806: Lydia Pang Argues “Stinky” Is a Great Thing

22:14Matt Rodbard:Lydia Peng, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to have you on the show today. I enjoyed reading your book and I think we have a lot of fun things to discuss. And before we get into any of that, you know, this book is so much about food and memory. And I'm wondering if you would share an early food memory from growing up that you think somehow maybe encapsulates the point of view that you're bringing to this book and to your work. Gosh, I suppose the book really does trace my kind of childhood eats and their significance. but I would say if there was like a singular one that kind of anchors the book and my experience it would probably be char su which is like Cantonese roast pork honey roast pork that my gung gung which is my Chinese grandfather used to baste and cook fresh for us it's like such an ugly dish but it smells so sweet and is so like delicious and jerky like but I suppose the polarizing texture and appearance is what I love about it it kind of looks unassuming and ugly but is like really pungent in flavor and kind of symbolizes a lot of what I unpack in the book around being underestimated, things not being as they seem, but also kind of the beauty and the ugly.

23:29Matt Rodbard:Yeah, it's interesting. I don't think I've read a food book that uses the words like ugly, stinky, like as much as this book does. And I think a really kind of singular way. And I'm curious if you felt like you always have had this interest in maybe these kinds of darker, more unexpected sides of things, or if that's something that maybe developed later on? No, do you know, I've always had that sort of gothic disposition where I love things that feel jarring or highly contrasting or incongruous. Like I was, you know, an emo growing up. I was obsessed with MySpace and obsessed with alternative culture.

24:06And I've just always found things that are kind of like grotesque or abject or jarring, really fascinating. And I think because I am quite a visual creative, I think I write that way, you know, to try and evoke certain senses. That's just like naturally how I write and I'm told how I speak. And so, yeah, I've always just been interested in kind of like sticky, smelly, stinky, spitty descriptors. I think that's just something that I have been drawn to in my creative work in my career. It was just so lovely to just like bask in all of those descriptions and relive all those food memories and like really enjoy being descriptive about food in a way that kind of felt like it could belong in like a murder mystery.

24:53Matt Rodbard:I love a murder mystery food description for a book that's really fun and I loved reading about your kind of younger goth kid self. I feel very tenderly towards like baby goths and things like that. I'm curious if there was a piece of music or a culture that you feel like kind of set you on your baby goth journey. I'm sure there were many things. Oh my God, of course. I mean, so I grew up in like very rural, misty gray Wales in the UK. You know, there's not a ton of people, there's not a ton of culture, there's not a ton of diversity. And so, you know, I grew up and remember the internet happening and was so excited by like dial up and, you know, the creation of the self and brand on MySpace.

25:37And so really those platforms and those subcultures and those niche little kind of corners of the internet were my upbringing creatively, really. And MySpace was just such an amazing tool to like, figure out who you are, like, what color am I? What song am I when people load on my page? That self curation, which is just, I suppose, how we all live now. I was the beginning, you know, I was there at the beginning of that. And it was so potent and tender and amazing for someone that lived in the middle of nowhere to suddenly be able to reach the world and to design who I wanted to be online.

26:11Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think that is such a special kind of moment in the development of the internet. And of course, the development of the South in regards to youth culture. And, you know, you're writing this book coming out of this very prolific career as a creative director. I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about like what being a creative director even means to you and kind of how that was a tool for you in in your work and in kind of your creative thought yeah I mean for sure to be honest like my career is like such a patchwork of experiences like I'm not excellent at anything I'm like kind of a bit good at everything and really opinionated about everything and I think being a creative director you know that I mean that title has actually really lost so much meaning.

