Speaker 1: What are we going to do here together? Well, I
Speaker 1: think on the surface, we're going to make some Nissan
Speaker 1: cup noodles instant ramen. But I think the reality of
Speaker 1: what we're going to do is that our souls are
Speaker 1: going to touch. This is my friend Francis Lamb. He's
Speaker 1: the host of the Splendid Table podcast and the editor
Speaker 1: in chief at Clarkson Potter aka, publisher of some of
Speaker 1: the most gorgeous cookbooks on the planet. He's won a
Speaker 1: bunch of James Beard Awards and has been a judge
Speaker 1: on Top Chef. I mean, he's fancy. When we met
Speaker 1: in the jungles of Belize a few years ago, I
Speaker 1: had no idea how glamorous he was. But it's not
Speaker 1: quite time for me to tell you that story yet.
Speaker 1: For now, what you need to know is that I'm
Speaker 1: in my kitchen in California and he's in his kitchen
Speaker 1: in New York, and we're both making cup of noodles.
Speaker 1: I have never shared a cross country cup noodles before,
Speaker 1: so I really feel like this is going to be special.
Speaker 1: So okay, So first step is what do we do? First? Francis,
Speaker 1: Let's get our water hut. Okay, Oh, my God, listen
Speaker 1: to it. Go that's the sound. Okay, I'm now so
Speaker 1: I'm opening. Oh I just love I mean like that
Speaker 1: moment when you peel open the top and the insides
Speaker 1: are revealed and they're so beautiful and dry and self contained,
Speaker 1: and it's just so gorgeous and that little like three
Speaker 1: microns of dried cabbage that makes you feel like there
Speaker 1: was a vegetable inconvenience in the making of this noodle.
Speaker 1: It's going to be good for me. Yes, whoa, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to cover it up again to let
Speaker 1: the steam like optimal steam. So this is where when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and I guess right now too,
Speaker 1: like this is like the longest three minutes in history,
Speaker 1: and it was just it's gonna be hungry. You'd be
Speaker 1: so looking forward to like that incredible salty msg laden
Speaker 1: broth and and I really remember sitting here and just
Speaker 1: being like, come on, hurry up, come on, hurry up.
Speaker 1: While we wait for our noodles to cook, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the story of how Francis and I met. We
Speaker 1: were all on a guided tour in Belize with a
Speaker 1: company called Dandelion Chocolate. We were there to meet the
Speaker 1: farmers and learn all about how cacao is grown. It
Speaker 1: was like summer camp for chocolate nerds. I flew solo
Speaker 1: to the capital of Belize, and then the tiniest playing
Speaker 1: on Earth took me to a place called Punta Gorda.
Speaker 1: As we landed, I could see water and the emerald
Speaker 1: green of tree tops. It was sweltering. The jungle humidity
Speaker 1: immediately turns your pores into a series of tiny sprinklers.
Speaker 1: I met Francis at the welcome dinner, and it turned
Speaker 1: out he would also be my roommate, along with about
Speaker 1: ten other people I'd never met before. Francis really won
Speaker 1: my heart on night three when he emerged from the
Speaker 1: shared bathroom into our massive communal sleeping area and said,
Speaker 1: in a soothing voice, listen, guys, I found a scorpion
Speaker 1: in the bathroom and caught it under a cup. Just
Speaker 1: try not to tip it over so it doesn't escape.
Speaker 1: Good night. But you better belize that wasn't the only
Speaker 1: scary thing we experienced that night. Oh the howler monkey
Speaker 1: do you remember them? They were terrifying. It was like,
Speaker 1: what is that? It sounded like a dinosaur monster? No,
Speaker 1: for real? I was like, oh, I thought we were
Speaker 1: gonna belie, it's not Jurassic fucking Park. Like it was
Speaker 1: like in the middle of night, you'd be like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: w Forty eight hours later, I finally asked one of
Speaker 1: the people at the camp, I'm like, what does that
Speaker 1: sound at night that we hear that terrifies all of us?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? And they were like, oh, that's the
Speaker 1: Howler monkeys. And then like, I think I googled one.
