Restaurants can post information about special dishes and promotions at any time, subject to moderation from Luu and her team of administrators. In one case, local Asian food writer Victor Yu shared information about poon choi, a special Cantonese dish for the Chinese New Year holiday, which Luu says generated interest and sales for restaurants on the South Shore and Chinatown. And the community pitches in with their expertise, too. Teochew Foodie’s Chanel Dai says it’s a good platform to promote products because its members are interested in learning about Asian food. “It’s definitely a good platform to keep the community aware of new dishes that we’re putting out,” he says. I can see that whenever I post information about a new dish, or someone recommends a dish from the restaurant on the page - like the bánh khọt - because our orders go up.”Įric Ku from Chinatown’s Dobe and Andy echoes Ha’s observations about the page.
“Local 88 reminded everyone that we were here, we were open, and we had the dishes that would fulfil those cravings for comfort food. One of the city’s original Vietnamese restaurants, Ha was concerned that their regular customers would forget about them during the lockdown. That’s how Cindy Ha’s restaurant Au 14 started getting more orders for their miniature bánh khọt, a crêpe garnished with pork and shrimp. Sometimes it’s the restaurant that pipes up, but more often than not, it’s a crowdsourcing response that shines the spotlight on where to get what. Local 88 members use the page for everything from restaurant recommendations to advice on where to find specific dishes. The anti-Asian situation in the pandemic shook me up, to think that might not always be the case,” he told Eater Montreal. “I always thought my favourite restaurant would be here forever.
Local food blogger Jason Lee ( Shut Up and Eat) has deep roots in Montreal’s Chinatown - his ancestor’s grocery store is now the Beijing restaurant - and echoes Luu’s concerns about the possibility of Asian restaurants shutting down during the pandemic. “Plus, Local 88 is easy to remember and pronounce in English and French.” And even though it might not necessarily be the same in other Asian cultures, anti-Asian racism was mostly targeting Chinese descent communities,” Luu says. The name Local 88 was resolvedly optimistic on Luu’s part. I love to eat and I really missed going to those restaurants.” “With the rise of anti-Asian racism, Asian restaurants here suffered more than the average. “I was afraid my favourite places would close,” she says. Luu ultimately left the administration of the GECREAQ page to invest more energy in Local 88. “Within ten days, the groups were booming within the Asian community,” Luu says, noting that the Local 88 page now has almost 11,500 followers, mostly from Montreal and the suburbs, but with followers from Toronto as well. She decided to start two Facebook groups in parallel: the Groupe d’Entraide contre le Racisme envers les Asiatiques au Quebec (Mutual Assistance against anti-Asian racism in Quebec, GECREAQ), and Local 88, a public page dedicated to supporting local Asian restaurants. Montreal police confirmed what Luu was hearing anecdotally: the number of hate incidents and hate crimes relating to race or ethnic origin increased exponentially from 2019 to 2020, and Luu didn’t want to sit around and watch it happen. Some were hitting close to home, with friends and relatives telling her about unsettling situations in the city which targeted them as Asians. The actress was hearing disturbing stories about anti-Asian sentiment relating to COVID-19 disinformation. Laura Luu was on maternity leave at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, and what she saw happening to the Asian community worried her.
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