Flavor Boulevard

It starts with the food bullying that I feel I can relate to Eddie Huang‘s story. Cleverly, he begins the book with dimsum, so that got my interest, but he talked about dimsum for less than 2 pages. The food bullying though, where his classmates said that his food smelled bad, that he wanted the white kid lunches, that’s where my memories came back. The bully for me wasn’t in school and wasn’t by the kids. Comments, always by adults and mostly white females, that the food my mom made made the house smell bad, or the stuff I eat or drink that they haven’t heard of, much less tried, is “gross”, are this pet peeve of mine that I can’t forgive. Sure, they may not be intended to hurt me or anyone specifically, but they’re never well-meaning. They are too minute to confront the speaker about, so I have no way to tell the speaker that she’s disrespecting my whole culture. They are the papercut stings that you feel every time you wash your hands.

Eddie Huang and I don’t have anything in common, except we both being born to Asian parents. He grew up liking basketball, seeing himself in hip hop lyrics, doing drugs (and selling them), working in restaurant kitchens, getting in fights and juvenile in high school and probation in college. I grew up doing literature, math and science competitions. He lives in the East Coast. I live in Texas and the Bay Area. He is a celebrity. I am one of many of the model minority. Unlike him, I didn’t have classmates bully me for being Asian, because lucky for me, I wasn’t in America until late high school. In Vietnam, at least in those days, when you make good grades, your classmates don’t hate you, the cool kids are not the ones that play football or are in the cheerleader team (there’s no such thing as cheerleading in Vietnamese schools), and there’s no nerd that talks only about science or Star Trek in an annoying, obsessive way that makes a bad name for everyone who actually likes to study and get good grades. So at Humble High, I joined a group of class-loving friends at lunch, we sat by the library, then I went to college wanting to be a Physics professor. In American terms, I’m a big nerd. But I can’t feel one bit related to or represented by Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory. That show is a cheap attempt of boxing all science students and scientists into this inaccurate, overblown stereotype of what a scientist looks and acts like. Not a single real physicist that I know fits into the Sheldon box. However, a few students that I’ve taught, who make themselves fit into that box because they want to be scientists, fit the box like a cat. Shows like BBT make teenagers mold themselves into erroneous molds without ever knowing the correct mold, if there’s even one.

So yes, we shouldn’t fit ourselves into molds, and I’m a bit afraid of trying to fit myself into the Asian mold right here by relating to Edie Huang’s story simply on the ground that we’re Asians.

I feel worried every time there’s an Asian in the news, because most of the time only bad news make it into the news. When my mom saw the news about a drug dealer who happens to be Vietnamese American, she felt ashamed. When news about the Virginia Tech shooting and more recently, the UCLA shooting, came out with just the vague description of the shooter being Asian, I felt ashamed. Then I felt relieved that they weren’t Vietnamese, but still ashamed that they’re Asian. When Asian girls act promiscuously as if they’re trying to prove a point that they’re not the Asian-good-girl type, I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed for every Vietnamese who eats dogs or cats. Just fitting into the model minority image isn’t enough, I feel responsible for every action made by every Asian that doesn’t fit into that image. Why? Because I’m afraid that if we don’t fit into the model minority mold, they’ll make up another mold, a stinky-food-eater K-drama-watcher hip-hop-dancer-wannabe Tinder-hookuper mold, throw us all in, box us up and never let us out. I shouldn’t be ashamed though. Those people with actions that I don’t agree with don’t represent Asians (they don’t intend to represent anyone but themselves), they’re no more Asian than me, and certainly no less American than our presidents.

Yet, why do I feel such familiarity when Eddie Huang said that he felt at home at his friend’s house because he’s Filipino, that the American Thanksgiving dish that he liked the most to bring home to convince his mom of American food was green bean casserole (I think this is a pure coincidence, what culture influence can there be?). I see Kristen’s pen mark underlining every sentence that I feel related to, they must have resonated with her too, and that brings me comfort. Why do I like it when I take off my shoes at the door at Rashmi’s house (not because I enjoy the act of taking off shoes, but because Rashmi’s family is Indian, and we do the same at home)? Why do I like grocery shopping in Oakland Chinatown, just to look at the sauces, dried squid, rambutan, bok choy, sea cucumber, unidentifiable roots, Asian pears in styrofoam nets, when I don’t buy anything? The thing is, I feel comfortable seeing, eating, doing, thinking the stereotypical things that we see, eat, do, and think. Stereotypes are based on truths. Sure, one or two hundred people may deviate from the stereotype in one form or another, but 99% fit the stereotype for that form, and the 1% that deviate may actually fit the stereotype in another form. I’m not studying to be an engineer or a medical doctor, but I’m good at math. My parents don’t work in the restaurant business, but I love food (and still want to run a restaurant at some point). The stereotypes and our experiences with them, good and bad, connect us.

Publishers Weekly say “Huang reconfigures the popular foodie memoir into something worthwhile and very memorable”, and it makes me think they didn’t read past 20 pages of the first chapter. Labeling the book a foodie memoir is wrong. It’s not about food, Huang is not a foodie, and it’s not about him being a foodie. He’s a restauranteur, a popular food personality, a chef, but his memoir is not about his life in any of those jobs. It’s about him growing up in America and becoming successful as an Asian kid who didn’t fit (and didn’t want to fit) into the stereotypical image of Asian kids in America. It wasn’t like he was thinking the whole time, “oh I gotta be different, non-stereotypical”, either. He was just a kid growing up. Fresh Of The Boat is a coming-of-age nonfiction. He tells it as it was, real, unpolished, neither grammatically nor politically correct. He’s good at food, and he’s Asian, but neither is the whole picture. The point of the book is that he, just like everyone else, went through many experiences that a lot of us happen to be able to relate to. (The laughs are on you too, though, Eddie. You tried so hard to figure out what you were and you didn’t want to just take the easy path, conform and be typical, but you actually did everything a typical Asian does: you did your homework, you helped out at your family business, you cared about being a good student, you want your parents to approve of you, you went to law school, and as you pointed out in the book: you succeed by going into the restaurant business. Like you said, “You can take a Chinaman out the paddies, but he will still put MSG in all your food.” The difference is you’ve done other things too.)

You don’t have to be an American-born kid from Taiwanese immigrant parents to relate to the narrative. A lot of people can relate: immigrants, people whose parents used to argue a lot, kids who get bullied in school, smart kids, basketball lovers, hip-hop fans, kids who get into troubles, kids who have to stand up for themselves and their brothers, youngsters who sell drugs, people who work in the restaurant business, people who don’t care for pretentious labels, food, diplomatic talk, etc., college students who don’t see the point of fraternities. Fresh Off The Boat is so awfully relatable, that’s why it’s so good.

That’s not to say you’d be disappointed if you dive into this book looking for some yummy time. The food is the cornstarch in the sauce to bind his book together, as expected from an Asian, we tell stories and discuss business while we share foods. Huang shares his recipe on some meat, and there’s abundant talk of the night market in Taiwan and the shops to hit in New York. The food stuff doesn’t really start until page 190 though, and every sentence rings home: “… that summer in Taipei, I looked around and saw myself everywhere I went. Pieces of me scattered all over the country like I had lived, died, burned, and been spread throughout the country in a past life. Here I was coming home to find myself again in street stalls, KTV rooms, and bowls of beef noodle soup. All the things instilled in me from a young age by my family and home, rehydrated and brought to life like instant noodles. They never left, they just needed attention.” This is how I feel when I am in Chinatown in Oakland, the strip malls near the Lion Supermarket, the food courts in San Jose, and Japan.

