Bund to Brooklyn

Episode 15: Social movement through food with Soleil Ho

Episode Summary

On Episode 15 we're joined by SF Chronicle's food critic and James Beard award-winning writer Soleil Ho to talk about how their work uses food to explore larger social issues like race, labor, and gender. Specifically, we dive into Soleil’s piece: "I was done talking about cultural appropriation. The rise in anti-Asian violence pulled me back in" and the many issues around cultural appropriation.

Episode Notes

Soleil  joins the pod and shares how they started writing about food as an avenue for social change. (4:39)

How Soleil has observed the conversation around appropriation evolve over the last decade. (9:44)

How do we balance our attention between appropriation and other socioeconomic issues in the AAPI community? (16:02)

Soleil warns against viewing authenticity as binary.  (22:41)

The issue around labor and food highlighted by the pandemic (29:51)

NOTES

Follow Soleil Ho @hooleil

Soleil's article: "I was done talking about cultural appropriation. The rise in anti-Asian violence pulled me back in

Bund to Brooklyn's Guest Food Map

1990's Teachers Workshop

Follow us on IG: @bundtobrooklyn

Follow us on Twitter: @bundtobrooklyn

Questions? Requests? E-mail us @ b2b@1990institute.org

Learn more about the 1990 Institute

Episode Transcription

(Note: this transcript is automatically generated by Descript)

[00:00:00] Hey listeners

[00:00:21] welcome back to bun to Brooklyn. I actually have our executive producer, Sean with me today and we talked to a really awesome guest named sole. But before that, we wanted to share a few life updates between me and Sean. Sean. Congrats. I don't know if you wanna spill the beans. Oh yeah. Sure. Thanks for, uh

[00:00:43] Thanks for preempting it, but yeah, I am going to film school in the fall for screenwriting. So when I got interviewed the Taiwanese American professor was like, are your parents upset at you for doing such. Non pragmatic degree. And I was like, uh, they're actually they're okay about it. And he was like, wow, I'm impressed.

[00:01:09] Did you ask him back if his parents were upset at him for pursuing such a nontraditional? No, but, uh, I will have the chance to in the fall, so yeah, can't wait to, can't wait to just kind of. Focus on my, my art. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Maybe he can be on this podcast. Maybe he can. Maybe he can't. What about you, Lue?

[00:01:33] I think you have a, another big update. I, I do have an update, so I'm going to be a mom. Yay. Uh, this coming July to a baby girl. And so, yeah, we're pretty excited about it, but also it's a, it's gonna be a very big change in our lives and you have been such a trooper. Recording episodes at 9:00 PM to 10 while being very pregnant.

[00:01:57] So we appreciate you a lot. Thank you. I, I appreciate it. I think it's something that you take for granted when you're not pregnant. and you realize that you can just kinda like stay up late at night and do all these different things. But I think your body changes a lot during pregnancy. But not to board the audience.

[00:02:18] It's, it's been a fun journey. And with that, we are actually going to take a short break from the podcast for the summer. And that just means that we won't be updating episodes, uh, on a biweekly basis, but there might be a few special guests that show up. Uh, and if you, you know, special episodes that show up that Sean might include.

[00:02:41] So just be on the lookout for. Yes. Unfortunately, there will be less of Lucia, a little bit more of me. I mean, unless if you want a screaming baby in the background, I mean, that's always delightful. Listen. Um, yeah. We'll, we'll spare you we'll spare you we'll let you focus on your motherhood. all right. I appreciate that.

[00:03:01] So on today's episode, we talked to Sojo. They are a food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where they talk a lot about food and politics and how those two interplay. So it's gonna be a very interesting and nuanced conversation. They talk about towing the line between mass outrage versus. Over cultural appropriation versus, you know, just having flexibility around being able to play around with food and giving it the ability to continue to evolve.

[00:03:34] Yeah. I'm really excited before this episode, because I think we have talked about culture appropriation and the flip side of that, which is authenticity from a number of different angles from our other episodes. Like the hip hop one, the one we talked about with Janet Yang about movies and sole. Has a really interesting perspective of giving space for both this topic, as well as other important social issues that are more directly impactful to the lives of fringe or peripheral people in the Asian American community.

[00:04:09] And so we dive into that a lot more in the episode. So before we move on tole, please follow us on social media. We are at bun Brooklyn. You can email us at A2 B 1990 Institute, do org and make sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcasts. All cool onto hi.

