SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - There's a new Asian restaurant in downtown Yellowknife, but this place has something different in mind.

Leonore Kwong, owner of Golden Cuisine, said she opened her Filipino-themed restaurant to bring a taste of her homeland's culture to Yellowknifers. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Leonore Kwong, a certified general accountant who moved to Yellowknife from her home in the Philippines in 2001, opened Golden Cuisine at the corner of 50 Street and 51 Avenue last week.

Kwong sees the restaurant as her chance to retain her culture, do something more active while still running her other business – Diamond Placement and Financial Services – and, most of all, give Yellowknifers a taste of her native country's cooking.

"I want to show the people in Yellowknife how good, delicious and healthy Filipino cuisine is," she said. "My parents have their own restaurant … back home.

"I wanted to promote my culture."

Doing that by preparing meals from her country would prove difficult, she realized early.

"The Philippines is composed of 7,100 islands. In every region, we have our own different delicacies and style of cooking. I just want to put out the most common and famous ones."

All the dishes share one very important characteristic.

"We don't put MSG on our food," she said.

"Even my cook insisted; I said no," said Kwong.

Among the tried, tested and true dishes chosen by Kwong: adobo, a dish of chicken or pork mixed with soya sauce, vinegar, black pepper and bay leaf.

All dishes at the restaurant except for plates used for the all-day buffet are adorned with a banana leaf on which the food is placed as a further means of immersing her clients in the culture of the Philippines.

Kwong isn't stopping at the restaurant. Starting this fall, in the space beside the restaurant, Kwong will begin selling foods and ingredients crucial to Filipino cuisine plus bubble tea, organic fruit spreads and concentrates, bread, pastries and herbal products.

For now, she's slowly becoming accustomed to running a restaurant that opened, with little to no hoopla, only months after another Asian eatery, two-year-old Robin's Nest Restaurant, folded.

Word of mouth

"People were surprised because we didn't advertise or anything," said Kwong.

But Joyce Yap, a server at Kwong's restaurant, is certain her country's cooking will catch on with Yellowknife residents – provided they give it the chance it deserves, she said.

"When they ask me what kind of food this is and I tell them, they're like, 'Oh, OK. I'm going to try that,'" said Yap. "Some people, they don't like trying other things."

But her strategy is to tell people to try the buffet. That way they can sample things at their own pace.

As for members of the Filipino community in Yellowknife, they've already welcomed the restaurant with open arms, said Yap.

"They want to support it so it doesn't close," said Yap. "They come here usually at lunch for the buffet and then sometimes they (come) out for desert, like halo-halo (a fruit mix with milk and ice cream). They like it. There's other people, who are not Filipino, that liked it too."