Weekly Welcome

The second episode in a three-part series Friends & Family with Ben, Arnold, & Dan features Jimmy Ly from Madame Vo, Yen Ngo from Van Da, and Jae Lee from Nowon. 

Ling Song is the Seller Empathy Lead at Send Chinatown Love (SCL), an organization that provides an online platform to low-tech, cash-only, Asian-owned small businesses that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.  Ling's family business, New Win, is also the second merchant that SCL onboarded to their online platform. In this episode, Ling explains to use how SCL came to be, how the mission has evolved and developed overtime, and the importance of supporting and safeguarding Chinatown.  

The first episode in a three-part series features Eric Sze from Taiwanese-inspired 886, Huey Cheng from Japanese-inspired Cloud 9 Hospitality Group (Raku, Kura, Patisserie Fouet), and Rich Ho from Taiwanese beef noodle soup specialist Ho Foods. The three individuals actually teamed up earlier in the year with Bento Essential, an initiative designed to help feed and provide hot meals for healthcare heroes at the height of the pandemic. Today, we check-in with them individually to see how business has been as well as their general outlook for the future.

A new mini-series from Ben Hon, Arnold Byun, and Dan Ahn featuring our friends in the industry. We circle back with guests that graced the podcast to check-in on current situations and general outlook on the restaurant industry.

Hannah Wong is the Chef & Owner of Haema, an upcoming Asian street-food inspired restaurant in Brooklyn. Previously, she was the Executive Chef at Van Da, a modern Vietnamese restaurant in the East Village with a Michelin Bib nod. We chronicle her culinary journey from academic publishing to professional cooking. We converse on rethinking, reimagining, and repurposing restaurants as community-based third spaces rather than a traditional restaurant model. How do we radically restructure the power dynamics within a restaurant setting to redistribute resources back to the community while offering an equitable work environment for restaurant professionals? 

Eric Huang is a former Sous Chef at Eleven Madison Park who is setting out to create and open his own restaurant, Anzhu. Drawing from his experience in fine-dining kitchens in NYC (Cafe Boulud, Gramercy Tavern), Anzhu will be Eric's take on reintroducing Chinese-American cuisine. We tackle topics such as cultural appropriation in food, the perception of Chinese cuisine in America, the lack of representation in kitchens, and changing the conversation about "cheap" takeout and MSG. We chronicle the humbling full circle of Eric's experience of growing up in the family restaurant to now filling in as its dim sum chef due to COVID-19. 

Ben Hon is the creator behind @StuffBenEats on Instagram. On the regular, you'll see him featured on various lists on food media as a must-follow account for foodies. We speak about the negative connotation around the term "food influencer" and how he uses his platform in hopes to feature and capture more than just a snapshot of a dish. Ben's ties and experience growing up firsthand in a restaurant family has enabled him to connect and cultivate meaningful and lasting relationships with restaurant owners and Chefs around the city. 

Linus Kim is the Chef-Owner of Linus BBQ in Seoul, South Korea. He's an acclaimed pitmaster and runs easily the most accomplished and tastiest American-style barbecue joint in all of Korea. He also happens to call Itaewon, home. Itaewon is a foreign-friendly neighborhood in Korea with a progressive and LGBTQ-friendly nightlife. While Korea has certainly gotten ahead of managing the pandemic; there's another story we hope to tell and capture with Linus in the fold. He shares his respective struggles running a restaurant during the pandemic as well as his outlook on the future of dining in Korea.

Helen is the Chef-Owner of Saigon Social on the Lower East Side in NYC. A concept in the making for well over a year; Helen had initially set an official opening date that coincided with "New York on Pause" -- a city-wide mandate that required all restaurants to indefinitely close in response to COVID-19. We share Helen's journey from a career in real estate in Seattle to pursuing her passion for cooking via culinary school in the city. Her first professional kitchen experience at Restaurant Daniel and the boom of a new-wave of modern Vietnamese restaurants inspired the birth of Saigon Social. 

Jenn’s Thai-American identity paired with an extensive experience within the industry has led to the critical and commercial success of contemporary “pad thai free zone” Thai restaurant, Fish Cheeks.