Never Heard of It is a series about the places that shape how this city eats — corner spots, bakeries, strip mall dining rooms, and family-run kitchens that rarely make the glossy lists but have always mattered. These are stories about more than food. Each entry looks at how history, migration, and shifting neighbourhoods show up on the plate, offering a glimpse into the everyday culture that builds a city from the ground up.

It’s a summer Sunday evening in Richmond, and Union Square is buzzing. Clusters of young people are circling the lot in polished imports, waiting each other out for parking stalls; neon lighting reflecting off windshields as they stream between bubble teas, snack counters, and other late-night franchises. This is ‘ethnoburb’ geography in full effect: a suburban plaza where Chinese food and commerce set the scene and the beat. In the midst of it all sits JiangNan Wok.

Chef-owner Allen Guo trained under master Zhang Xianmin and spent years in China’s top hotel kitchens before relocating to Vancouver. After doing stints in other local restaurant kitchens, he opened JiangNan Wok in Richmond in the summer of 2024, shaping a menu that leans on Huaiyang values of balance, precision, and seasonal sensitivity.

In Vancouver, where many Chinese chefs quietly perfect their craft behind the scenes, JiangNan Wok has managed to cut through. Last year, the Chinese Restaurant Awards named it Best New Restaurant in the Vancouver region, bringing rare attention to Huaiyang cooking.

Inside, the walls are faux raw concrete, the lighting is cool, and the décor is minimal and modern. Picture a few slab tables, the bustling of servers, and a kitchen moving at full tilt. The sound levels are reasonable — not the sonic punishment you get at so many Vancouver spots — which gives you space to pay attention to the food.

Shanghai food in Vancouver usually gets boxed into a few standbys, like syrupy braised meats, endless baskets of XLB (Xiao Long Bao), and the obligatory plate of noodles. And although the higher-end joints push further into the canon, JiangNan Wok takes a slightly different and nuanced tack. Many of the expected standbys, including the aforementioned XLB, aren’t on the menu, and these absences signal something important: the Chinese dining scene here has matured beyond regional broad strokes into more interesting, granular expressions.

As suggested by the name JiangNan Wok, the roots of this cooking are in Jiangsu, the province north of Shanghai that anchors the Jiangnan region, and home to Huaiyang cuisine, one of China’s most refined and technically demanding culinary traditions. Shanghai cuisine is what most people recognize, but Huaiyang is the foundation it’s built on. That’s what makes the cooking here feel so pointed.

Take the Lion’s Head meatballs, which usually arrive in a deep red braise. Here, they come in a clear broth that’s delicate and almost austere — the kind of variation you rarely see in Canada. This kitchen is clearly paying attention to Jiangnan as a whole, and not just Shanghai.

Then there are the rice cakes: finely ground rice packed into molds with a core of red bean, then steamed and allowed to cool before serving. This is a rare and unexpected dish that I have not seen it made this particular way before. They are “bland” in flavour and “rubbery” in texture – but in ways that work.

Of course, some of the standards are here – notably the squirrel fish (pictured above), a Jiangsu showcase of knife and frying skill. The flesh is crosshatched into a pattern that fans out into a lattice when fried, then lacquered in a glossy sweet-and-sour sauce. At JiangNan Wok the knife work is precise, the fry crisp, and the presentation sculptural and dramatic. The sauce leans sweeter and stickier than other versions I’ve had, but the effect is still striking. This is a dish meant to display mastery as much as to satisfy.

JiangNan Wok slips in a few fusion-y flourishes, too. For instance, the first dish to hit the table was a salmon sashimi platter that was more ‘izakaya’ than Jiangsu: thick strips of raw salmon piled into a bowl with expertly slivered ginger and green onion, then tossed in a soy dressing. Tasty, sure – but also a little disorienting.

At the time of my visit, there were seven of us around the table, including chefs of Asian descent from both Vancouver and Toronto — people who spend their days running modern restaurants. Around the table we talked shop: the grind of running restaurants; the tricky balance between precision and survival; the layers of Chinese and other foods of diaspora that don’t always make it onto menus here. The chefs spoke about their own paths, how each had arrived as an immigrant before becoming part of this city’s dining landscape, and how Vancouver had shaped them.

For me, this was a chance to check my own impressions against theirs. They’re not easy to impress, but JiangNan Wok did it – one even called the meal a highlight of their eating trip to Vancouver. We all left with the same conclusion: JiangNan Wok is doing something special that’s worth paying attention to.

If you want to understand where Vancouver’s food future sits, it’s right here in a strip mall located just off Number 3 Road: great ingredients from the land and sea; a city wired by immigration; and a steady supply of slightly unhinged people willing to run restaurants to keep us all pushing forwards and outwards — so many of them Asian. What makes it all work is that the cooking can still reach back to food from home thousands miles away and make it new again.

JiangNan Wok

1211-8338 Capstan Wy, Richmond, BC (Union Square Shopping Centre)

778-916-0888