[00:04:39] Filea welcome to bun to Brooklyn. We're so excited to have you on the podcast. We always like to have our guests introduce themselves. So would you mind giving a quick introduction of what you do and who you. Sure. So I'm Sojo, I am the restaurant critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, and I started doing that about three years ago.

[00:05:02] Otherwise I write about pop culture. I write about politics and all kinds of other things though. Primarily these days I just write about food. I also heard that you have your own podcast. Yeah, thank you for following up, cuz I'm so bad at self-promotion the Chronicle has a food podcast, which they is essentially, it's just like play time for me called extra spicy.

[00:05:26] And I get to talk to all kinds of interesting people who have relationships to food in some way, people who make it, people who serve it, people who study it, it's really, really fun. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting that you sort of use food. A almost like Trojan horse for exploring social issues.

[00:05:47] And I'm just kind of curious how you ended up writing about social issues through food. Yeah. Oh gosh. That's a really good question. So I went to college, I went to a liberal arts school and I realized, well, I graduated in 2009, sort of in the midst of like the previous recession. And I found myself without really any interesting job prospects.

[00:06:14] And so I ended up working in restaurants as a cook and. I was working with people who didn't have the same sort of educational privilege that I had, but I still wanted, I mean, obviously like we were friends and wanted to have conversations and like good conversations. Cause we were sort of stuck elbow to elbow for 10 hours at a time.

[00:06:34] And I wanted to talk about politics and about the things that I cared about. But. I think there was a big sort of wall as far as theory went and philosophy and just like the, the sort of lingo that you learn in college. And so I realized like food was a. Potent metaphor. It was right in front of us. And like, it was something that we all thought about all the time.

[00:06:57] And that's when I started to use food as a way to explain race and class and gender stuff, to people who didn't have the fortune of going to college, who maybe didn't graduate from high school or had previously worked in coal mines. Literally it was a way to connect to other people and it was just. I think that was sort of the answer I was looking for as far as bridging the gap that emerged during my time in academia with normal, I guess air quotes, people just like people at large.

[00:07:29] Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I completely relate to that cuz I, I don't think a lot of the listeners know this, but in my past life, I was also a chocolate tier and I started my own chocolate business off on a limb. Like after. Working four years in corporate America doing financial services and decided I'm gonna try my hand at doing something very, very different and like create a product on my own and everything like that.

[00:07:55] And I felt the same way that you did, cuz like all the people in food are, they're so nice and they're very family oriented. Like they, they just feel like they treat you like family, right. And they always feed you and they always make you feel great. But at the same time, It just didn't feel the same as like talking to your college classmates or talking to the people who like you used to work with at a big company.

[00:08:16] And so I think to your point, like, this is a little throwback, uh, a tidbit about me, but I started the whole chocolate business to introduce a lot of like, Eastern flavors to the chocolates. And this was like before Asian desserts became super popular. So I was like one of the first chocolate tier to like incorporate MAA and black Sesame and like Chi and a whole bunch of different flavors into, into food.

[00:08:41] And so I completely resonate with how you feel like food can be a really great bridge. To help, not only educate people, but also introduce them to new concepts or to new things that you're passionate about. And so I think it's super awesome that you're able to do this for a living . Yeah, I think so, too.

[00:09:02] It's such a privilege. I also took a lot of lessons away from second wave feminism and it's just my learnings about it. And particularly the consciousness raising sessions that people would have. Housewives or just people in the neighborhood. And they would sit in a circle and just talk about their concerns.

[00:09:18] And I think this is a, a strategy that a lot of workplace organizers take when it comes to unionization is you just get people to talk about their sort of material world, their experiences in order to kind of. Help, like I said, sort of bridge the gap between their reality and like the sort of theory that informs political work.

[00:09:39] It's very much been a part of my ethos for decades. Now, can I ask, uh, someone who's only been a consumer on that side? How have you seen that dialogue evolve in specifically in the Asian American community? Where I think a lot of Asian Americans, especially online, I think food. One of the most important and popular topics that kind of gathers people around and, and, and helps people and builds consensus, uh, in that sense.

[00:10:09] And of course, in the last few years, we've seen a lot more awareness about social issues that affect Asian Americans given. The rise in violence, the rise in hate. And, uh, I would love to hear your kind of perspective of how the larger collective of consumers have engaged with your, your work in, in the last few years.

[00:10:32] Oh, sure. Yeah. So previously before I was a critic, I, I was, I was, I mean, I was also a critic, but a different kind of critic. I had a podcast called racist sandwich where I talked. Politics and food media. And we also had a very, very vibrant social media presence. And what I observed in my time with racist sandwich was that Asian Americans in particular were really mobile or were really easy to mobilize or like when it came to food and like people getting Asian food wrong, there are big examples.

