Honey Garlic Spareribs: Chinese Five Spice

General Tao Dept: In mid-20th-century Montreal, when pagoda-shaped signs beckoned with the promise of chop suey and egg rolls, Canadian-Chinese cuisine - let's call it Can-Chi for short - conjured images of a world that most diners could only imagine. Our culinary mindset has expanded since then, but it's never too late for a nostalgic look back, according to Montreal Gazette. For many Montrealers, particularly Jewish Montrealers, the nexus of Can-Chi nostalgia is Yangtze in C te des Neiges. Opened in 1956, it just might be the longestrunning Chinese restaurant in the city outside of Chinatown. The decor hasn't changed much - mid-century chinoiserie accents meet diner booths under embossed ceiling tiles - and neither has the food or the clientele and nowadays, with Szechuan peppercorns and Chinese five-spice on the tips of our tongues, it's easy to forget that just a few decades ago eating honey-garlic spareribs under a dragon statue was considered an exotic culinary experience. General Tao? Never heard of him. Chopsticks? Give me cutlery. Hot pot? Let's do takeout. Or is it? While Montreal still has a few vintage Chinese restaurants, they are fewer and fewer between. As I ate my way across town in search of chow mein and pineapple chicken, the refrain from restaurateurs was the same: Can-Chi is disappearing from the city's foodscape, and with it a page from our cultural history. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.