MEET AND EAT AT LEE'S GARDEN

44 min / Directed by Day's Lee
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Meet and Eat with us! Join us for a pre-film nosh of Kosher Chinese appetizers and dessert

Stay for the movie and a post-film conversation on food and community with panelists Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus, Professor of Religion and Coordinator of Jewish Studies at Wheaton College, and Chef Moshe Karlin of Nice Jewish Boys Brunch.

Filmmaker Day’s Lee recalls her memories of her family’s restaurant Lee’s Garden, one of the first Chinese restaurants to open outside of Montreal’s Chinatown in the 1950s. As Chinese restaurants and the food they serve continue to evolve, it is these early restaurants and their cuisine that has captured the hearts and memories of people everywhere. Through interviews with former customers and families who owned other restaurants, MEET AND EAT AT LEE’S GARDEN explores how these early restaurants played an important role in the social history of Chinese and Jewish communities.

Day's Lee, Director/Producer/Writer
Day’s Lee is the producer, director and writer for her first documentary entitled Meet and Eat at Lee’s Garden. The documentary is based on her father’s history as a head tax payer and the family’s restaurant, Lee’s Garden, which was one of the first restaurants to open outside of Montreal’s Chinatown in the 1950s.

Lee is also an author and has published three books: a children’s picture book The Fragrant Garden, a short story collection, The Red Pagoda and Other Stories and a young adult novel Guitar Hero, all of which are stories about the Chinese-Canadian community. She holds a journalism degree from Concordia University and as a freelance writer, she has written articles for national magazines.

Biographies

Moshe Karlin, originally from Teaneck, New Jersey, grew up a member of Congregation Beth Sholom, one of the most dynamic synagogues in the Conservative Movement. He is now the sous chef of The Slow Rhode and has been cooking in Providence for the last 5 years. A graduate of Johnson and Wales (BS, 2021), he is one half of the Nice Jewish Boys Pop-Up Brunches.  Karlin, along with Jordan Fleischer, has created this culinary endeavor to share their love of their Jewish food roots with the greater Providence community. Moshe’s goal is to highlight the cuisine he grew up eating; spread the love that comes from the generations and community that created that food. The outcome? A delicious and positive environment.

Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus is Professor of Religion and Henrietta Jennings Faculty Chair for Outstanding Teaching at Wheaton College (MA). He is the author of Gastronomic Judaism as Culinary Midrash (Lexington Press, Dec., 2018) and has published numerous articles on food rituals and Jewish food in the Proceed­ings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Studies in Jewish Civilization, and other journals, and has translated Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher’s fourteenth-century Hebrew mystical manual on food, Shulhan Shel Arba (Table of Four) into English which is available online on Sefaria. He has regu­larly taught “The Rituals of Dinner” First Year Seminar at Wheaton for over twenty years, as well as courses such as Gender and Violence in the Bible, Intro. to Comparison of Religions, Smells and Bells: The Sensual Dimension of Religions, and Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-Being from a Comparative Religious Perspective. He regularly stages meal rituals at home and at Wheaton and other places, even virtually. He’s currently working on a book on the myths and meal rituals of American Thanksgiving. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies (New Testa­ment) from Vanderbilt, and is ordained as Reconstructionist Rabbi. He lives, cooks, eats, and gardens with his wife Maia, a retired elementary school teacher in Providence, RI.