[00:11:08] Like when New York times business section discovered. Bubble tea, for instance, or I think one of the big food magazines, like Bon app petite did like a hello, hello story. That was like completely bananas. Oh. And then they did this video about how to eat FA and called it like fus the new ramen with a white chef based in Pennsylvania.

[00:11:27] And it was just really interesting. One like how much social media traction, those stories got, but also just how the reactions. we're so rich in like just a myriad of like sort of political ideas. There was a sort of idea that food could be static or should be static. Right. And if you are, if it doesn't look like something that you recognize and it's illegitimate, there's the other idea of appropriation that became huge right in the past.

[00:11:57] I don't know, like five. Five to 10 years. I feel like it's been a while, but I know that in like around 2012, 2013 appropriation and food was starting to sort of emerge as a concept popularly. And I think before that it was mainly focused on people who wore those, like those like native American head dresses to Coachella, you know, that was sort of the thing.

[00:12:18] Exactly. And when it became applied to food, it became like really potent of a metaphor for imperialism and all of that. But what I found was often those critiques by Asian Americans of representation of food, didn't really get super deep . And I think it became this conversation about appropriation as a bad thing in itself.

[00:12:45] Someone making. Some other food. Right. And I think that became a really effective distraction when it came to defanging that concept. I was interviewed many times by white journalists who asked if it was okay for white people to make Curry. Right. And that wasn't the question, actually, it was about power.

[00:13:05] It was about money. It was about the dynamics of like living within a white supremacist country and like being made into a thing. But it was never. That, that was never the focus right. Of these interrogations. And so I had just felt like appropriation just became less and less useful because it was so in itself, appropriated as a conversation.

[00:13:27] I know, I just like went everywhere, but like that it's hard to sum up. No, I, I mean, I it's so nuanced, right? Like it's such a nuanced topic because when you talk about food and you talk about our cultures, I mean, so much of our culture is based on food. Right. And like, as a Chinese person, like the, the thing that you ask somebody, if like they're doing okay, it's like, it's not, how are you?

[00:13:50] It's have you eaten yet? Right. Like the concept. Food is so tied to our identities and the fact that like you have, I mean, I think one of the articles you wrote was saying how the New York time is like white explains bubble tea, right? Like I think there's this like visceral reaction from the community when things that.

[00:14:12] Maybe you used to get made fun of as a kid, eating becomes super popular, right? So like Chave dumplings for example, or like you would bring them to the classroom and then kids would be like, Ew, what are you eating? Like I remember as a kid, like I would bring these like Hawthorne candies. I don't know if you guys have had them.

[00:14:30] Yeah. Yeah. My classmates would be like, oh, what are you eating? And then they would try one. They're like, Ew, it taste like cardboard. But like, I , I don't know. Apparently they're pretty like popular these days, so it's just like, I think there's this visceral and like very emotional reaction from the community.

[00:14:46] That's like, you've rejected our food for such a long time. Like, you've thought about it as like low class, dirty, greasy, whatever. And then now you're trying to like class it up. And now that it's made by a white guy, it feels like it's classier or maybe a little bit better. So I can understand the like anger.

[00:15:06] that can come behind a lot of this, if it's not done authentically or right. But at the same time, on the flip side, it's not like we're saying, dude, like, just cuz you're white, you can't make ramen. Like that doesn't make sense. Right. Right. And I think it's, there's so much there. Right? There's there's class stuff there.

[00:15:24] And there is just, just a lot of money stuff wrapped up in that too. That makes. Significant. And I think it's really easy to forget that. And I think it purposefully, I think, is diminished as a factor in these like kind of mainstream media, like arguments about it because that's a much harder question to answer is like, what is the economic solution to appropriation?

[00:15:48] Well, it's pay people what they're worth, but no one wants to hear that. I also have so many thoughts on this, because as you wrote in, in your article on last year about appropriation, that will link in the comments. I'm just gonna speak for my own journey about it, where I was one of those people who. Got really upset about that.

[00:16:09] Like white woman making a clean Chinese food restaurant in New York and, and how it ties to appropriation in, in movies. I even made a whole podcast that was about celebrating Asian American movies, because I felt like they were, we were so exoticized or diminished in movies. I wanted to promote them, promote what we had.