It’s not all melancholy either. There are *many* funny comments, here are just a few:

[…] Chinese people don’t believe in psychologists. We just drink more tea when things go bad.

[…] Initially, my recipe was for Chairman Mao’s red cooked skirt steak over rice, but the network asked for something handheld. I didn’t get it and said that rice usually goes in a bowl. I mean, that’s pretty fucking handheld, but they didn’t go for it. So… I did what every culture does when Americans can’t understand something: I put it on bread. From banh mi to baos to arepas to Jamaican beef patties, it takes a little coco bread to make the medicine go down.

[…] Asians don’t use the oven for anything but holding Jordans.

And a few more that represent Huang’s current voice as he’s known for and what Kristen, I, and others who genuinely love food and not the Food Network or I-go-to-culinary-school-and-I’m-here-to-redefine/reconstruct/revolutionize-your-palate hipster version of food want to say but don’t have a voice to say:

There’s a difference between bastardizing an item and giving it the room to breathe, grow, and change with the times. When Chinese people cook Chinese food or Jamaicans cook Jamaican, there’s no question what’s going on. Just make it taste good. When foreigners cook our food, they want to infuse their identity into the dish, they have a need to be part of the story and take it over.

[…] The most infuriating thing is the idea that ethnic food isn’t already good enough because it goddamn is. We were fine before you came to visit and we’ll be fine after. If you like our food, great, but don’t come and tell me you’re gonna clean it up, refine it, or elevate it because it’s not necessary or possible.

White American chefs, if you had just got to “elevate” something, if you stay up at night thinking about what to “refine”, take it out on your food. Burgers, hot dogs, funnel cakes, apple pies, pumpkin pies, steaks, barbecue, baked potatoes, you’ve got tons to work with. If you say that your food is good as it is, which is fair, then what gives you the right to say that our food needs to be refined?

I love America. I really do. It’s my home now. When I’m out of the country, I miss it. I’m infuriated by the Vietnamese way a lot of times, and I like the independent, confident, I-do-what-I-do-and-don’t-you-dare-lecture-me American ways. I’m American, Vietnamese, both, neither, generic Asian, etc., the identities switch around so often, sometimes by choice, most of the time that’s just how things go with the first- and second-generation immigrants. I don’t have one fixed identity, and that’s fine, nobody does. I want to be American sometimes and I’m mad at America sometimes, but most of the time, I love the country, the way you can be yourself here, a lot of the people I met. Maybe I’m making a gross assumption here, but seeing that I agree with 60% of the book (the other 40% I don’t have a clue because it’s about basketball and hip hop), I think Huang the Book Writer does too (maybe not the other personas of Huang’s, but this one does). He gets it. Then he says it loud and clear. That makes me happy. So, American or not, FOB or not, you should get the book, not that the mad famous Eddie Huang could care less about you or I would get make a profit from this post, but chances are you’ll see your thoughts voiced out in there too.

This is Wilfred. He lives in Chengdu, China. He’s an early-middle-age moon bear (not because he’s from the Moon but because like everyone in his species, he has a moon-shape patch of yellow fur on his chest). He likes watermelon and loves to climb. On paper, he’s my sponsored bear.

Wilfred is blind in both eyes, most likely a result of the poor treatment for bile-farmed bears. But at least he’s alive and now cared for in an animal shelter, something that thousands of his species can only dream of while being barred in iron cages, fed only gruel and extracted bile twice a day.

Bile farming   —   In Asia, there’s a belief that bear bile, a digestive juice produced from the liver and stored in the gall bladder, has medicinal effects. This belief originates from China, spreads to the neighboring countries, and results in the shameful practice of bile farming. Wild bears are hunted and kept captive in “bile farms”, where their abdomens are pierced to extract the bile from the gall bladders twice a day. Only rarely is there anesthesia, their abdomens are either stabbed repeatedly until the gall bladder is found, or the wound is kept perpetually open (not allowed to heal), which causes infection and so much pain that they would chew their own paws. The bears stay in cages designed for easy access to their abdomen, and the cages are too small for them to stand up or move around at all. They live for years in such condition until they no longer produce any bile, when they are killed for meat, fur, paws and gall bladders, or until they die from malnutrition and diseases.

Bear bile farming started in North Korea in the 1980s and spread to China, South Korea, Vietnam and most recently Laos (since 2005, when Vietnam banned bile farming). Today, bile trade is legal in China, Laos, Japan and South Korea, and illegal in Vietnam (however, due to loopholes and government negligence, bile farming still exists in Vietnam *sigh*).

Bear rescue   —   Organizations such as Animals Asia set out to negotiate with the governments and the farmers in these countries to rescue the bears and to provide them medical care (many bears need surgery after being rescued because of the years of damage) and food in bear sanctuaries. To date, Animals Asia has rescued a total of 400 bears. However, tens of thousands are still in bile farms, mainly in China. It’s an arduous process to convince the indifferent, money-hoarding governments and the farmers, who, for the benefit of the doubts, are presumably just trying to make a living. It’s also expensive to raise bears the humane way.

I had known about bile farming for many years, but I never looked up any information about it. As time passed, it became something like the thinning of the ozone layer – a problem that I feel so troubled by that I buried in the back of my head and avoided thinking about it altogether. Early August, my mom saw on TV that some organization was rescuing bears from Ha Long Bay (Vietnam), and she told me about it. That organization turned out to be Animals Asia. One of their programs is “sponsoring a bear,” a monthly donation program. You can sponsor a normal bear for $45, or a special care bear (one that is more severely damaged from bile farming, like Wilfred) for $55 a month.

It doesn’t take a whole lot to help   —   Forty five dollars was exactly how much I paid for one dinner at Belli (after my cousin took care of more than half the bill). That dinner wasn’t anything exceptional either, that’s just how much one would expect to spend on a decent meal made of good ingredients around Berkeley. In the past two years, I regularly spent this much or more per dinner, which is quite outrageous when you think about it. Even more outrageous is that rarely did those expensive meals leave me satisfied. So that just leaves a bad taste. But now, with the money I spend on one single meal, Wilfred can have enough food for a month, and I believe he enjoys his food a lot more than I enjoy mine.

Admittedly, it feels weird talking about my spending and donation. It sounds like I’m bragging about my non-existent wealth and puny generosity, and I apologize for that (._.). My intention, though, is to advertise for Animals Asia and hope to convince you to donate for the bears (._.). Animals Asia seems different from other wild life organizations – they don’t bombard us with letters, stationaries and calendars. The donated money at least doesn’t seem to be spent on advertising and “raising awareness”, but goes straight to the animals.

On my end, except for special occasions and work-related meals, you won’t see me stuffing my face at restaurants anymore [says the girl who just stuffed herself with pork shoulder last week!]. Wilfred (and his bear buddies) are holding down the fort for me. I only wish I could take a picture of them chowing.