Speaker 1: They're like six and a half inches tall. I think
Speaker 1: they're so tiny, and you're like, how you sound like
Speaker 1: a t rex? How are you this tiny and cute?
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And I totally remember you telling stories lying
Speaker 1: on the couch in like all your manifest glory, reading
Speaker 1: these stories about hilariously awful lovers. I'm gonna be friends
Speaker 1: with Virgie. Okay, our three minutes are up. Time for nudes.
Speaker 1: This is how Asian I am. I actually got chop
Speaker 1: sticks for this. Oh my god, I love that. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. God, this is the worst. This is
Speaker 1: the thing that like people like this. Listeners of my
Speaker 1: show like call in about and be like you people
Speaker 1: are disgusting. I never want to hear anything go into
Speaker 1: someone's mouth. I mean, I love that sound. I mean
Speaker 1: when I first was like, we're eating on this show,
Speaker 1: and everyone's like no, everyone knows that, everyone hates that.
Speaker 1: There's articles about this, and I'm just like, no, the
Speaker 1: refusal to like be okay with people eating is white supremacy.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's just rakismo, which is how I pronounced racism.
Speaker 1: Like you're you're like European discomfort with your body. You
Speaker 1: will not put that shit on me. Oh that's good.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that, like making that connection. But
Speaker 1: I'm I'm feeling it a little bit. I mean, at
Speaker 1: this point, you can tell me, like literally anything is
Speaker 1: like like the fact that like I don't know that
Speaker 1: light bulbs burned too hot and they actually hurt you
Speaker 1: if you touch them when you thought they only produced
Speaker 1: light as white supremacy, Like I would believe that, like
Speaker 1: at this point, like that's the thing. It's always true,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So my experience with the noodles, this
Speaker 1: snack is sort of complicated for me because it was
Speaker 1: the choice snack of the popular kids in middle school,
Speaker 1: of which I was not a member. So I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit I'll admit I'm remembering this ancient twelve year
Speaker 1: old fear, like there was certain food and behaviors and
Speaker 1: language the popular kids got to do that were completely
Speaker 1: forbidden for me, Like if you did it then like
Speaker 1: you were a poser really trying yes, or it was
Speaker 1: kind of like I mean literally to go back to
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, it was kind of like, you know how
Speaker 1: the aristocracy gets to eat certain things, and if you
Speaker 1: are not the aristocracy, it is just it is uppity
Speaker 1: and it's disrespectful to eat that same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: it was so disrespectful of you to go get the
Speaker 1: cup noodle vergion, Like what were you thinking? You don't
Speaker 1: deserve the cup noodle? No, but really it was the thing.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like a code where it
Speaker 1: was like you're not getting that cup noodle because you're
Speaker 1: a virgin who doesn't have a jeep. It took me
Speaker 1: a second of process because you know, where I grew up,
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, pretty white bread, suburban New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and so the idea that like an instant ramen, like
Speaker 1: this was something I would eat when I got home, right,
Speaker 1: and this was you know, when I was still at
Speaker 1: the stage of my life where I was like really
Speaker 1: embarrassed by my food because it spoke too much of
Speaker 1: our ethnic you know nests. You know, something like instant noodles,
Speaker 1: which I love, love, love, love, love, like I've always
Speaker 1: loved love the ms, I love the weird texture, you know,
Speaker 1: love its association with my cousins who were from Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: and so they, like they would have all these cool
Speaker 1: flavors and brands of instant noodles that like I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have access to and you know in New Jersey. So
Speaker 1: when I visit them or when they would come, they'd
Speaker 1: bring something like totally all these like really powerful memories
Speaker 1: of being a kid specifically right and just loving this food.
Speaker 1: But it was totally the kind of thing where like
Speaker 1: I would eat at home and I would be embarrassed
Speaker 1: if anyone from school would see me eating it. So
Speaker 1: where did you grow up in New Jersey? And like what, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, how did you end up in a white suburb?
