A Toronto restaurant wants to add your family recipes to its menu

While you'd typically go out to eat so you can sample something other than the food you grew up on, one Toronto restaurant is looking to serve up exactly that: its own diners' family recipes.

Dundas West's AYLA is a deeply personal project for its founders to begin with. It primarily deals in Hong Kong cuisine, paying homage to the region where they all first met and, for some, were born and raised.

"At AYLA, food has always been a way for us to tell stories about where we've been, the people who have shaped us, and the cultures and flavours we carry with us," says chef and co-owner Kevin Shawcross.

As a chef's personal history and adventures can shape their restaurant, that same restaurant can, in turn, make a huge impact on its diners. Now, though, the team at AYLA wants to flip that cycle on its head, inviting its patrons' histories to shape the restaurant's menu.

The restaurant's new community storytelling project, AYLA Family Recipes, is how the team is achieving that.

The restaurant is now inviting Toronto residents to share family recipes passed down through generations — the more stained the recipe card, the less exact the measurements, the better — and AYLA will reinterpret each one as a dish on the menu for a limited time.

While I'm sure your grandma made it — whatever it is — better, the recipe will be in capable hands at AYLA.

The stories behind the dish are just as important to the team as the ingredient list, though. AYLA wants details: "Who made it? When did you eat it? Who was around the table? What makes that dish impossible to separate from the person or memory behind it?"

Along with your story, you're free to submit a photo or written version of the recipe.

"The best family recipes are the ones that have been made a thousand times," says chef and co-owner Craig Wong. "The page is stained, there are notes in the margins… That's the good stuff."

You can submit your own family recipe to AYLA on the restaurant's website, and you may just have the chance to see your most cherished family memories on the plate at a popular Toronto restaurant.

AYLA is located at 794 Dundas St. W.