Oncle Lee: Bringing a contemporary taste of Chinatown to Montreal’s Mile End

Restaurants like Oncle Lee are a new breed for Montreal.

While the city's not exactly a stranger to a newer generation of Chinese restaurants, few—if any—have gone the lengths to offer an alternate take on the cuisine.

Newer spots will often solely focus on the classics and, while executing them well, seldom go outside the bounds to play with flavours, techniques, and traditions of the source material.

That's the space where chef Andersen Lee's contemporary Chinese restaurant Oncle Lee plays, jumping in between the chef's coming-of-age and culinary cultures to create something that's wholly of and by Montreal.

Heritage and Tutelage

I really feel like I'm rediscovering something about myself here.

His first foray into the world as a chef-owner, Oncle Lee represents a confluence of two rivers for Lee: His heritage on one hand, and his tutelage on the other.

Born to a Taiwanese mother and Hong Kongese father, Lee knows his own traditions intimately. But he's also been working for the high-end and creative restaurants of the Boullion Bilk group since 2017, and has done time cooking on a globetrotting trip of stages in the kitchens at Odette in Singapore, Core by Clare Smyth in London, and Quintonil in Mexico City after winning the 50 Best BBVA Scholarship in 2019.

Searching for Chinese restaurants in cities around the world, Lee cites spots like Toronto’s MIMI Chinese and Sunnys Chinese as particularly influential, and finding kinship with the contemporary Chinese-American Mister Jiu's in San Francisco.

“It was so inspiring to see a chef like Brandon Jew who, like me, had always worked in fine dining with French and Italian food but went out searching for himself in China and learn the food, but finding that wasn’t him either,” he says, noting the beauty in finding a space for yourself that you can truly call your own.

“Oncle Lee is a restaurant that’s been in my head for years since I was 18," Lee says. “But at places like MIMI and Sunnys, it confirmed for me what I wanted to do, something in between what’s casual and what’s fine dining.”

"I really feel like I'm rediscovering something about myself here."

Striking While the Wok is Hot

“Working at places like Cadet, doing high volume when the house is jammed and everyone’s happy, that’s the effect I wanted. But it can be difficult to take that and balance it out with Chinese cuisine in a way I wanted,” Lee explains.

Helming kitchens like Cadet and Boullion gave the chef time to play around with dishes and flavours in ways where the cuisine could not only inspire or influence something he'd put on the pass, but provide him direction.

Finally given the reins to run his own spot alongside Boullion Bilk chefs François Nadon and Émile Collette with Mélanie Blanchette at the front of the house, it was time for Lee to strike while the wok was hot.

At first we thought of something that was truly of Chinatown on Laurier, but we also love going deeper into our food, exploring it in different ways.

While Oncle Lee embarks into some uncharted territory for Montreal to create a contemporary Chinese spot, where flavours and even some dishes are recognizable, so much of what the restaurant does won't be served in the Beijings, Mon Nans, and Keung Kees of the city: Steaks sliced and served sizzling on hot plates with a side of bone marrow; oysters either steamed with black bean sauce or served with a yuzu mignonette; raw fish and shellfish dishes like scallop crudo with XO sauce and marinated salmon.

“At first we thought of something that was truly of Chinatown on Laurier, but we also love going deeper into our food, exploring it in different ways," Lee says.

"You’d never find a tartare in Chinatown, for example."

While you can’t get these dishes in Chinatown, Lee explains, working with Chinese flavours means it’s not a matter of being divided—i.e. this is Chinese and this isn’t—but that there shades of grey.

“We embrace that. We try to bring refined, finessed processes to the flavours to make something original and unique,” the chef says.

Putting together the menu here was one of the biggest challenges, but it’s also about finding my roots again, and cooking what’s authentic to me with what I know and what I grew up eating.

Inspiration, Influence, Identity

As Lee points out, much of the menu's built around Chinese cuisine, and while so much of it strays from the classics you'll find at more traditional and long-standing spots, it's also true to its roots.

“Overall, the concept’s based on sharing, and it’s very much inspired by Chinese cuisine and what’s on offer in Chinatown. The menu’s got classics in there—noodles, fried rice, wonton soups, Chinese hot pot, duck platters, fried squid and shrimp—but there are a lot of options that are more on the side of modern cuisine.”

We knew what we wanted to serve, but it was about how it would take shape—would it go in the direction of an eatery, or fine dining?

Even so, each 'classic' dish that Lee and the team have designed will have some sense of play with it. Wok-fried greens with garlic and bird's eye chili will be served in a buttery pool, a crispy seafood chow mein will incorporate bacon, mushrooms are instead grilled and varied in a rich miso sauce, or a dessert will resemble Hong Kong-style French toast dressed in ice cream and condensed milk with a green tea infusion.

“Putting together the menu here was one of the biggest challenges, but it’s also about finding my roots again, and cooking what’s authentic to me with what I know and what I grew up eating.,” Lee says.

“That challenge I mentioned was about technique. We knew what we wanted to serve, but it was about how it would take shape—would it go in the direction of an eatery, or fine dining?”

A Space to Call His Own

Set up to entertain throughout the evening and night, Oncle Lee's now not only bringing its own spin to Chinese cuisine in a part of town somewhat devoid of Chinese representation—calling time-honored spots like Chez Lévêque and Leméac its neighbours—but it's doing so with the kind of energy only a late-night spot can.

Oncle Lee is about you coming into my home. Mind you, everybody’s telling me the name’ll do me better when I put on 20 years.

Grasp the front doors' Chinese dragon handles, and you'll end up in a dining room with an in-house design: A long mirror runs the length of the restaurant’s eastern brick wall, opening up the space filled with hanging pothos chandeliers lit up by red paper lanterns. Farther towards the back, a cold side communicates with a long back kitchen through a window in the wall.

That late-night vibe spills partly out from a long backlit bar bearing a sizeable range of libations: Cocktails by Connor Scott pull ingredients from East and North Asia like soju and fermented Chinese black tea, wine selections by Alexandra Doyon ranging from Quebec to France and Italy, and Chinese teapot shots of Campari and yuzu—all to entice tables to stay long after their meal’s over.

A 55-seat space, its front and private back terrasses can effectively double the size of the space in the summer. “We’re confident in the design. As a Chinese restaurant, we wanted it to feel at home and relaxed,” Lee says.

Hence the name: “It’s an homage to Chinese culture: I never thought I’d name a restaurant after myself, but in Chinese and other Asian cultures, everyone’s senior is an uncle or an auntie. When you’re young, it’s confusing, you’ll be like ‘are we related? We look nothing alike!’ but it’s a part of who we are.”

“It’s also about how coming to Oncle Lee’s is about you coming into my home. Mind you, everybody’s telling me the name’ll do me better when I put on 20 years.”

“I’m purely excited about this, and eager to open. I’m so well-surrounded by a great team and mentors. Maybe the stress will come later, but right now, it’s finally happening. The goal is here.”

Opening on January 17, 2024, Oncle Lee is located at 222 Avenue Laurier Ouest.