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The first time I looked at the flavours of my childhood through new, slightly hazy eyes was about six years ago, at the cocktail bar Little LAB in Hong Kong’s SoHo. I was confronted with an alcoholic riff on yuenyeung, that classic coffee and tea blend you can find at many Hong Kong cha chaan tengs, that had never escaped these classic venues, but suddenly, remixed versions of yuenyeung were everywhere. There were yuenyeung macarons, yuenyeung ice cream, yuenyeung egg tarts to be had.
Not too many years later, Hong Kong went salted-egg-yolk berserk. What previously was only found dusting crisped fish skin snacks imported from Singapore, found its way into cream puffs, onto KFC fried chicken, and swirled into McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream (this was very good). The iconic milky White Rabbit candy, produced in Shanghai and notorious for its edible rice-paper film wrapping, experienced the same wave of intense popularity as it was whipped into ice cream by Wanderlust Creamery in LA. All around the world, the well-honed jaws of Chinese kids who spent their childhoods gnawing on White Rabbit candy were left hanging. White Rabbit has continued to resonate through remixes as bartenders, baristas and pastry chefs melt down the little white candies and transform them into coffee drinks, cocktails, and croissants.
Why are so many Asian and Pacific Islander chefs reaching back through time to reimagine the flavours of their childhoods? Who is messing around with nostalgic flavours to create something new, intentional, and totally unique? And to what effect?
Tiffany Ran, the chef and founder of Babalio, a Seattle-based Taiwanese pop-up series, explains: “A big part of my culinary philosophy is storytelling, and Taiwanese cuisine in particular requires a lot of explanation. Our most popular pineapple cakes originated… wait, at a Russian bakery? Taiwanese cuisine and its history are bittersweet, complicated, and it keeps evolving. I want the food I make to represent that migration and showcase the continued changes that we’re seeing in these dishes. Taiwanese cuisine is not static or in a vacuum. It’s responding to the influences of the world constantly.”
Lovage Aiyu Photo by Stacy Nguyen
“Taiwanese desserts are so quirky they beg to be reinterpreted.” Ran gives me an example: “Aiyu is this beautiful jello dessert that’s traditionally in a citrus syrup, made by rubbing dried fig seeds to extract its natural gelling agent. We’ve done syrups with elderflower, anise hyssop, and lovage, which brings the Pacific Northwest into it.”
Ran makes a stunningly lovely sour plum soup sorbet with black sesame sachima based on “two snacks that I hated as a kid.” She explains the tension growing up between two cultures that many other chefs also express. “I was that Taiwanese-American kid that wished my parents would fill the fridge with Capri Suns and instead we had sour plum soup, made of hawthorn, dried sour plums, osmanthus and rock sugar. I wanted Rice Krispies treats and would instead get sachima, a similarly shaped cube of fried dough compressed together with maltose. I saw [my] dish as an improvement on those – what I once considered disappointing – desserts. Sachima is delicious when made fresh, especially with black sesame. I mellowed out the sour plum soup with fresh plums and used that to make a sorbet.”
Sour Plum Sorbet Sachima Photo by Stacy Nguyen
Speaking of sorbet, Neale Asato of Honolulu’s Asato Family Shop made his name and whipped scores of Hawaii kids (including the author of this article) into a frenzy with his throwback sorbets that brought to mind old-school crack seed stores and drugstore candy. Asato explains: “Asato Family Shop brings the community flavours of Hawaii. Small kid time candy, snacks, local staples like Li Hing Mui, crack seed, and many other things we grew up eating bring back great memories of simpler times. We try to capture those memories in our products and brand.” Asato also now works with restaurant friends to create special flavours for their menus. “We [reinterpret] some Hawaii candy staples like Li Hing Gummi Bears, Li Hing Sour Belts, White Rabbit Candy. The Lemon Peel Gummi Candy has been trending here so we did our take and turned it into a frozen sorbet. It tastes like the real sorbet.”
Asato has played a huge role in translating the memories of our shared youth into new ones, for today’s youth and adults. “Being a kid, eating candy and treats, really sticks with you through life. Just a little taste of it as an adult takes you back to remember a time or place growing up. We do this for the people of Hawaii and want to see these flavours and memories passed on to the next generation of kids in Hawaii.”
Reinterpreting culturally resonant snacks can also be a way of confronting and understanding an uprooted childhood. Matt Delatour, a former executive chef and current sales representative and restaurant consultant, does this exact thing when developing menus for his pop-ups in Los Angeles. “I lost a lot of my culture and heritage when I was adopted. [As an adult] I stumbled upon a multitude of Korean snacks – Pepero, Honey Butter Chips, Melona Bars, Moon Pies. I tried all the Korean snacks I could get my hands on.” Delatour fixated on Moon Pies. “Super chalky cake, mixed with extra sticky marshmallow, covered in a chocolate shell that melted in two seconds – I was instantly a fan.” So he remixed it. Delatour is in the process of making Moon Pies from scratch, but with chocolate frosting, graham cracker crumbles and marshmallow drizzles – flavours that ring true to any American kid.
