‘Here the people know each other’: why do so many regional Australian towns have a Chinese restaurant?

Lin Jie Kong: One night, in search of dinner towards the end of a long road trip, I found myself at the RSL club in Karuah, a sleepy bayside town just north of Port Stephens, New South Wales. I feared it would be another night of choosing between chicken parmy and fish and chips, but was surprised to find a well-reviewed Chinese restaurant in the club.

All the Australian Chinese staples were there: sweet and sour pork, Mongolian lamb, beef and black bean sauce. But what really caught my eye was the specials board: mapo tofu, Sichuan beef, a whole fish. These were dishes that wouldn’t be out of place in a big-city Chinatown restaurant, but all the way out here? I ended up sticking with two favourites – special fried rice and Peking pork.

The first bite of Peking pork was a revelation: juicy, crispy and covered in sweet sauce. Meanwhile, the fried rice was generously covered with layers of barbecue pork, chicken and prawns. Rolling myself back to the hotel, I rang my creative confidante Jennifer Wong: “You won’t believe where I’ve just had the BEST Chinese meal!”

We traded questions back and forth: “Why were these people in Karuah? Where were they from? Why were they running a Chinese restaurant, and how were they serving up such delicious food? Did the locals actually order mapo tofu?” And: “Could we travel around country Australia and ask these questions?”

Jennifer Wong : Fast forward to 2020 and I’m at New Bo Wa in Moree with Lin Jie and our crew, Sue Lumsdon and Adam Toole, filming Chopsticks or Fork? for the ABC.

I watch in fascination as a table of eight eat spring rolls … with knives and forks. I’d never seen anything like this before, but this was regular business for these diners, who’d been eating at the Bo Wa for 40 years.

• Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Travelling around regional Australia to interview families who run Chinese restaurants – and the diners who love them – has been rich with endearing revelations. Right across the country, no matter where we went, we found stories about what it means to feel at home, whether you’re the diner or the family running the restaurant.

To be able to tell a handful of stories about people you don’t usually see on television has been a true honour. For the Chopsticks or Fork? book (based on the ABC series), we visited 10 Chinese restaurants in regional Australia in total, between 2020 and 2022, and spent time with the families who run them. This is the story of one of them – the New Bo Wa restaurant in Moree in New South Wales.

Related: ‘Never go to battle hungry’: Australian chefs on their mother’s best advice in the kitchen – and beyond

‘It’s a very small community, but people help each other’: New Bo Wa in Moree

For more than 40 years, Moree locals have been heading to the New Bo Wa for prawn cutlets, sweet and sour pork and deep-fried ice-cream. It’s also a regular spot for tourists after they’ve worked up an appetite soaking in the nearby natural hot springs.

Husband and wife Ernest and Whitney Lai have run New Bo Wa since 2017. It was opened in 1975 by Robert Wong from Hong Kong, and when he retired he passed the restaurant over to Ernest’s uncle-in-law, George. Although the restaurant has had three owners, the menu has hardly changed since the 1970s. And that’s the way the locals like it.

“People go travelling to China and they order the sweet and sour pork. They come back and tell us they don’t really like it,” says Whitney. “They just like the Bo Wa’s one.”

Ernest and Whitney moved to the agricultural town of Moree, seven hours north-west of Sydney, to escape the rush and crowds of the city. “We just wanted to change our lifestyle,” says Whitney. “We were in Sydney, expecting our first baby, and we thought it’s time to make a change.”

Ernest had gone to high school in Moree, but the first time Whitney came to Moree was when she moved there. She noticed people in the country town of 13,000 were much friendlier than in the city.

“Here the people know each other and we say hello, and sometimes talk to them a little bit more,” she says. “It’s a very small community, but people actually support and help each other.”

Ernest found it pretty challenging when they first took over the restaurant. His day starts at 9am and finishes at 9pm or 10pm, with a break between 2pm and 4pm. “First of all, you have to run the whole restaurant, then you have to find the staff, which is hard because we are in a regional area,” he says.

“I also had to order the stock, which I hadn’t done before … and I had to learn to cook from my uncle. Everything here is pretty much homemade: the spring rolls and the dim sims. And the vegetables we cut fresh, not frozen. We make our own sauces.”

