Alex McCuaig and his girlfriend were hungry after midnight recently, so they walked down the block from their home in Calgary, Alberta, to the only restaurant still open.
It was the Chinese barbecue house in one of the dozens of new Asian malls that have opened in the past two decades in the biggest city in the province.
'There's no other place open that late,' said McCuaig, a writer who was in the middle of renovations at his girlfriend's home when the hunger pangs hit. 'We were saying as we walked over there at 1.30 in the morning how great it was that there's an Asian mall right next to us.'
It appears many others agree, judging from the outraged response to a report commissioned by the city that advised a curb on development of Asian malls.
'An effort must be made to avoid 'exclusive' cultural-specific retail developments,' wrote Thomas Leung, head of Global Retail Strategies, in the report posted on the city's website this month.
'[They] lead to marginalised ethnic enclaves which can diminish overall community cohesiveness.'