Asian-influenced pastas plus a snappy wine and drinks package in a cosy 24-seat setting equals a blueprint for the neighbourhood eatery circa 2025.
14.5/20
Modern Australian$$
The first person you’ll meet at Little Gan’s will probably be Jocelyn Gan, the restaurant’s cordial, all-knowing manager.
Those raised with traditional Asian values might feel compelled to call Jocelyn “auntie”, such is the aura of calm, wisdom and you-better-listen-to-me that she (non-threateningly) exudes. However you address Jocelyn, one thing is certain: the First Lady of Little Gan’s goes about her work with the quiet confidence of someone who feels at home. Largely because she is.
Before it was Little Gan’s, this was Foo Wah. I don’t know when Foo Wah opened, but I do know that Jocelyn and her husband Steven bought it in 1996 when it was takeaway-only. In the quarter of a century that they ran it, the Gans added a dining room and fleshed out the menu with Chinese cooking deep cuts such as eight treasure duck to accompany crowd-pleasers a la sweet and sour pork. So far, so very suburban Chinese restaurant, right up until Foo Wah closed in mid-2021. Which is when the story takes a turn.
Reader, meet the Gans’ youngest son, Richard. Recently returned from Melbourne where he cooked at long-standing beachside fortress Stokehouse, Richard told his parents that he wanted to resurrect the mothballed Foo Wah as a polished, mid-range neighbourhood restaurant serving contemporary cooking – plot twist number two! – that locals previously needed to travel for. They agreed, and in Easter 2022, Little Gan’s entered the fray.
Richard, like all his siblings, helped out in Foo Wah growing up. Now that he was calling the shots, mum and dad returned the favour (most of Papa Gan’s work, however, happens behind the scenes in the kitchen).
Although Richard was based in the Foo Wah kitchen, his job was bagging takeaways rather than preparing them. It wasn’t until his early 20s that he started learning to cook professionally, initially at TAFE, then at the Culinary Institute of America in New York.
After graduation, he joined upscale Manhattan restaurants Marea and Vaucluse and learned Italian and French cooking respectively. His time at the latter comes through clearly in the textbook tri-tip beef tartare: bouncy and saucy of body, confidently seasoned and unflinchingly classic. Richard’s attitude towards Italian cooking, however, is less traditional.
Rather, he reckons that handmade pastas and maverick sauces is a great way to lure la cucina vera out of its comfort zone. That pickled shimeji mushrooms are an inspired way to brighten bonbon-like agnolotti packing unctuous beef cheek. That coating toothsome spaghetti with a verdant purée of garlic scapes isn’t sacrilege. And that chilli-spiked linguine yearns for the crunch of golden fried prawn heads: pangratatto for crypto millionaires.
This bowerbird thinking informs other dishes. Korean chilli butter prolongs the crustacean-on-crustacean rapture of juicy tiger prawns paired with a stupid good bisque. The combination of North African harissa and Thai fish sauce makes a compelling argument to let all octopus hold dual citizenship. I’ve eaten plenty of sweet and salty Japanese-style grilled eggplant in my 46-year innings. This was the first that a miso dengaku “side dish” threatened to steal the spotlight from charry steak and juicy pork scotch fillet.
Granted, Little Gan’s brand of modern Australian has a pronounced Asian accent, but this isn’t food driven by a mission statement or – sharp inhale – “chef’s philosophy”. Instead, these are organically evolved dishes that taste unforced and emblematic of the global village we all live in. Once upon a time, crossover cooking was a byproduct of colonisation. Today, an Instagram DM plus a valid passport are enough to sow the seeds for a win-win collaboration.
The comfortable albeit basic dining room shares the kitchen’s cosmopolitan spirit. Framed art on the walls includes pieces from Japan’s Yayoi Kisuma and American painter Edward Hopper, as chosen by Richard’s sister Gillian. (The bijou ceramic vases on the tables, meanwhile, are also made by her).
The clientele reflects the multicultural, upwardly population that inhabits the City of Canning’s golden triangle of Rossmoyne, Willetton and Lynwood. Mum, dad and the two kids are out celebrating exam success. Dates and double dates unfold around me. Lubricated by an armful of BYO fizz, a party of 10 is making the most of its Friday night out.
Two straight-talking desserts reiterate Little Gan’s democratic nature. Fluffy Basque cheesecake is great as far as baked cheesecakes go, but lacked the wobble found in the genre’s Premier League specimens. No such qualms with the lithe muscovado tart though, its jiggly mahogany custard made hench by the richness of unrefined cane sugar.
While this essay’s subject matter is a single address, the truth is that Foo Wahs and (potential) Little Gan’s exist in almost every postcode. Sometimes they’re a proudly un-gourmet fish and chipper.
Other times they’re an increasingly regional-specific eatery where the tables are undressed, but the social fabric is strong. All are in various stages of flux and evolution as they try to balance the needs and aspirations of management with those of the paying public. Success happens when both parties meet in the middle.
Little Gan’s is a deeply likeable – and deeply delicious – example of a multigenerational family restaurant successfully entering its second act. One reason for this smooth transition is longevity. When you convert restaurant years to human years, a quarter of a century is a lifetime.
The other, I think, is support. Not just from customers, but from loved ones. Jocelyn and Steven might have hoped Richard would take after them and his eldest brother and become an accountant. But once they realised his dream was somewhere else, they quickly changed theirs.
“I would like my children to be themselves and not have any regrets,” says Jocelyn. “I want them to be able to say that they did what they did because they wanted to, not just because mum and dad told them to.”
The low-down
Atmosphere: a likeable neighbourhood eatery delivering a neat take on the suburban, family-run Chinese restaurant.
Go-to dishes: prawn linguine, miso eggplant.
Drinks: a surprisingly contemporary cross-section of classic and new-wave wines, although the glass pours aren’t quite as exciting as what’s by the bottle. BYO is also available ($15 per bottle).
Cost: about $140 for two people.
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
