one for whom restaurants like the Cameo Café loom large as a cultural influence growing up. While slowly fading today, Chinese cafes remain a fixture across Canada, and especially in the West. An article in the National Post traces them back to the building of the Canadian Pacific Rail Line in the late 19th century.
Many Chinese workers were employed building the Canadian Pacific Rail line into the early 1900s. But in 1923, Parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Act, restricting Chinese immigrants from entering Canada except under the titles of merchant, diplomat or foreign student. Shut out from professional occupations and farming, many dispersed to communities along the CPR line, some opening laundromats and grocery stores, but most realizing that they could support their families running restaurants, particularly in the Prairies, where the cafés often had no competition.
As the National Post article also points out that, in recognition of the iconic role played by Chinese cafes in Canadian culture, the Royal Alberta Museum has developed a travelling exhibit that will be touring the country this fall. It will surely be an informative and nostalgic journey, one which I hope to take in.
On the other hand, maybe I'll just drop by my local Chinese cafe for an order of Sweet'n'Sour Chicken Balls.
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