Wenny Chou: Running a Private Dinner Club in My Tiny College Apartment

Happy Fourth of July hAAPI hour friends! I hope you all spend quality time with family and friends today—this episode fits today's theme of spending time with your favorite people. My guest today is Wenny Chou, the 22-year-old Taiwanese-Canadian and recent USC business graduate who just started Saloon 301, an exclusive dinner club that seeks to celebrate food and people. During the pandemic, Wenny had the initial thought of running a small takeout business where she would cook for her friends, but as she metaphorically fed into this idea of making food for others, the concept expanded into Saloon 301.

Although she’s currently running her newly minted restaurant in her small, college apartment, Wenny’s been able to transform her own living space into an energizing dinner club, where guests wine and dine, try out new cuisines, and often stay past midnight.

She cooks everything herself from scratch, such as the pie crust, cake mix, pesto, vegetable stock, or anything premade that could be store bought. But someone who loves cooking and is inspired by intimate, family-owned restaurants in Italy, she wishes to establish recipes that preserve the integrity of the ingredients. It brings me great joy knowing that at Saloon, not only are the original ingredients preserved and honored, but so are the new relationships you establish there.

Before you hear my full chat with Wenny, I invite you to grab a drink of your choice and let’s spend happy hour together.

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(Music from Epidemic Sound)