Gung Haggis Fat Choy!
Chinese-Scots-Canadians deep-fry Robbie Burns and lettuce rap the haggis.

10th Annual Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner
features special guests and surprises… like the anticipation of
Vancouver councilor Raymond Louie wearing a kilt!  Mc Louie and McWong
will start off Robbie Burns Day by a joint appearance on Rock 101's Bro
Jake Show.

January 27th, 2008
5:00 reception, 6:00 dinner
Floata Seafood Restaurant
#400 – 180 Keefer St.
Vancouver Chinatown.

“This is shaping up to the best
Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner yet!” states bagpiper Joe McDonald, who has
piped in the haggis for 8 Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinners beginning in
2001.  Joe and organizer Todd Wong will be featured on CBC Newsworld's
6pm tv broadcast to the nation on January 25th, when they will perform
a short rap version Robbie Burns' immortal poem – Address to a Haggis.  McDonald and his cross-cultural fusion band Brave Waves provide a sonic setting for many of the evening's singalongs.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy is a dinner like no other. 
Jam-packed with cross-cultural references to the Scottish and Chinese
pioneer history of British Columbia, it feeds its audience a
cultural-fusion cuisine of deep-fried haggis wun tun and lettuce wrap
in a 10 course Chinese banquet.  It looks forward to the future of
Chinese-Scottish-Canadian mixed DNA, and present-time Hapa-Canadian
culture of mixed ethnicity.

Blackthorn, the celtic music band, is
really looking forward to the cultural fusion mix that Gung Haggis Fat
Choy.  Vocalist/flautist Michelle Carlisle really loved the
taste-testing dinner and played a duet of Loch Lomand with host Todd
Wong on his accordion, for Shaw TV's The Express with Sukhi Ghuman.

For more information
Call Todd Wong
h: 604-987-7124
c: 778-846-7090
email: gunghaggisfatchoy.com
www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com

Friday January 25
Bro Jake Show Classic Rock 101 FM
with Vancouver City councilor Raymond Louie – some time between 7:30am and 8:45am

Friday January 25
The Express on SHAW TV – channel 4
Interviews and footage from the taste-testing rehearsal
at 10am, 11am, 11:30am, 2pm, 3pm

Georgia Straight – Straight Choices – Jan 24
King of Culture – page 19

Vancouver Sun – January 23
On the burner – Mia Stainsby,
Gung Haggis Fat Choy: This Scottish-Chinese-Canadian tri-brid event celebrates its 10th year

Georgia Straight – Blog  – Jan 16
I will wear a kilt to Robbie Burns dinner, Coun. Raymond McLouie

Raymond Louie will be kilted for Gung Haggis Fat Choy

News Flash…
Raymond McLouie and Toddish McWong will appear on the Bro Jake Show on Rock 101.
January 25th, Robbie Burns Day
somewhere between 7:30 and 8:45am

The rumours are true.  Vancouver city councilor Raymond Louie will be seen in attire other than his dapper suits. Raymond has supported Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinners in the past, bringing his family to the 2006 dinner featuring children's entertainers Rick Scott and Harry Wong.

‘I will wear a kilt’ to Robbie Burns dinner, Coun. Raymond McLouie promises Gung Haggis Fat Choy organizer Todd Wong

No longer considered a cultural fusion hybrid event…
Food critic Mia Stainsby calls us tri-brid!

A list of really cool Burns Dinners and special food events came out in the January 23 Vancouver Sun today.  We accompany articles about a $1200 one ounce tasting from a 1795 bottle of cognac, and a $95 Burns Dinner at Boneta Restaurant….  pretty nice company for our little 10 course Chinese dinner with a “Vancouver special – deep-fried haggis wun tun”- Check it out:

Today was a busy Gung Haggis Day….

I took some table reservations, confirmed other seating arrangments, found out when Shaw TV's “The Express” will run tomorrow on Jan 24, and Robbie Burns Day on Jan 25th. 

Bagpiper Joe McDonald and I discussed a new arrangement for our rap version of Gung HAGGIS RAP Choy, for when we perform for CBC Newsworld on Friday.

I met up with a major distributor of fine spirits, for sponsorship an donations for our event.  I can't tell you anything now… but I have promised surprises for our 10th Anniversary.

I picked up 50 haggis (or is the plural haggisses or haggi?), from Peter Black & Sons – my favorite haggis maker, at Park Royal South.  Delivered them to Floata Restaurant in Vancouver Chinatown… and worked on some more arrangements for the big event!