Speaker 1: So my folks came in the seventies early seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was raised in middle and then upper middle
Speaker 1: class suburbs almost entirely surrounded by white people. So you know,
Speaker 1: that was obviously who the dominant culture like in my
Speaker 1: actual physical space was and obviously in our larger culture too.
Speaker 1: Then again, I also had this whole side of my
Speaker 1: life that was about how much I loved Hong Kong. Basically,
Speaker 1: my parents are from there, and you know, I had family,
Speaker 1: they're all growing up, you know, and so so much
Speaker 1: of my sort of escape from my suburban existence was
Speaker 1: about the fact that I would go to Hong Kong
Speaker 1: for two months at a time and spend time with
Speaker 1: my cousins, and I would learn about living a city.
Speaker 1: I would learn about, you know, being independent in the
Speaker 1: sense that you could actually go places and you would
Speaker 1: learn to take public transit, and that was like that
Speaker 1: was your passport to like the world, right, and that
Speaker 1: like the basis of my exploration of that world was
Speaker 1: basically either we were going somewhere to eat like amazing
Speaker 1: Wanton noodles, or we were going somewhere to like buy
Speaker 1: video games like or play video games like. That's all
Speaker 1: we did. So like a super foundational part of my life,
Speaker 1: you know, my self construction of my self identity, Like
Speaker 1: fifty percent of that was about running around the city
Speaker 1: of Hong Kong looking for yummy food, you know, so it.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because I've told the story I think
Speaker 1: is accurate about why I went into food. It's a
Speaker 1: professional and all that stuff, like a trillion times, and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I've never actually thought of this part
Speaker 1: of it. Like it was about that exploration and feeling like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm like my own person in the world, and that
Speaker 1: was just connected to like the activity of going out
Speaker 1: for food. I know exactly what Francis is talking about.
Speaker 1: Food felt like a passport to me when I moved
Speaker 1: out of my parents' house. I remember being eighteen and
Speaker 1: finally getting to choose what I ate. I was so
Speaker 1: curious about anything I didn't need at home, or wasn't
Speaker 1: served at the mall, anything unfamiliar. One of my discoveries
Speaker 1: was wait for it, balsamic vinegar. I know I wanted
Speaker 1: that story to be more glamorous too, but the moment
Speaker 1: I tasted it was nothing short of thrilling. The sweet
Speaker 1: acidity brought me fully into my body in a way
Speaker 1: that felt good. I loved that feeling and I wanted
Speaker 1: more of it. At the time, I was still dieting,
Speaker 1: and that impacted what I thought I could eat. But
Speaker 1: even that couldn't stop my pursuit of that feeling. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of emotional instability at home, and I
Speaker 1: was a fat pariah at school. That humble, little teaspoon
Speaker 1: of vinegar meant that there was something entirely outside the
Speaker 1: orbit of the life I had known for eighteen years.
Speaker 1: It gave me hope. I didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 1: but for me, this curiosity about food was connected to
Speaker 1: the relationship I wanted to have with the world. Growing
Speaker 1: up in the suburbs with immigrants who had seen a
Speaker 1: lot of war, poverty, and instability, I understood why my
Speaker 1: immigrant family saw the whole world as one big, looming threat.
Speaker 1: But just like the little Mermaid, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: where the people are. I wanted to be part of
Speaker 1: that world, and I knew that food was a bridge.
Speaker 1: After the break, Francis will tell me about how food
Speaker 1: was a way to explore and to connect to who
Speaker 1: he was and who he wanted to be. I found
Speaker 1: this picture of you online where you're a little boy
Speaker 1: and you're with your family gathered around this huge plate
Speaker 1: of dumplings, and everyone is looking at the camera, but
Speaker 1: you are not. You are lovingly gazing at the dumplings,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of curious. I want you to tell
Speaker 1: me about little Francis and like his relationship to food.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I mean, I don't know. Maybe maybe the
Speaker 1: way you describe the picture kind of says it. So
Speaker 1: in our culture, you know, everything is done around food. Like,
Speaker 1: so we always we only saw people to eat meals
Speaker 1: with them, even in our own home and our own family.