The food was very different to what Ernest and Whitney ate at home, and much of it was new to Whitney, who is originally from Guangzhou (Canton) in China. “We make lots of deep-fries here, but at home we don’t deep-fry stuff frequently,” says Whitney. “We usually just stir-fry or steam stuff, so it’s a big difference. Sometimes I cook western-style food, like spaghetti bolognese, because my kids love it.”

Whitney’s favourite dish in the restaurant is salt and pepper squid and Ernest’s favourite is the prawn cutlets. “Probably because I make them,” jokes Whitney.

The last few years have not been easy for Moree; there was a devastating drought from 2017 to 2018. “You can see, instead of the $200 takeaway, people might just have a couple of items for $50,” says Whitney. Just as the weather began improving and things started to look up, Covid hit. The restaurant shut for two months. “We were lucky because we were still able to keep the doors open and the customers could buy takeaway instead,” says Whitney.

For Whitney, it’s the happy customers who makes it all worthwhile. “This is the most important thing for me. Also, sometimes when you’re working very hard and then you go home and you look at the kids and they smile … this is the most rewarding thing for me. Because it’s long days and nights. To manage the restaurant and look after the kids as well, sometimes it’s pretty tough.”

Their kids, Sophie, Kingsley, and Corey, are right at home at the restaurant, where Sophie folds red napkins into crowns and Kingsley heads straight to the kitchen after school for a handful of cashews. Whitney and Ernest haven’t put any pressure on them to take over the restaurant when they grow up and so far it looks as though the kids have dreams outside the restaurant.

“When I grow up, I want to be an astronomer or, I think I’m pretty good at giving advice. So, maybe a counsellor or a therapist,” says Sophie, the eldest. Meanwhile, Corey, the youngest, wants to be a policeman and Kingsley would like to be a gamer.

Country life has been good to the family, although the kids have occasionally experienced racism. “Most of the time, because my parents own the Bo Wa, I get compliments at school for how good it is,” says Sophie. “Sometimes, some racist comments, but I don’t really mind. Although, they are rude.”

Having lived in Moree for more than five years now, Ernest says the moment he felt as though he belonged to the community was when the kids started to have friends to play with. “The kids feel like they’re locals,’ he says. “They’re not only Aussie kids, they’re country Aussie kids.”

New Bo Wa’s spring rolls – recipe

Spring rolls are a traditional snack in China and are eaten to celebrate lunar new year (also known as the spring festival). That’s why spring rolls are filled with fresh vegetables that traditionally would have only been available in springtime. The fact they look like solid gold bars makes them a lucky food to eat for prosperity in the coming year.

You’ll need to start this recipe ahead of time to cool the spring roll mixture.

Makes 20

Related: ‘We put it in the car fridge and take it home 1,000km’: love letters to Australia’s Chinese restaurants

2 tbsp vegetable oil
400g beef mince
2 garlic cloves , crushed
2 cups shredded carrot
2 cups shredded cabbage
1 cup water
2 tbsp salt
2 tsp white pepper
4 tbsp cornflour
1 pack spring roll wrappers (20 sheets)
1 tsp cornflour, extra, mixed with 1 tbsp water, for sealing spring rolls
Vegetable or canola oil , for deep-frying
Store-bought sweet and sour sauce, to serve

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok on high heat. Add the mince and garlic and stir-fry until the mince is broken up and becomes brown. Add the carrot, cabbage and water and stir-fry until the vegetables have wilted. Add the salt and pepper and toss through.

Turn off the heat, drain the excess liquid from the wok, reserving the liquid. Cool the mince mixture completely, then refrigerate for one hour.

To roll the spring rolls, add the cornflour to the reserved wok liquid and stir to dissolve. Lay a sheet of a wrapper with a corner facing you. Add two spoonfuls of the filling, 5cm in from the corner. Fold the corner over the filling, then fold the left and right sides into the centre, then roll the wrapper up like a cigar. Seal using the cornflour mixture.

To deep-fry the spring rolls, heat the vegetable or canola oil to 180C in a small deep saucepan or wok on medium-high heat. Fry the spring rolls in batches, turning occasionally, until golden. Drain on a plate lined with paper towel.

Serve with sweet and sour sauce.

• This is an edited extract of Chopsticks or Fork?: recipes and stories from Australia’s regional Chinese restaurants by Jennifer Wong and Lin Jie Kong, available now through Hardie Grant (RRP $42). The series Chopsticks or Fork? is available to stream on ABC iView.