Down the street at the Radha Yoga Centre, writer Alexis Kienlen held the Vancouver launch of her poetry book “She Dreams in Red.”  It was nice to Alexis who has been writing and editing in Grande Prairie AB.  She is a past literary editor for Ricepaper Magazine, and on her way to participate in the Canadian Cooperative Association's upcoming Study Mission to the Philippines where she will be responsible for documenting the trip, and writing stories for various Canadian media outlets.

Watch The Express on Shaw TV today and Friday – for Gung Haggis Fat Choy interview with Todd Wong and Michelle Carlisle!

Thursday January 24 – Robbie Burns Day Eve
at 6pm, 6:30pm, 10:30pm, 12am

Friday January 25 – Robbie Burns Day
at 10am, 11am, 11:30am, 2pm, 3pm

She brought cameraman Zac Radcliffe and they both sat down with us to enjoy the haggis wun tun, shrimp balls and other tasty dinner courses as we taste-tested our 2008 menu.  They also met some of our featured guest performers such as: poet George McWhirter, Blackthorn flute singer/vocalist Michelle Carlisle, film maker Ann Marie Fleming and media columnist Catherine Barr.

2008 Menu for Gung Haggis Fat Choy™:
Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner
– Anticipating the Year of the Rat!

What:     Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ Dinner
When:    January 27, 2008 – Sunday
Time:     Reception 5:30 pm – with Dim Sum appetizers
                Dinner 6:00 pm
Tickets:  $64.50 adult, $54.00 student, $43.50 children 13 & under
Purchase online www.ticketstonight.ca
NEW # ORDER BY PHONE:
604-631-2872

Additional $2.50 per ticket for phone orders

Call Gung Haggis Fat Choy Productions at 604-987-7124 by January 21 to reserve a table for 10 for $600

Our
selections are not a real “traditional” Chinese New Year dinner menu –
but a blending of favorites, and brand new fusion-fare.  It is created
to help introduce “real Chinese banquet fare” to Scottish-Canadians and
to help make “haggis” safe for Chinese-Canadians.  And if you are
Ukranian-Italian-Japanese-First Nations… that's alright too!

Here is the menu for 2008, subject to change at my whimsy and the kitchen's demands:

Haggis Dim Sum Appetizer buffet
This will be available upon people's arrival soon after the reception starts after 5:30pm
The restaurant will have the bar open for 5:30pm
We have moved the dinner location to the South side of the restaurant so we can use the BIG bar.



1a –  Deep fried Haggis Wun Tun
Haggis
Wun Tun was first created in September 2003 when I walked into New Town
Restaurant in Chinatown with a Haggis from Peter Black's and asked them
to make won tons for me to take to the CBC Radio reception to welcome
Shelagh Rogers and “Sounds Like Canada” to Vancouver.  She said that “the haggis wun tun and special plum sauce goes together like Bogart and Bacall.” It's been a
favorite ever since. 

We ask the restaurant to mix the haggis with
water chestnuts to make it crunchy – yum yum!  Even the Scottish Studies coordinator from Simon Fraser University, Harry McGrath, has said it is “surprisingly good!”

1b   Haggis Su-Mei (Pork Dumplings)
Pork Dumplings (Su-Mei) are classic
cantonese dim sum, and we are adding haggis for great taste!  Somehow the haggis and the pork seem to go very well!

1c Haw-Gow (Shrimp Dumplings)
non-haggis dim sum… one of my favorites!  tasty morsels of shrimp wrapped in rice noodle wrapping.

1d  Vegetarian Spring Rolls
Because we knew there would be people who wouldn't want Haggis or meat their Vegetarian spring rolls.

2 – Hot & Sour Soup
Always
a favorite for everybody – and vegetarian to boot!  Warms up the
innards on a cold January night.  I am sure Burns would approve.

3 – Ginger Dungeness Crab
The
West Coast equivalent to Nova Scotia Lobster and better tasting too!
Flavoured with Ginger, it's always been one of my favorites.  The best
way to eat crab is to have somebody else crack it and de-shell it for
you.  If your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend won't do this –
invite somebody else.

4 – Buddhist's Feast
A traditional New Year dish – with rice vermicelli noodles and lots of vegetables and lotus root.  All the good things that every vegetarian loves.  The Chinese calendar is based on the 12 animals that came when Buddha called.  Feb 7th starts a new 12 year cycle that begins with the Year of the Rat – the first animal to see Buddha.  I was born in the Year of the Rat.