Speaker 1: Really the only time we got together, as you know,
Speaker 1: parents and children was you know, at the table to eat.
Speaker 1: Like we almost never spent time together, you know, outside
Speaker 1: of the table. So here's a story that I realized
Speaker 1: many many many years later that it really like spoke
Speaker 1: so much to like who I think I am now.
Speaker 1: So it was like one of our family trips to
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, and we were in a restaurant with you know,
Speaker 1: you don't go to a restaurant with four people. You
Speaker 1: go to a restaurant with twenty and you take two
Speaker 1: giant tables or three. You know. It was like that's
Speaker 1: how we went out to dinner. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: two generations of our family kind of thing. And we
Speaker 1: went to this restaurant that I remember thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was like sort of a more special one, and
Speaker 1: I insisted on sitting with the grown ups. I was
Speaker 1: exactly how old I remember, but definitely under ten. And
Speaker 1: the steam fish came out, like the whole steam fish,
Speaker 1: which is almost always like the prized you know, that's
Speaker 1: the centerpiece of like a big Southern Chinese meal or
Speaker 1: banquet or whatever. And I grabbed my chopsticks and like
Speaker 1: some intuitive spear fisher like, I went right for the
Speaker 1: fish's head and grabbed the cheek out of the fish's head,
Speaker 1: which was so appalling because oh, if you were like
Speaker 1: in the know, you know that the cheek is the
Speaker 1: best bite of the fish, and obviously there are only
Speaker 1: two of them, you know, and in a highly patriarchal,
Speaker 1: highly like elder focused society, like it is no question
Speaker 1: my grandfather is supposed to get the bite of cheek
Speaker 1: out of the fish. And so the whole table like
Speaker 1: my parents were like, oh my god, like what animal
Speaker 1: are we raising? I'm s I was sorry, you know,
Speaker 1: like like truly like they felt like humiliated. And my grandfather,
Speaker 1: in all his I can never pronounce this word by magnanimity,
Speaker 1: whatever the fuck that word is, and all of his
Speaker 1: generosity just laughed and said this one really knows how
Speaker 1: to eat, and like I actually do remember after that happened,
Speaker 1: like I remember, um, you know, like back home or whatever,
Speaker 1: when like you know, our versions of these dinners at
Speaker 1: home with like you know, our cousins and aunties and
Speaker 1: uncles and whatever, and oh wow, cousin Albert got straighties
Speaker 1: again for the nineteenth straight term, you know whatever, all
Speaker 1: my brilliant like oh oh master of the piano, great
Speaker 1: nine years old, amazing, good for you. Like my parents
Speaker 1: never had anything to brag about, but I totally remember
Speaker 1: them saying at one point, well, Francis really knows how
Speaker 1: to eat. It was as if it was the equivalent
Speaker 1: of like, oh Francis really like Francis is a real poet,
Speaker 1: you like, you know, and so I just felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was like that was worth something to my parents.
Speaker 1: But you know, that doesn't make sense to like we're
Speaker 1: saying like the predominantly like white suburban culture that I
Speaker 1: grew up in, right, So, like this thing that I
Speaker 1: can hold with like pride in my family, in our
Speaker 1: little in our community wasn't thing that translated the community
Speaker 1: I grew up in on the edge of the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay Area was different from Francis's, where he grew
Speaker 1: up in a predominantly suburban white community. My neighborhood was
Speaker 1: full of families from Mexico, Nicaraua, Yemen, India, China, and
Speaker 1: the Philippines. As a kid, I was hipped to the
Speaker 1: fact that before I could become someone's friend, I had
Speaker 1: to be invited to dinner first. My reaction to the
Speaker 1: meal would determine whether I was a good friend or
Speaker 1: a bad one in the eyes of their parents. Eating
Speaker 1: was part of the initiation and vetting process. My family
Speaker 1: do the same thing. We had to gauge whether you
Speaker 1: were down with our weird food. Could you hang with
Speaker 1: us in our maneuver? Did you ask for seconds? On
Speaker 1: the dim sum? The rule was simple, eat well, be liked.