26:54I'm kind of cringing explaining it right now. And so, but you know, 10, 15 years ago when I was kind of coming up in the industry, I wanted a kind of like a title that encapsulated the fact that I was a good creative leader, that I was able to get people that were way more talented than me behind a singular vision and deliver that as a force, as a team. And so for me, a creative director is less of a craft expert. They're more of a generalist. They have vision, they're decisive, and they're able to kind of rouse all of the other people that are significantly more talented than them in their craft behind that singular vision so that everyone is kind of creating and manifesting and birthing these beautiful artifacts into the world that are meaningful and kind of understood across every touchpoint.

27:40I think a creative director needs to understand holistically how to pull a world together. And so I like to think of myself now, I'm obviously an author and a writer and a founder of a creative company. And so my day-to-day is actually a lot of problem solving, creative business solutions. But I think that actually a creative director is exactly that, somebody that's able to get everyone behind a vision and build law, build a world that can be felt.

28:07Matt Rodbard:I like the idea of building law. And I feel like that comes across in this book, Eat Bitter, which began as a zine. can you tell me about like what does that term eat bitter mean and why was it something that you kind of began engaging and exploring with yeah for sure so eat bitter is actually a Chinese idiom which means to endure pain before tasting a sweetness and it's the kind of thing that like a you know your Chinese auntie would kind of spit at you in disdain at your impatience or your short-sightedness like it's kind of like a generational um lesson and so it's it's the sort of thing that you kind of just always ambiently hear in the house, you know it, you know, and for me, it was just kind of like, oh, toughen up, endure, be strong, be a leader.

28:53Those were all kind of like lessons that were sort of circling my childhood and my adulthood. And, but what was interesting was as I kind of designed this life for myself through this lens of being strong and eating my bitter and being kind of like the poster girl for resilience, which I suppose is its core lesson, I kind of built myself into this persona who I like just really didn't like. I was incredibly like decisive and successful and strong, but I wasn't allowing any space for nuance or softness or surrender. And so I decided to use Eat Bitter as a kind of vessel to explore sweetness, bitterness, surrender, liminality, and modern identity.

29:35And so I kind of used, you know, my experiences as a way to unpack a new version for what Eat Bitter could mean. And therein lies the book. Originally, I was just kind of unpacking what resilience meant through food, which was actually really one note because it's like, okay, toughen up, cool, like we got it. Like every book, especially every self-help book kind of just gives you another version of that in a different wig. But I think what's interesting about Eat Bitter and the book I've written is it is also encouraging a much more iterative state to resilience and strength. one that's, you know, more ugly about an undoing.

30:10And as I mentioned at the beginning, kind of encouraging you to be messy and gross and in that finding a truer strength.

30:18Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think it is such a, it seems to be such a universal kind of phrase that people across the Chinese diaspora hear and internalize. And I think like that makes it really ripe to be explored. And I always love talking about process. I'm curious how the zine kind of laid the foundation for the book? Obviously, they're really different formats in terms of how much text is in it and length. But like, what were the kind of early ideas in the zine that made you kind of want to expand on it further in book form? So I didn't, I didn't want to expand on it at all. I'm so like, okay, do a thing. That felt good.

30:55I'm happy with it. It's dead. Move on. And I felt really good about the zine. Like I worked on it for a year, which was a personal project of mine. You know, I'd always been so results-driven and I was in a very high-pressure commercial creative role at a massive brand. And so my day-to-day was about being responsible and accountable and driving results. And so Eat Bit of the Zine was about none of that. It was about just exploring some creativity on the weekend. Low stakes. I'll do some illustration. Oh, I'll take some photos. Oh, I'll do some graphic design. Oh, I'll make a mood board. Oh, I didn't like it.

31:29Let's push it a month. It was gorgeous, indulgent side hustle that had zero KPIs or expectations on it. And so once my husband and I finished designing it and, you know, took it to print, we had such a gorgeous day luxuriating in all the options for the, you know, the paper and the weight of it. Like it really was just about fun. And it was pure in that sense, which I think is why it was successful in the traditional sense in that people wanted it and bought it because it was just the most, I don't know, I suppose the purest expression of my creativity at the time. And it was for no one and just for my family.

