Food is a Bridge with Francis Lam

on Top Chef. I mean, he's fancy. When we met in the jungles of Belize a few years ago, I had no idea how glamorous he was. But it's not quite time for me to tell you that story yet. For now, what you need to know is that I'm in my kitchen in California and he's in his kitchen in New York, and we're both making cup of noodles. I have never shared a cross country cup noodles before, so I really feel like this is going to be special. So okay, So first step is what do we do? First? Francis,

Let's get our water hut. Okay, Oh, my God, listen to it. Go that's the sound. Okay, I'm now so I'm opening. Oh I just love I mean like that moment when you peel open the top and the insides are revealed and they're so beautiful and dry and self contained, and it's just so gorgeous and that little like three microns of dried cabbage that makes you feel like there was a vegetable inconvenience in the making of this noodle.

It's going to be good for me. Yes, whoa, Okay, now I'm going to cover it up again to let the steam like optimal steam. So this is where when I was a kid, and I guess right now too, like this is like the longest three minutes in history, and it was just it's gonna be hungry. You'd be so looking forward to like that incredible salty msg laden broth and and I really remember sitting here and just being like, come on, hurry up, come on, hurry up. While we wait for our noodles to cook, I'll tell

you the story of how Francis and I met. We were all on a guided tour in Belize with a company called Dandelion Chocolate. We were there to meet the farmers and learn all about how cacao is grown. It was like summer camp for chocolate nerds. I flew solo to the capital of Belize, and then the tiniest playing on Earth took me to a place called Punta Gorda. As we landed, I could see water and the emerald

green of tree tops. It was sweltering. The jungle humidity immediately turns your pores into a series of tiny sprinklers. I met Francis at the welcome dinner, and it turned out he would also be my roommate, along with about ten other people I'd never met before. Francis really won my heart on night three when he emerged from the shared bathroom into our massive communal sleeping area and said, in a soothing voice, listen, guys, I found a scorpion

in the bathroom and caught it under a cup. Just try not to tip it over so it doesn't escape. Good night. But you better belize that wasn't the only scary thing we experienced that night. Oh the howler monkey do you remember them? They were terrifying. It was like, what is that? It sounded like a dinosaur monster? No, for real? I was like, oh, I thought we were

gonna belie, it's not Jurassic fucking Park. Like it was like in the middle of night, you'd be like, I'm like, w Forty eight hours later, I finally asked one of the people at the camp, I'm like, what does that sound at night that we hear that terrifies all of us? Oh my god? And they were like, oh, that's the Howler monkeys. And then like, I think I googled one. They're like six and a half inches tall. I think they're so tiny, and you're like, how you sound like

a t rex? How are you this tiny and cute? It's amazing. And I totally remember you telling stories lying on the couch in like all your manifest glory, reading these stories about hilariously awful lovers. I'm gonna be friends with Virgie. Okay, our three minutes are up. Time for nudes. This is how Asian I am. I actually got chop sticks for this. Oh my god, I love that. Okay, here we go. God, this is the worst. This is

the thing that like people like this. Listeners of my show like call in about and be like you people are disgusting. I never want to hear anything go into someone's mouth. I mean, I love that sound. I mean when I first was like, we're eating on this show, and everyone's like no, everyone knows that, everyone hates that. There's articles about this, and I'm just like, no, the refusal to like be okay with people eating is white supremacy.

I'm sorry, it's just rakismo, which is how I pronounced racism. Like you're you're like European discomfort with your body. You will not put that shit on me. Oh that's good. I hadn't thought about that, like making that connection. But

I'm I'm feeling it a little bit. I mean, at this point, you can tell me, like literally anything is like like the fact that like I don't know that light bulbs burned too hot and they actually hurt you if you touch them when you thought they only produced light as white supremacy, Like I would believe that, like at this point, like that's the thing. It's always true,

you know. Okay, So my experience with the noodles, this snack is sort of complicated for me because it was the choice snack of the popular kids in middle school,

of which I was not a member. So I'm a little bit I'll admit I'm remembering this ancient twelve year old fear, like there was certain food and behaviors and language the popular kids got to do that were completely forbidden for me, Like if you did it then like you were a poser really trying yes, or it was kind of like I mean literally to go back to ancient Rome, it was kind of like, you know how the aristocracy gets to eat certain things, and if you

are not the aristocracy, it is just it is uppity and it's disrespectful to eat that same thing. You know, it was so disrespectful of you to go get the cup noodle vergion, Like what were you thinking? You don't deserve the cup noodle? No, but really it was the thing. It was like it was like a code where it was like you're not getting that cup noodle because you're