Speaker 1: Food was a stand in for the people who made
Speaker 1: it and the cultures and traditions they came from. That
Speaker 1: made sense to me because in my home, to love
Speaker 1: our food was to love us. To hate our food
Speaker 1: was to spend the rest of your enchilada hating life
Speaker 1: in exile. But there was a vulnerability in all of it, too,
Speaker 1: because all of us wanted our whole selves tripe and
Speaker 1: all to be loved and accepted in a land that
Speaker 1: was unfamiliar. Francis shared this story about that vulnerability. I
Speaker 1: was a kid and I was at my parents workplace,
Speaker 1: and like, my dad takes me out to lunch this
Speaker 1: like new restaurant that you know that he likes, and
Speaker 1: we have Taiwanese pork chops with like pickles and rice.
Speaker 1: And it was actually in particularly a sweet moment with
Speaker 1: my father because we rarely went out just the two
Speaker 1: of us, and like I just have like a really
Speaker 1: lovely memory of that moment, Like even at the time,
Speaker 1: I remember thinking was really sweet and special. And later
Speaker 1: that afternoon, I'm, you know, back in the back in
Speaker 1: their shop and this guy comes in. It's like well
Speaker 1: dressed and white and like wearing a suit and had
Speaker 1: an English accent because of course, like every villain is
Speaker 1: gonna you know, he's every villain. And he comes in
Speaker 1: just as I was, like, you know, reheating the leftovers
Speaker 1: from lunch as a snack and I was like happily
Speaker 1: chowing down on them, and he comes in He's like
Speaker 1: asking for my parents. I'm like, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: where they are, and then he like sniffs the air.
Speaker 1: I swear to you God. He sniffs the air and
Speaker 1: then says, what on earth is that awful smell? And
Speaker 1: I look down at my food and I throw it
Speaker 1: away in front of him, and I pretended like, you're right,
Speaker 1: it's disgusting. Any even will feel sad at the time.
Speaker 1: I just feel like cleanse myself, you know, like get
Speaker 1: this stinky Chinese nous off of me. Right now. That
Speaker 1: story hit me in the gut. He's talking about the
Speaker 1: idea that to be an immigrant, to be a person
Speaker 1: of color, is to be dirty somehow, and we spend
Speaker 1: our whole lives trying to clean ourselves up. I know
Speaker 1: that feeling so well, and I also know that just
Speaker 1: because I'm aware that it's caused by racism and xenophobia
Speaker 1: doesn't mean as any less painful. This food chain drives
Speaker 1: us to try to fit in at any cost, whether
Speaker 1: it's throwing away the leftovers of a meaningful meal or
Speaker 1: changing how we eat through participating in diet culture. Many
Speaker 1: people of color and immigrants are told that we can't
Speaker 1: change our race or immigration status, but we can change
Speaker 1: how we eat. We can change what our bodies look like.
Speaker 1: We can admit that the food that brings us comfort
Speaker 1: is bad for us. I think about how for my
Speaker 1: family and me, dieting wasn't just about watching what we ate.
Speaker 1: It was about trying to be real Americans. It was
Speaker 1: about showing others that we were willing to sacrifice something
Speaker 1: we loved in order to be accepted. Instead of being
Speaker 1: angry about these injustices, the things that made us different
Speaker 1: became a source of shame. I'm sort of curious about
Speaker 1: were there moments when your feelings about or your relationship
Speaker 1: to food changed, or like for the better or for
Speaker 1: or for the worse, like and I think, like maybe
Speaker 1: embedded in this question or it might be its own question,
Speaker 1: is there comes a moment, I think in everyone in
Speaker 1: our cultures who grows up in our culture, when there's
Speaker 1: an association between food and body, where all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know you're aware, like, Okay, what I'm eating is,
Speaker 1: according to this culture, affecting what I look like, and
Speaker 1: that has implications. I'm just sort of curious with that
Speaker 1: moment was like for you, Yeah, for sure. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I ever changed my thinking and feeling about
Speaker 1: food in and of itself, as much as it was
Speaker 1: an opportunity for me to blame myself when my body
Speaker 1: wasn't looking a certain way. But yeah, but like you know,
Speaker 1: going back to like, oh, not being one of the
Speaker 1: popular kids. Like for us, like ninety percent of what
Speaker 1: defined you as a popular kid where and when I
Speaker 1: grew up was like athleticism. Right were you a jock? Right?