Chefs also spoke about improving upon the snacks of their youth, infusing their versions with better ingredients, as well as ingredients that speak to their new lives in new cities. Daphne Kauahi’ilani Jenkins of Ono Mau Goods spent her childhood on Oahu, but in recent years, has assumed the deserved title of the Butter Mochi Queen of Portland, Oregon. Her butter mochi is light years away from the plastic wrapped chi chi dango stationed at the checkout line of Long’s Drugs, and it belongs to the same galaxy as those familiar foil trays of butter mochi that someone’s parents always brought to the volleyball tournaments of her youth, but it swirls around a totally different sun. “The kind of butter mochi I make now has that elastic texture of mochi but I infuse different flavours into the plain cake. Kahuku Farms lilikoi butter, lemon curd, black sesame paste, tamari.” None of these flavours ever crop up on butter mochi found in Hawaii.
Jenkins’ extraordinarily beautiful swirled butter mochi cakes permeate many an Instagram feed and draw from a joyfully riotous combinations of memories. She does as her father did, “He’s notorious for refilling his drink at the soda fountain with all the sodas at once. And that’s the vibe when snacking. I love iso peanuts, any kind of mochi crunch, kaki mochi with li hing mui sauce, pickled mango, dried squid, M&M’s.” All these flavours, salty and sweet, make it into her mochi some way or another, and her customers get it. “[My business] started with people with Hawaii roots [as customers] but now most people are coming to me out of curiosity. Some of them have never even tried traditional Japanese mochi, but they are drawn in by the visuals.”
Baking is also a way for her to address of being away from home. “I’m infusing emotion and intention into each batch. This mochi practice grew out of my longing for Hawaii. My family, my parents and brothers were all far across the ocean and during the pandemic, they seemed farther away due to restrictions. I like to think of the texture of my butter mochi as the texture of longing.”
Animae Ube Magnolia ice cream Photo by James Tran
Tara Monsod, the executive chef at San Diego’s Animae strives to “present nostalgic Asian flavours in a new way. The dishes I like to create may not look like something you’ve eaten before, but taste like dishes nostalgic of an Asian American childhood. Halo-halo takes me back to summers with my family. I love when ‘ube’ ice cream melts and it’s like a milkshake on steroids. Traditional halo-halo uses Ube Magnolia ice cream, natta de coco, mung bean, red bean, macapuno and plantains but our Ube Sundae at Animae uses flavoured coconut pineapple ice and its texture comes from an almond coconut crumble and meringue.”
Toying with Filipino flavours also draws connections to shared heritages with Mexican foods, as Roxxanne Delle Site-Jeronimo illustrates through virtual bakery Mexipino, which is “inspired by my son who is half Mexican from his father and part Filipino from me. I began to combine and play with nostalgic flavours and traditional desserts from both cultures. We take classic Filipino sweets, snacks, and desserts and put a twist to them by adding an authentic ingredient or childhood flavour from Mexico and vice versa. What’s interesting is that Mexico and the Philippines have a deep connection and a history that dates back to the Spanish trade route centuries ago.”
Something must also be said about the chefs who are working to bridge the oceanic divide between the cultures and continents of America and Asia, at Japanese establishments in New York City. Kenta Goto, of Bar Goto and Bar Goto Niban, will serve you chicken wings and celery sticks as you might expect in a typical bar, but these will be sauced with “miso and sesame, with celery coated in sesame oil and a house kombu and shiso blend”. Goto also riffs in the opposite direction, remixing popular Japanese bar snacks, infusing korokke with Gruyere and Parmesan.
Shigefumi Kabashima, owner and beverage director of NR, adheres to a similar philosophy as Goto, but is primarily inspired by the cuisine found in traditional 19th century Japanese port towns. NR’s deviled eggs are whipped up with Japanese mayo and mustard, wasabi and sea urchin and his customers “seem very happy to have a Japanese ingredient accent”.
Private chef Sarah Najemian manipulates Japanese nori snacks – the most important snack to her, growing up – in a similar fashion. “There are so many flavours and types of nori snacks. This allows you to do so much. Like blend it up into a powder and coat fresh cod in it, then make a cod mosaic, which I have done on a menu this past winter. It was a cod and nori mosaic with a shiitake broth, and a jalapeño crema. You could julienne it and use it as a garnish, or you could hydrate it and incorporate into a sauce like I did with the nori sabayon. Nori not only adds flavour but it adds a nice natural dark colour that is hard to find.”
All of these dishes aren’t exactly fusion. They weren’t conceived to be mash ups for the sake of some restaurant or business concept. Each of these reinterpretations of snacks, whether making Asian ones more Western, or Western ones more Asian, derive from a chef’s inner dialogue, borne from their personal memories, and are ways to confront two very different but internalised cultures. These dishes are themselves third culture kids.
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