More info + apply

Last fall, the author and writer Hannah Kirshner and I teamed up to host our first ever food writing retreat in the countryside of Japan, where Hannah resides for most of the year and has written about extensively.

A cohort of eight joined us in Hannah’s dreamy, then recently renovated open-air kitchen, where we spent the better part of a week mulling over the anatomy of a recipe—and how it holds not just instructions, but cultural context.

Hannah and I like to keep a leisurely pace, with classes in the morning, daily tea time, and plenty of space in the afternoon to wander the town, soak in the onsen, and interact with the lively and generous cast of characters who reside in the quaint mountain town of Yamanaka.

I was pregnant then and had notably, just gotten over the crippling nausea of the first trimester the day before I arrived. Being in Yamanaka, with the crisp mountain air and the company of thoughtful, talented writers, was great medicine. I felt invigorated afterward; at times I forgot entirely that I was pregnant.

Though billed as a series of lectures and readings, the workshop became something closer to a community—a rare convergence of kind, like-minded people, with an easy synergy that left Hannah and me wondering how we got so lucky. Just as striking was how seamlessly the townspeople folded into our week: a vegetable sommelier teaching us to make persimmon leaf sushi, an innkeeper taking students out for drinks—no doubt the result of the deep friendships Hannah has cultivated over the years.

In short, we had such a spectacular time that we’re doing it all over again.

We’re hosting our second inaugural Yamanaka food writing retreat this October, with returning special guest, the novelist, Bryan Washington—whose most recent novel Palaver just won the LA Times Book Prize.

Details on the price, the curriculum, and how to apply are on Hannah’s website.

I’m also pleased to announce that we’re opening up a couple of scholarship spots. A generous friend of mine from college is comping one full and two partial seats. If you need financial support, you can indicate that in the bottom section of the application.

Whether you’re deep into a cookbook proposal or simply in a creative lull, I encourage you to apply if it feels within reach.

Looking forward to reading your applications.

More info + apply

I wrote a cookbook about postpartum recovery, rooted in the Chinese diasporic tradition of “sitting the month,” or zuò yuè zǐ 坐月子. It’s an ancient initiation into motherhood by way of food, where new moms are fed a progression of warming dishes to heal and reset the body.

Preorder my new cookbook!

For context: In Chinese culture, it is believed that giving birth disturbs the equilibrium of the body, and that a person’s qi, or life force, is depleted in the process. New mothers are expected to stay indoors and rest for a full month to conserve energy and allow the body to fully heal. More importantly, we aren’t expected to cope alone. We are cared for and fed recovery dishes so specific that there’s an entire industry behind them, from ready-to-eat meals, to dedicated hotels, to nannies who specialize in what is known as confinement cuisine.

I got the idea for the book when my son was born. I had checked into a specialized postpartum confinement hotel here in Taipei (read about my experience there in The New Yorker) and realized there were little to no resources about confinement cuisine in the English language.

So I took meticulous notes on all the dishes I was served at the hotel, enlisted the help of a second-generation herbalist here in Taiwan (who gave birth to her first kid shortly after I had mine), and spent the next two years furiously developing recipes and interviewing postpartum care providers in Taiwan and the States.

Signed copies from Now Serving LA

What I learned: There are specific stages of recovery to follow. Postpartum recovery isn’t just limited to the first month; it can take up to two years. Herbs should be layered in thoughtfully, not aggressively.

The timing couldn’t be better because…well, I just gave birth to my second child…a week ago.

Yep.

But this time, instead of splurging on a postpartum hotel for a full month, I’ve been at home following the recipes and guidance from my own cookbook, and the difference in my mental health has been significant. A big part of it is because this isn’t my first time with a newborn. But I feel much more confident and nourished because I finally know what I’m eating, why I’m eating it, and what each dish is meant to do for my body. At the confinement hotel, by contrast, I was simply handed trays of food with little to no context.

I’ve been documenting and filming my postpartum recovery process at home and will be posting updates on my Instagram over the next five months leading to publication. I hope you’ll follow along.

Preorders for the book are now open. The book will be available across the United States on September 15, 2026 and yes—I’ll be doing a book tour this time around.

If you know a new mom, or are entering early motherhood yourself, I hope you’ll consider ordering. To encourage preorders, I’m putting together a digital bundle of exclusive discounts and perks for new moms and anyone interested in traditional Chinese herbalism. Just upload your order receipt on my website and I’ll email you the link.

My hope is that this cookbook becomes a universal go-to resource for postpartum recovery—one that brings intention and care into a stage of life that’s too often overlooked.

I poured my heart into this book, and I’m excited to finally share it with you.

Preorder Here

This is part of my ongoing series documenting how I’m building HEYDOH, the single-origin soy sauce company that I co-founded in the fall of 2025.
Previous posts: How we built a soy sauce company (Part 1) and (Part 2)

I knew going into HEYDOH that the most important task would be the branding, and as a writer by trade, I had a jumble of copy I wanted to play with, but no aesthetic direction.

So good you can sip (which we’ve now officially trademarked, by the way). For everything and anything. For dipping, drizzling, and finishing. Less sodium* (*compared to the big guys). Twice fermented. Single-origin black soybeans.

Though we had yet to formally name the brand (it was initially called Blackjade), the vision for HEYDOH was clear: a clean-label soy sauce with universal appeal, one that simplified all the various use cases for soy sauce, contained less sodium, and tasted better than anything else on the shelf.

I just needed to find someone to translate what I had written down into a label design.

So I started my search by flipping through a book of contemporary Taiwanese indie designers that I’d picked up at a neighborhood bookstore.

Though HEYDOH has always and will always be primarily for the American market, I initially sought out a Taiwanese team because of budget constraints, because I’m based in Taipei, and because I had had an incredible experience working with a Taiwanese photography team on my cookbooks. My cookbook photographers were adept at translating what I put in words into picture form. The partnership was both serendipitous and intuitive, and I thought I could easily replicate that dynamic with a local packaging designer.

Suffice to say, I was wrong.

Not because the designer we ended up hiring lacked talent. Far from it. But because we were operating from entirely different design languages. Taiwanese and American packaging styles are vastly different from one another. America veers towards bold typefaces, clear information hierarchy, punchy taglines. Taiwanese design is often more abstract, teetering on the edge of poetic.

But the biggest gap wasn’t aesthetic so much as procedural and cultural. There were mismatched expectations around iteration, communication, brand narrative, market positioning. It all lived in different cultural frameworks. I wasn’t able to vocalize what I wanted, and our designer was not familiar enough with the American market to ask the right questions to help me understand what I was looking for.

At one point, I was convinced I wanted an angsty black and highlighter yellow aesthetic.

My co-founder Christine had to stage an intervention.

Many months and a couple thousand dollars later in wasted design and printing costs, we decided to bite the bullet and hire an American branding studio.

A solo Taiwanese designer might cost a few thousand dollars. A boutique American agency? Easily ten to 15 times that.

It was a painful decision and investment, but after months of unsuccessfully trying to translate our brand vision to a physical design, we found that we still (much to our own chagrin) had no idea what we wanted.

