Asian Legend

Asian Legend owner Michael Wang grew up in the restaurant business. “I never had the experience of eating at home in my own kitchen,” he says. "Growing up, my house was a restaurant. We lived upstairs because in Taiwan the home and the restaurant were always one piece.”

Michael's parents owned a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, but after immigrating to Toronto in 1987, they realized there weren't a lot of Chinese food options in the city at the time, especially not the authentic northern Chinese cuisine the Wangs specialized in. “We served fried dumplings, chopped beef noodle soup and soup-filled dumplings, and at the time, most Chinese food in Toronto was cantonese-style – sweet and sour pork, vegetables in oyster sauce, stewed beef. But in Northern China it snows, just like in Canada, so there are a lot of good resources already here used to make Northern Chinese dim sum,” says Michael.

So, in 1988, the Wangs opened a small take-out place on the second floor at 526 Dundas Street West called Wey Shiang Tsuen, but this was hard for Canadians to pronounce. “Wey Siang sounds Asian and we serve authentic cuisine that we keep traditional, so it's a legend – an 'Asian Legend.'”