a virgin who doesn't have a jeep. It took me a second of process because you know, where I grew up, it was like, you know, pretty white bread, suburban New Jersey, and so the idea that like an instant ramen, like this was something I would eat when I got home, right, and this was you know, when I was still at the stage of my life where I was like really embarrassed by my food because it spoke too much of

our ethnic you know nests. You know, something like instant noodles, which I love, love, love, love, love, like I've always loved love the ms, I love the weird texture, you know, love its association with my cousins who were from Hong Kong, and so they, like they would have all these cool flavors and brands of instant noodles that like I wouldn't

have access to and you know in New Jersey. So when I visit them or when they would come, they'd bring something like totally all these like really powerful memories of being a kid specifically right and just loving this food. But it was totally the kind of thing where like I would eat at home and I would be embarrassed if anyone from school would see me eating it. So where did you grow up in New Jersey? And like what, like, I mean, how did you end up in a white suburb?

So my folks came in the seventies early seventies, you know, and I was raised in middle and then upper middle class suburbs almost entirely surrounded by white people. So you know, that was obviously who the dominant culture like in my actual physical space was and obviously in our larger culture too. Then again, I also had this whole side of my

life that was about how much I loved Hong Kong. Basically, my parents are from there, and you know, I had family, they're all growing up, you know, and so so much of my sort of escape from my suburban existence was about the fact that I would go to Hong Kong for two months at a time and spend time with my cousins, and I would learn about living a city.

I would learn about, you know, being independent in the sense that you could actually go places and you would learn to take public transit, and that was like that was your passport to like the world, right, and that like the basis of my exploration of that world was basically either we were going somewhere to eat like amazing Wanton noodles, or we were going somewhere to like buy video games like or play video games like. That's all

we did. So like a super foundational part of my life, you know, my self construction of my self identity, Like fifty percent of that was about running around the city of Hong Kong looking for yummy food, you know, so it. It's so funny because I've told the story I think is accurate about why I went into food. It's a professional and all that stuff, like a trillion times, and for whatever reason, I've never actually thought of this part

of it. Like it was about that exploration and feeling like, oh, I'm like my own person in the world, and that was just connected to like the activity of going out for food. I know exactly what Francis is talking about. Food felt like a passport to me when I moved out of my parents' house. I remember being eighteen and finally getting to choose what I ate. I was so curious about anything I didn't need at home, or wasn't served at the mall, anything unfamiliar. One of my discoveries

was wait for it, balsamic vinegar. I know I wanted that story to be more glamorous too, but the moment I tasted it was nothing short of thrilling. The sweet acidity brought me fully into my body in a way that felt good. I loved that feeling and I wanted more of it. At the time, I was still dieting, and that impacted what I thought I could eat. But even that couldn't stop my pursuit of that feeling. There was a lot of emotional instability at home, and I

was a fat pariah at school. That humble, little teaspoon of vinegar meant that there was something entirely outside the orbit of the life I had known for eighteen years. It gave me hope. I didn't know it at the time, but for me, this curiosity about food was connected to

the relationship I wanted to have with the world. Growing up in the suburbs with immigrants who had seen a lot of war, poverty, and instability, I understood why my immigrant family saw the whole world as one big, looming threat. But just like the little Mermaid, I wanted to be where the people are. I wanted to be part of that world, and I knew that food was a bridge. After the break, Francis will tell me about how food was a way to explore and to connect to who

he was and who he wanted to be. I found this picture of you online where you're a little boy and you're with your family gathered around this huge plate of dumplings, and everyone is looking at the camera, but you are not. You are lovingly gazing at the dumplings, and I'm kind of curious. I want you to tell me about little Francis and like his relationship to food. Oh boy, I mean, I don't know. Maybe maybe the way you describe the picture kind of says it. So

in our culture, you know, everything is done around food. Like, so we always we only saw people to eat meals with them, even in our own home and our own family. Really the only time we got together, as you know, parents and children was you know, at the table to eat. Like we almost never spent time together, you know, outside of the table. So here's a story that I realized many many many years later that it really like spoke so much to like who I think I am now.