We believed that working with a specialized consumer packaged goods (CPG) design agency — especially one with experience bringing products to shelves in the States — would solve all our problems.

And thank goodness it did.

After a round of interviews with a handful of decorated agencies, we ranked our favorites by price point and how well we vibed with the account manager. We wanted a team that could push back on our bad ideas, ask us the right questions, challenge us, and ultimately lead us in a good direction. It was also important that they cared about soy sauce.

The winner: Herefor Studio, a wonderful team of three who were genuinely enthused about our products, and who approached our mental and communication roadblocks with a fine scalpel.

First, we were given a long survey, which helped massage out our thoughts and vision for the brand. They also ingested all the copy I had jotted down over the months and a Pinterest board of misc packaging that I liked.

Next, a round of what they called “visual territories,” in where they pitched us a collection of vibes: a series of mood boards that reflected how they interpreted the answers in our survey. This was the main step, perhaps, that was missed in Taiwan. A critical communication exercise to make sure we were all on the same page and that no wires were crossed.

After we had narrowed down our visual territories, we went straight into multiple rounds of designs. It was a couple of months of back and forth, sharpening and clarifying how we wanted HEYDOH to look.

Slowly but surely, we started to hone in on the elements:

1. A hand: the hey in HEYDOH. The hand would wear an accessory that reflected its soy sauce variant. A classic watch for Classic Soy Sauce. A silk scarf for Silky.

   

2. A transportive scene that subtly evokes Taiwan and the countryside where our soybeans are grown.

   

3. This drop element, that repeats throughout. A nod to the single-origin nature of our sauce.

   

4. A color scheme that feels calm and inviting, but intentionally avoids red. To me, red feels like the visual shorthand for Asian culture, almost in the same way red, white, and blue telegraphs “all-American.” Familiar, but clichéd.

5. Personality and hidden gems on the back of the pack, featuring calligraphy from Christine’s mother-in-law. Cute speech bubbles and more hands throughout.

Eventually we landed on our current labels, which we adore and are incredibly happy with.

In retrospect, although we lost money and time with our first designer, I’m grateful we did. It taught us a valuable lesson about knowing our limits. That sometimes (not always), it’s better to just call in the professionals.

Aside from designing our labels and branding system from the ground up, Herefor helped us digest and translate what we wanted HEYDOH to become. They gave structure to our instincts, pressure-tested our assumptions, and built a visual language that could scale. It was an investment that was well worth it.

We’re currently in our fifth month of business (though technically third since we were sold out for two of those months), and have acquired 95 stockists and counting. We’re moving through inventory fast and already have another production run queued up. Our social media following is slowly but steadily growing.

There’s a long way to go before we can pay ourselves and consider this a self-sustaining business.

But at least we look fabulous.

Transitioning from writing to business was a deep learning curve, but also surprisingly more intuitive than I thought it would be. Freelance writers are already small enterprises in motion, constantly pitching, negotiating, and packaging our ideas for the world. Friends in CPG warned me about the notoriously thin margins in selling food. But then I showed them the numbers behind freelance journalism and cookbook publishing, and they immediately gave me their blessing. My financial expectations were already modest. “You’ll be fine,” they said.

Buy Our Soy Sauce Here

Last week in Part 1, I talked about why I wanted to sell soy sauce. In today’s post, I’ll break down how I got started:

1) Assembled a team

I always knew the first step was to build the right team. I’m a storyteller by trade, and though I have a pre-existing audience and had settled on a product with a strong market fit, I had no idea how to build a financial forecast, how to calculate COGS (cost of goods sold), or or do anything in Excel beyond basic addition.

So I did what I always do when I’m staring at a blank page: I started talking to anyone who would listen. I wanted to see who resonated and who felt the same itch. It took about five months to find the right people and the right dynamic. But once I did, everything snapped into place.

A bit about my team:

Our Chief Product Officer Hank Hsieh is one of the most efficient people I’ve ever worked with. We call him our supplier whisperer. Born and raised in Taiwan and trained as an engineer, he brings structure to everything we do. Though I’ve lived in Taiwan for years, I’m still seen as slightly outside the fold given my accent and American mannerisms. Hank smooths that over instantly.

Still, having two people based in Taiwan wasn’t going to help us much. I knew I only wanted to sell to the American market, and so I needed someone in the States to handle logistics and operations and ideally, all the math.

Enter Christine Liu, my co-founder and our COO/CTO, the yang to my yin. When she signed on, soy sauce finally stopped being a vague idea and became an actual company. Christine is based in New York City, is a data engineer from big tech, worked at a supply chain start-up, and is extremely good at digesting numbers and building systems. We are childhood friends and had spent a significant amount of timing traveling rural China together in our 20s, so I knew we could get along in dicey situations. In many ways, we are complete opposites. I’m introverted. She’s extroverted. I know my way around words. She knows her way around numbers.

I knew she was in between jobs, and I had been coyly pitching soy sauce to her online for weeks, though she kept shrugging it off. Understandably so. It wasn’t the obvious career move for her.

But then last fall she came to Taiwan on vacation and brought a box of trendy sauces from the States for me to do some market research with. Hank and I took her to one of the soy sauce factories we had been in touch with, she tasted the sauce, and was sold on the spot. We ended up spending the rest of her vacation writing up our business plan, lining up advisors, and hunting down the perfect glass bottle between hot pot meals.

Suddenly, the pace went from slow and uncertain to fast and electric. That’s how you know: when everyone in your team is self-motivated, knows exactly what role they’re playing in the company, and the to-do lists start to generate themselves.

2) Hired a lawyer

These days, you can use LegalZoom and create a company in a couple hours. We considered it. But a close friend of mine had done exactly that for her tech startup a couple months prior, made a few glaring mistakes in the paperwork, and later had to bring in a major law firm to sort everything out once they raised money. Her advice was to get it right from the start.

She mentioned that a high school friend of ours was now a startup lawyer at Russ August & Kabat. We hopped on call with her, she listened to what we wanted to build, and incorporated us. While hiring a law firm ate up most of the money we had in those early months, it was completely worth it. Now that we’re growing and fielding interest from investors, we don’t have to worry about our cap table (company’s equity ownership) or paperwork being a mess. Everything is clean, which is exactly what investors want to see.

3) Negotiated and secured production and suppliers

Honestly, this was the easiest part and where my background as a champion of Taiwanese food and stories played the most to our advantage. I’ve had Taiwanese media write about my work over the years, and having local Chinese-language press clips helped build a strong case for why people should work with me. At one point, a supplier even insinuated that the Taiwanese government should be paying me to promote Taiwanese food to the Western world (hah!).

Our team dynamic helped a lot as well. All three of us are Taiwanese and speak Chinese (so they trust and understand us and vice versa). Christine and I are Americans (so they saw potential in us in expanding their market outside of Taiwan). Christine and Hank are engineers (people love that). Christine has an Ivy League education (you’d be surprised how much people love that even more than anything else listed above).

I won’t and can’t go too much into the nitty gritty here, but I will say that there is immense value in being invested in and based where your suppliers are. We don’t parachute source and we’re proud of it.

