A32 THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2018
RICHMOND-NEWS.COM
BU$INESS
From Italian to Greek and back Former Paesano’s owner takes over George’s Taverna in Steveston
and people are calling me up asking for tables and I’m not even open yet.
Alan Campbell RICHMOND NEWS
“I do have an extended contact list and people from all over have been reaching out.” Don’t start lining up just yet, though, as Jaswal said the former taverna, which was popular in its day, was in “pretty bad shape” when he took the keys a few weeks ago.
A new, old favourite is making a comeback in Steveston and it’s all thanks to complete and utter boredom. Almost two years after selling up and shipping out of Italian restaurant Paesano’s on Bayview Street to take his first summer vacation in half a century, Satinder Jaswal got fed up with retirement.
“I still need another month or so here; this place was a mess,” he added. “We had to gut the entire place; I don’t know how people managed to eat in here.”
This time Jaswal, 64, has taken over George’s Taverna on the corner of Moncton Street and First Avenue.
Despite edging closer every day to official retirement age, Jaswal, who until recently had spent 36 years serving up Italian food in Richmond, said he still feels up for the challenge of running his own restaurant again.
And in a script that you couldn’t make up, the former Italian restaurant owner, who is of East Indian ethnicity, is set to re-open the Greek eatery sometime next month.
“I feel good and I feel healthy. I’m not into sitting at home doing nothing.
However, it won’t be a fusion of Italian, Greek and East Indian cuisine – it will be straight up Italiano, according to Jaswal, and will be called Cucina Piccolo, meaning “little kitchen.”
“This place is going to be an Italian through and through. But I can’t use the Paesano’s name, I gave that up with the last place (now Britannia Brewing). “This will be a fresh start. I’m hoping to get open by the end of April.”
“I left almost two years ago and took some time off, did a bit of travelling. But I got really bored of all of that very quickly. It was just so boring,” Jaswal told the Richmond News.
In May 2016, Jaswal told the News, “I want to retire, basically. It’s a lot of work and I just want to take it easy now.”
“I really missed working and working with people especially. Now word has gotten out
Satinder Jaswal got so bored of retirement after selling Paesano’s on Bayview Street in Steveston that, after almost two years, he’s back in the restaurant game on nearby Moncton Street. Alan Campbell file photo
“You never know where we might pop back up,” he said at the time.
Music ‘school’ brings in top Asian stars Introducing some of Asia’s top music acts to the Lower Mainland and beyond is the goal of a Richmond-based company. In recent years, VISM (Vancouver International School of Music) has hosted more than 50 concerts across North America, which included Asian-based artists such as the 12 girls’ band, Christine Fan and Fish Liang. Next month, it will bring in Ying Na, one of China’s top female artists, to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Na, dubbed China’s Mariah Carey, has sold more than 10 million albums.
VISM founder Jason Li is behind the move to bring top Asian acts to the area.
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Founded in 2010, VISM started as a music school, but after several years, it began to build connections with Asian companies.
Li then started a division in the company called VISM Event, dedicated to hosting Asian concerts at venues such as the Orpheum and Queen Elizabeth theatres. However, tickets were hard to move, at least in the earlier stage.
“Some companies from Asia approached us to see if we could help host concerts in Vancouver, since we understand the music industries in both Asia and North America, and are more familiar with the local markets,” Li said. “We also realized that there was no company in North America dedicated to hosting Asian concerts and most celebrities could only perform very short acts at casinos. “Often at casinos, performances can only
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“We mainly used tickets selling services such as Ticketmaster, but we found the sales were so low,” Li said. “So, we developed our own website and a mobile application for ticket selling (and) implemented a membership strategy to boost the sales. Now we have more than 20,000 members across North America.”
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do a couple of songs, so technically they cannot be called concerts. Also, many people spend time gambling and they often miss some parts of the show.”
Gilbert Rd.
Kacy Wu
VISM owner Jason Li told the Richmond News the company’s goal is to bring the best Asian music to North America — although that wasn’t his original intention.