So it was like one of our family trips to Hong Kong, and we were in a restaurant with you know, you don't go to a restaurant with four people. You go to a restaurant with twenty and you take two giant tables or three. You know. It was like that's how we went out to dinner. It was, you know, two generations of our family kind of thing. And we went to this restaurant that I remember thinking like, oh, it was like sort of a more special one, and I insisted on sitting with the grown ups. I was

exactly how old I remember, but definitely under ten. And the steam fish came out, like the whole steam fish, which is almost always like the prized you know, that's the centerpiece of like a big Southern Chinese meal or

banquet or whatever. And I grabbed my chopsticks and like some intuitive spear fisher like, I went right for the fish's head and grabbed the cheek out of the fish's head, which was so appalling because oh, if you were like in the know, you know that the cheek is the best bite of the fish, and obviously there are only two of them, you know, and in a highly patriarchal, highly like elder focused society, like it is no question my grandfather is supposed to get the bite of cheek

out of the fish. And so the whole table like my parents were like, oh my god, like what animal are we raising? I'm s I was sorry, you know,

like like truly like they felt like humiliated. And my grandfather, in all his I can never pronounce this word by magnanimity, whatever the fuck that word is, and all of his generosity just laughed and said this one really knows how to eat, and like I actually do remember after that happened, like I remember, um, you know, like back home or whatever, when like you know, our versions of these dinners at home with like you know, our cousins and aunties and

uncles and whatever, and oh wow, cousin Albert got straighties again for the nineteenth straight term, you know whatever, all my brilliant like oh oh master of the piano, great nine years old, amazing, good for you. Like my parents never had anything to brag about, but I totally remember them saying at one point, well, Francis really knows how

to eat. It was as if it was the equivalent of like, oh Francis really like Francis is a real poet, you like, you know, and so I just felt like, oh, that was like that was worth something to my parents.

But you know, that doesn't make sense to like we're saying like the predominantly like white suburban culture that I grew up in, right, So, like this thing that I can hold with like pride in my family, in our little in our community wasn't thing that translated the community I grew up in on the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area was different from Francis's, where he grew

up in a predominantly suburban white community. My neighborhood was full of families from Mexico, Nicaraua, Yemen, India, China, and the Philippines. As a kid, I was hipped to the fact that before I could become someone's friend, I had to be invited to dinner first. My reaction to the meal would determine whether I was a good friend or a bad one in the eyes of their parents. Eating was part of the initiation and vetting process. My family do the same thing. We had to gauge whether you

were down with our weird food. Could you hang with us in our maneuver? Did you ask for seconds? On the dim sum? The rule was simple, eat well, be liked. Food was a stand in for the people who made it and the cultures and traditions they came from. That made sense to me because in my home, to love our food was to love us. To hate our food was to spend the rest of your enchilada hating life

in exile. But there was a vulnerability in all of it, too, because all of us wanted our whole selves tripe and all to be loved and accepted in a land that was unfamiliar. Francis shared this story about that vulnerability. I was a kid and I was at my parents workplace, and like, my dad takes me out to lunch this like new restaurant that you know that he likes, and we have Taiwanese pork chops with like pickles and rice.

And it was actually in particularly a sweet moment with my father because we rarely went out just the two of us, and like I just have like a really lovely memory of that moment, Like even at the time, I remember thinking was really sweet and special. And later that afternoon, I'm, you know, back in the back in their shop and this guy comes in. It's like well dressed and white and like wearing a suit and had an English accent because of course, like every villain is

gonna you know, he's every villain. And he comes in just as I was, like, you know, reheating the leftovers from lunch as a snack and I was like happily chowing down on them, and he comes in He's like asking for my parents. I'm like, oh, I don't know where they are, and then he like sniffs the air. I swear to you God. He sniffs the air and then says, what on earth is that awful smell? And I look down at my food and I throw it away in front of him, and I pretended like, you're right,

it's disgusting. Any even will feel sad at the time. I just feel like cleanse myself, you know, like get this stinky Chinese nous off of me. Right now. That story hit me in the gut. He's talking about the idea that to be an immigrant, to be a person of color, is to be dirty somehow, and we spend our whole lives trying to clean ourselves up. I know that feeling so well, and I also know that just because I'm aware that it's caused by racism and xenophobia

doesn't mean as any less painful. This food chain drives us to try to fit in at any cost, whether it's throwing away the leftovers of a meaningful meal or changing how we eat through participating in diet culture. Many people of color and immigrants are told that we can't change our race or immigration status, but we can change how we eat. We can change what our bodies look like. We can admit that the food that brings us comfort

is bad for us. I think about how for my family and me, dieting wasn't just about watching what we ate. It was about trying to be real Americans. It was about showing others that we were willing to sacrifice something we loved in order to be accepted. Instead of being angry about these injustices, the things that made us different