4) Invested our own money and convinced our family and friends

Obviously, we needed money. So we put in a lot of our own savings and rallied together some friends and family to help us get through our first production run. Our lawyer suggested fundraising via SAFE, which is a quick way to raise money without expensive paperwork, additional legal fees, and diluting our cap table early on. This was also a good exercise in seeing if we had landed on a good product and messaging. Most of the friends we approached were sold at first sip, and within three months of us incorporating our company, we had raised enough to place our first production order, partner with a logistics company, hire a branding studio, and pay all the legal fees. All of our investors during this first round were first-degree connections and that was important to us. We wanted people who believed in us and the product, not institutional capital pushing for a growth pace that didn’t make sense for where we were.

5) Branding

This was the most difficult and most rewarding part of the process, and something I’ll dive in deeper for next week, but branding was a six month long process of trial and error, us trying to cheap out by doing as much of it ourselves, and me going insane on Pinterest. In short, we ended up losing money on designs we didn’t like at all.

Eventually, we bit the bullet, and decided we were going to invest a significant part of the money we had on a proper American branding studio (context: we were quoted a range of $10k-$50k USD for packaging design). We interviewed at least seven very reputable places, and after narrowing them down by price point, we settled on Herefor Studio…mostly because we just really trusted and vibed with the team. Perhaps that’s a strange way to choose a design studio, but that’s been the resounding strategy that Christine and I have used whenever we decide to partner with people. Do we get along with them? Are they actually enthused about our product or just looking to make a quick buck? Are they condescending or do they seem bored? Is it easy to communicate with them? Herefor passed with flying colors, and we love the final design they put together for us.

Buy Our Soy Sauce Here

6) Asked for help along the way

Though Christine, Hank, and I are all fairly accomplished in our respective fields, none of us had started a CPG brand before. We knew we needed people who had actually taken a shelf-stable product to market. So we brought on my friends Jane and Denner from Empress Hot Sauce as advisors. They guided us through everything from supply chain negotiations and pricing structures to logistics and supplier introductions. Having them to call whenever we hit a snag has saved us countless mistakes and a lot of money. Quick plug: If you’re thinking about developing a CPG brand that sources from Taiwan, Jane and Denner are available for hire as consultants. I can’t recommend them enough. In one of our early meetings, they had Christine and me sit down and map out our five- and ten-year plan. Those goals have shifted since launch, of course, but having advisors who’ve actually done this before and can help us zoom out and see the industry from a wider perspective has been invaluable.

Obviously, this is a very condensed summary of all that we went through the last year to bring the product to market. Next week, I’ll dive deeper into the branding process.

Buy Our Soy Sauce Here

Subscribe now

My epiphany came in the early summer of last year, at my family’s cottage in Sweden on our annual vacation. I was sitting in the study, and through the window I could see my husband crouched on the front lawn, a leaf between his teeth, trying to coax our determined, cherubic baby through his very first steps. Meanwhile, I was in front of my computer, staring at my inbox and income statement for the year and feeling a sense of dread.

For the past decade, my workflow looked like this: spend days crafting pitches and sending really thoughtful emails, wait for an editor to eventually bite, schedule calls and interviews, then spend an unhealthy amount of time wrestling the words onto the page. After I filed the story and worked through the edits, I’d wait for the check to arrive a month later, though more often two or three months, if we’re being honest.

As a writer, unless you’re extraordinarily gifted (which I am not), most of the work is an internal battle that requires long, uninterrupted stretches of quiet. Once I became a mother, I lost the luxury of time and the bandwidth to chase anyone except my own kid. I’ll always appreciate a good byline, but the opportunity cost stopped making sense.

I still loved writing, but I needed a different life, one where the work I put in had a clearer relationship to the outcome. And the idea that kept circling back was soy sauce.

As a business idea, soy sauce had been on my mind while I was developing recipes for my first cookbook Made in Taiwan. It’s a core pantry ingredient, with a global market larger than that of olive oil. Yet in the States, most grocery stores are stocked with the same old brands that have been around for 50 years. Naturally brewed yes, but mostly made with crushed yellow soybean grits, a byproduct of the industrial cooking oil industry. Many of the big brands also have added alcohol or preservatives or food coloring.

I’m not here to ingredient-shame. There’s nothing inherently wrong with defatted soybeans or preservatives. There will always be a market for that. But living in Taiwan opened my eyes to the sheer range of soy sauces out there—some of them as nuanced and complex as fine wine. And, as any cook can tell you, when you start with better ingredients, your food simply tastes better.

I had just landed my second book deal and was back in recipe development mode in the Swedish countryside. I was working with the standard Asian pantry staples (soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, rice vinegar) from the nearest grocery store. Even though we lived in a fairly remote town, the selection was the same as what you’d find in a large American supermarket. But if you tasted any of them straight, the flavors were flat, saline, and sharply acrid. It made me wince.

When I returned to Taiwan, I began sourcing more deliberately and tasted widely. And I found that truly well-made pantry staples are pleasurable, not just passable. Much like a high-quality olive oil, the flavors have depth, balance, and ease. The soy sauces I encountered were round, savory, so good you can sip. The contrast wasn’t just subtle, it was absolute.

Except I still defaulted to the standard brands for recipe development. Because when you’re writing for a general audience, as much as you can, you have to use mainstream pantry staples.

Up until this point, I had spent a decade covering Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine and watching Asian Americans push back against the idea that our food should be cheap. We’ve championed our cooking as worthy of craft, care, and technique. And yet, for some reason, our pantry aisle hasn’t caught up. And I’m not referring to the chili crisps and the shortcut stir-fry sauces. I mean our very core, fundamental staples, like soy sauce. We’ve gotten used to a baseline that is entirely defined by commodity agriculture and industrial shortcuts. We accept generic soybeans when there are varietals that express dramatically different flavor profiles.

Plenty of food aficionados will shell out for Spanish olive oil, Italian tinned fish, even algae oil, but almost no one will go out of their way for a single-origin soy sauce.

And it’s not for lack of effort, either. There’s already a robust range of artisanal soy sauces in the U.S. They’re just not very approachable. The market basically splits into two camps: the $5 supermarket staples like Kikkoman, and the high-end $40 gourmet bottles. The latter are often excellent, but their marketing leans heavily on mystique rather than clarity—pretty labels, foreign script, and vague claims like “premium” or “barrel-aged” that tend to intimidate home cooks more than they inform or inspire them.

Being based in Taiwan and fluent (enough) in Chinese gave me access to suppliers and context most people don’t have.

And as a writer and journalist, I felt confident that I could tell the story of quality soy sauce more clearly.

I saw an opportunity.

So I began assembling a team.

Get My Soy Sauce Here

It’s time for me to jump ship.

That doesn’t mean I’m quitting altogether. I’m still pitching to editors I have relationships with, working on book-length projects, and telling the stories I genuinely care about; it just won’t be the primary way I make a living. And to be honest, even with the autonomy of this platform, I still felt the pressure to constantly churn out ideas. I had paused paid subscriptions to give myself breathing room, but somewhere in that quiet, I realized: I don’t have the heart to recommit.