P.S. Animals Asia’s website is not quite easily navigated at the moment [Update: Animals Asia tweeted me that they’re in the process of changing website], so here are some info links, if you’re interested in donating for the bears *wink wink nudge nudge*

• where the sponsoring money goes
• information about moon bears
• general information

September was an extremely busy month. In addition to the usual school work, teaching, a part-time job and my editor job at the Daily Cal, I took on editing a special issue on Food (how could I resist?) and I worked for Sinto Gourmet for two weekends (again, it’s food work, I just couldn’t resist). The first weekend, Hyunjoo Albrecht, Sinto’s owner, asked me to be at the Stonestown Farmers’ Market at 7:30 am on a Sunday.

I told myself that waking up early is good for me, and that after the Farmers’ Market finished I would have the rest of the day to study. That was all good in theory, until I couldn’t sleep the night before and ended up working all night, then begrudgingly got dressed to leave at sunrise. (My friend Nancy was so unbelievably kind to drive me all the way from Berkeley to Stonestown, otherwise, I would have had to take the bus at 5:30 am and made a few transfers)

After leaving me with the kimchi, Hyunjoo rushed to another Farmers’ Market to set up her stall. Other vendors slowly arrived and filled up their space, but not the stall to my left. The wind blew fiercely from Lake Merced in the west, which is also on my left side. Of course, I didn’t dress warm enough, had no scarf, and had to mentally fight off the cold by reading about sushi. I hated the first two hours at the Farmers Market.

By 9:30, the sky got clearer and I stepped into the sun to warm up. Then customers started coming by, I started giving out samples, the vendors of the stall to my left finally came and rushed to set out their vegetables. I came back to life.

At the end of the day (which was about 1 pm), the vendors began packing up. I dropped by the neighboring stalls to say hi and see what they were selling. The Saint Benoit Yogurt lady gave me a strawberry yogurt, the Phoenix Pastificio guy gave me a chocolate macaroon (not macaron), the honey guy let me taste 5 (or 6?) different honeys and gave me an orange blossom honey jar, and the vegetable vendors to my left gave me some tomatoes (the girl even washed one for me to eat right there – I hadn’t tasted such an aromatic tomato for years!). The other vendors also traded stuff with one another, kale for honey, marinated tofu for pastries, and so often they just give them for free.

Orange blossom honey, tomatoes and chocolate macaroon.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted from standing and talking and dragged my feet to the bus station without a care in the world, but I was happy. Not just because I got free food (that made me happy of course). Not just because the food was so divine (the yogurt was so creamy because it’s made with whole milk, the honeys actually tasted like the flowers that the bees used to make honey, and over all, these fresh, real foods have such pleasant floral smells to them that store products can never compare). I actually didn’t know why I felt so happy until two weeks later, when I worked at Eat Real Festival with Hyunjoo. I was happy at the end of each day at the festival too.

Sure, I had to wake up at the time I normally go to bed, walked half a mile each way (from the bus stop to Jack London Square, where the festival was held), stood for 8 hours each day and felt like my knees and heels were going to shatter. Neither Hyunjoo nor I had any time to eat or check out other stalls, no vendors did. On Saturday, we bought two pastries from the stall right in front of us and a few sad dimsum (that were tiny and tasted no difference from the frozen ones). On Sunday, we ate nothing. We were tired for sure, but like Oaktown Jerk’s Randall Hughes in the next stall said, I didn’t feel miserable. There’s something so real about working with products, holding them in your hand, handing them to your customers and watching their expression as they got surprised by its quality. It was motivating. The kimchi is not even my own product and I’m already this happy selling it, I can hardly imagine how happy Hyunjoo must feel, and how the other vendors feel about their own. I began to understand how my parents feel when they spend hours everyday tending the apple and plum trees and cucumber vines in the backyard (and others in the front yard too).

Sinto Gourmet booth at Eat Real Festival 2013. Image courtesy of Sinto Gourmet.

For someone who spends almost all of her time in front of the computer, the interaction with physical products and physical people was fresh air. There were some annoying customers and some crazy ones of course (literally crazy, as in something is off in their head), but it was all very real. The interaction among the vendors was even better. Everyone was kind and eager to share their knowledge, and I like how they buy from one another (for example, Hyunjoo buys apples from another vendor at Farmers’ Market to make apple juice in her white kimchi). There was hardly any competition. During those hours, my focus was on preparing samples fast enough while observing and talking to the customers; I didn’t have to think about what I should do for my future, how to write my resume, how to sound smart against everyone else in my field. During those hours, I could actually rest.

The day after, my calves felt as if they had shrunk and standing up to start walking was the most painful moment ever. But, I would gladly do it again. I’m sure I would hate myself when I try to get out of bed, but as soon as I leave the apartment, I would feel alive.

Around spring of 2012, I discovered The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. I’m not a fan of his art works. (I like traditional arts, he’s the most prominent figure in American pop arts, which I actually find weirdly fascinating, though.) His life was the exact opposite of mine. (To start, he’s somebody, I’m nobody.) But I find his view on life strangely resonating and, thus, comforting.

Andy Warhol was also big on food. Very American, very industrial food, but still food. A nice portion of his art works features Campbell’s tomato juice and soups, ice cream, hamburgers and bananas [which I can’t show here because it would entail paying fees ($40 per image) to the Andy Warhol Museum and many legal steps to obtain permission from the Artist Rights Society (I checked). As much as I want to support arts, my humble blog is in no condition for such extravagance. Besides, Google Images does a great job]. Back to food, in the third “Men in Black” movie, when Agent J (Will Smith) goes back in time to stop alien crime stuff, he and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) went to a rowdy party looking for Agent W (Bill Hader), whose alias was “Andy Warhol”. While they were discussing alien business, someone called for Andy Warhol, to which Agent W replied “tell her that I’m filming a man eating a hamburger. It’s… uh… transcendent.” That’s my favorite scene in the entire movie.

So here’s 14 food-related quotes from Andy Warhol:

1.

And New York restaurants now have a new thing — they don’t sell their food, they sell their atmosphere. They say, “How dare you say we don’t have good food, when we never said we had good food. We have good atmosphere.” They caught on that what people really care about is changing their atmosphere for a couple of hours. That’s why they can get away with just selling their atmosphere with a minimum of actual food. Pretty soon when food prices go really up, they’ll be selling only atmosphere. If people are really all that hungry, they can bring food with them when they go out to dinner, but otherwise, instead of “going out to dinner” they’ll just be “going out to atmosphere.”

That’s just restaurants everywhere. Not the mom-and-pop shops. Not the actual street vendors. But the classy restaurants.

2.

My favorite restaurant atmosphere has always been the atmosphere of the good, plain, American lunchroom or even the good plain American lunchcounter. The old-style Schrafft’s and the old-style Chock Full O’ Nuts are absolutely the only things in the world that I’m truly nostalgic for. The days were carefree in the 1940s and 1950s when I could go into a Chocks for my cream cheese sandwich with nuts on date-nut bread and not worry about a thing. No matter what changes or how fast, the one thing we all always need is real good food so we can know what the changes are and how fast they’re coming. Progress is very important and exciting in everything except food. When you say you want an orange, you don’t want someone asking you, “An orange what?”

I’m not into progress in food either. I just want traditional food. Good old comfort food.

3.

I really like to eat alone. I want to start a chain of restaurants for other people who are like me called ANDY-MATS—”The Restaurant for the Lonely Person.” You get your food and then you take your tray into a booth and watch television.

Warhol had a fascination for television and diners. He also had a fascination for emptiness, most likely because everything felt empty for him.

4.

