Pin Pin most popular restaurant to open this year

Pin Pin Restaurant is the newest and the most popular Filipino restaurant to open in Vancouver this year and is only over two months old. It is not the usual, same-same, turo-turo restaurant that’s abundant in the City. Pin Pin has the unique selling proposition of being the only restaurant in the province serving Chinese-Filipino cuisine.

The restaurant is owned and operated by Virginia and Jojo Lee six days a week (closed on Mondays) from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Virginia’s late father owned Pinpin Café Restaurant on Tomas Pinpin St. (near Escolta) from 1945 to the late 90s. During weekends and lunchtime, the customers can be seen patiently lining up just to get a table in the small, casual venue that can only seat 46 to 50 people. In order not to offend or alienate customers, the restaurant will not take table reservations.

Not being a turo-turo restaurant, the table service is friendly, fast and efficient. To many of us who have lovely memories of dining out in old Chinatown in Manila, it is hard to resist Pin Pin’s siopao bola-bola and asado, kikiam, hototai, pata tim, lupia shanghai, camaron rebosado and inihaw na tadyang ng baka.

And there’s more, isda con tokwa and cha-mi (egg noodle with vegetable in brown sauce). For dessert, Pin Pin makes excellent maja mais and cassava cake.

The success of Pin Pin may inspire the Lee family to open Pin Pin 2 in Surrey and Pin Pin 3 in Richmond. We are hoping that the popularity of Cocina Manila (Pampanga cuisine) and Pin Pin, future Filipino restaurants will offer authentic regional dishes and not be limited to the usual adobo, laing and sinigang. I believe it is time for Pinoy restaurants in Canada to specialize in order to showcase the variety of Philippine cuisine.

Alberta’s economy was more than five times the national average. A record number of people moved to Alberta this year which boosted the population by 25,100 or 0.76 percent to 3.3 million.

Well, the whole country and the media are talking about the boom economy in Alberta, specially the city of Calgary.

The recent cover story of the popular Maclean’s magazine featured Calgary as the "new center of the universe" or Canada’s new power nexus. Calgary is indeed the country’s fastest growing city (not Toronto, not British Columbia) because Calgary is fuelled by an oil price jump from $10 a barrel in 1999 to more than $60 today.

The city of Calgary has the highest GDP per capita in Canada. There is no sales tax and there is a flat provincial tax. The debt is zero and the budget surplus is more than $10 billion. It is no wonder a lot of people have thought of moving there. In addition, Calgary has also been recognized as the new capital of Canadian retail in terms of potential. Calgary’s sophistication has also grown, along with the art and culture, wine and food business that’s been energized by what critics described as the new rich, commonly known as the nouveau riche.

A leading analyst of the Asia Foundation of Canada reported that there are now over 2.7 million Canadians living abroad, including those who have returned to the countries of their birth after obtaining Canadian citizenship. This represents 8.8 of the 2001 resident population.

The main advantage is that they bring Canadian tastes to their countries and encourages doing business with Canadian companies. However, the downside is that the country loses people who generally are highly educated and have outstanding business skills.

When I arrived in Vancouver 12 years ago, the province had a stream of Hong Kong immigrants concerned about the 1997 handover of hong Kong to China, Over 200,000 have returned to Hong Kong over the past nine years since Hong Kong became stable and China has become an economic powerhouse.

We are proud to see Edgardo Tapia, a mechanical engineer and community leader, in the cover story of the latest Canadian Immigrant Magazine. It tells the success story of Edgardo and Carmelita Tapia who immigrated to Canada to find a better future and found success in manufacturing air filter bags. They are the only leading supplier of the environmental product. The filter bags collect dust and other pollutants during the manufacturing process. Tapia’s company is Odessa Manufacturing Inc.