I’ve discovered that making things that exist in the real world is what makes me happiest. My first cookbook, Made in Taiwan, was the most difficult project I’ve ever taken on. Sleepless nights and me losing it in the kitchen and questioning my own sanity for nine straight months. But it was also the most rewarding : a tangible, physical artifact of research built on on-the-ground reporting, and meticulous recipe work. I feel that same pride for my second cookbook which is coming out next fall.

In this noisy world of hyper-short videos and AI slop, being behind a physical product helps me feel grounded. So last summer, when I was brainstorming how I would pivot away from depending entirely on digital media for my primary source of income, I came up with this: I’m going to sell a physical product. And then — I’m going to sell soy sauce. And I am.

Introducing HEYDOH. Single-origin soy sauce from Taiwan. One month in, and we’re already in 20+ boutique stores. It’s been surreal and I’m honestly really enjoying the journey.

In a way, it’s more work than ever before, and I’m not at all divorced from grind of content production. I’m still churning out scripts and social media reel ideas, but unlike pitching and writing one-off articles to big media, which often felt like being stuck in the doldrums, there’s real momentum and excitement in the consumer product space. Doors are opening quickly. Opportunities are flooding in. It’s like finally getting out of an abusive relationship and seeing what a healthy one looks like.

To my paid subscribers: I’m sorry for not meeting the mark. I’ve issued partial refunds to everyone to make up for the months I didn’t deliver. I’ll still write here from time to time, but only when I have something worth saying.

Thank you for sticking around and for reading. I’m still writing, just not in the same way, and I hope you’ll come along for the slower, quieter version of it.

Landing that first cookbook deal—which took years, thanks to my relatively modest platform—came with an immense weight. I didn’t take the assignment lightly.

We now live in a world where being a competent writer and thorough researcher doesn’t guarantee job security—or even visibility. As a journalist by trade, with little desire to plaster my face across my feed, I knew Made In Taiwan might be my only shot at writing a book. So I poured a large chunk of my advance into hiring a team to help me. Even with that support—and an in-house Taiwanese recipe developer who answered all my questions—I obsessed over every recipe, testing some so many times that just looking at them now makes me gag. There are Taiwanese staples I once adored—like savory rice pudding and kueh—that I can’t eat without feeling queasy.

Two years after publication, there are still recipes I wish I could tweak, redo, or rip out entirely. But what’s on the page is on the page. That’s the nature of print.

In the middle of all this, I got pregnant and had a child—born the same week the book came out—a seismic shift that carved a hard line between life before the book and everything that followed.

Next week is the photoshoot for my second cookbook, and I am stressed out of my mind. Grateful, absolutely. Writing a physical book is still one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But while I have a few more months to finish the essays and finesse the recipes, the photoshoot locks in the menu. If I want to change anything—like the cut of the tofu in my stir-fry or whether the pork gets bathed in sauce or just kissed with a drizzle—I need to decide now.

The first time around, I was more prepared. Mostly because I wasn’t a mother yet and could work on the manuscript from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. My husband didn’t mind; he knows how obsessive I get. This time… life is louder, and most of my free time belongs to my son.

Being a published author is an immense privilege—one I probably take too seriously. But I chalk that up to knowing how hard it is to get a book deal, to be published at all, or to have your voice heard in a media landscape that tends to reward vibes over substance.

I also know that readers who buy a cookbook—and actually cook from it—expect recipes that work. That’s especially true if you're a sleep-deprived mom with a newborn, which just so happens to be the audience I’m writing for now.

Last week, I scrapped one of the many dessert soups in my manuscript and decided to replace it with a spiced brownie. That decision alone took hours of back-and-forth texts with my assistant. I have too many sweet soups. Americans like baked goods. I hate developing baked goods.

My assistant gave it a go. My Chinese herbalist–slash–recipe developer took three stabs at it. And today, I spent six straight hours baking three different versions of that one damn brownie.

I think—I hope—I finally nailed it. I just sliced off a piece, wrapped it up, and sent it to one of my American mom friends (a former dessert caterer) for a gut check. I'm covered in chocolate. My stomach hurts from butter overload.

My second book comes out next fall. Until then, I’m pouring whatever energy and sanity I have left into making sure I put out the best version of it I can muster.

Wish me luck at the photoshoot next week. God knows I’ll need it.

I wish I had a similar experience with expository feature writing. Instead, my writing skills were shaped by tough feedback and constant rejections. To this day, I don’t consider myself an extraordinary writer, but I know I am a strong researcher. I am also able to quickly pinpoint unique POVs, and I can write a recipe that works.

Last fall, I hosted an online food writing workshop with Hawa Hassan, whose first cookbook “In Bibi’s Kitchen,” inspired me deeply when I was crafting my proposal for “Made in Taiwan.” Her newest cookbook, by the way, “Setting A Place For Us” is out for pre-orders. What started out as a spontaneous IG DM turned into an incredibly rewarding four-week course, where we really connected with over two dozen aspiring and established food writers from around the world.

Exhausting as it was to lesson plan and talk non-stop for hours, I knew I wanted to do something of the sort again. And hence, this announcement.

This September, I’m co-hosting a food writing retreat in the countryside of Japan with Hannah Kirshner, a writer whose work I have admired for years. Our focus will be on the recipe. We will explore the function, ethics and art of recipe writing, and how the same concerns apply to good writing in general.

I visited Hannah last November at her home in Yamanaka Onsen, a serene, mountainous village renowned for its hot springs. The place reminded me a bit of my neighborhood on the outskirts of Taipei, though ours is purely residential and hasn't been developed for tourism at all. Yamanaka Onsen, on the other hand, offers a picturesque walking trail that runs alongside a peaceful river. The village is dotted with shops selling local lacquerware and there's even a sake brewery. It's the kind of place that feels timeless, where nature and tradition blend seamlessly.

Hannah and I did some preliminary brainstorming in person, and this month, we finally nailed down the curriculum and schedule. I’m thrilled to be leading another workshop, this time in person, amidst the breathtaking backdrop of the Japanese countryside

If you're an aspiring food writer or simply in need of inspiration, consider joining us. I hope we can offer the insights—or even just the sounding board—that I desperately sought when I first started out.

MORE DETAILS & APPLICATION

The early stages of motherhood, I’ve found, are not conducive to creative work, even though I sometimes do feel like I need the creative work to feel like a fully functioning adult. But most of the time I’m just burnt out and in dire need of a long nap.

With that said, I’ve been thinking about the way I work, and have decided to put an indefinite pause to paid subscriptions as I reshape my relationship with writing and embark on a new project. This pause technically started in November; none of you guys should’ve been charged since then. If you have and something slipped through the cracks, please let me know.

I will always have articles (and hopefully books) in the pipeline, but with the state of media right now, it’s naive to continue to depend on writing as my primary source of income.

What I’m working on right now is a bit out of my comfort zone, but it’s an idea that I’ve been nurturing quietly since the summer, and something that will build on my work as a researcher and writer.

I’ll continue to publish updates occasionally on this platform, and hopefully, when I get a bit of more breathing room—restart paid subscriptions with more enlightening and invigorating posts.

Thank you, as always, for reading my work. More to come in the new year.

