Gene's Restaurant

05/30/2026

This is really exciting
to announce that Iris Ng won for Best Cinematography for Exclusion - Beyond the Silence. I had small role in this documentary.

05/19/2026

This is the Rotary club documentary about Stratford Dragon Boat Festival which I helped start in 1996 and how the community and beyond has benefitted from the million dollars that the event has raised. Great Opportunity see it tonight 7pm at the former Central High School which is now the Stratford Intermediate School.

Stratford, Ontario friends and followers: Please join the Rotary Club of Stratford for a community screening of “The Ripple Effect”, a short documentary (30 minutes) that illuminates the extraordinary fundraising power of the long-running Stratford Rotary Dragon Boat Festival and its impact on local and global causes. The film features music from The Bookends with the Stratford Symphony Orchestra and Paul Shilton. Catch “The Ripple Effect” and support this year’s dragon boat festival. Details below. The film will have its international premiere in Taiwan next month at the Rotary International Global Convention. Ken Gene Robert Ritz Gary Wreford Rotary Hospice Stratford Perth Stratford General Hospital Foundation Stratford and Perth County Community Foundation

05/07/2026

I grew up in Stratford and back then we were known as “Orientals”. Around the mid 90’s we became Asians? The term Orientals was considered offensive! We used to have a dish called Oriental Chicken. No one seemed to care or be offended by the name. We weren’t going to change it to Asian Chicken. Eventually there were some ingredients we could no obtain and that item did get eliminated from the menu.

05/06/2026

Open Mother’s Day 4:30-8pm

Pre-order your takeouts or reserve a table for dine in!

05/05/2026

May is Asian Heritage Month

In 1996, I was happy to co-found the Rotary Stratford Dragon Boat Festival and bring some Chinese Culture to Stratford. The event has raised over $1 million for Rotary charities. Below is a podcast discussing the documentary - The Ripple Effect and the event’s far reaching impact. There is a screening in Stratford later in the month. A link for ticket information will be in the comments.

Rotary Voices · Episode

04/19/2026

Mayor Ted Blowes in 1982 helping my parents Rae and Larry Gene with the Grand Opening of House of Gene Restaurant. We expanded into the Pounder Brothers building at the corner of Downie and George Street. This was our 2nd restaurant and featured a buffet that ran until about 2000.

03/25/2026

Congrats to Ballinran Entertainment for their documentary being nominated for Canadian Screen Award. I had a small role in that project.

Nominations are out for the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards and we are honoured that our documentary Exclusion: Beyond the Silence, has been nominated for Best Photography, Documentary or Factual for Iris Ng’s wonderful cinematography. The film, directed by Keira Loughran, and shot in China and across Canada, tells the forgotten story of Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 and its affect on multiple generations of Chinese Canadian families. Congratulations to Keira and Iris on their visually-impactful collaboration on this film and everyone else who played a role in bringing this story to the screen.

02/17/2026

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! Year of the Horse. Today is day 1 of the lunar new year.

We’re closed today and reeopen tomorrow but the new year is celebrated for 15 days.

Note: Politically correct it’s the “Lunar New Year”. I guess Chinese don’t own it anymore! Lol

02/05/2026

Update: The bank teller wasn’t sure if it was real or not so the manager took a look and determined the security futures we there - hologram, raised Bank of Canada lettering etc. So it is real but just really mangled. Sorry for the false alarm but now I know some of the security features to look for. Check this out to spot the fakes

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/counterfeit-prevention/

Got passed a counterfeit $5 tonight. This one was not the same dimensions as the real ones. It was smaller. The bottom bill in this pic is the fake. Also missing the hologram face in the upper part of the silver strip. So watch out for the fakes and don’t take any wooden nickels!

01/30/2026

As Gene's Restaurant approaches the 56th Anniversary in June, I need to mention the sister restaurant House of Gene at 108 Downie Street that ran from 1980 - 2000. This was a second downtown restaurant that opened in 1980. It was different than the other Gene's Restaurant location as it was a buffet restaurant (back then we called it a smorgasbord). Two years later we would expand into the Pounder Brother's building (currently Livery Yard) which increased the main floor capacity to 180 seats. There was a bar/lounge in the basement of the original section and another banquet room on the 2nd floor and gave the total capacity at about 300 seats.

My father Larry Gene would be the one running House of Gene and have a run for 20 years until about 2000. It would be my mother Rae Gene that would look after the 81 Ontario Street Gene's Restaurant although my father would come back to help out after the buffet restaurant closed at 8pm. I came back to Stratford in 1991 to work full time at Gene's Restaurant.

The picture shows the 1980 House of Gene before we expanded into Pounder Brother's. To the left was Perth Furniture. The top picture is after the expansion in 1982. The staff of House of Gene would nickname the restaurant by its initials: "The HOG".