When restaurant dining rooms were shut down across the country in mid-March, Michelle Lee didn’t know what to do at her Kimchi Korea House restaurant in the downtown core. “Prior to COVID, the only time mom wasn’t there working at lunch and dinner service was when I graduated from university,” recalls her daughter, Diana. “Even then we went back to the restaurant afterwards.”
When the shutdown came, Diana set her mom’s restaurant up with the usual delivery apps. In the meantime, the restaurant at Bay Street and Dundas Street West sat quiet and Diana wanted to cheer her mom up. In late March, Diana picked up her phone and asked her mom to give a kimchi-making tutorial to the restaurant’s followers on Instagram.
“I could tell (the shutdown) was hard for her, so I set up these cooking videos as a fun distraction,” she said. “I created an Instagram account (@KimchiKoreaHouse) for the restaurant earlier but it was dormant because mom was always too busy to even entertain doing anything for it. She never took out advertising or did anything on social media because we relied on word of mouth and being in a good location. The social media thing was purely born out of the pandemic.”
Kimchi Korea House is one of a few Toronto restaurants that, thanks to help of the owners’ children or more tech-savvy young employees, have found a new audience during the pandemic by going on Instagram. In some cases, it also helped bridge a language gap between the owners and English-speaking diners with posts that explain the dishes as well as give the backstory of the people who run the place. It’s not new, places such as East Court BBQ, Mona’s Roti and Korean Village Restaurant had the owners’ children and younger relatives keep up an online presence before the pandemic, but now the pressure to reach a wide audience feels as urgent as ever.
“My mom grew up in a remote village in the mountains of Korea,” said Diana, 31, who works as a radiation therapist in her day job. “She still doesn’t know what Instagram is but she knows it’s a medium to share and she knows customers now come in because of the videos.”
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Diana’s Instagram lives and archived story posts started to gain a small following among the city’s food obsessed, especially back in the spring when many were getting used to being housebound. Watching Michelle in the restaurant’s kitchen, perfectly coiffed and assuring viewers that anyone can cook Korean food provided comfort amidst the panic buying.
Over the next months Michelle made more staples such as jeyuk bokkeum (spicy pork), kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew), kimchi pajeon (kimchi pancake) and kkakdugi (spicy pickled radish). The videos would have occasional interjections from Diana behind the camera, asking her mom “how much water?” or “how do you know it’s done?” and being met with answers of “you just know” and “look at it.”
Depending on the complexity of the dish, it takes between two to four hours to film a video, not including the additional time it takes for Diana to edit the footage, add captions and double check with her mom on the instructions. “I always wanted to write down mom’s recipes so that I could have something concrete to pass down,” she said. “The hilarious part is that it changes every time she makes it.”
Anna Peng has been showcasing the dozens of menu items and giving users some insight into the daily operations of Great Fountain Fast Food, a Hong Kong diner-style food stall inside the Dynasty Centre food court at Sheppard Ave. E. and Midland Ave. in Scarborough’s Agincourt area.
“The restaurant has been around for 20 years. Our family has been operating it for a little over five years now,” said Peng, 22. The pandemic hit just as she was about to graduate from OCAD University, so rather than immediately pursue a career in design she helped out at her parent’s food stall, starting at the cash register and eventually promoting the place online.
“Our regulars are on the older side and aren’t the people who would go on social media like Instagram or TikTok. I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen with the business, but maybe if we take a shot on Instagram, we could get a younger audience back into the plaza,’” she said. “This is a place where a lot of people spent their childhood before moving to Markham or Richmond Hill. It’s a place of nostalgia.”
Great Fountain is the kind of place you either know or don’t. It’s inside a quiet mall that has seen better days and a food court with salmon-coloured tabletops that ’90s mall kids would fawn over. Before the pandemic, older regulars would sit at the tables sipping milk tea and watching old Cantonese soaps that would play on a TV in the corner of the food court.
That area was once the place to be for newly landed immigrants from Hong Kong in the late 80s and 90s, many of whom have since moved to other parts of the GTA. The slated-to-be-demolished Dragon Centre mall across the street was the first Chinese shopping mall in North America.
Aside from the mouth-watering photos of baked spaghetti, fried pork chops and videos of the wok in action posted on her account @GreatFountain, Peng also captures the candid moments of her parents, Jack Peng and Eva Lin. They’re eating lunch, doing paperwork or catching a nap while sitting upright behind the counter. One of the posts is simply a bin of lemons that Peng sliced up to make iced tea.
The posts are the opposite of the perfectly curated feeds of a restaurant that has the money to hire a professional photographer and social media manager. But what’s captivating about Great Fountain’s feed is that it shows the reality of the long hours (and often, solitude) of working at a restaurant during a pandemic.
Peng’s work paid off, as local food sites caught wind of her place. People from downtown Toronto made the trip to Scarborough; some who grew up in the area and forgot about the place, others who never had Hong Kong diner food before. “Customer service before was fully in Chinese, but now it’s like, I can help you too. Language is not a barrier,” she said.
“Every parent wants their kids to do better than the last generation. Sometimes customers will be surprised that I’m working here and not at an office. I don’t mind helping my parents because it’s a way for me to give back,” Peng added. “All restaurants are struggling and over half of Toronto’s restaurants could close in the upcoming months. It makes me want to go harder on social media but at the same time, how much more can I do? It’s more like how long we can do this for?”
Long-standing institutions have also turned to Instagram during the pandemic. Square Boy, a burger joint at 875 Danforth Ave., has been open since 1964, but didn’t take to social media until a week after restaurants across the province were shut down in mid-March.
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The account, @Squareboy.Restaurant, is mainly run by Constantine Andricopoulos, 35, a high school friend of Jim Syrbos, one of the four owners, and whose father Mike took over the business in 1985 (the other two current owners are Louis Pirgakis and George Karagorgios). While Andricopoulos isn’t related to the owners, he’s like family. Syrbos is the godfather to his daughter, and their wives are best friends. Andricopoulos also works the grill, the cash or the fryer — wherever he is needed that day.
The account initially started to let customers know that the place was still open for takeout, but scrolling through the Square Boy hashtags, Andricopoulos also came across fan art of the restaurant and wanted to share that as well.
“We got artwork, photos of people past and present who worked here. We wanted to remind people that the place is still family operated,” he said. “We also wanted to introduce some of the new members like myself, alongside people like Louis and Mike, the two owners who have been here since 1985. There’s only so much you can post about homemade burgers and hours to stay relevant during COIVD.”
It’s unlikely that social media alone will be the key for any of these places to stay in business while the pandemic continues. Rent keeps coming due, food costs don’t change and many people are still staying at home and spending less on eating out. While letting people know they’re open is the driving force, a more robust social media presence helps diners learn more about the people behind local restaurants and to see what’s at stake.
“Even though the restaurant is open again, I have a lot of anxiety over the industry, but my mom is so much happier being able to see the customers in person again,” said Diana of Kimchi Korea House about the restaurant’s dining room reopening at limited capacity.
“She’s getting fairly into cooking videos and watching more Korean cooking channels. It’s been a good bonding experience because we wouldn’t have time to do these videos before. I don’t know if it’s helping with the business, but customers now appreciate her more now that they know how passionate she is about her business and food.”
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Do it for the ’gram: How these restaurant owners’ children helped them build social media buzz during COVID-19 - Toronto Star
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