I’m Jasmine. I grew up in Vancouver, but a part of my childhood lived in Chinatown, in my grandmother’s (Po Po’s) tiny apartment two blocks from the park. The smell of BBQ pork bao still puts me right back there.

Every Saturday when I was little, my mom would drop me off at Po Po’s place. By the time I got there she’d already have her purse over her shoulder and her sweater on. “Chut gai la,” she’d say, and we’d walk the same five blocks down to Kam Wai in Chinatown. The line at the counter was always long. She’d order me one BBQ pork bao to eat right there, and then pack a few more in a paper bag to take home for our breakfast the next morning. I remember the steam fogging up her glasses when she opened the bag in the kitchen.

That bao was warm, sweet, savoury. The skin slightly sticky and soft. The pork inside glossed in that dark, shiny sauce. I didn’t know it then, but that was my favourite food in the world.

Then high school happened. AP classes, soccer team, college applications, and we moved out of East Van. Saturdays at Po Po’s went from every weekend to occasional. Then I left for U of T in Toronto, and “occasional” turned into a couple of holidays a year. I kept telling myself I’d visit properly the next time I was back home.

Po Po passed away in the spring of my second year at U of T. I never made it back for one more weekend. After that I didn’t eat BBQ pork bao again. Not for years. I’d see them in supermarket bakeries and walk straight past. Whatever was in that plastic wrap was never going to taste like a Saturday morning at Po Po’s, so what was the point.

A few months ago I was walking back from a meeting near E Hastings Street and saw a new storefront. “Kam Wai Legacy.” I stopped on the sidewalk. The name sounded familiar in a way I couldn’t quite place. I almost just kept walking.

I went in at lunch the next day, skeptical. I ordered one BBQ pork bao. Just one. I was already preparing myself for disappointment.

The first bite stopped me. It was that taste. The same dark, shiny sauce on the filling, the same skin that was sticky and soft, the same impossible sweetness I’d been quietly chasing in every other bao I’d tried over the years without realising it. I sat at a table in the corner of the shop and cried a little, in a way that I hope no one noticed.

When I went up to pay I asked the woman at the counter if this was the same Kam Wai. She said yes. Same family, fourth generation. I almost laughed. Of course it was.

The new shop is nothing like the one I went to with Po Po. It’s brighter, more open, with about twenty seats for people who want to sit down. The menu has expanded a lot. There are way more hot dim sum items than I remember as a kid: shrimp dumplings, siu mai, red bean sesame balls. And there’s a whole take home section with a row of cold case products you can steam at home, which is what I went for on my second visit.

I picked up a pack of fresh BBQ pork bao from the cold case for my parents. It had been over a decade since my mom had eaten a Kam Wai bao. The last time was probably one of those Saturday mornings at Po Po’s. She steamed the pack that Sunday morning, took a bite, and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she just nodded. That nod meant something.

My dad ate three.

Half of my office had been asking me about Hong Kong food for months. They kept searching “dim sum restaurant near me” on Saturday mornings, ending up at huge Cantonese banquet halls in Richmond, sitting down with a menu the size of a tablecloth, and panicking. Nobody ordered the dim sum. Everyone just ate fried rice. They wanted to try real Hong Kong food, but they didn’t want to feel completely lost while doing it.

I told them I’d take them somewhere easy. Last Thursday at lunch the six of us walked over to Kam Wai Legacy. I ordered for the whole table: a few BBQ pork bao, shrimp dumplings, pork siu mai, beef meatballs, and red bean sesame balls. Easy starters.

The shrimp dumplings disappeared first. Translucent skin, whole shrimp inside you could see through the wrapper, still snapping when you bit into one. My coworker Liam, who grew up in Saskatchewan eating his grandma’s pierogies, held one up to the light and said “you can actually SEE the shrimp.” He ate eight!

But it was the red bean sesame ball that really got him. By the first bite, he was making a noise I had never heard him make in three years of working together. These days he stops by the shop almost every lunch hour just to grab one. He is, somehow, the office’s newest red bean sesame ball convert, and he isn’t even trying to play it cool about it.

I don’t go back to Chinatown much these days. The original Kam Wai is still there, but E Hastings is closer to my office and closer to home, and it turns out closer is enough. This new shop didn’t replace Po Po. Nothing was ever going to do that. But it gave me back something I thought was permanently gone. A Saturday morning breakfast. A taste I’d stopped looking for. A piece of her I now get to share with my parents, and with a guy from Saskatchewan who is, somehow, deeply emotionally invested in dim sum.

If you’ve been wanting to try Hong Kong food but never figured out where to start, this little dim sum shop on E Hastings is the easiest entry point I know. Walk in. Order one BBQ pork bao. You’ll see.

Click here to learn more: KAM WAI LEGACY DIM SUM NOW OPEN VANCOUVER