Spanakopita Meets Egg Rolls in Toronto’s Greektown

Dolmas and baklava dominate the stretch of Danforth Avenue known as “Greektown” in Toronto. Yet Anthony Lin and Sandra Chung, the owners of Danforth Dragon, offer a different dining adventure that fuses their Hakka and Indian roots. In this casual restaurant, they blend Indian spices such as jeera (cumin) and chile with Chinese soy sauce and rice wine for a distinctive cuisine that explodes with flavor.

Anthony Lin’s parents made shoes in India. Even though his mother was born in India, she enforced Chinese traditions at home: “We ate with chopsticks. No Hindi was spoken. ‘You’re Chinese, speak Chinese at home,’ Mom would say.” Anthony left school early and has worked in restaurants from the age of twelve. “There was no future in India,” he says. In 1989, at the age of fifteen, he followed his mother to Canada.