“I believe that great cuisine starts with taking the simple dishes that really define a culture and making them the best that they can be”
- WiSushi Chef Hai
Chef Hai learned the fundamentals of Asian cuisine at a young age and applied them to high end French cuisine before perfecting the art of sushi. Click the tabs to read his story…
Chef Minh-Hai Bui was born in Saigon (today known as Ho Chi Minh) to an enterprising family with a taste for fine cuisine. After school, Hai would spend time watching his family’s cook prepare local specialties. It was here that he gained a fundamental understanding of the pan-Asian cuisine principal of the five elements: sweet (earth), salty (water), bitter (fire), sour (wood) and spicy (metal). An intuitive learner, Hai also learned how ingredients and dishes are combined to appeal to the five senses while maintaining a balance of yin and yang, or “cold” and “hot”. On days when he arrived home hungry and between mealtimes, he started to cook for himself.
In a Saigon steeped in French colonialism and with his father’s penchant for good restaurants, Hai was also introduced to the finer points of French cuisine at a young age. Little did he know how well this education of his palate would serve him later on. In the meantime, Hai studied education and taught high school in Saigon before setting out on his own to discover the world. Landing in Canada, Hai found himself drawn to the kitchen once more. But not just any kitchen.
Le Gourmand in the Montreal suburb of Pointe Claire was a revered local flagship of French cuisine. Starting as a humble dishwasher, Hai’s aesthetic talents caught the eye of the chef and he was quickly promoted to plate decorator. With his excellent organization skills and talent for making beautiful meals for himself out of unplanned ingredients, it was often Hai who was asked to prepare meals for the kitchen staff. His talents started to shine.
When the owners decided to open a second restaurant, they promoted Hai to head chef at Le Gourmand. After two weeks of tireless work, he was running the show on his own, lending his intuitive sense of ingredients, flavour harmony and creativity to creating the restaurant’s popular table d’hôte each week.
A few years later, one Le Gourmand’s owners opened fusion bistro Marlowe in Pointe Claire and asked Hai to join him in running the kitchen. Ever curious and inventive, Hai teaches himself sushi and introduces it to the menu on Wednesday evenings. Customers are so delighted that the 20 orders he prepares on his own sell out in the first hour of dinner each week. People start calling to reserve their sushi orders in advance.
So in 1998 when Hai is offered the chance to start his own sushi bar in DDO, he doesn’t hesitate. Foliage and bamboo bring an exotic touch to the neighbourhood, and the quality of the sushi makes WiSushi an instant success. Customers start lining up outside to get their share. WiSushi earns high marks from sushi lovers year after year, consistently ranking among the top three sushi restaurants in Montreal.
In 2001, WiSushi opens a second restaurant on Boulevard des Laurentides in Laval to raise the standards for sushi in that area. In 2009, building on the success of the original 25 seat sushi bar in DDO, Hai takes over the adjacent space, tripling the restaurant’s capacity while maintaining the local vibe that his customers have come to enjoy.
The rest, as they say, is history. While other Japanese restaurants distract customers with over-designed décor and high prices, Hai has kept WiSushi just the way he likes it: simple, pleasant surroundings with a friendly low-key atmosphere as backdrops to simply wonderful fresh sushi, perfectly stir-fried teriyaki and beautifully balanced bentoboxes. Other restaurants have come and gone, a few have stayed, but as his fans know, WiSushi is still the best sushi in the West Island.