But if you do watch your weight, try the Andy Warhol New York City Diet: when I order in a restaurant, I order everything that I don’t want, so I have a lot to play around with while everyone else eats. Then, no matter how chic the restaurant is, I insist that the waiter wrap the entire plate up like a to-go order, and after we leave the restaurant I find a little corner outside in the street to leave the plate in, because there are so many people in New York who live in the streets, with everything they own in shopping bags.
So I lose weight and stay trim, and I think that maybe one of those people will find a Grenouille dinner on the window ledge. But then, you never know, maybe they wouldn’t like what I ordered as much as I didn’t like it, and maybe they’d turn up their noses and look through the garbage for some half-eaten rye bread. You just never know with people. You just never know what they’ll like, what you should do for them.
So that’s the Andy Warhol New York City Diet.

One time I saw someone gave a banana to a homeless guy in Berkeley. The homeless guy took one bite and threw the banana away. Sometimes I give my restaurant leftovers to homeless people, I don’t know if they eat them though. Maybe I should hide in a corner and watch if they eat them.

5.

I know good cooks who’ll spend days finding fresh garlic and fresh basil and fresh tarragon, etc., and then use canned tomatoes for the sauce, saying it doesn’t matter. But I know it does matter.

It does. Warhol lived in the industrial era, I guess he would be pleased now with the revival of farm-to-table foods. Then again, he hardly found happiness in anything, so I don’t know.

6.

I also have to admit that I can’t tolerate eating leftovers. Food is my great extravagance. I really spoil myself, but then I try to compensate by scrupulously saving all of my food leftovers and bringing them into the office or leaving them in the street and recycling them there. My conscience won’t let me throw anything out, even when I don’t want it for myself. As I said, I really spoil myself in the food area, so my leftovers are often grand — my hairdresser’s cat eats pate at least twice a week. The leftovers usually turn out to be meat because I’ll buy a huge piece of meat, cook it up for dinner, and then right before it’s done I’ll break down and have what I wanted for dinner in the first place — bread and jam. I’m only kidding myself when I go through the motions of cooking protein: all I ever really want is sugar. The rest is strictly for appearances, i.e., you can’t take a princess to dinner and order a cookie for starters, no matter how much you crave one. People expect you to eat protein and you do so they won’t talk. (If you decided to be stubborn and ordered the cookie, you’d wind up having to talk about why you want it and your philosophy of eating a cookie for dinner. And that would be too much trouble, so you order lamb and forget about what you really want.)

This is where I’m different, but also the same. Food is indeed my great extravagance, but I like leftovers (if I like what I order in the first place). And the only thing I ever truly want is carb. I would steam some squash blossoms or braise some pork, and after I’m done, I break down and go to the diner downtown and get pancakes. Or I microwave some ramen.

7.

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. AM the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
In Europe the royalty and the aristocracy used to eat a lot better than the peasants—they weren’t eating the same things at all. It was either partridge or porridge, and each class stuck to its own food. But when Queen Elizabeth came here and President Eisenhower bought her a hot dog I’m sure he felt confident that she couldn’t have had delivered to Buckingham Palace a better hot dog than that one he bought her for maybe twenty cents at the ballpark. Because there is no better hot dog than a ballpark hot dog. Not for a dollar, not for ten dollars, not for a hundred thousand dollars could she get a better hot dog. She could get one for twenty cents and so could anybody else.

Again, the common diner theme. I quoted this quote before.

8.

When I was a child I never had a fantasy about having a maid, what I had a fantasy about having was candy. As I matured that fantasy translated itself into “make money to have candy,” because as you get older, of course, you get more realistic. Then, after my third nervous breakdown and I still didn’t have that extra candy, my career started to pick up, and I started getting more and more candy, and now I have a roomful of candy all in shopping bags. So, as I’m thinking about it now, my success got me a candy room instead of a maid’s room. As I said, it all depends on what your fantasies as a kid were, whether you’re able to look at a maid or not. Because of what my fantasies were, I’m now a lot more comfortable looking at a Hershey Bar.

9.

It’s strange the way having money isn’t much. You take three people to a restaurant and you pay three hundred dollars. Okay. Then you take those same three people to a corner shop — shoppe — and get everything there. You got just as filled at the corner shoppe as at the grand restaurant — more, actually — and it cost you only fifteen or twenty dollars, and you had basically the same food.

Yet again, the common diner theme.

10.

Of the five senses, smell has the closest thing to the full power of the past. Smell really is transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don’t want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I’m in the mood to have. Just for a second. The good thing about a smell-memory is that the feeling of being transported stops the instant you stop smelling, so there are no aftereffects. It’s a neat way to reminisce.
[…]
When I’m walking around New York I’m always aware of the smells around me: the rubber mats in office buildings; upholstered seats in movie theaters; pizza; Orange Julius; espresso-garlic-oregano; burgers; dry cotton tee-shirts; neighborhood grocery stores; chic grocery stores; the hot dogs and sauerkraut carts; hardware store smell; stationery store smell; souvlaki; the leather and rugs at Dunhill, Mark Cross, Gucci; the Moroccan-tanned leather on the streetracks; new magazines, back-issue magazines; typewriter stores; Chinese import stores (the mildew from the freighter); India import stores; Japanese import stores; record stores; health food stores; soda-fountain drugstores; cut-rate drugstores; barber shops; beauty parlors; delicatessens; lumber yards; the wood chairs and tables in the N.Y. Public Library; the donuts, pretzels, gum, and grape soda in the subways; kitchen appliance departments; photo labs; shoe stores; bicycle stores; the paper and printing inks in Scribner’s, Bren-tano’s, Doubleday’s, Rizzoli, Marboro, Bookmasters, Barnes & Noble; shoe-shine stands; grease-batter; hair pomade; the good cheap candy smell in the front of Woolworth’s and the dry-goods smell in the back; the horses by the Plaza Hotel; bus and truck exhaust; architects’ blueprints; cumin, fenugreek, soy sauce, cinnamon; fried platanos; the train tracks in Grand Central Station; the banana smell of dry cleaners; exhausts from apartment house laundry rooms; East Side bars (creams); West Side bars (sweat); newspaper stands; record stores; fruit stands in all the different seasons — strawberry, watermelon, plum, peach, kiwi, cherry, Concord grape, tangerine, murcot, pineapple, apple — and I love the way the smell of each fruit gets into the rough wood of the crates and into the tissue-paper wrappings.

My mom always says she doesn’t like Berkeley, but Berkeley is growing on me, and I feel like a traitor for letting it grow on me. One big thing about Berkeley is that I can walk here. I used to hate walking because it’s inefficient and especially when it’s sunny. But when I started learning about tea, I started rubbing my fingers on whatever leaf or flower along the road to train my nose. At some point, I didn’t have to rub anymore and could still smell the leaves walking by. I began to like walking then.

11.

I put my napkin over the bowl of cherry pits so I wouldn’t have to look at how many I’d eaten. That’s the hard part of overdosing on cherries—you have all the pits to tell you exactly how many you ate. Not more or less. Exactly. One-seed fruits really bother me for that reason. That’s why I’d always rather eat raisins than prunes. Prune pits are even more imposing than cherry pits.

12.

You take some chocolate . . . and you take two pieces of bread . . . and you put the candy in the middle and you make a sandwich of it. And that would be cake.

13.

