In Ottawa, the battle between big box and locally owned has descended upon Chinatown. With a newly opened T&T supermarket, the Vancouver originating chain's 4th largest in Canada, pressure has been applied on Chinatown. Chinatown shops are smaller, locally-owned, and specialized in Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and Malay groceries. The monopoly the shops once enjoyed is gone.

Now, the formerly pre-eminent Kowloon Market in Chinatown, once an extremely crowded and bustling business, has lost significant customer-base. The store is far less busy on Saturdays, normally peek shopping hours. Parents who drop off their children for Saturday Chinese language school, caravan to T&T in the Riverside South area. They fill its enormous parking lot, making Ottawa's T&T the consistently busiest one I have ever come across. Do not expect a leisurely shopping experience after 10:00 am. For perspective, I have been to several T&T's in Vancouver (including its first location), Toronto, and Edmonton.

To make matters worse, many of the shops lost employees to T&T. The butcher Jenn and I frequented at Kowloon Market for barbecued meats is now masterfully wielding her cleaver at T&T. In-house bakers, fish mongers, and cashiers defected. Even waiters from Chinatown restaurants, familiar faces from Yangtze (700 Somerset Street W.) and Chu Sing (691 Somerset Street W.), can be found working shifts at T&T. Prevalent reasons: better pay and an opportunity for benefits.

With significant turnover, some of the bakery at Kownloon Market has changed. Prices have been knocked down to compete with T&T and the buns are physically bigger. Curious, Jenn and I purchased baked (as opposed to steamed) barbecue pork (char-siu) buns (bao or baozi) from both T&T ($1.39) and Kowloon market ($1.09) and compared them. In the process, we happened to attempt to re-invent American South comfort food, fried chicken on a waffle, but more on that later.

Regarding the buns, both were brushed with an egg wash to brown. The Kowloon Market bao seemed more evenly browned.

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both were baked in-house the morning they were purchased.

Customarily, our T&T bao came individually wrapped in a self-sealing cellophane bag.

Individually-wrapped Bao
In fact, no matter where you go, bao from T&T are sold in the same bags. In fact, the char-siu bao pictured above was purchased from the T&T in the West Edmonton Mall.

To compare the Ottawa T&T and Kowloon Market originating bao, we weighed them and cut them open to look at their crumb and fillings.

Firstly, off to the scales:

T&T Char-siu Bao - 150 g

Kowloon Market Char-siu Bao - 144 g

Next, dissection:

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both white bread buns had the texture of super market dinner rolls, only sweeter. The T&T bao's filling was more centered. Conversely, the Kowloon Market's was off-center and it was much more red in colour.


T&T Char-Siu Bao Filling
Filling-wise, the T&T filling was predominately lean meat and included little sauce.


Kowloon Market Char-Siu Bao Filling
The Kowloon market filling was a mixture of fatty meat, onions, and sauce.


T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Flavour-wise, we found the T&T filling less intensely flavoured and more savoury. The Kowloon Market filling was strongly flavoured, tasting almost entirely of hoisin sauce.

If I were forced to choose, I would slightly favour the T&T char-siu bao, but bao wasn't our lunch that day.

At Kowloon market, Jenn and I eyed the hanging roasted pig after picking up a char-siu bao for the comparison. When we saddled up to the counter at the back of the store, we lucked out, ordering 2 lbs of belly-portion crackled roast pork.

Belly Portion Crackled Roast Pork

With our roast pork sporting an expertly crackled skin that was crisp and flavourful, I decided to stop off at Viva Loca in the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, home of Great Canada Theater Company (GCTC) for something to accompany it. The theater center is located at the corner of Holland Avenue and Wellington Street W.

Oat and Whole Wheat Pancakes
We used the stack of made-to-order oat and whole wheat pancakes to re-invent the fried chicken on a waffle.

Roasted Pork Belly with Crackling on a Pancake
And yes, it tasted great with maple syrup.

As an aside, we observed Loblaws Superstore on Richmond Road selling individually-wrapped and nor Northern Chinese-style buns, starting in September 2009.

A Variety of Bao from Loblaws Superstore
A closer look at the labels reveals the source of the bao.

Source from a Toronto Bakery
Purchased from Jin Xin Bakery Ltd in Markham, Ontario, the buns are shipped in in refrigerated trucks, arriving cold. Not only is it interesting that the Loblaws CEO Galen Weston has been espousing the virtues of locally sourced produce and products when one of his Superstores sells trucked-in bakery, but Weston completely missed the point about why Asian supermarkets have in-house bakeries. Customers like fresh buns, not ones that taste stale. Shipping perishable buns in refrigerated trucks causes them, like fresh bread, to change texture. Refrigeration changes the protein and starch structure of fresh bakery. At least this means Loblaws Superstore cannot compete with T&T and Chinatown supermarkets.

Particulars:
Ottawa T&T
224 Hunt Club Road (corner of Hunt Club and Riverside)
(613)731-8113

Kowloon Market
712 Somerset Street W.
(613)233-1108

Viva Loca
1233 Wellington Street W.
(613)728-8482

Loblaws Super Store
190 Richmond Road
(613)722-5890



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