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Bernice Chan

For the Taiwanese community in Vancouver, Canada, finding a restaurant that truly satisfies their cravings can be a challenge. However, A.Bento stands out as a favourite.
The menu is a delightful showcase of Taiwanese comfort food like crispy chicken nuggets, hearty pork ragu on rice, three-cup chicken, and the ever-popular braised beef noodles in soup with a spicy kick.
Despite the authentic Taiwanese flavours at A.Bento, chef and owner Aaron Jian Zhou, 32, actually hails from Wenzhou, in mainland China’s Zhejiang province, about 320 kilometres from Taiwan.
Jian’s introduction to Taiwanese cuisine came courtesy of a restaurateur uncle on his father’s side, who introduced him to snacks such as deep-fried chicken nuggets, Taiwanese sausages and rice rolls, which he would take for breakfast during his school days.
“Taiwanese food is comfort food; everyone likes it,” Jian says.

He has visited Taiwan numerous times and enjoys going to the night markets to see what is cooking.
“It’s just so convenient and so comforting. There are so many stalls there, so I don’t need to go to specific booths. I just follow the crowd – wherever people are lining up means that that stall has the best food.”
The nostalgic flavours of Taiwanese street food he enjoyed as a child inspired Jian to open A.Bento, which offers Taiwanese dishes presented in a Japanese bento style that appeals to local office workers.
He did not consider opening a restaurant serving Wenzhou cuisine because most of those dishes feature steamed freshwater seafood, including yellow fish and hibiscus mud crab, which are unavailable in Vancouver.
Despite the geographical proximity of Wenzhou and Taiwan, Jian notes differences between the two cuisines, which can be seen in how each region prepares beef noodle soup.
“The beef in Taiwanese beef noodles is braised in a sauce, while Wenzhou has beef noodle in a clear broth,” he says.
“For Taiwanese beef noodle soup, the main ingredient is doubanjiang, or chilli bean paste. The different kinds of the doubanjiang actually affect the soup a lot, but for the clear beef noodle, the flavour is more from the scallion and leek.”

He adds that beef brisket is typically used for the Taiwanese version, paired with thick wheat noodles and eaten with pickled mustard greens, while the Wenzhou dish uses beef shank with thin rice noodles and daikon.
Jian appreciates the culinary differences, which is why he aims to keep the Taiwanese flavours at A.Bento true to the original.
Jian’s interest in cooking began in his childhood, when he would help his mother in the kitchen. In 2009, when he was 17 years old, he and his family immigrated to Vancouver, a place he knew hardly anything about, except that it was “a beautiful place”.
After school, he studied chemistry at a local college, and earned extra money by working in Chinese eateries on the weekends.
Seeing he was interested in cooking, one of Jian’s friends suggested he learn more at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, a local culinary school. He completed a six-month intensive programme in 2018.
“I just wanted to learn more skills,” Jian says modestly.
However, after graduating, he was offered a stage (internship) at Hawksworth Restaurant, known for its refined dishes made from Canadian ingredients. The restaurant, housed in the upscale Rosewood Hotel Georgia, had previously ranked No 2 in Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list.

His experience of wok cooking was completely different from Western fine dining: at the Chinese eateries, 20 to 30 orders would come in at once, while in fine dining there was pressure to work together with other chefs in the kitchen and be organised with mise en place, or ingredients prepared in advance.
After interning at Hawksworth Restaurant, Jian worked in its catering department, a role he enjoyed. A year and a half later, he spent six months in New York, helping his aunt at her Thai restaurant near Times Square, which had a constant queue of customers.
Upon returning to Vancouver, he felt there was a lack of casual dining options. “When I was a university student, I couldn’t find casual food to eat, because people usually eat Subway sandwiches. There were no Asian bento [concepts] in Vancouver, so I thought maybe I could try that,” he says.
In 2019, he embarked on a research trip to Taiwan and mainland China. He opened A.Bento the following year, just as Covid-19 began spreading in Vancouver, forcing the restaurant to pivot to takeaway food.
They also began making frozen meals that could be quickly reheated at home, but it took a while and a few tries to figure out which dishes worked best – like braised Taiwanese beef noodles, ginger duck, sticky rice with eel, Taiwanese chicken nuggets and kung pao chicken.
“We tried several different ways. The first time, we cooked the meals like we do in the restaurant and then froze them, but they didn’t taste good after reheating them. The second time we tried sous vide, then we changed the ingredients we used, choosing vegetables that freeze well, and tweaked how we cooked it [to freeze],” he says.
They eventually nailed it after several attempts. Since then, sales of the frozen meals have been so successful that two years ago, Jian opened a factory 45 minutes’ drive from his restaurant to manufacture and distribute frozen food to two local supermarket chains and for online orders.

Some days Jian is already in the factory at 6am overseeing the distribution of the frozen meals, only checking in at A.Bento in the late afternoon. If everything goes well, he can go home early to spend time with his family.
And that is what he likes most about cooking.
“It can create more time for families to spend together, because when I was growing up, my dad was always so busy [working at his shoe factory], and so it was always my mom, my sister and I eating together, always missing my dad,” he says.
“But now, because I can cook, I can bring everyone together, they can talk and chat, and I can spend time in the kitchen. After around half an hour, we can share the meal and talk about the day.
“I think that’s the moment I was trying to have more of, for myself and also for my own family, because I just got married two years ago, so I was thinking, if dad can cook, then mom can take care of the kids, and we can spend more time together.”


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Food & Drink

Despite the authentic Taiwanese flavours at A.Bento, chef and owner Aaron Jian Zhou actually hails from Wenzhou in mainland China


Despite the authentic Taiwanese flavours at A.Bento, chef and owner Aaron Jian Zhou actually hails from Wenzhou in mainland China.


How this chef built one of Vancouver’s most authentic Taiwanese restaurants

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Despite the authentic Taiwanese flavours at A.Bento, chef and owner Aaron Jian Zhou actually hails from Wenzhou in mainland China

Despite the authentic Taiwanese flavours at A.Bento, chef and owner Aaron Jian Zhou actually hails from Wenzhou in mainland China