5  – Haggis
You
can't have a Robbie Burns Supper without Haggis… We serve the best
haggis that I have found.  It comes from the Highlands of West
Vancouver… or rather the Lowlands of West Vancouver's Park Royal,
from Peter Black & Sons.  Peter's
haggis is like a nice liver pate.  It is not too oaty, and it has many
nice spices.  Try it with sweet & sour sauce.  But the Plum sauce
is best. 

6  Lettuce Wrap
We
serve a vegetarian lettuce wrap.  We had so many vegetarians who
lamented that they couldn't eat the duck or the pork or the beef
lettuce wrap… so now it is a vegetarian lettuce wrap.  Very tasty. 

We
encourage people to combine Haggis with the lettuce wrap…. Take a
large spoonful of haggis, plunk it on a lettuce leaf, add the
vegetarian filling, smother it with Hoi-Sin Chinese plum sauce, and
it's great.  People really like it.  Before we invented the haggis
lettuce wrap, there was always plenty of haggis left over.  But now…
everybody eats it up.  We blame it on the lettuce wrap.

7 – Mongolian Beef
At one time the Mongolian empire was the largest contiguous empire in human history reaching  into what is now Modern Poland by 1279.  That's almost 90% of the distance from Beijing to Edinburgh!  Mongolian beef is one of the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team's favorite Tuesday night dishes after a hard paddle practice.

8 – Deep Fried Shrimp balls with fruit salad.
It's traditional to have a fish dish because the Chinese word for fish sounds like the Chinese word for money… But we are substituting this wonderful Floata Restaurant specialty.  The shrimpballs are lightly
deep-fried to a nice light crunch.  The salad is melons with a
mayonaise sauce… very much Hong Kong style.  While, not one of the
Chinese-Canadian dishes that I grew up with, but the Chinese members on
our Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team really like it, and they
assure me that it is a traditional style food dish for Chinese New Year.

9 –  Special Long Life E-Fu Noodles
Long noodles signify long life – a very important part of traditional Chinese New Year greetings.  I really like the E-Fu noodles.  They are lighter than regular Chow Mein noodles – very heavenly.  Another traditional belief is that the Kitchen God goes to heaven, to report on the family.  Maybe this is why the e-fu noodles are so special!

10 – Dessert 
The return of Mango Pudding.  My girlfriend was happy to see this back on the menu after years of traditional Chinese New Year pastries.   One of the top selling gelato ice creams at Casa Gelato is Death by Mango.  We will definitely NOT have blood pudding – Go ye to a
Scottish resturant for that stuff

Hope you enjoyed these delicious descriptions…

Each
year we are challenged by the logistics of serving 350 to 450 people at
the same time, in coordination with a fantastic musical and literary
show.  Every year we try to improve on the presentation and the
execution of our event, while making it fresh with adjustments to both
the menu and the performance schedule.

So….
reception starts promptly at 5:30pm.and the dim sum appetizers will be
available because we know people will be hungry.  The restaurant assures us that the bar will be open at 5:30pm and we have moved the event to the south side of the restaurant to utilize the large bar, and to be closer to the kitchen.

And
of course… the entire program and menu is subject to change.  We do
our best to create a fabulous meal and evening of entertainment.  And
the best way is to be sensitive to the audience, the performers, spontaneous to great ideas, and
meeting any challenges that come our way.



I look forward to sharing the surprises and joys of Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ 2008 with you!

Toddish

Our Gung Haggis Fat Choy Robbie Burns Chinese New Year dinner always has raffle prizes to further help raise funds for Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, Historic Joy Kogawa House and Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team.  We try to find prizes that reflect our themes of BC's Chinese-Canadian and Scottish-Canadian history and culture.  In particular we try to help promote Asian-Canadian arts and culture.

The dinner actually costs quite a bit to put on, plus additional production costs including sound technician and additional equipment plus publicity and posters.  We hope that our guests will further help us raise funds for our very worthy organizations, by purchasing lots of raffle tickets!

For our 2008 dinner on January 27th, some of the prizes so far include:

From Harbour Publishing:

The Trail of 1858: British Columbia's Gold Rush Past  – by Mark Forsythe & Greg Dickson

.

The BC Almanac Book of Greatest British Columbians: – by Mark Forsythe & Greg Dickson


Forage
Forage – by Rita Wong

From Tradewind
Abby's Birds – illustrated by my friend Sima Elizabeth Shefrin

From Arsenal Pulp Press

Swallowing Clouds, edited by Andy
Quan & Jim Wong-Chu (This poetry collection is one of my favorites – it contains the Jim Wong-Chu poem “Recipe for Tea” which tells the story of how tea was originally introduced to Scotland from Southern China by traders.)

