Over the past three decades, the sprawling dining room of Floata Seafood Restaurant hosted prime ministers, premiers, mayors, business leaders of every stripe, and way too many weddings, political events and formal occasions to count, with as many as 1,000 guests dressed to the nines packing the Chinatown landmark for fancy nights out.

But for Donna Seto’s family, the restaurant served a less ostentatious but no less important role: A chance to come together over early morning dim sum.

With Seto’s father working long hours and nights in restaurants in the 1990s, the family’s only chance to all dine together was in the morning. So they would go to Floata, she recalls, which opened early in those days.

“Because of his schedule, he couldn’t come to dinner with us, he couldn’t have lunch wi

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