Speaker 1: Were you into sports? And I was never athletic, never coordinated,
Speaker 1: And I was in the video games and eating fucking bugles.
Speaker 1: Like like, I was a pretty skinny kid and then
Speaker 1: I gained like a fair amount of weight in like
Speaker 1: my middle school years, and I remember thinking that I
Speaker 1: was fat. I'm thinking that I was pudgy, and I
Speaker 1: remember like looking at stretch marks. I have two brothers,
Speaker 1: both younger, so I was always around my middle brother
Speaker 1: in those years, and he was always just a much
Speaker 1: bigger person, just like a much heavier person. And so
Speaker 1: you know, like growing up in a highly like fat
Speaker 1: phobic society, it was like that thing, right, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's like before like if you're not at the very
Speaker 1: bottom rung, but you're on the like the second rung,
Speaker 1: then like you're either the person wants to help other
Speaker 1: people up or the person like find solace in the
Speaker 1: fact that you can see someone you know below you.
Speaker 1: And I hate to say, I think there was a
Speaker 1: part of me that I felt that way, you know,
Speaker 1: not not like I would be like cruel to him
Speaker 1: about his weight or anything, but just like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not like that. But meanwhile, like I would go and
Speaker 1: like take a bath or take a shower, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, look at my own stretch marks and you know,
Speaker 1: look at my little like boy boobs, And there's a
Speaker 1: really direct relationship between that and like my awareness of
Speaker 1: my popularity because it was it seems so clear that
Speaker 1: your popularity was defined by your body. And like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that I was tortured by it.
Speaker 1: It didn't take up extreme amounts of time and emotional energy,
Speaker 1: but it was constant and it was there. It was
Speaker 1: like a low hum of you know, being self conscious
Speaker 1: about my body. I a little bit want to um.
Speaker 1: I want to pivot into talking about gender. Obviously, gender
Speaker 1: is a massive part of a person's relationship to food.
Speaker 1: Like I grew up being socialized that eating as little
Speaker 1: as possible was a sign of the successful performance of
Speaker 1: like being a woman or being a girl, and to
Speaker 1: eat absolutely nothing was the ultimate goal. That is one
Speaker 1: of the intersections of like how food and gender plays
Speaker 1: out in my life. And I'm sort of curious how
Speaker 1: your relationship to food intersects with gender. I don't I'm
Speaker 1: just curious what you think about this. The performance of
Speaker 1: gender and the understanding of gender is complicated by my
Speaker 1: Asian nous, right because Asian males are feminized famously. There
Speaker 1: are so many Chinese restaurants and Chinese laundries in like
Speaker 1: the early days of Chinese immigration, because that was women's work,
Speaker 1: and that those are industries that white men were not
Speaker 1: threatened by, and so they were fine with Chinese people
Speaker 1: opening that stuff. Okay, I'd like to take you back
Speaker 1: to California eighteen forty eight. It was the gold rush.
Speaker 1: Young people, most of the men came from all over
Speaker 1: the world to find their fortunes panning for gold or
Speaker 1: setting up supplies and services for those who did. Some
Speaker 1: of the men who came from China opened restaurants to
Speaker 1: feed fellow Chinese immigrants with cheap, nourishing food that provided
Speaker 1: a little familiarity in a place that was so far
Speaker 1: from home. At the time, most employed Chinese immigrants worked
Speaker 1: in laundries that changed after the Chinese Exclusion Act became
Speaker 1: federal law in eighteen eighty two. It was designed in
Speaker 1: part to give white workers an unfair advantage by banning
Speaker 1: the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years, But the
Speaker 1: Chinese Exclusion Act also introduced a new visa system where
Speaker 1: certain business owners could obtain a visa that would make
Speaker 1: it possible to move to the United States and sponsor relatives.
