Club Café

Chinese cafés were a staple of virtually every growing prairie town through the first half of the 20th century. When no suitable historic building could be found, Heritage Park designed and built a structure that incorporated the characteristic features typically found in western Canadian Chinese restaurants of the Edwardian era.

While the façade resembles Wong’s Public Lunch in Olds, circa 1918, the interior incorporates a lunch counter, curtained booths, tongue-and-groove siding and drop-style lighting fixtures, all of which were repeatedly found in archival photographs and eyewitness accounts. The name Club Café was chosen because research found this to be the most commonly used name for Chinese cafés in southern Alberta. The exhibit, which doubles as a unique dining experience for Park guests, opened in 2004.