When Fox is a Thousand, by Larissa
Lai (Another favorite – I love Foxes)

Hopeful Monsters, by Hiromi
Goto (Hiromi is now the Writer-in-Residence at the Vancouver Public Library)

From Vancouver Opera
2 tickets to Italian Girl in Algiers
2 tickets to Voices of the Pacific Rim

2 tickets for Banana Boys

From TF Productions
2 tickets for The Quickie – the follow up theatrical production from the “Twisting Fortunes” team

10 more days until Gung Haggis Fat Choy: Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Dinner.

Yesterday and today, I received calls from Matt Burrows from the Georgia Straight asking what was happening for the 10th Anniversary celebrations for Gung Haggis Fat Choy.  We have celtic band Blackthorn, Vancouver poet laureate George McWhirter, our house band Joe McDonald and Brave Waves + an sneak peak excerpt from Grace Chin's new theatre play.

“Sorry, I can't tell you anything more because everything else is going to be a surprise,” I told Burrows.  “I am looking at some of the best memories, performances and elements over the past 10 years and trying to find a way to make the dinner have the same remarkable spontaneity that the first dinner of 16 guests had, but now with 400 guests. 

As usual we will be having people reading Burns Poetry, reading Asian Canadian poetry… and we will have members of our audience come up on stage to read.  It's always important for me to find a way to recognize both the
Scottish-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian history and culture of our city
and province.

It's always exciting seeing who will be in our audience.  By introducing celebrity people and community leaders in our audience, it always makes the dinner feel more intimate and friendly.  This is one of the secrets that has made Gung Haggis Fat Choy such a cherished must-attend event for so many Vancouverites.  After singing a chorus of “When Asian Eyes Are Smiling” or “My Haggis Lies Over the Ocean,” you have 9 brand new best friends at your dinner table… and 400 new friends surrounding you…. all singing Auld Lang Syne in Mandarin!

At that first dinner, we had no idea what was happening… we had a list of things that were supposed to happen at a traditional Robbie Burns dinner.  I cooked most of the Chinese dishes, and other people brought or cooked some more of the dishes.  But as the dinner grew to 40 people, then 100, then 200, then 400 and up to 590, it has always struggled with losing the original intimacies of the first dinners, while taking advantage of the opportunities for better performances and better sound/video technology as the dinner grew to larger venues.

“We are going to be showing clips from the CBC documentary Generations: The Chan Legacy which features some of the history of the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner, including being interviewed by Peter Mansbridge from The National, and also the CBC Vancouver TV special,” I shared with Burrows.  “After all, how many times does a Burns dinner get to spin off a TV special… it's been pretty incredible!”

All the haggis is now ordered from Peter Black & Sons in West Vancouver's Park Royal.  It's very fitting, since the first dinner of 16 guests took place in a North Vancouver town house.  The haggis will soon be delivered to Floata Restaurant where they will make hundreds of deep-fried wun tun appetizers, as part of our haggis dim sum appetizer buffet that will greet guests on their arrival at 5:30pm

Tickets Tonight is handling all single ticket orders, while I take reserved tables of 10.  There are many organizations and individuals reserving tables.  These will all be announced during the “Calling of the Clans.”
Single ticket holders will all be assigned seating at “General Admission” tables in the order that they bought their tickets.  Reserved tables of 10 will have the “Clan Names” place on the tables.

Our host organizations Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, Historic Joy Kogawa House Society and the Gung Hagggis Fat Choy dragon boat team will each receive a portion of funds raised from the dinner, as well as provide volunteers for the event.

Raffle prizes are looking very good.  Each year I talk with organizations that contribute to the intercultural nature of our arts community. 

Banana Boys theatre – 2 tickets from Firehall Arts Centre
Italian Girl In Algiers – 2 tickets from Vancouver Opera
Voices of the Pacific Rim – 2 tickets from Vancouver Opera
The Quickie – 2 tickets from TF Productions
Book gift pack from Arsenal Pulp Press
Book gift pack from Harbour Publishing
and many more prizes…

So… everything is now set up.  Media interviews are happening.  Last week I was interviewed on Co-Op Radio by Rowan on Accordion Noir.  This friday I am being interviewed by Eric Model for this radio and podcast for his Conversations on the Road show where he travels all across North America interviewing interesting people and stories.

Hmmm… what's next.  Read Thursday's Georgia Straight to find the latest work in dress attire for Gung Haggis Fat Choy… and who will be wearing a kilt to the dinner.