Speaker 1: One of the types of businesses covered by this visa restaurants. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there was a catch. Actually there were several. I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about two of them. First, each Chinese
Speaker 1: applicant needed two white character witnesses to vouch for them.
Speaker 1: According to my research, the same six white dudes apparently
Speaker 1: did all the vouching. Catch number two, you had to
Speaker 1: apply with a high grade aka a fancy restaurant. So
Speaker 1: these savvy immigrants began opening ornate restaurants that could seat
Speaker 1: several hundred people. They were called Chop Suey palaces. They
Speaker 1: would pull their money for the startup capital and eventually
Speaker 1: bring their relatives over and get them jobs in the restaurant.
Speaker 1: In New York between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, the
Speaker 1: number of Chinese restaurants quadrupled by nineteen eighty. Chinese restaurants
Speaker 1: had become so popular, easy to find, and affordable that
Speaker 1: they change how Americans eight. One historian Young Chen argues
Speaker 1: that Chinese restaurants provided a small luxury most people could afford,
Speaker 1: and that this helped make dining out accessible for more
Speaker 1: people than ever. I love thinking of how restaurants became palaces,
Speaker 1: and palaces became bridges between countries, cultures, and most importantly, families. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the kind of cooking I do now is I'm a
Speaker 1: home cook for my family. He has you know, which,
Speaker 1: obviously in a lot of ways, is you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote women's work. Right, it's that old idea of women's work.
Speaker 1: But it's something that I cherished and I think of
Speaker 1: their are very very innately connected to my identity as
Speaker 1: a father. Well, I was actually literally my next question
Speaker 1: was going to be you've written there's no greater joy
Speaker 1: than watching your daughter eat. I mean, I don't have children,
Speaker 1: and so I'm so curious about what is that feeling?
Speaker 1: I mean, is it is it like that sense that
Speaker 1: sort of she is walking in the footsteps of like
Speaker 1: little Francis and the and the fish cheek or is
Speaker 1: it like something else? You know, I don't think of
Speaker 1: it that way. I always have just seen her as
Speaker 1: her own person. But you know, she's small, and there
Speaker 1: is a feeling of providing, and there is a feeling
Speaker 1: of protecting, and there is a feeling of, you know,
Speaker 1: making sure she stays alive. When I see her eat,
Speaker 1: I feel like she is keeping herself alive, and it
Speaker 1: is just an experience of pure joy. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people ask me, how do I make sure that
Speaker 1: my child doesn't, you know, have a disordered relationship to food,
Speaker 1: because we live in a culture that teaches people how
Speaker 1: to have a disordered relationship to food. And I'm so
Speaker 1: curious if you have thoughts on this, um Bo, I
Speaker 1: don't have any answers for sure. Well, there was one
Speaker 1: way in which I felt like I had to catch
Speaker 1: myself and police myself, which was when she was born.
Speaker 1: She was like whenever, like fiftieth percent time, the weaight,
Speaker 1: and then she like lost a lot of weight really quickly,
Speaker 1: which apparently is not uncommon, but she like never really
Speaker 1: gained it back, and so she went from like fiftieth
Speaker 1: percent out It's like twenty fifth percent out. Obviously when
Speaker 1: she was like an infant and you know, the first
Speaker 1: time parents, new parents, and we were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know, is she okay? Are we doing something wrong
Speaker 1: and we're not feeding her right? Blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: And doctors of course like, no, it's fine, it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. But I couldn't shake
Speaker 1: it for a while. And when she was eating solid food,
Speaker 1: you know, I would you know, encourage her to finish
Speaker 1: her food. Oh you didn't really eat anything. Oh you
Speaker 1: took two bites, you know, just not not trusting her
Speaker 1: trust in her body. Where I find myself policing myself
Speaker 1: now is like maybe I'll suggest, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: to finish your broccoli, and not pressure and if I
Speaker 1: do it, if I suggest it once, maybe that's okay,
Speaker 1: but not suggest it again because then it starts to
Speaker 1: feel like this is what daddy wants, this is what
Speaker 1: mommy wants. But you know, just helping her, you know,
Speaker 1: just helping her find her own confidence in what she's
Speaker 1: doing around food. And I'm also trying to be careful,
Speaker 1: not like praising her, because I think that's the same
Speaker 1: thing right, just like the opposite manifestation of the same dynamic.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying not to be like, wow, you did
Speaker 1: such a great job. You're you're eating really well. Like
Speaker 1: So it's weird because I don't know how to drawn
Speaker 1: that line either, because I want her to feel validated.
