I think we really need a place in Australia
that reminds Chinese people of home.
This store is not only important
to the Chinese community, but also to me.
My father died when I was 19.
I feel like I didn’t spend enough time with him.
With this store being here,
I feel like he’s still around.
I’m Alan,
the second-generation owner
of Mother Chu's Taiwanese Gourmet.
My parents opened the store in 1991.
We sell mainly Taiwanese snacks.
There are many Chinese people in Australia.
They miss the food from their hometowns.
This store is like their second home
where they can eat food
that tastes like what they had back home.
Our Taiwanese youtiao, or fried dough stick,
is crispy outside, and soft and airy inside.
When you bite into it,
you can smell the flour’s fragrance.
Usually you eat it with soy milk.
It’s the most traditional way of eating it.
We Taiwanese folks like to wrap it in a wrap
made in a clay oven.
We also use it to make rice balls.
It’s meat floss, dried radish,
and crispy bits of youtiao
wrapped inside a sticky rice roll.
This is the youtiao with shallot pancakes,
and an extra fried egg inside it.
It’s just such a satisfying dish.
I can eat this all day if I can.
One the best dishes I grew up with.
We ordered tofu pudding with youtiao.
It’s so tasty.
The Chinese community likes to come here a lot.
We make the youtiao by hand.
We make it with our family’s secret recipe.
After we pour flour into a bowl of water,
we knead it.
You need to push the dough up and down.
If you knead it in a circular motion
like how a machine does it,
the dough will get stiffer and stiffer.
That’s why the texture
is really different from (machine-made ones).
After that, we let the dough rest.
Then we knead it again.
We lift it up and flip it.
Finally we roll it out so it’s flat and thin.
We cut it into strips.
We put (two strips) side by side,
press them together, and fry it.
When it cooks inside hot oil, it will expand.
You have to keep rotating it
so it'll be fluffy and airy.
When I was a kid, I watched my father make it.
But he died when I was still in high school.
So he didn’t get to teach me
a lot of skills in person.
My father wasn’t very healthy all along.
He had a brain tumor.
It was very difficult
to remove it completely through surgeries.
He had to run the store
and go to the hospital, undergo surgeries,
and do chemotherapy all at the same time.
In 2013, after his last operation,
his doctor told him
they couldn’t operate on him anymore,
and he would only live for another half a year.
He died in March of 2014.
I was 17 and my brother
was only around nine or 10 years old.
My mom was alone
and she also needed to
take care of our schooling.
I was applying for college at that time.
The most important person in our family
was no longer here in a blink of an eye.
It was like there was a void.
There was no one to tell us
what we could do.
If a very important person in your life died,
you would hope that there is one thing
that can make you feel their presence,
like they’re still around.
So I decided to take over the store.
Our long-time staff were still working here.
So we supported each other,
worked hard, and kept the store running.
I'm Ashley. I'm Alan's little brother,
and I'm a waiter at the restaurant.
So I work on the weekends at the restaurant
and, one to five, I'm doing my own thing
in terms of music.
It's incredibly hard to run a business like this.
It's especially during the whole
COVID lockdown and quarantine.
It's just seeing all these different shops
around the area closing down.
It's pretty harsh.
Ever since my dad passed away,
it has just been so, so rough.
And I know my brother’s going through a lot.
And just the fact that he's still able to push through
and still run this business,
it really means a lot.
And still being able to,
you know, to let me be able to do my own thing.
I definitely owe everything to him.
So I don't have any other words
except for, like, thank you so much, Alan,
for doing this for me and doing this for us,
because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do things
that I want to do in my life. So thank you.
I think we really need a place in Australia
a place that preserves our culture and tradition.
I will also continue to work hard
and make this store better and better.
I hope this will help (my dad) worry less.
I don’t know where you are,
but don’t worry.
I will keep the store running smoothly.
We’ll visit a family
that gave street cred to stir-fried rice noodles
in Brisbane.