It was “a far better weapon than a bomber in our competition with the Communists for influence in the developing world,” George McGovern, who served as a director of the program, had said. As part of this initiative, Taiwan—a natural enemy of Communist China—along with other countries around the world, received large shipments of wheat, relieving the United States of its food surpluses in exchange for diplomatic leverage and influence.

I finally got an opportunity to expand on this finding in podcast form. For Proof @ America’s Test Kitchen, I put together a half an hour episode in where I investigated the correlation between the rise of the modern Asian bakery and Food For Peace.

A preview:

From the early 1950s up until the late 1960s, Taiwan was one of the top ten recipients of the food aid program. In 1952, Taiwan had imported over 19,000 tons of American wheat. Two years later, that figure increased to 183,000 tons. That’s an 850% increase.

Listen to the episode here

Other pieces of mine that recently published:

Serious Eats - Where and What to Eat in Taipei—Including the Best Night Markets
A caveat: the recommendations on this list are tried and true reliable spots, not the hip and new. Please don’t come to me for the hip and new. I do not have my finger on that pulse anymore, nor do I find much joy in chasing new trends.

The Guardian - I wrote a little thing about Taiwanese hospital food.

The last couple of days have been a doozy. Taiwan was hit by Typhoon Kong-Rey last Thursday, the largest storm to have hit the island in 1996 and suddenly, it felt like I was living inside a washing machine. Water started trickling in from the side of our windows and front porch. At one point, it started coming in through our lights (!?!), which was horrific but impressive, and tells you a thing or two about construction standards here on old houses.

The lights kept flickering on and off and we were convinced we were going to lose power. Which we did, a full day later. And water too.

It all got to be too much, so my husband, baby, and I packed up our stuff and temporarily went to stay at my parents’ house in another neighborhood. On our drive over, we marveled at toppled trees, severed electric lines, and even convenience stores that were blacked out, the latter of which is a surefire sign that things had gotten bad.

If it wasn’t for our kid, my husband and I probably could’ve toughed it out in our house even sans water and power for a couple of days. We really only left because my baby is extremely sensitive to warm temperatures, and having the AC off for more than six hours was starting to make him visibly uncomfortable.

With erratic typhoons, constant earthquakes, and a real possibility of a Chinese military blockade, Taiwan can be a uneasy place to live in. Earlier this year, my husband and I did some basic disaster prep for our little family in anticipation for the worst case scenario. We’re extremely far off from true sufficiency, but have enough supplies to comfortably last us a couple of weeks. Here’s my list and tips:

Read more

The experience became an involuntary exercise in seeing how much of the non-Western world lives. At first, it felt romantic—like I was truly immersing myself in what it meant to be a home cook in Taiwan. But after a while, I started daydreaming about being back in the States, where kitchens have dishwashers and hot water, and where some refrigerators even have ice dispensers. And not only that—in Los Angeles, where I’m from, I can drive to an air-conditioned Asian mega-grocery store like 99 Ranch, get all the ingredients I need, load everything in my car, and bring it all straight back to my kitchen.

In Taiwan, the shopping experience is not as centralized. I have to zig-zag around to many vendors and at least one supermarket on foot to fulfill my weekly shopping list. Supermarkets in Taiwan don’t stock specialized traditional ingredients like long-grain sticky rice or pickled mustard greens. On the flip side, traditional markets don’t have a wide variety of international pantry ingredients to choose from.

I also often found myself caught in the rain with heavy bags of hanging from my arms. By the time I lugged everything up six long flights of stairs, I needed a nap.

So when I got pregnant, enough was enough. The month my son was born, my husband and I moved.

Today, I only have to go up one flight of stairs. I now have a dishwasher. I plan my shopping trips more meticulously so I’m not running around like a madwoman.

In the West, it’s easy to take day-to-day amenities for granted. Many folks who visit Taiwan exclaim at how convenient life is here compared to the Western world. And yes, I agree. Taiwan is awfully convenient. But the States has its perks too (oh, how I miss Amazon next-day delivery!). We're often just blind to what’s right in front of us.

I’ve been in the thick of recipe testing for cookbook #2, so I’m not eating out much. But the other day, I stumbled across this tiny hole-in-the-wall in Taipei that I cannot stop raving about to everyone I meet.

Read more

I also want to avoid leaning too much into whataboutisms. I am aware that many other neighboring countries, like Japan or Korea, also do not allow dual nationality. But this isn’t about those other countries. It’s about what Taiwan stands to gain if it decided to integrate its foreign population, and what it might lose.

I am a Taiwanese citizen married to a foreign national, and over the years, I’ve seen how difficult it is for non-Taiwanese citizens to get anything done in this country. I basically have to co-sign mostly anything my husband does. Which is annoying, because I have enough on my plate.

Signing up for a joint phone plan? The staff laughs at us condescendingly and says to just put my name on it because my husband is just a foreigner.

Signing up for anything with his identity number? An error message because foreigners don’t really “count.”

For my American readers: it’s the equivalent of getting a social security number as a green card holder…that doesn’t work most of the time. And a number that changes every time you renew your residence permit. When that number changes, sometimes the services linked to the old number gets disabled and you have to manually reactivate everything. As I’m writing this, I actually just got a call informing me that I should tell my husband to go to the bank to update his identity card number.

The nitty gritty is boring. But trust me when I say being a foreign national in Taiwan is a maddening Kafkaesque bureaucratic process rooted in inefficiency.

Perhaps the social security metaphor isn’t that great because we don’t actually use our social security in the States on a day-to-day basis. In Taiwan, our ID number is used for everything. From the mundane: signing up for events, getting a library card, to really important things: hospital queues and government subsidies.

So I was delighted to see this petition go around this summer: a path forward for foreign nationals to become citizens without having to renounce their original nationalities.

In Taiwan, foreign nationals can become citizens, so long as they give up their original nationalities. Which you can imagine, is not a very attractive prospect for many folks who either have a nostalgic attachment to their homes, or are hesitant to forfeit the practical benefits and protections their original citizenship provides.

Again, I am not an expert, so I called up Michael Fahey, a Californian lawyer and long-time Taiwanese resident by way of the Bay Area, and asked him some questions about the petition, which he helped put together.

read full petition here

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Clarissa Wei (CW): What is the historical background of the current law restricting foreigners from obtaining dual citizenship?

Michael Fahey (MF): In the early 20th century, when countries started having nationality laws and passports after World War I, the main model was for a country to be ethno-nationalist: One blood. One language. One people. Italy and Germany were like this. Japan (editor’s note: of which Taiwan was a colony during this period) copied Germany’s system, and the Republic of China did too because the whole project was to turn China into a nation-state founded on one blood, one people, one culture.

CW: What are some misconceptions people have regarding this proposal, to allow dual-nationality in Taiwan?

MF: Well, I would say that the biggest misunderstanding is that this would somehow allow people from China, particularly PRC spouses to become citizens more easily. And the answer to that is that the law that we’re proposing, to change the Nationality Act, is totally different from the law which governs people from the PRC and Hong Kong. They are governed by totally different laws so this has no effect on them.