became a source of shame. I'm sort of curious about were there moments when your feelings about or your relationship to food changed, or like for the better or for or for the worse, like and I think, like maybe embedded in this question or it might be its own question, is there comes a moment, I think in everyone in our cultures who grows up in our culture, when there's an association between food and body, where all of a sudden, you know you're aware, like, Okay, what I'm eating is,

according to this culture, affecting what I look like, and that has implications. I'm just sort of curious with that moment was like for you, Yeah, for sure. I don't know if I ever changed my thinking and feeling about food in and of itself, as much as it was an opportunity for me to blame myself when my body wasn't looking a certain way. But yeah, but like you know, going back to like, oh, not being one of the

popular kids. Like for us, like ninety percent of what defined you as a popular kid where and when I grew up was like athleticism. Right were you a jock? Right? Were you into sports? And I was never athletic, never coordinated, And I was in the video games and eating fucking bugles. Like like, I was a pretty skinny kid and then I gained like a fair amount of weight in like my middle school years, and I remember thinking that I was fat. I'm thinking that I was pudgy, and I

remember like looking at stretch marks. I have two brothers, both younger, so I was always around my middle brother in those years, and he was always just a much

bigger person, just like a much heavier person. And so you know, like growing up in a highly like fat phobic society, it was like that thing, right, Oh my god, it's like before like if you're not at the very bottom rung, but you're on the like the second rung, then like you're either the person wants to help other people up or the person like find solace in the fact that you can see someone you know below you.

And I hate to say, I think there was a part of me that I felt that way, you know, not not like I would be like cruel to him about his weight or anything, but just like, well, I'm not like that. But meanwhile, like I would go and like take a bath or take a shower, and like, you know, look at my own stretch marks and you know, look at my little like boy boobs, And there's a really direct relationship between that and like my awareness of my popularity because it was it seems so clear that

your popularity was defined by your body. And like, you know, I don't I don't know that I was tortured by it. It didn't take up extreme amounts of time and emotional energy, but it was constant and it was there. It was like a low hum of you know, being self conscious about my body. I a little bit want to um. I want to pivot into talking about gender. Obviously, gender is a massive part of a person's relationship to food.

Like I grew up being socialized that eating as little as possible was a sign of the successful performance of like being a woman or being a girl, and to eat absolutely nothing was the ultimate goal. That is one of the intersections of like how food and gender plays out in my life. And I'm sort of curious how your relationship to food intersects with gender. I don't I'm just curious what you think about this. The performance of gender and the understanding of gender is complicated by my

Asian nous, right because Asian males are feminized famously. There are so many Chinese restaurants and Chinese laundries in like the early days of Chinese immigration, because that was women's work, and that those are industries that white men were not threatened by, and so they were fine with Chinese people opening that stuff. Okay, I'd like to take you back to California eighteen forty eight. It was the gold rush.

Young people, most of the men came from all over the world to find their fortunes panning for gold or setting up supplies and services for those who did. Some of the men who came from China opened restaurants to feed fellow Chinese immigrants with cheap, nourishing food that provided a little familiarity in a place that was so far from home. At the time, most employed Chinese immigrants worked in laundries that changed after the Chinese Exclusion Act became

federal law in eighteen eighty two. It was designed in part to give white workers an unfair advantage by banning the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years, But the Chinese Exclusion Act also introduced a new visa system where certain business owners could obtain a visa that would make it possible to move to the United States and sponsor relatives. One of the types of businesses covered by this visa restaurants. Obviously, there was a catch. Actually there were several. I want

to tell you about two of them. First, each Chinese applicant needed two white character witnesses to vouch for them. According to my research, the same six white dudes apparently did all the vouching. Catch number two, you had to apply with a high grade aka a fancy restaurant. So these savvy immigrants began opening ornate restaurants that could seat

several hundred people. They were called Chop Suey palaces. They would pull their money for the startup capital and eventually bring their relatives over and get them jobs in the restaurant. In New York between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, the number of Chinese restaurants quadrupled by nineteen eighty. Chinese restaurants had become so popular, easy to find, and affordable that

they change how Americans eight. One historian Young Chen argues that Chinese restaurants provided a small luxury most people could afford, and that this helped make dining out accessible for more people than ever. I love thinking of how restaurants became palaces, and palaces became bridges between countries, cultures, and most importantly, families. Yeah, the kind of cooking I do now is I'm a home cook for my family. He has you know, which, obviously in a lot of ways, is you know, quote

unquote women's work. Right, it's that old idea of women's work. But it's something that I cherished and I think of their are very very innately connected to my identity as a father. Well, I was actually literally my next question was going to be you've written there's no greater joy than watching your daughter eat. I mean, I don't have children, and so I'm so curious about what is that feeling?