[00:16:30] And then again, this is just through my personal experience. Digging deeper into that joining 1990 and, and trying to understand other issues that are materially impact people's lives. I would say, like for instance, affordable housing, mental healthcare, the prison complex, like the, these kind of things that get might be, get people killed or, or incarcerated for a long time.

[00:16:50] And I, and I just felt like it's so easy to get upset about something that does have ties to racism, right? Supremacy, colonialism. At the same time, I feel. Maybe there's more of my energy should be invested. In changing more systemic issues. How can someone balance that? Right. I mean, I think it gets kind of dangerous psychically when you start thinking, like, why are we talking about this and not this, you know, you see that all the time on social media, like, oh, you have time to talk about such and such, but like, you forgot about this.

[00:17:25] You can hold all those truths together. You can have multiple concerns, but I do think there's a failure in. in like among Asian American kind of thought leaders to connect the dots, to like make it so that people who are kind of getting. Interested in Asian American politics through food politics are able to go beyond that and think about hunger for instance, and then think about poverty and think about our elders, like collecting hands in the streets.

[00:17:54] Like that stuff is really important too. And I think it is possible. It is possible to make that connection as like a writer or as someone who creates content about this. You just kind of have to spell out the connections and that's sort of why my chagrin, right. Like appropriation is a really interesting thing to start with one because it just really energizes people.

[00:18:16] But also when you are just, when you just explicitly lay out the economic. Reasoning behind, like, why, like what it indicates, right? Like what appropriation indicates you can talk about this other stuff. Right? You can talk about labor and you can talk about poverty and you can talk about hunger. I just think like the next sharks of the world are never gonna do that.

[00:18:35] And , you maybe shouldn't look for thought leadership from them. But I think the more and more we say those things and make those connections, I just have faith that the more they'll disseminate just in general. and like the thing about the thing about the, the sort of appropriation debates just a few years ago, that was so frustrating was like, when you are in white media, right.

[00:19:00] You get so bogged down in that those like distraction questions about whether or not white people can do this or that. Right. Like, I think that's the big, like scam of white racism is like making it up to individual action. And like what's in people's hearts and their intentions. Like, that's not actually.

[00:19:15] In question, and that is the most uninteresting part of this whole concept. Right. But it is the thing that people fixate on because they're looking for absolution and you can find absolution by ponying up. essentially by like, just doing these like big gestures, these like real things, you know, mutual aid.

[00:19:36] And like, I dunno, I'm just ranting, but like there are things concretely, right. That are workable. But the easy question is, can I, or can I not make Curry? And what's the answer like, can, can, can I, can I make Curry? Like, is that I, I guess, like to your point, right? Like a lot of it is, are you capitalizing?

[00:20:04] Some of the things that don't quite feel authentic. Right? Like I think when people really bulk at something, it's when it truly doesn't feel authentic. So like, as I was looking at the articles about this, like, Lucky Lee's restaurant that Sean you talked about, which is like the clean Chinese food restaurant.

[00:20:24] And I was like looking at the photos and I'm like, this doesn't look any different from PF Changs or like any better. I think it was like a mashup of PF Changs and buy Chloe's fruit wise. And then the second piece is I think just like. The visceral reaction of like reading it where they're like, oh, it's like non greasy.

[00:20:46] It's like MSG free and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is just, it's so inauthentic. like, it just feels like if you're gonna be a Reau tour, you should at least try to learn about the culture. Like be a bit more authentic that like there's many regions in China that eat very healthy. Right. So I guess the dichotomy between like how authentic something is versus like, just trying to like.

[00:21:09] Put on a sort of facade and pretend that you're this other thing when like you're completely not. Yeah. I mean, I, that, that, I think, I think so they kind of hinted at the, the use, like the, the buying of authenticity kind of, it kind of reminded me of also again, mention in your article since I live in LA, I thought about sh Bumi.

[00:21:34] Uh, I remember that a message where. The, the white chef of this Japanese restaurant bemoaned, how Japanese chefs weren't making a certain dessert. I think I remember, I think it was a dessert. Yeah, it was a soccer mochi. Oh yeah. Okay. Soccer, mochi. Yeah. In a, in authentic manner. And there's definitely a, a world.

[00:21:55] I definitely see a world where there is a. A a white person or person who is not Japanese, who is so obsessed about Japanese culture, that they might have a more interest in an obscure part of the, the culture that they might know more than most Japanese people. But it just still throws me the wrong way, I guess.

