What would a New West cookbook look like?

Jocelyn Wong has loved New West for as long as she can remember.

“It has this kind of small town feel, even though it’s not necessarily a small town. It’s definitely a city that’s very transit accessible, and I think what’s interesting is there are a lot of tidbits of history that people don’t realize exist.”

Wong lived in the city for five years – she now lives in Vancouver – but the distance didn’t stop her from putting together New West Eats: A Community Cookbook, highlighting the variety of delicious eats you can find through the city’s restaurant scene.

Wong says she was inspired to take on the project after she created a community cookbook for her best friend as a birthday present.

“As soon as I got that done, I realized, ‘okay, I can start a full-on project on this.” That’s when Wong decided to apply for some grant money through the Vancouver Foundation; further on in the project, she ended up getting a bit of funding from the City of New Westminster. “[Word of the project] ended up posted on Facebook, in the [Eat New West] group, and it ended up kind of being a bigger project than I anticipated,” she shares.

Very much in line with her general perspective of New West, she believes the city’s food scene is special – many people don’t realize that some of the businesses have been owned for generations.

“It’s one thing to know about the food in New West; there’s a lot of great food, but there’s another thing to know about the stories of mom and pops that have existed here, especially immigrants. I think they have really cool stories to tell.”

Wong is proud of the direction she took the project in, as she tried to obtain as many diverse contributions as she could.

“These days I feel like there are more and more Cactus Clubs or Milestones. So having a little restaurant, like a Taqueria Playa Tropical, and some of those Ethiopian restaurants, they’re the little gems that are local knowledge, and I’d love to share that with people in the broader community,” she says.

“I thought it would be a good way to connect business owners with the community so that they can get a taste of the restaurant. Maybe not necessarily a direct dish, but a taste of their character, their vibe, and then they can go and support the business.”

If she could do the project again, Wong says the only thing she would change is having more time and more funding.

“I think there’s something more to food and stories, and storytelling. It’s a great way to bring people together, and we all have memories around food because it’s such a big part of our lives.”