My favorite simultaneous action is talking while eating. I think it’s a sign of class[…,] knowing how to talk and eat at the same time. […] It’s very important if you go out to dinner a lot. At dinner you’re expected to eat—because if you don’t it’s an insult to the hostess — and you’re expected to talk — because if you don’t it’s an insult to the other guests. The rich somehow manage to work it out but I just can’t do it. They are never caught with an open mouth full of food but that’s what happens to me. It’s always my turn to talk just when I’ve filled my mouth with mashed potatoes.

Is that why he liked to eat alone? I was telling Kristen how I went to this Korean restaurant in Oakland Chinatown when I had jury duty. I was very tired and just wanted some comfort food. When the owner ladies brought me my samgetang (chicken and ginseng soup), they also started talking to me. A lot. Not only was I by myself, I was also the only customer at that time (it was past lunch time). Between smiling and responding to them, I had no time to eat. I really, really just wanted to eat my soup.

14.

In high-class stores they sell through “display,” in low-class ones they sell through “smell.”

Warhol was talking about clothing stores here. But I think it’s true for food business too.

Early August, I had a great meal at Homestead, one of the newest additions in Oakland’s restoscape. The meal was a media invite – one benefit of working at the Daily Californian – and the owners were incredibly generous at letting us order everything we wanted at no charge, which turned out to be, as it always goes when Kristen and I dine together, everything on the menu. But that’s not the best part of a food writing job. The best part was the interview. The chefs are always busy of course, but they were willing to set aside an hour the next Monday morning to chat. Afterwards, I gained 48 minutes and 31 seconds of recording, part of which I transcribed into 6 full pages of typed notes, a load of information about opening and running a restaurant, and so much positive emotion.

Earlier last week, I struggled to choose which pieces of information and which quotes should make it into my article to fit the word limit for print – there were just too many valuable details. Unlike news reporting, a feature must also follows a theme, and someone’s life is a lot more diverse than one box of introduction-body-conclusion tied together by a theme. Editing was a pain, and for the sake of journalistic professionalism, I won’t go into details, but despite the frustration, the feature, which came out on Friday, is one of my favorites, because it’s a product of the understanding between the chefs and me.

I find interviews a lot more enriching than the meals themselves. The person tells you a story and lets you catch a glimpse of their world, from their perspective, something that you can’t get from simply eating a meal. This is particularly true with Homestead. The welcoming and homey vibe that Fred Sassen and Liz Hopkins want to create in their restaurant isn’t just a business theme, they were genuinely open people that can make you feel at home.

“If you ever think back about the best meals you ever had, nine times out of ten, it’s not the food that’s the memory, it’s the reason you went to eat that’s the memory,” said Sassen. “We sat down with [Hopkins’] family and had sunday supper and it was the best sunday supper I ever had. The ham was burnt, and the peas was overcooked to mush, but it was okay because it was fun. It was that interaction with the family and that communal atmosphere.”

That’s one of the stories I like that didn’t make it into the final draft. To be honest, I didn’t expect to find Homestead very homey – the food they serve is not what I grew up with, and the price is higher than what I can afford everyday. But that conversation with Sassen and Hopkins became the reason that I want to go back, and the memory that makes the meal there memorable.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for “home”. Maybe it’s because both Sassen and Hopkins are young and passionate about what they’re doing (Hopkins is only 26, I didn’t get to ask Sassen’s age), and something about young people branching out on their own to build something for themselves is the inspiration I need these days. For whichever reason, I like this restaurant.

How was the food, though? This part I reserved for this personal blog and not talked about it in the Daily Cal review, because as a rule, we only review the food when we’re anonymous diners.

The small plates

Squid with bean stew, sausage and pesto ($11) – We both like the bean stew, and Kristen doesn’t like tentacles, so more tentacles for me. 😉

Summer squash salad with lemon, padrones and goat cheese ($10) – I detest goat cheese, but I could tolerate this goat cheese, so this salad was actually quite bright and lovely.

Housemade ricotta, peaches, housemade spicy coppa and grilled bread ($12) – Best ricotta I ever had.

Pan-fried gnocchi, corn, chanterelle mushroom and wild nettles ($12) – I think I’ll start pan-frying all of my gnocchi from now on.

The counterspace

While waiting for the food, we looked at the open kitchen attentively.

On the left is Sassen filleting a halibut. On the right is the multi-functional brick oven that he designed, taking inspirations from Camino’s, Waterbar’s and Boulevard’s brick ovens. The oven is fascinating but I’m afraid to get it wrong if I try to recite what Sassen described…

The main course

Slow-roasted pork with cream corn ($20) – We liked the cream corn, but the pork erred on the dry side.

Grilled ribeye, grilled frisee, carrots and bone marrow ($24) – The picture speaks for itself.

Salt-baked halibut, butter-roasted potato, pickled torpedo onion and hollandaise ($24) – Best halibut I ever had.

I’m no fish fanatic, but I’m still drooling for this halibut’s melting texture right now…

Desserts

“Plate of fresh fruit” ($5) – They tasted sweet and fresh, but we were expecting something more elaborate…

Plum upside-down corn cake with creme fraiche ($8) – I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember anything about this corn cake…

Hot fudge brownie with vanilla semifreddo and cashew brittle ($8) – It was as rich as you would expect.

Teas ($3 each pot) – Lapsang Souchong (white pot) and Spring Jade (green pot). Although I appreciate the effort to include several kinds of tea (7 total) in the dessert drink menu, let’s just say that, unfortunately – in America in general and Homestead is no exception – restaurants’ knowledge of tea is still far below that of wine. A tea aficionado can only hope for the future.

Sometimes I’m amazed by Kristen’s and my own capability of consuming infinite dishes in one sitting. 😀 We unapologetically finished everything, too… Kristen said she was so ready for us to be kicked out of the restaurant. So was I.

Address: Homestead
4029 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 420-6962

If you know me in person, you know that my only hanging-out activity is eating with friends. I like it to a sin. Now, recently, First We Feast published a list of “great places to dine alone in NYC“. I find the connotation somewhat unfair against introverts, myself included. Why do we treat “dining alone” as separate from “dining”? EVERY place is a great (or mediocre) place to dine alone. What makes a place great (or mediocre) are the food and the service, NOT the number of bodies you sit with.

In college, I noticed that all of my roommates shared a common habit: they ABSOLUTELY had to call someone to go eat with them at the cafeteria, if they couldn’t find someone, they curled up in the room with mac ‘n cheese or some takeout. Recently, a friend of mine felt stressed out, I told her to treat herself to a nice dinner, but she said that wouldn’t work because eating out alone would make her look pathetic. It’s not just her either. You rarely see a table of one at nice restaurants. Somehow, eating out alone is considered sad, awkward, something to “get used to”, especially for the ladies. It shouldn’t be. The company at a meal can boost the experience, but it is NOT a necessary condition to eat out. The party-of-one experience is not to be approached with the mindset of “how to do it right”. You don’t think of how to correctly eat s’mores or drink hot chocolate on a rainy day, right? Party-of-one is one of the most relaxing and carefree activities, right up there with hot chocolate and pajamas on rainy days. Here’s why:

1. No need to think of things to say. Dinner conversation can make or break a dining experience. With no dining companion, you don’t have to worry about the awkward small talk, the touchy subjects, how not to bore your company to death (or pretend that you’re not being bored), and the green onion on your teeth.