Speaker 1: I want her to feel a proval you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to have a completely neutral affect. It's
Speaker 1: just like truly like do what your body tells you,
Speaker 1: do what your body tells you, you know, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's good either, but I'm I don't
Speaker 1: know how to balance that, and like I'm just trying
Speaker 1: not to introduce the idea of stress with food. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to do that, but I'm that's that's
Speaker 1: what I hope for. Oh that's so beautiful, Francis. I mean,
Speaker 1: just like hearing you talk about how like trusting her
Speaker 1: trust in her body and watching her keep herself alive,
Speaker 1: Like I just I mean, it's just so beautiful to
Speaker 1: kind of hear that. I love it. Francis. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on Rebel Eaters Club.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me in the club. Now do I
Speaker 1: get like a card? We were getting to that point.
Speaker 1: We're getting to that point. Holy shit. It was just
Speaker 1: so good talking with you and hearing your voice, and
Speaker 1: there's such a genius, and you're so I don't know,
Speaker 1: You're just such a wonderful human being, and I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you wanted to be on the show. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it was so fun. I felt like you'd like to
Speaker 1: know that. After this interview, I sent Francis some hot
Speaker 1: sauce made by a company named Howler Monkey. I hope
Speaker 1: he puts it on something delicious. After we talked, I
Speaker 1: thought about bridges and the people who sacrifice so much
Speaker 1: to build them through food. I thought about what it
Speaker 1: may have felt like, almost two one hundred years ago
Speaker 1: to come to a new country to make the food
Speaker 1: you associated with home in a place where you weren't welcome.
Speaker 1: I thought about Francis's parents, even though I've never met them.
Speaker 1: I thought about my grandparents, and then I thought about
Speaker 1: the two of us. We're one part of a centuries
Speaker 1: old ripple. I mean, we met because we both loved
Speaker 1: chocolate and wanted to learn more about it. It boggles
Speaker 1: my mind how chocolate can help two people become friends.
Speaker 1: It gets down to one thing. Food is connection. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to Head to Rebel Eatersclub dot com for this
Speaker 1: week's journal prompt. We also have brand new badges for
Speaker 1: this season and advice on starting your own Rebel Eaters
Speaker 1: Club courtesy of the Babes of the Wesleyan University Rebel
Speaker 1: Eaters Club. Rebel Eaters Club is produced by Transmitter Media.
Speaker 1: Our lead producer, Jordan Bailey loves vermin Chelly. Lacy Roberts
Speaker 1: is our managing producer and she can't live without Soba noodles.
Speaker 1: Sarah nix edits the show and she prefers ichibon instant noodles.
Speaker 1: And our executive producer, Greta Cohen loves those wide rice
Speaker 1: noodles that come and pads to you. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Virgie Tovar, and I gotta agree with Gretta. I love
Speaker 1: a chubby noodle. Ben Shano is our mixed engineer. Special
Speaker 1: kudos to James T. Green and Jess clack Blazer for
Speaker 1: the production assist and Utaka Yasuzawa, who wrote some of
Speaker 1: the music we use in the show. If you love
Speaker 1: Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love
Speaker 1: by writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See
Speaker 1: you next week,