Inside the expansive and dark wooded restaurant SooRa Korean Fine Cuisine, Erin Choi sits at one of the empty tables, anxious, perking up at the sound of the door opening.
It is just her and the older women of her family – who own the restaurant – moving about inside, despite it being 1:30 p.m., the middle of the lunch rush.
“We’ve been open for three months, people didn’t know much about us,” Choi says.
But, Choi says, the Koreana Restaurant, another Korean eatery located on the west side of Bronson Avenue, isn't struggling to draw customers like SooRa.
“I don’t see people walking here… (customers) think that everything is up there (on the west end). We feel that we are not a part of Chinatown,” Choi says.
Business owners, like Choi’s family, on Somerset Street east of Bronson Avenue, are increasingly feeling left out from Chinatown’s aura and the business it brings.
The red lampposts and yellow flags adorned with dragons that plot out the official boundaries of Ottawa’s Chinatown span Somerset from Bay to Rochester.
Yet, despite the Somerset BIA’s efforts to broaden awareness of all Chinatown businesses, shop and restaurant owners claim the west side of Bronson gets all the public’s attention.
“A lot of people think Chinatown starts from Bronson and onwards,” says Kate Thai, owner of Times Housewares and Gifts, a shop east of Bronson.
A new gateway, proposed to be built at Somerset and Cambridge – one block west of Bronson – could exaggerate this stereotype and contribute to the exclusion, says Donald Kwan, owner of Shanghai restaurant east of Bronson.
The traditional archways, found in many Chinatowns across Canada, usually signify the entrance of such cultural centres.
Grace Xin, executive director of the Somerset BIA, says the proposed location is strictly about logistics. Cambridge Street opens to a deadend on either side of Somerset and provides the only space large enough for the planned construction.
Kate Thai, whose gift shop has been next to the Scotiabank on the corner of Bronson and Somerset for eight years, says the issue could also have to do with there being fewer shops on the east side. With more residences, the flow of customers becomes watered down.
Grocery stores especially, are one thing that all business owners and the BIA mention as a faucet for customer activity.
“I don’t think location means that much, but maybe [it’s] the atmosphere,” says executive director of the Somerset BIA, Grace Xin.
“I think because all the Chinese churches are in that block and also grocery stores, that makes you feel ‘oh that’s Chinatown’ because people come here to shop. But that part [east of Bronson] has been a part of Chinatown for more than 20 years.”
Xin also points out that east of Bronson is a lot more ‘dynamic,’ it is not strictly Chinese. Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese even Middle Eastern businesses are more prevalent east of the area.