2. Perfect time to read. Or pretend to read and eavesdrop instead. Or observe people, including the kitchen staff.

“Party of One” by Anne Teigen
I stumbled on this painting while reading an Art of the Soul blog post. Just look at the lady in this painting, there’s an air of sophistication and charm around her. When I see a lone diner, I often see an art form that I would want to capture on paper. Thank you Anne Teigen for permission to show the painting here.

3. Eat all you can. I’ve long passed the point where I eat only a small amount to appear like a delicate little lady (not sure if I ever did that at all, although my mom used to remind me not to eat like a piglet every time I went out), but really, we’re all conscious of how much we eat, depending on who we eat with. Eating alone gives you the full freedom to indulge, and that means I can order 5 different dishes for myself (and take home most of them, if I like them). Eating at a restaurant should be a self-indulgent event, where you can eat delicious food without preparing and cleaning, so why not enjoy it to its fullest?

4. Enjoy the meal at your own pace. It’s awkward to let my food sit around to cool down a little when my friend already works their plate. It’s awkward when I finish before they do and stare at them eating. It’s also awkward when they finish before I do and stare at me eating.

5. Eat anything you want to. Dining with company means that, to some degree, you have to be considerate of your company’s food preference, or sacrifice your own preference. If I tell people I don’t want a certain type of cuisine for dinner, but they like that cuisine, I feel bad. If I don’t tell them and we go somewhere that serves that type of cuisine, I’m stranded. I’m also the sort that likes to share food at the table, so no matter how much I want the stuffed squid, I won’t order it in the presence of my vegan friend. I can order anything when I eat alone.

6. Eat when you want to. Just wake up, get out of work, don’t feel like cooking, or have screwed up your cooking experiment completely? Going to restaurants on a whim, whether for lunch at 3 pm or dinner at 10 pm, is an unparallel liberation.

7. No messy scheduling to arrange a dinner with friends. The more people you plan to share a dinner with, the harder it is to find a time that works for everyone. And that’s not counting the food preferences (see #5).

8. Quick to get seated. There will always be room for a party of one.

I’m not bashing dining with company. Sharing food with people you like is undoubtedly enjoyable, but for a culture that preaches independence as much as the American culture, it’s baffling that dining alone is such a taboo. There’s only one reason that makes enough sense to me: I once read that servers don’t like parties of one because fewer people means less tip, a very American issue but still understandable, so I was a bit taken aback. Now, every time I eat out alone, I make sure to order at least 3 courses and tip well. Then I crawl home like a python after swallowing an elephant, a happy python. 😉

Berkeley is known for many things.

The protests, the hippies, the arts, homeless people, the diversity and the acceptance of that diversity (you can literally see every type of people and every type of activity in this city, and anyone who has actually lived here would stop seeing them as different types of people, just as people).

Berkeley also has the best public university in America, and actually the only public university that ranks above the Ivy league schools in many disciplines. (Public universities usually suffer in rankings not because of the students’ quality or the teaching quality, but because of the professor-to-student ratio, which is lower than those of private schools. Why? Ask the government about funding for public schools.) UC Berkeley was the reason I came to Berkeley, and for a while I hardly thought of the city as anything but the school. For a while, the academic life was my only life, and what I had planned for was a straight path into academia (and never out of it). But things change, and on some days, I feel lost. This is when I find that the city of Berkeley is more than the university it contains. That it has people who want to make change, who actually do it, who are willing to teach others how to do it, and some that are all three. Perhaps even more importantly, it hosts the environments where I can meet those people.

The dinner event that HUB Bay Area organized last week is one of those environments. Originally, I was hesitant to go, the official name of the event is “Innovate Berkeley: Sustainable Economic Development – East Bay Social Innovation Dinner”, and its list of participants include CEOs and founders of companies, architects, scientists, people who have not only ideas but the experience of doing something pertaining to the economy, and what do I put in the register box? “Student”. I was hesitant because I didn’t have anything to bring to the table. In the end, I went.

HUB dinner buffet – prepared by chef Hugh Groman and his catering staff. Baby lettuce salad with plum, goat cheese, pine nuts and sweet poppy seed vinaigrette; potato salad with celery, red onion, sweet pickle and egg; lentil salad with sundried tomatoes, radish, carrots and scallions; and lovely fried chicken (I’ve been craving fried chickens for some time, too…)

The evening began with some beer drinking and mingling. The ice breaker is a casual handshake and “what brings you here?”, followed by “why not, right? there’s free drinks!” with a chuckle. (I don’t drink, so I chuckled along with my glass of water.) Arriving on the earlier side would make it easier to get into groups, and you would get more time to talk to people, so you get to know more people before breaking up into tables for dinner. (Guess who arrived late?) The dinner is accompanied by a presentation. This time, it was an incredibly inspiring and engaging talk by Dr. Mike North about innovations, how they can be born and how they can be useful. After the talk, everyone moved around again, some grabbed desserts, most started or restarted discussions about ideas, careers, business, community developments. Serious topics. By the end of those conversations, business cards were exchanged.

Although I didn’t have anything to bring to the table, it was alright to be on the receiving end, at least this time. I learned from Barbara Hanna about computer vision, from Mike North and Jaki Levy about engineers and entrepreneurs that get together on the weekends to build communication systems for communities in Gambia, or foot brace for children in Nicaragua. Their projects connect professionals of different fields and materialize their ideas together. I listened in on a conversation among a landscape architect, a software architect and an environmental study post-grad, the topics ranged from business management to insurance policies on buildings. There were artists too, not just tech people and businessmen, and there were talks of practical art projects. The age difference was hardly any barrier: the accomplished people in their 60s were generous, and the start-up owners in their 20s and 30s were confident.

Those conversations, the people and the dinner as a whole represent Berkeley as a city, where every idea is welcome, and everyone is open to new ideas. But unlike the usual social events, these people weren’t playing nice. If you’re wrong, they tell you that you’re wrong, and they explain. Isn’t that how innovations come about, and how Berkeley is a hub for innovations?

Over the course of three hours, I felt completely intimidated, but also motivated. My line of work is one of the farthest way you can remove yourself from humanity, both spatially and chronologically. (I study light that came from outer space 30-40 million years ago. For comparison, homo sapiens appeared about 0.5 million years ago. The folks who study dinosaurs at least still stay on earth). You can imagine the impact I make in people’s lives today: it’s non-existent. The knowledge I have about solving human world problems? Also non-existent. How can I fix that? Where do I fit in this innovative crowd? I haven’t figured it out. So I’ll keep thrusting myself into this type of event until I figure it out.

—————————————————————————————————–
I’ve published a less personal version of this post on the Daily Cal, not as an abuse of my editorial power (although it may appear so 😉 ), but because I believe that there are other students who would like to know about this type of event.

Logistics: HUB Berkeley Innovation Dinner is a monthly event organized by HUB Bay Area. The dinner is hosted at HUB Berkeley, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. Early Bird tickets cost $31.74 each.

We were driving in San Francisco. A friend suddenly asks: “would you like to live in Berlin?”
– No.
– Why not?
– German food isn’t good.
– What about London?
– Same thing. British food isn’t good either.

Then my friend started chastising me about how I haven’t lived in those two cities to know, how they have wonderful restaurants of various cuisines, and how I should be open-minded to try new things. True. But for me, “London has many good restaurants of various cuisines” has nothing to do with “British food is good”. Another example. I like yakisoba, and I like some yakisoba in San Francisco, but that just means I would prefer any Japanese city to San Francisco in terms of yakisoba. In order to like a city, I have to like its culture, and its regional cuisine happens to be the least personal cultural thing that pops up in my mind.

