Quang Dang, C Restaurant’s Chef de Cuisine, exemplifies the new breed of chef making the Pacific Northwest’s food scene avant-guard and ultramodern. He is a blend of styles mixing magician with kitchen improv in a "hold no prisoners" fashion. He sees the alchemy he produces in the kitchen as the practical application of science and wits. His inventive and resourceful nature combines with intense curiosity and high-energy to permeate this young man with a talent so distinct, he is recognized as one of Vancouver’s most ingenious hot new chefs.
His "chef whites" come with an interesting travel map that has some diverse twists and turns. He is a prairie boy, raised in Calgary. He is the son of a professor of engineering, with family roots stretching back to the orchards and rice fields of Vietnam, and a Canadian mother of Scottish descent who taught school fulltime. Helping out as a teen he learned to forage for dinner and, in doing so, unearthed a passion for food and flavours that mixed his diverse cultural background with a quizzical "let’s give this a try" way of thinking.
He comes from a long line of what he calls "food geeks" so his love of good food and world flavours was already imbedded in his DNA. In her will, Quang’s paternal grandmother left him the family heirloom cookbook of traditional Vietnamese recipes. It is one of his prized possessions and sits in an overflowing bookcase at home, along with hundreds of other cookbooks from master chefs around the world. This is his vault of inspiration and the bar he measures himself against.
Quang never stops learning, exploring and asking. This trait has served him well and helped him to find his true calling. His initial path was to follow his father into engineering and biology, but his part time jobs got the better of him. From refreshment vendor at the Calgary Stampede, he migrated to an "after-school and weekend" senior line cook at one of Calgary’s busiest restaurants called Joey Tomatoes Med Grill. Mix in a few other intriguing stats like his Grade 10 in Royal Conservatory piano, an accomplished speed skater and a goalie for Canada’s national field hockey team, and one has a dichotomous skill set for a man of 27 years of age.
He moved to Vancouver to ostensibly finish his engineering degree and train for the Olympics with Canada’s national field hockey team. That’s not quite how things worked out. He transferred his part time job at Joey’s in Calgary to an affiliate restaurant in Coquitlam. Here he became what he calls with great humour and respect, the "whipping boy" of his first mentor, Kathleen O’Connor. She taught him the strategies and discipline necessary to run a high volume kitchen. It was here too that he came to the attention of Chris Mills who was doing product development for the Joey’s chain. Mills saw in Quang the raw talent and drive needed to take it to the top. He later brought Quang to work with him at Diva at the Met. This was Quang’s "fork in the road."
