It was really wild to go back and watch this episode 14 years later. I haven’t seen it since the year it came out and the most striking aspect to me were the issues that mattered to us as young people at that time.
While Asian immigrants had been cooking food in America for generations, this was the beginning of authentic Asian cuisine colliding with the New American Dining Scene and there was a lot of anxiety and perhaps frustration regarding the extra work we had to do explaining every thing that felt intuitive and basic to us.
There were some Asian chefs that chose not to do the work and cooked dishes that were self explanatory, not challenging, and at times pandering, but I really liked how the intention of the Rice Paper Scissors crew was to communicate their identity as opposed to becoming star chefs.
This was also the beginning of food pop-up culture and its cool to see how this pop-up began on sidewalks with plastic stools reminiscent of Asian Night Markets or street vendors. …