Edit: with Cheryl’s comment below, I think I should clarify a few things here: there’s ethnic restaurant, and then there’s fusion restaurant, both types make up the culture of a city. So, in a sense (and in the future), a fusion Chinese restaurant in London is just as “authentic” as an ethnic Szechuan restaurant in London, because they both make up the authenticity of London, the vibe of a big city, but neither can ever be as “authentic” as a Szechuan restaurant in Chengdu. With the globalization in big cities, the lines blur quickly, every ethnic thing is blended into other ethnic things, every plate contains ingredients and flavor profiles adopted from everywhere around the globe. That’s the beauty of cuisines, they always grow, they adapt to their surroundings and incorporate their surroundings to spawn new cuisines. A one-minute search on Google maps returns a cocktail bar in Shoredictch that serves up tamarind and onion jam on flat bread, and a fine dining restaurant in Kreuzberg that incorporates langoustine with wasabi, Cantonese style (whatever that means). These are just two of numerous Asian-flavor-inspired restaurants that I would easily find in London and Berlin, that I would most likely enjoy, but if you ask me, do you like London food, I wouldn’t think of them. Because I don’t consider them London food.

In fact, I don’t know what to consider them. We want to make good food, that’s great. Good fusion food is good. It has its own beauty, and I’m not totally against it. But the fusion happens too fast and too much to become a cuisine and to last. That Cantonese style langoustine with wasabi is served at 1 restaurant, by 1 chef, and will unlikely last for more than a decade. No German will ever say it is a German dish, on the same caliber as sauerbraten. So instead of fusing things together, why can’t we improve regional cuisines using the same ingredients that people in the region have used for hundreds of years, but with better techniques and higher-quality ingredients? If the trend is to mix everything together, what will become of regional cuisines? I like that Asian flavors are gaining appreciation among the Western palates. I think it’s wonderful. But what’s even more wonderful would be the authentic dishes of each culture getting appreciated on their own, no mixing, no “influence”.

People tell me that my taste bud will change as I eat more fusion food. Yes, it does change, but not in the direction that they mean. The more fusion food I eat, the less I’m impressed by fusion, and the more I want “authenticity”. Nobody ever agrees on the definition of authenticity, it has too many factors: land, people, ingredients, techniques, etc. For me, sometimes I think of authentic food as “food with history”, sometimes “localness”, but mostly, I want something pure.

The restaurant is big, clean and convenient. It’s in Westfield San Francisco, a big chunk of the fourth floor of the shopping mall is restaurants, and M.Y. China is one of them. Sitting 50 feet from the kitchen and you can smell the intoxicating fumes of dumplings. We order two Chinese classics: xiao long bao (pork & crab juicy dumplings) and niu ro mien (beef hand-pulled egg noodle soup).

The niu ro mien is good. Fourteen dollars. Melting tender beef, chewy noodle (not as chewy as I would like, but I’m not a fan of egg noodle anyway), dark, flavor-packed broth (which gets a bit too salty after a while and sends you drinking water like mad).

The xiao long bao‘s are dry. Twelve dollars for five. There’s not enough broth in them. The dumpling skin is dried up on top, the carrot slice at the bottom, which supposedly helps preventing the dumpling from sticking to the spoon, disrupts the harmony in texture. The pork filling? This is where my friend and I disagree.

The filling has ginger. My friend insists that: 1. xiao long bao should have a lot of ginger (to mask the flavor of the pork); 2. she has eaten a lot of xiao long bao over the years to know that it should have a lot of ginger; 3. she doesn’t notice the ginger in these xiao long bao, in fact, she added extra ginger to the dumplings to make them taste gingery.

I insist that: 1. these xiao long bao are too gingery (the pork and the crab are completely masked); 2. even with the pre-equipped knowledge that xiao long bao are supposed to have a lot of ginger, I don’t like these xiao long bao because they have too much ginger.

Ice cream ($4 each) – toasted rice (left) and chinese walnut (right) – both remind me of grocery rice milk and walnut milk, which are sweeter than I would have liked.

Of course, the natural question comes up: should you review food based on your knowledge of the food (how it should be) or based on your taste of the food (how it is)? Food reviews have both objective facts and subjective preferences, and as a reviewer, I don’t mix those two categories together. If I know with all certainty how it should be, I’ll include that statement in my review, otherwise, all of my reviews are about how it is (with respect to my taste buds). Is that too subjective? Sure. Are my preferences peculiar? Maybe. I don’t drink coffee and alcoholic beverages, and I don’t eat spicy foods. In general, I don’t like anything too strong. If a dish has one overwhelming flavor that masks everything else, I call it “one-dimensional”. I want to taste different flavor profiles in a dish, especially the natural flavors of the ingredients, which is why I’ve grown increasingly fond of raw seafood sushi and increasingly intolerating of cakes. So if you like strong flavors, the things that I like would be almost water to you, and the things that I say are too this or too that would taste just fine. 🙂

But surely, there must be others who share my preferences?

Logistics: M.Y. China is a new restaurant by Martin Yan and the owners of Koi Palace. It opened early this year, and it locates on the 4th floor of Westfield San Francisco Center, 845 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94103 – (415) 580-3001

Masterchef is a reality TV show that currently airs on Fox and is in its 4th season. I’ve watched the show for three seasons now (I missed out on the first season), and have been increasingly bothered by much of the show. While I understand the need to create drama to boost up ratings and that shows about cooking that are not on food-specific channels really aren’t actually about food per se, there are some issues, particularly in this newest season, that have been consistently bothering me about Masterchef. I figured that Mai would also feel the same way, so I asked her to watch this season with me and then see if my angry reactions were justified. We decided to share our many Facebook chat conversations with you guys (slightly edited and condensed). We’ll love to create an ongoing dialogue about this show so feel free to talk back in the comments! Any points that you disagree/agree with us? Who’s your favorite/least favorite contestant? Any judges you love/can’t stand? Join in the Flavor Boulevard conversation!

Mai: Hmm, I’m watching episode 2 of MasterChef now. Doesn’t it feel like the judges choose people based on their inspirational backstory or character a bit more than their food?

Kristen: Yes! I’m really annoyed at the show right now, but I can tell you why once you’ve seen more episodes.

M: I mean, like the lady with the fried chicken and singing [Editor note: Sasha Foxx], she’s fun, but it’s fried chicken! And the yacht stewardess [Jessie Lysiak] made seabass en croute [fish fillet baked in a pastry shell], which is much more complicated than fried chicken and they said it doesn’t have what it takes??!!

K: Yeah…in a previous season Joe [Bastianich] said that rice was poor people food.

M: What????????? That is so racist!!!!!!

K: And yet pasta is perfect in his eyes. Even worst, the winner of last season is Vietnamese, and during the final challenge, they asked her why she made a Vietnamese dish when they aren’t in Vietnam…

M: Yeah! I remember that!

K: And they never questioned the other finalist who made classic French food :-/ Yeah… this show. This show.

M: They said it’s like food-truck level or something.

K: I have so much to write about.

M: Yeah, definitely! I mean, just the fact that the three judges are all white already makes it skewed.

K: There’s some kinds of food that’s “comfort home-style food” and then there’s some food that’s “unrefined and poor” (Western food v. Asian/other ethnic foods). And all the “high-end” foods that they want people to cook definitely put a lot of cooks at a disadvantage from the get-go!