There are also people who say things like, “You know I couldn’t get citizenship in another country, so why should we give citizenship to others?”

CW: Right, but even in many other countries, even if you’re not a citizen and just a legal resident, you are still able to sign up for most services without any issues. Your identity number doesn’t inhibit you from functioning in society.

MF: I’ve been a permanent resident for 20 years and the government keeps saying that they’re going to fix this and fix that. It’s just not happening. And I don’t think it ever will. And the reason that will never happen is because everything in Taiwan is based on having a household registration. And [non-citizens] don’t have household registration.

My understanding is that some countries, like Germany, give their permanent residents some kind of quasi-household registration that entitles them to everything. But I just don’t see any change on that front ever coming [in Taiwan].

CW: So without a household registration, what are some things that you just can’t get?

MF: Honestly I’m not particularly inconvenienced, but I do have an annoyance that comes up every few months. I’ve had a credit card with a bank for 25 years. One day, the digital chip was scratched and it wouldn’t work. When I went in, they came back and said, you’re going to need a guarantor now because you’re a foreigner. We have a new policy.

CW: I suppose that’s the issue. Unless you have a Taiwanese guarantor, foreign residents—even permanent ones—can’t get basic things done.

MF: Yeah, you have workarounds. Like my friend, who wanted to buy a Gogoro? His girlfriend ended up buying it for him. But not everybody has a spouse or a partner or whatever. So for some people, it’s really a problem.

It’s just annoying. I pay taxes. Why can’t I get a government subsidy?

There was also this British guy who was disabled. He was dying and his Taiwanese wife that was caring for him couldn’t get a disabled card. She couldn’t park in a convenient place in the hospital. They did get the benefits eventually but he passed away soon after.

CW: You said this law doesn’t apply positively or negatively to Chinese people. Can you elaborate?

MF: Basically we’re talking about PRC spouses because they’re basically the only Chinese citizens  who are permitted to reside in Taiwan these days. They don’t go through naturalization. They are permitted to reside in Taiwan. I guess the assumption behind that is that they’re already Republic of China nationals. They get a special status. They apply for residence, then they get a residence card. After they’ve been here for six years, then they can apply for long-term residence. After that, they can apply to settle. And once they have settled, then they can go to the household registration office and apply for household registration. Then they can go and apply for a passport and vote.

CW: Oh. So what you’re saying is that PRC nationals have more rights than a foreign permanent resident who has been in Taiwan for 20 years.

MF: Yes. But they have to give up their household registration in China. My understanding is that they get it back, although that’s not always the case for desirable household registration in Shanghai and Beijing. It’s very complicated. They are neither ROC citizens, nor are they foreigners.

CW: But also to clarify, it’s not like PRC nationals can just drop into Taiwan.

MF: Basically, the only way they can live in Taiwan is through marriage.

CW: As you know, the process of becoming a foreign resident in Taiwan is fairly easy—at least compared to countries like the U.S. Do you see any value in making the path to Taiwanese citizenship more challenging, perhaps by adding requirements like a language test?

MF: Yeah so what we’re proposing is that you would reside in Taiwan for five years on an ARC, then you would get permanent residence. Then you would need to reside for another continuous five years, for a total of ten years of residence. When you do the permanent residence, you do a criminal and financial record check. Then you do it again when you naturalize. Part of naturalization is passing good moral character. There’s also a citizenship test, but these tests are currently pretty easy, I would personally argue that I think they should be a bit harder.

It’s important to realize that there are restrictions on us politically too, because you can’t run for office until you’ve been a citizen for ten years. You can vote, but you can’t run for office. There are also many jobs in government that dual nationals cannot hold.

CW: Restrictions apply to people like me. I hold both Taiwanese and American citizenship, but my Taiwanese citizenship was granted based on my family background.

MF: In general, most public sector service jobs are closed to you. You can’t be a legislator, or a city councilor. Or a member of the professional volunteer military.

CW: I’ve seen a lot of people compare Taiwan to its East Asian neighbors. Like Japan and Korea. They don’t allow this; why should Taiwan?

MF: Korea and Japan are important reference points whenever Taiwan does something. Both Korea and Japan are much more conservative and less liberal than Taiwan is. Even Korea has now loosened up on this a bit for spouses. Japan, well, they’re just the ultimate conservatives.

There are a lot of people in Taiwan whose image of Taiwan’s future is something like Japan. But is that really where we want to go? Japan doesn’t allow same-sex marriage. It’s way more conservative about women’s rights.

CW: It also seems like the Taiwanese government is really trying to sell the image of Taiwan being a diverse society. At the inauguration banquet this year, the theme was all about this diversity.

MF: The government does push diversity as a value. Whether or not people are on board with that is another question. I don’t think we can assume, the way that we might in California, that most people in society accept as a sort of axiomatic first principle, that diversity is good in and of itself.

What the government is really talking about is Taiwan’s internal diversity. Hakka. Indigenous.

CW: Southeast Asians?

MF: Because of the traditional patriarchal view that a woman becomes a part of her new family, there’s this perception that when a marriage immigrant comes in, they’re magically transformed into becoming Taiwanese.

CW: Right.

MF: But the most important argument is that of demographics. Taiwan’s population is irreversibly in decline. According to 2022 projections, Taiwan is going to have between 15 to 17 million people in 2070, and the median age is going to be 58. There will not be enough tax paying workers in Taiwan to support or care for these people.

We already see shortages in the workforce everywhere. There are not enough bus drivers, not enough people to clean hotel rooms. Restaurants are short-staffed. Taipower says it needs people to hang transmission lines. That’s why there are so many older people working at 7-11 now.

What Taiwan is doing is similar to what Japan has been doing, which is practicing stealth immigration. They’re letting people like me come in here and become permanent residents.

CW: What do you mean by stealth immigration?

MF: There are now over 820,000 migrant workers and former migrant workers. Migrant workers can now be reclassified. After five years, they can become permanent residents. That's very similar to what Japan is doing. You’re not telling people there are a lot more foreigners, but of course you can see it everywhere.

It’s just kind of like, “Don’t worry. They’re not citizens. Maybe they’ll be here for a long time, but just don’t worry about it.”

Is it really in Taiwan’s interest to create a multi-generational community of permanent residents who are permanently disenfranchised and not integrated into society? That’s the kind of approach that has gotten Europe into trouble.

CW: Final question. You guys have gotten enough signatures for the petition to go through. What’s next?

MF: It will be forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior. I’m pretty sure they’re going to say hell no. They have a long-standing policy of single nationality with very limited exceptions, and say that there are national security issues with dual citizens. And that Taiwan is a small place with limited space.

So we have to go to the legislators and talk to them. Now that they know people are interested, especially with 5,000 signatures, we have shown that there is something there.  In today’s Taiwan, if you want to get anything done, you have to put out a digital petition on the government’s platform. It’s a first legitimizing step. 

More Details

I’m writing this on the heels of a very upsetting daycare transition. Or maybe it’s just reverse culture shock. Today was my child’s first day of daycare. When we got to the center, the teacher came out, took my child, handed him off to another teacher, and closed the door. Without so much of a hi or a bye or a basic greeting. No one introduced themselves. My husband and I were appalled. I was told I wasn’t allowed to even go in and take a peek because “other kids might be scared of us.”