[00:22:11] I don't know. I'm still kind of trying to process that I'm still debating whether I should go to this, this restaurant, I guess. Right. And I don't know. I guess I don't really have a point in that, but just like, I guess there's, it's hard. Not often like a completely black and white line, I guess that I felt where it's this complete villain that is taken a Asian or other cultural, ethnic food and completely changed it.

[00:22:34] I don't know. What do you, what do you think about that? , that's a big, I gave you a, I gave you a lot of garble there, garble shitty, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. So. You know, to sort of jump off your point. I think that there is a tendency and it's, it's very easy to, to think that authentic or inauthentic is a binary.

[00:22:53] And assume that source cultures, especially when you're in diaspora, right? Like that your source culture is a certain way, or, you know, you carry, I mean, you see this with Vietnamese people. just speaking personally, you know, there is this idealized vision of pre 1975 Vietnam reunification, Vietnam, that a lot of the.

[00:23:13] Diaspora has carried with them around the world. You know, like this is true Vietnam. This is not. And like, I think a lot of them have no idea how the country and its culture have changed. And just . I think that is, I think it illustrates, I think a lot of the dynamic around food too, where we carry around that this idea of, oh yeah, we know what Japanese food is, or we know what Peruvian food is, but really there's a lot more experimentation that happens in source cultures.

[00:23:38] There's a lot more, yeah, there's a lot more like back and forth. And yeah, a lot of traditions that might not really exist so much anymore. I think the thing that hits me about the idea of authenticity is how easily it gels with like, Fascism . Um, and one of the sort of key pillars of fascism is an idealized past, right?

[00:24:06] Like an idea of like, this is, this was culture at its peak, and we need to return to that culture. Um, you see this with like white supremacists idealization of colonial America, or like Greek or Roman sort of society, or like enlightenment society and a sort of European kind of. European cultures being the pinnacle before the world became globalized and Deb botched by yeah.

[00:24:30] Islam and et cetera. So we have to be careful, uh, when we talk about it, because you know, we in general and I'm including a sort of rhetorical, we here, but can be very easy for us to participate in that freezing of culture too. When we talk about food, I, I think. Most recently of an example of a grocery store in San Francisco, that's run by Korean Americans and, you know, they stock some really interesting stuff like goji made of strawberries and chickpea miso, really interesting for events that are made locally and.

[00:25:02] I remember once posting a picture of their Kim B, which was very farmer's markety and had a lot of like vegetables in it and not too much rice and people on the internet got so inflamed over it. I, I became the object of Asian American food rage, which was really interesting, like conceptually for me. Um, and you know, people began digging on the.

[00:25:23] On the grocery stores like online listings and criticizing it for carrying like these sort of gentrified, I guess, items. What do you do with that? I thought that was really interesting. Like how authenticity was wielded sort of as a very dull weapon against people who were trying to bring something new to the scene.

[00:25:44] And privileging Asian American vendors and farmers and doing everything right. It just didn't look like something your like AMA would get into. So yeah, I, I'm not saying right. Obviously there's a class difference too, in what they were doing and the prices they were charging. But I do think Asian Americans definitely.

[00:26:05] I. When you use authentic, right? You're also sort of erasing that there are class differences in Asia, in Asian America, that there are bougie people and working class people. And oftentimes, like if you really care about working class, people like talk about them, talk about their concerns. I doubt they care whether or not like someone's selling strawberry, go to jug somewhere, you know?

[00:26:30] So, like, I don't think people on the internet are as sophisticated to like, think about that. I think like they just have this like gut reaction and constantly, I'm always thinking about like cancel culture and the fake outrage and like what's happening online. It's just so easy to hide behind a screen and comment on something or like correct somebody and feel a bit like better about yourself because you've corrected somebody and you think you're doing the.

[00:26:54] Thing, but like, I think what we've uncovered with this conversation is just, it's so highly nuanced. And to your point, like food and culture is constantly evolving, right? Like you look at these different. Countries where food continuously evolves. Like I think about Shanghai, which is like my hometown and like the food there is just constantly evolving with foreign influences and French influences.

[00:27:20] And like at a certain point in Shanghai history, there were like seven different countries that occupied Shanghai high. Right. And so, because there's this, this like, Interplay between different cultures, like it's gonna mix. Right. And I think where America, at least we were fed this ideal of America as this melting pot, right.

[00:27:44] Where cultures come together and like, We share in a lot of different types of cultures and things. And we incorporate that into our own culture that like, it feels like there needs to also be room to your point to grow and explore different things without, uh, with an open mind. And I like recall how. I think in like, is it like the early two thousands or like mid two thousands where like Asian fusion was like the biggest deal or the biggest thing, like everybody was doing Asian fusion in some sort of way shape or form.