I mean, is it is it like that sense that sort of she is walking in the footsteps of like little Francis and the and the fish cheek or is it like something else? You know, I don't think of it that way. I always have just seen her as her own person. But you know, she's small, and there is a feeling of providing, and there is a feeling of protecting, and there is a feeling of, you know, making sure she stays alive. When I see her eat, I feel like she is keeping herself alive, and it

is just an experience of pure joy. So a lot of people ask me, how do I make sure that my child doesn't, you know, have a disordered relationship to food, because we live in a culture that teaches people how to have a disordered relationship to food. And I'm so curious if you have thoughts on this, um Bo, I don't have any answers for sure. Well, there was one way in which I felt like I had to catch myself and police myself, which was when she was born.

She was like whenever, like fiftieth percent time, the weaight, and then she like lost a lot of weight really quickly, which apparently is not uncommon, but she like never really gained it back, and so she went from like fiftieth percent out It's like twenty fifth percent out. Obviously when she was like an infant and you know, the first time parents, new parents, and we were like, oh my god, you know, is she okay? Are we doing something wrong

and we're not feeding her right? Blah blah blah blah, And doctors of course like, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. But I couldn't shake it for a while. And when she was eating solid food, you know, I would you know, encourage her to finish her food. Oh you didn't really eat anything. Oh you took two bites, you know, just not not trusting her

trust in her body. Where I find myself policing myself now is like maybe I'll suggest, hey, do you want to finish your broccoli, and not pressure and if I do it, if I suggest it once, maybe that's okay, but not suggest it again because then it starts to feel like this is what daddy wants, this is what mommy wants. But you know, just helping her, you know, just helping her find her own confidence in what she's

doing around food. And I'm also trying to be careful, not like praising her, because I think that's the same thing right, just like the opposite manifestation of the same dynamic. So I'm trying not to be like, wow, you did such a great job. You're you're eating really well. Like So it's weird because I don't know how to drawn that line either, because I want her to feel validated. I want her to feel a proval you know. Yeah,

I don't want to have a completely neutral affect. It's just like truly like do what your body tells you, do what your body tells you, you know, Like I don't know if that's good either, but I'm I don't know how to balance that, and like I'm just trying not to introduce the idea of stress with food. I don't know how to do that, but I'm that's that's

what I hope for. Oh that's so beautiful, Francis. I mean, just like hearing you talk about how like trusting her trust in her body and watching her keep herself alive, Like I just I mean, it's just so beautiful to kind of hear that. I love it. Francis. Oh my god, thank you so much for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thanks for having me in the club. Now do I get like a card? We were getting to that point.

We're getting to that point. Holy shit. It was just so good talking with you and hearing your voice, and there's such a genius, and you're so I don't know, You're just such a wonderful human being, and I'm so glad you wanted to be on the show. Oh my god, it was so fun. I felt like you'd like to know that. After this interview, I sent Francis some hot sauce made by a company named Howler Monkey. I hope

he puts it on something delicious. After we talked, I thought about bridges and the people who sacrifice so much to build them through food. I thought about what it may have felt like, almost two one hundred years ago to come to a new country to make the food you associated with home in a place where you weren't welcome. I thought about Francis's parents, even though I've never met them. I thought about my grandparents, and then I thought about the two of us. We're one part of a centuries

old ripple. I mean, we met because we both loved chocolate and wanted to learn more about it. It boggles my mind how chocolate can help two people become friends. It gets down to one thing. Food is connection. Don't forget to Head to Rebel Eatersclub dot com for this week's journal prompt. We also have brand new badges for this season and advice on starting your own Rebel Eaters Club courtesy of the Babes of the Wesleyan University Rebel

Eaters Club. Rebel Eaters Club is produced by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer, Jordan Bailey loves vermin Chelly. Lacy Roberts is our managing producer and she can't live without Soba noodles. Sarah nix edits the show and she prefers ichibon instant noodles. And our executive producer, Greta Cohen loves those wide rice noodles that come and pads to you. I'm your host, Virgie Tovar, and I gotta agree with Gretta. I love

a chubby noodle. Ben Shano is our mixed engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green and Jess clack Blazer for the production assist and Utaka Yasuzawa, who wrote some of the music we use in the show. If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See you next week,