Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging

A captivating memoir of belonging, sacrifice, and the untold stories families carry across generations. 

When Rachel Phan was three years old, her parents opened their family restaurant. For her parents—whose families fled China under Japanese occupation and later survived the horrors of the Vietnam War—it was a dream come true. For Rachel, it was something quite different. The restaurant became not just a home but the force that defined her childhood and fractured her family.

Growing up as a ‘restaurant kid’ meant living between two worlds: the relentless demands of her parents’ dreams and the pressures to fit in. At home, she was the ‘good Chinese daughter,’ while outside of it, she struggled to be seen as a ‘real Canadian.’ As the only Chinese girl at school, she shifted between roles—Asian sidekick, geek, fetish—hiding her culture, language, and true self to meet the expectations of others.

Now, with her parents nearing retirement, Rachel faces the uncharted territory of getting to know them beyond the restaurant’s walls. She struggles with the tension many children of immigrants face: balancing the weight of her parents' sacrifices with her desire to live on her own terms. In this deeply personal journey, she confronts the ways their shared history of love and hardship shaped who they are—and who she has become.

Restaurant Kid is a heartfelt exploration of identity, resilience, and the complexities of family, offering a tender yet unflinching look at how we make sense of where we come from.

Content warnings: Restaurant Kid contains descriptions of anxiety, bullying, depression, emotional abuse, fetishization, fire, gambling, hospitalization, mental health hospitalization, misogyny, parental separation, physical abuse (parents spanking children), poverty, profanity, racism, recreational drug use, self-harm, sexism, sexual harassment, sexual intercourse, slut shaming, starvation, suicidal ideation, war