M: Exactly, they need to be consistent! Either you praise high-end techniques and whatnot, or you praise home cooking, but not both!

K: Totally agree!

M: Although it’s a bit hard though, depending on the people’s goal with food, it’s hard to say which one is more skillful.

K: Yeah it makes it hard for viewers because we can’t tell if the food is actually good or bad, we only have to rely on the judges’ word!

M: The show needs to have a clear goal, are we making the next professional chefs, or are we just finding the best home cooks? I guess they should just do away with the technique and background thing and just judge the freaking food! That’s why I much rather watch “The Taste“.

K: Exactly!!! it is a Fox show though… so a lot of the show is all these weird advantages and stuff and encouraging people to backstab each other.

M: Really?????

K: Oooo watch more!!! Lol!

M: Ok, I’m boiling already…

K: Hahahaha yeah the more I watch the show the angrier I get. There’s one thing that’s absolutely pissing me off more than anything but I won’t say anything until you’ve seen more!

M: I feel like I would get way too angry 😀 I wonder when Asian food will be considered high-end, we have thousands of years of culinary history for crying out loud, and what does America have, like hundreds of years?

K: Yeah T_T I’m tired of all the privileging of French/other western techniques that “elevate” Asian food gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (or any other ethnic food). It annoys me so much (haha it’s also why Eddie Huang doesn’t like David Chang’s food and claims that his pork buns aren’t authentic in his book 😉 ).

M: But David Chang is at least putting Asian food on the screen, it’s good.

K: Yup! I think without him there wouldn’t be as many Asian chefs out there!! For sure!!! I’ve never had his food either, but I love Lucky Peach heehee…

M: Ok I’m gonna watch episode 3 now.

[TWO DAYS LATER]

M: Ok MasterChef really needs to lay off on the “who do you think will go home today” thing. (I’m on episode 5 now.) I think they’re seriously wanting to send Lynn home. Undercooked pasta is better than pasta with the wrong filling? WTH????!!!!!

K: I think so too! It’s ridiculous! I honestly think it’s because the winner last season was an Asian women (an Asian *disabled* women too wooow!) and there were a TON of Asian people last season. My guess is that they can’t really eliminate Lynn because his food is probably too good but they can limit his screentime so no one would mind if he is eventually eliminated, and in the meantime they’re getting rid of all the other people of color..

M: Actually I’m so happy yesterday that Lynn didn’t get eliminated, that Howard is not a bad guy, I wonder why everybody disliked him.

K: Yeah I don’t know why people start hating each other… I guess they’ve been with each other for a lot of weeks by this point but it always seems really random to me. And I’m still on Episode 9! I’m just glad they finally showed Lynn talking and gave him a talking head!!! Now I know he’s 27 and a systems administrator. 😛

M: Wait… oh no I leaked the ending!!!!!!!!!! I’m so sorry!!!!!!!!!!

K: Oh it’s okay!!! I read it on a blog a few days ago actually by accident! Haha so I spoiled it by accident! T_T

M: I feel so bad for Lynn.

K: Me too! His food always looks soooooooo good but apparently his food always needs seasoning :-/

M: The heck with that, I think they’re just trying to make him look bad to the audience. Because seasoning is the only thing the audience can’t see.

K: EXACTLY! By the way this is a great blog by a former masterchef contestant: http://benstarr.com/blog/. Also, back to Lynn, it’s ironic because all of the other contestants have chosen him first in all of the group challenges (up to episode 9 at least) :-/ That means he must be a good chef, right? Blah they probably just don’t want another Asian to win.

M: Exactly!!!!! I’m so angry I could boil an egg on my head.

K: Me too! Why do we do this to ourselves?? I’m sorry for making you angry by having you watch this show with me haha, but it’s nice to vent with someone!!!

M: I totally understand! Venting is necessary! If we notice it I’m sure a lot of others notice it too, and sooner or later the producer will hear some complaints (I hope!).

K: I know! It’s almost too obvious though… how often is it that a single contestant doesn’t get ANY airtime in a cooking show if they aren’t eliminated right away.

M: And what’s with all the Italian thing? It’s like this contest had turned into either “classic American” or Italian, and making classic filled pasta is good and they should keep to the basic, while everything else must be done with “fineness”? What the heck?!!!

K: YUP YUP YUP YUP I agree 1000000000000000000000000%.

M: Haha my gosh it feels good to vent.

K: Oh gosh I can’t wait until we post this on Flavor Boulevard. I’m sure a lot of people watch this show right??

M: Exactly. I mean, it’s people around the world watching it!

K: Sadly so siiiighhh…

M: I wonder how many generations it will take until Asian food is considered classic in America like Italian food.

K: Yuuup. And Howard is totally right: “You want 15 of the same dishes?” I totally hate Joe and his attitude. He’s the worst most elitist person ever.

M: Yesssssssssss I hate Joe too. Being proud of your ethnic food is great, everybody should be, but that’s not the same as thinking it’s sacrilegious, wait, I mean sacred.

[A FEW DAYS LATER]

M: I’m watching the Glee episode of Masterchef, and Krissi is such an annoying character, why does she hate Jessie so much? It’s like jealousy or something. And sure enough, it’s another person of color leaving the competition.

K: Yes that episode of Masterchef made me really dislike Krissi. I don’t think Bime should have left and I thought it was completely contradictory that she chose to save herself. I was hoping she would have more integrity because of the way she acts… but that really made me lose respect for her. I understand it’s a competition but she shouldn’t have made such a fuss about it last time someone saved themselves and then turned around and did it herself.

M: I read on Ben Starr’s blog how they patch scenes and comments together out of context to make it more dramatic, which doesn’t surprise me, but that’s not an excuse for someone like Krissi to appear mean. If you don’t do or say mean things, or agree to say mean things (if it’s scripted), there’s no way to make you appear like that on TV. Also, to make Bime leave because of a stupid mistake is just unreasonable. [He accidentally used cream of tartar instead of corn starch in his pie filling.] That’s another thing I don’t like about this show, if something is good, they show doubts that it’s a fluke, if something is bad, bam! you go home. Why can’t they judge more consistently based on the performance history of the person instead of one or two moments?

K: Oh god the latest episode of MasterChef [Wedding Catering and Macarons episode]… I can’t even watch… I’m too angry… talk about setting people up for failure. It just feels like Lynn is being set up for elimination for anything besides his food [Chef Ramsay pounced on Lynn for wiping his sweat and then wiping dishes meant to go out to diners. Granted, that’s disgusting and wrong, but not a strong enough reason to send someone home!!!].

Closing Thoughts

Kristen: We’ve seen 12 episodes so far, not counting the first 3 because they’re in the process of selecting the finalists, so 9 episodes. For 4 episodes in a row, all of the people that were sent home were people of color…just one after the other. While people can argue that race has nothing to do with this food show, this pattern of eliminating people of color, of continuously privileging Western foods over ethnic foods, and of the judges singling out certain people (not just Lynn, but I think the judges were extremely rude to Howard as well) leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth when I watch this show. I want to see diversity reflected in the home cooks and after all, as Mai puts it, they’re home chefs and not restaurant chefs. I’ll still be watching because I never expected an Asian woman to win last season (or to see so much Asian American representation in a major network TV show), but with an ever critical eye! What do the readers think?