finding your new self in old places

Kimberly is 30, and works as a Business Designer. She is currently in LA quarantining with her boyfriend.

How has quarantine changed your relationship with food?

I work for an R&D studio inside of Airbnb and like many tech-workers, all of my meals were taken care of for me, so I didn’t usually grocery shop. Now everything I eat is created by me.

I’m also cooking with my partner, which is a totally new experience. He doesn’t really cook, so I’m showing him dishes I’m really into. The other night we made Lo Bak Go (Chinese radish cake). Whenever we get it at dim sum, he laughs at me because I complain about how it’s made, and now I get to make it the way that I love to eat it. Quarantine has definitely exposed the raw preferences I have around eating.

What kind of preferences?

I really like a roasty edge -laughs-. I really like that quality in food. It enhances so many things when you get that nice sear.

Love a roasty edge! What inspires you in the kitchen?

Well, my dad is white and my mom is Chinese. Being from a mixed household, you kind of learn to manage two distinct communities. I have these flavors that I have grown up with that are from disparate cultural references. My mom was born in the Philippines and grew up on Okinawa, Japan. When I was young, she would make Chicken Adobo or Japanese curry. 

I have a lot of fun experimenting with different flavors and flavor profiles. The things that are really easy to come back to are the dishes my mom cooked, and the familiarity of that feels good. 

What are those dishes that are easy to come back to?

Lo Bak Go. My grandmother is still alive but her physical capabilities are on the decline. The last time we made it together, we were on Okinawa. She’s 91, so she sat in the kitchen with me and made sure that I was doing everything correctly. 

It’s one of those dishes that is very involved. We had gotten this enormous daikon radish which you have to grate down. It’s something I associate with having a lot of leisure time since it takes a while to make.

Let’s talk about the involved process of making Lo Bak Go. I’ve been thinking about this idea that everything in life is art. When you take something monotonous, time-consuming, or otherwise hard and look at it in a new way - as a source of joy, as a journey, it can turn into something very fulfilling. Does that resonate with you?

Absolutely. Something that I love, which I think is part of this whole arc of life as art and self-nourishment, is the grocery shop. I’m obsessed with it. It's the first step. It’s the hype step. It’s something I’ve been talking about as “Activated Boredom”.

Is there a country that you love especially for its cuisine?

I think the one I was surprised to truly fall in love with, was the food in Lebanon. I stayed in Beirut, and at a house on the coast with my classmate who is Lebanese. The mezze there is incredible. There are quite a few Lebanese/Armenian restaurants in LA. The Kardashians always go to this one called Carousel, which I love. They have this thing where you pay $25 per person and they bring out every mezze, it’s a crazy amount of food but you get to try every dish.

Do you have a favorite restaurant from when you lived in New York?

The restaurant I went to a lot was Dimes since I lived in the Lower East Side. I also went to an Italian deli called Milano Market near Columbia University. It was my favorite place to get a salad. It is the equivalent of a hoagie shop except you walk out with a salad that weighs 3 pounds.

What's your most indulgent pleasure?

Any kind of melted cheese moment. I went to Mexico a couple of weeks ago and we had queso fundido. It was glorious.

Last question, who, living or deceased, would you want to sit down for a meal with?

I want to say Bernie Sanders. He seems so food agnostic. 

Where would you go with him?

I would want to go somewhere really spicy and flamboyant. Like, Miss Lily’s for Caribbean food in Alphabet City. We’d pretend it’s his birthday and they would play that Rihanna song and bring out a cake for him.

This interview has been edited and condensed.