[00:28:20] Right? Like, and part of me is like, that's one way of getting your culture noticed and getting like one way of helping people at least take a step towards something that they might not be as familiar with. And so. You know, I kind of wanna also then steer this conversation around like, okay, well, outside of cultural appropriation, cuz I think cultural appropriation is like a, a, a simpler concept to sort of be angry about but like what else in food?

[00:28:53] It is like reflected in like today's society. Right. And I'm specifically thinking like there was this like moment during COVID when this designer for Lululemon decided it was a good idea to create this like visual t-shirt that had a takeout box and a bat in that takeout box and like, I forget what the caption said, but that sparked so much outrage.

[00:29:26] Right. But like, I guess, like, it'd be kind of interesting to hear from you of how like dialogue can change from just like black and white. Like our cultural appropriation is bad, or these people are capitalizing on things that belong to this different culture to like, I just like commentary on what's currently happening and like the anti-Asian sentiment and violence that's happening towards Asian Americans today.

[00:29:51] Mm. Oh, that's a big question. I think one of the really big ones that, or big issues that has come out of the pandemic so far has been about labor and food, the labor of the people working in restaurants and kind of bearing the brunt of C frontline stuff and the people who work as gig workers for these delivery companies.

[00:30:14] I think it's very much. These people are vulnerable. Right? And I think it includes a lot of Asian American people, a lot of undocumented immigrants too, who are uniquely vulnerable to being exploited by these gig companies and by restaurants, and also being really brutalized by customers too, in, in both fronts.

[00:30:32] And, you know, I think we need to keep talking about that, about those conditions, about the, the sort of baseline customer. Server dynamic that just rules American restaurant culture. And, you know, I think there are a lot of really interesting intersections there for Asian Americans to consider cuz Asian American restaurants are a huge part of American culture too.

[00:30:56] And yeah, I just, you know, I think that's a little bit more general than specifically things that, that uniquely hit Asian Americans. But I do think that there's, there's a lot of people in the center of that ven diagram. Other than reading your writing. What other resources would you recommend? Someone that's interested in these topics?

[00:31:15] Follow man. It used to be the counter, but they got shut down like in the past month by their publisher, unfortunately. Oh, I, I think, oh gosh. I think grub street, there are reporters at grub street, which is a subsidiary or sorry, a vertical of New York magazine that do a really great job of covering labor in restaurants and the gig economy.

[00:31:40] And I have to say Eater's done a pretty good job. They could do more, but we all could do more. I think. Yeah. I think generally the, the like digital first publications have been doing. Really great work as far as getting to the labor question, legacy media, not so much. So yeah, I think we're, we're still kind of getting there as far as really hammering in the importance of, of that conversation.

[00:32:11] I wish I had better news. Sorry. No, I mean, you're, you're out there. Thank you for giving your time to talk to us about the topic. I've certainly learned a lot and I hope our listeners do as well. yeah. And so, Le um, I kind of wanted to ask, like, if somebody wanted to follow, follow you or like read more about your articles, et cetera, like where did they find you?

[00:32:37] I am always writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. SF chronicle.com. Otherwise you can. Find me sporadically tweeting out stories from my Twitter page. The handle is H O O L E I L. Yeah. That's basically it. All right. So follow you on Twitter and read your articles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that's it? Well, that sounds great.

[00:33:03] Well, so like, we usually close out with our one last question, which I'm actually really excited to hear your answer for. We ask our guests for their favorite restaurants and their, and their local vicinity, and we try to pin it on a Google map. So is there anything on your radar that you feel. Is worth a shout out.

[00:33:23] Oh gosh. I would have to say lion dance cafe, which is a Singaporean Italian vegan restaurant in Oakland. Wow. You just threw out a bunch of buzzwords there yeah, no, they do an incredible, like, gosh, just like array of, of dishes that are just at least come from like a country that just doesn't exist. You know, it's like so nostalgic and soothing and delicious.

[00:33:50] Yeah. Big. Sounds amazing. We'll include the link in the show notes. Also, Liz, it was so nice having you on the podcast. Thank you for sharing all your insights. Very excited to keep reading your articles. I think to your point about nuance and towing the line between like, How we view not just cultural appropriation, but how we can through the lens of food view.

[00:34:16] A lot of societal issues is super interesting and super important. So thank you for being a guest on our show. Thanks for having me.