Which is, quite frankly, a lie.

I spent the car ride back home in tears.

Read more

Like with the James Beard Awards, IACP submissions are stringently judged—a process that requires the judges to read the books cover-to-cover and recipe test. To be nominated for a James Beard and IACP was already a great honor. But to win?

Gosh, it feels good.

I gave birth to my cookbook and my son at the same time (lol). While incubating and giving birth to a human baby is no joke, writing the book was most definitely harder (raising a kid though, is completely different story). I was obsessed with Made in Taiwan, and pushed myself so hard that I pretty much have no memories from late 2021 to 2022 except for book-related vignettes.

As I’ve alluded in this newsletter a couple of times, being a full-time freelance writer is not for the faint of heart. Accolades don’t pay the bills, but they certainly are a great motivator.

Best of all, the winner of the Julia Child Award gets a grant to “support the continuation of the work of a first-time author.” It’s not a life-changing amount of money, but it does give me a bit of breathing room to really focus in on my new manuscript for the rest of the year instead of having to pitch and write one-off articles on the side just to make my monthly income quota. Cash prizes are virtually unheard of in this industry, so to celebrate, I’m pouring one out for Julia.

If you want to learn more about the cookbook writing process, consider signing up for my virtual workshop here. We have a healthy amount of sign-ups already, but there are still spaces left.

Okay enough navel-gazing. Onwards:

Things That Annoy Me About Taiwan

Taiwan is easy to fall in love with. There are certain tropes that get repeated over and over: that people are so nice, that everything is so cheap, that the food is incredible.

To all those points — yes, but there are caveats.

I’m a big believer of telling both sides of the story, and I think it’s fair to say that I’m a staunch cheerleader of Taiwan. As a resident though, I do get frustrated with life on the island. So here are some things most visitors are oblivious to, but annoy me greatly:

Read more

.

Over the years, many of you have slid into my inbox asking me for advice. How does one respectfully tell the story of a culture or region? How did I go about gathering and adapting recipes? What was my research process? How did I connect with and interview the people whose voices are featured? How did I get started?

Turns out, Hawa, who wrote the award-winning In Bibi’s Kitchen—a tome about grandmothers across eight African countries— had been getting similar queries from her followers.

Book Here

So we put our heads together and put together a curriculum for a four part online workshop. It’s $250 USD for four two-hour long classes, where we’ll explain our writing process, give concrete examples on how to source stories and credit people, and hold your hand through the recipe development process.

Both Hawa and I are big believers in giving credit where credit is due, and I think that shared ethos shows through our respective cookbooks. Her debut, In Bibi’s Kitchen, was actually one of the titles I was inspired by when I was structuring the book proposal for Made in Taiwan. I adored how the recipes are windows into these grandmother’s lives, and how the book isn’t just a cookbook or a travelogue—it is a cultural anthology.

This workshop is open to anyone with an interest in food writing—you don’t have to be an established writer to sign up.

In a world where quick-and-easy and culturally vague recipes have become the prevailing norm, I like to think we’re offering a different approach to recipe writing. What if, instead of viewing recipes as just instructions for convenience, we began to see them as acts of cultural preservation?

Each dish carries within it the history, traditions, and stories of the people who created it. By treating recipes as a form of storytelling, we’re honoring the roots of the dishes we cook. Cooking becomes a way to keep traditions alive for future generations.

Spots are limited, so sign up while you still can. See you guys in class.

Book Here

Taiwan, of course, has no shortage of gorgeous produce and local pantry staples.

The best way to acquire farm-fresh products is to buy directly from the producers. But the problem is— as anyone who lives in Taiwan full-time can relate to—most Taiwanese websites are horrible and unintuitive, even for native Mandarin speakers. Or worse, you have to order off of LINE, which is an even clunkier experience. I often get roped into group ordering chats with hundreds of people, where all the ordering and fulfillment and petty neighborhood drama gets aired out in real time. My phone gets so bloated with notifications that I always end up leaving the groups out of annoyance.

Lately, I’ve been making a concerted effort to source from small producers—inconvenience be damned. Organic rice, in particular, is something I’ve been actively seeking out. Rice has been farmed in Taiwan for more than 5000 years and we have roughly 148 accessions. Organic rice makes up about 25% of Taiwan's total organic crop production, and most of that comes from small farms.

To me, freshly milled rice just hits differently. It has a distinct, warm mouthfeel and a toothsome texture to it. It’s also just so flavorful. Some are nuttier than others. We have varieties with taro-like aromas.

Here’s a short Yilan-centric list of where to buy organic rice and rice-related products. The recommendations on this list are courtesy of Joelle Chevier, a Chinese-to-English translator who lives in Yilan. Joelle also used to farm her own rice and is quite embedded within the rice-farming community in eastern Taiwan.

Admittedly, this list probably isn’t all that helpful for folks who don’t live in Taiwan (these are micro-producers and most of them only take direct bank transfers), but if you’re visiting or have family in Taiwan, consider reaching out.

One of the biggest challenges in the rice farming trade is dealing with the golden apple snail, an invasive snail that feeds on young rice seedlings. Most farms spray the problem away. Organic farmers often have to resort to labor-intensive ways to get rid of the snails. I've heard stories of farmers waking up in the dead of night, headlamps on, to hand-pick the snails from their fields.

農田裡的科學 Science in the Field
These academics-turned-farmers are tackling the golden apple snail problem head-on with innovative methods, like transplanting older rice seedlings because they’re more resilient to snail damage and adjusting the timing of the sowing season. They have a Chinese & English digital zine where they chronicle their findings. They specialize in a Japonica variety (short-grain) called Kaoshiung 147 (高雄147), which has earthy, sweet notes. You can buy their rice here. They speak English.

田文社 Tain Bun Sia
Golden apple snails lay these really vibrant Pepto-Bismol pink eggs. This farmer makes art inspired by the snail eggs and she sells a premium Japonica variety called Tainan 16 台南16. Her store is here.

Thank You Rice
Thank You Rice is helmed by a Singaporean who is growing an indica (long-grain) variety specifically developed for organic farming. Joelle says: she “sun-dries a portion of her grain to sell at a higher price because she swears it tastes better.” There’s no online store, but just send a message via Facebook Messenger. She speaks English.

荃茗米
These guys sell organic rice and homemade brown rice cakes. I’m ordering this the moment I get back home to Taipei because my toddler is obsessed with rice cakes. Call or message them directly.

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. This week’s post is free, but please consider becoming a paid subscriber for more Taiwan-centric recommendations.

Signed copies of my James Beard-nominated cookbook Made in Taiwan can be purchased at Book Larder or Kitchen Arts and Letters. Amazon is also currently having a 45% off sale.

Most people have no idea that the stink in stinky tofu isn’t actually derived from the tofu. The malodorous odor comes from fermented amaranth—a perennial weed native to the Americas (ikr?).

Basically, you cover the amaranth with water and a bit of salt (1-2% salt brine), and let that sit for a month or two. The amaranth brine creates that signature funk. You strain it and then soak the tofu in it for a couple of days.

