Royal Cafe

Royal Cafe is an ongoing photographic and material exploration of food spaces on the Prairies in Alberta, specifically the Chinese-Western restaurants that are often found within small towns. These unique and ubiquitous places are culturally significant to identities in rural Alberta. The name Royal Cafe is a real place in Vulcan that I went to as a child growing up in Alberta and while that restaurant doesn’t have that name anymore, Royal Cafe is representative of the many places like it across Alberta. Through their menus and spaces, these cafes have become an important intersection for different people to interact. The shows the relationship between the spaces through my own experience on a road trip journey that I took in the summer of 2015. Royal Cafe is at the intersection of many questions I am exploring about home, identity, food, culture, and community. Chinese-Western restaurants are places for gathering, conversation, familiarity, and, in many ways, strangeness. It is a project that is ultimately about the experience of culture through food. In many ways, this is a documentary project but it doesn’t seek to define or make bold statements about the restaurants or the towns. My approach to documentary is to create layers, not unlike a collage, so that multiple perspectives and stories can be voiced.