My recipe for stinky tofu is in my cookbook (and updated, below) and features a minimalistic, amaranth-centric brine. Many vendors will bulk it up with some mustard greens, cabbage, shrimp shells, bamboo shoots, but the classic most basic flavor is just amaranth. Flavor-wise, I believe my recipe hits all the right notes. The only dimension I couldn’t quite figure out was the texture of the tofu. I used a medium-firm tofu in the book recipe, which was okay and passable, but admittedly, it doesn’t have that signature porosity that is typical of commercial renditions.

After my book was published, I met Sean Chen, a master Taiwanese fermenter, who told me that the secret to achieving the perfect texture in stinky tofu is to use…

Read more

Signed copies of my James Beard and IACP-nominated cookbook Made in Taiwan can be purchased at Book Larder or Kitchen Arts and Letters. Amazon is also currently having a 45% off sale.

I met Taiwanese Swedish food writer Karin Lei for the first time this summer at a coffee shop near my in-laws in the southern Swedish city of Malmö, and it felt like catching up with an old friend. We sipped coffee while trading notes on food writing, Taiwanese identity, and motherhood. A few weeks later, she hosted my family at her house for lunch, where she effortlessly whipped up an incredible Taiwanese feast: squid and celery licked with shacha, a well-rounded three-cup chicken, and an elegant cabbage stir-fry with garlic.

We signed each other’s books. Her son (who, coincidentally, shares the same name as mine) gifted my baby boy a capybara sticker. It was all very charming.

Karin is the author of Dumplings & annan dim sum. She was born in Stockholm to a Taiwanese restaurant family, and now lives in Malmö as a food writer and cookbook author. She’s currently working on a second book about the food of her family.

The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Clarissa: As you know, there was a significant migration out of Taiwan during martial law in the late 20th century. A lot of people, like my parents, went to the United States. How did your parents decide on Sweden, of all places?

Karin: My uncle already lived here with his cousins, and they had opened a restaurant called Taipei in Stockholm. My dad has been trained as a Japanese chef since he was 16 years old. There was a working visa in Sweden back then for chefs. Most of my parents’ friends who came here in the 70s or 80s were people who came for that working visa. Back then, there was a shortage of chefs. They’ve changed the rules on that now; you have to put up an advertisement for that job in Sweden before you outsource from abroad.

Clarissa: What were the Chinese restaurants like back then? (I’m using Chinese here as a general umbrella term because, in the late 20th century, a lot of people in Taiwan identified as Chinese—especially when they moved abroad.)

Karin: They were mostly owned by Cantonese and Taiwanese people. My dad worked at one called Golden Horse 金馬 in Stockholm. It was so popular that they had a coat room. My mom worked in the coat room. But it was Chinese food designed for Swedish people, so like sweet and sour pork, spring rolls, and things like that.

Clarissa: Your dad eventually opened his own restaurant in Malmö, right?

Karin: Yes. In 1989, he opened a Japanese restaurant called Osaka Inn. It was the second Japanese restaurant in town, and it was really hard.

Clarissa: In what way?

Karin: We had to explain everything. People came in and said, ‘Oh, this looks oriental,’ and would request sweet and sour dishes. My dad had to change the menu after a while because we couldn't survive on the Japanese menu. He even added Mongolian barbeque.

For example, customers would order chirashi bowls and think my dad was lazy because the dish was raw fish over rice. We had to tell them that a chirashi bowl, by definition, is fish over rice. That’s what they ordered.

Clarissa: Oh my. I’m assuming you guys made sushi with local Scandinavian fish, like salmon. (Most people don’t even realize that salmon isn’t a Japanese fish. The use of salmon in sushi in Japan is largely thanks to a highly successful Norwegian marketing campaign that took place in the late 20th century.)

Karin: Yeah. A small group of Swedish customers were interested and familiar with Japanese dishes. But almost every day when I was there at the restaurant, I’d hear a comment like, ‘Ew, I hate raw fish.’ People didn’t appreciate it back then. But Dad was always happy when the Japanese or Korean business people visited because they understood. He would get so excited whenever they booked a table and would spend the days before cutting small flowers out of vegetables and doing all the garnishes because he's like, ‘Oh, these people know, and they appreciate it.’

Clarissa: That’s so interesting, considering now I see poke stores all around town. From my limited understanding, sushi or raw fish isn’t exotic in Sweden today anymore. When did the tides turn?

Karin: The yuppie era. In the late 90s. People started serving sushi in buffets and lots of Chinese restaurants.

Clarissa: Zooming out a bit, what is the Asian food scene like in Sweden compared to other European countries?

Karin: We’re still lacking. It’s not like in Paris, where there is a Little Saigon. Restaurants are not at a point where they can make ends meet just by serving Asian people. To survive, they have to make food for the broader Swedish community.

You know, the other day I read reviews about a new Chinese restaurant in town and people were complaining and saying ‘Oh it’s the same food that old Chinese restaurants serve.’ I get it. I want the regional Chinese stuff, too. But at the same time, you have to understand it from the restaurant owner’s perspective. You have to play the safe cards.

Clarissa: With your work, you're continuing your parents’ job of educating Scandinavians about Asian flavors and condiments. But it’s in a much more direct way. (Karin hosts cooking workshops in Sweden)

Karin: Yep, exactly. But it’s also difficult. When I write about doubanjiang 豆瓣醬 or shacha 沙茶, people ask me what it tastes like. And I’m like, ‘You guys don’t have anything that tastes like this.’ But people are really curious.

My parents didn’t have the language to do this. They couldn’t even defend themselves. People would leave a bad review, and we didn’t know how to respond. They didn’t know how to market. They have a traditional Taiwanese mentality: if I work hard, then success will come.

Clarissa: For visitors to Malmö, what your recs? Best places to buy Asian pantry items and favorite Chinese/Taiwanese restaurants?

Read more

For as long as I’ve been alive, Taiwan has leaned into its food as one of its biggest assets. When the Michelin Star system and Bib Gourmand arrived in Taiwan in 2018 (fun fact: some locals call Bib Gourmand, “the Michelin Baby 米其林寶寶”), the initial excitement was quickly followed by a bit of confusion—why was a tire company suddenly so invested in our culinary landscape?

The Michelin recommendations have always been solid, but I was happy to see that last year, one of Taiwan’s largest newspapers launched its own version of the Bib Gourmand. I’m a big believer of Taiwanese people championing our own assets instead of relying solely on foreigners for validation (oh boy, I could write an entire book about this).

The award system is called “500 Bowls” — a massive street food listicle that encompasses the entire island. Instead of a star system, restaurants are ranked by “bowls.” The highest accolodades go to the three-bowl restaurants 🥣🥣🥣.

The results for 2024 came in last month, and here are the highlights:

THREE BOWLS: 🥣🥣🥣

Taipei: Fortuna Tainan Danzai Noodles 財神擔仔麵
A specialist of danzai noodles, a wheat noodle dish that hails from Tainan. But here, the top dishes are actually the braised minced pork belly and rice noodles in clear broth. Tucked inside an alleyway; small portions.

Read more