32:06I wanted my family to find it cool. And I wanted it to be a time capsule of our recipes. But what was fascinating about the year that I created it in 2020, obviously, as that year unfolded and the horrors that ensued, the zine kind of clarified in meaning and significance and kind of became me sort of elbowing space for my Chinese identity in a year that was, you know, very hard and very traumatic, especially in the wake of like, you know, the social justice movement, George Floyd, like Asian hate, like it was a tough time. And suddenly this silly little zine that was for my family felt like me taking up space with my smelly mixed race identity in the middle of Portland, in the middle of the eye of the storm as things were playing out.

32:49And so, yeah, it's an interesting project that's dear to my heart because it was just pure creativity.

32:55Matt Rodbard:Yeah I think that's often how you find an idea that resonates right is that it's not being made to be marketable but just because the idea is so resonant with you and then I think a theme in that zine which you know I had the pleasure of being able to read because my girlfriend had bought it back in 2020 and it was in my home while I was reading your book and carried through in the book as well as this kind of idea of being haka and like what specifically the haka culture and community means and i'm wondering if you could maybe explain that to someone who's listening who doesn't necessarily know a lot about haka people yeah so what's amazing about the haka identity like we were my ancestors were you know pushed through like several forced migrations onto kind of like the scraps of the land that were left and so it's very much a culture and a language and a identity and a cuisine that's built on resilience, nomadic spirit, innovation, like trying to figure out how to survive and thrive with the scraps of the land being kind of, you know, labeled misfits and kind of, in many ways, the identity of resilience inside Hakkar people is beautifully captured in a metaphor which Hakkar people refer to a lot, the dandelion.

34:10So the dandelion is kind this like weed unassuming um but what's beautiful about it is it will grow anywhere like it the seed will drop and it will figure it out like it doesn't matter if it's the crack in a rock in the middle of nowhere like the dandelion will figure it out and that sort of poetic visual is very hacker is something that hacker people are really proud of the fact that we can figure it out um and actually hacker people were incredibly progressive in terms of things like not asking the you know the women to like foot bind which was very very popular in china um but actually seeing people less as gender, but by like ability, like how, how can you contribute to the clan and make sure that we're all moving as one.

34:48And so, I don't know, as I learned more about my Hakkar ancestors, our language and like our history of displacement, I just felt like this like crazy pull towards, you know, literally every facet of their life from the way that they were like pickling and foraging and fermenting, which is something that I really love to do. My husband and I, it's like a big part of our you know our hobbies um to thinking about like you know progressive gender ideals or thinking about the fact that Hakkar people have this nomadic spirit where home is where they cook where they eat where they talk and I've you know moved across the world constantly my whole life and especially in my adult life and so I suppose discovering and deepening my understanding of my Hakkar ancestors really helped me connect to my present-day identity.

35:34And to be clear, growing up, it was not really something I like engaged with, or like, frankly, cared about, to be honest, like, my dad would be like, Oh, we're haka, it's different. Like, we don't speak Cantonese at home, we speak haka. Oh, we that's a Cantonese dish. This is a haka dish. And I was a bit like, okay, you all seem to think that's really important, but I don't fully get what that is, or why it matters to me. And it's so beautiful now that I've, you know, researched haka writers and haka books, of which there are not many. It's been really fun to kind of discover the writing that's out there and research about my ancestors.

36:08And I feel very close to that part of my identity now.

36:11Matt Rodbard:Yeah, it does seem like such a powerful kind of way of self-orientation and connection. And maybe on the food side, is there a haka dish that you think kind of really encapsulates this culture or spirit? You know what? I love this anecdote. So I read this in a food history book that apparently Hakkar people missed dumplings so much, but they didn't have the ingredients to make them. And so they made a kind of dumpling structure, like a format where they stuffed tofu with meat to kind of mimic the mouthfeel of a dumpling. And it is, I would argue, much more delicious. And so it's kind of interesting that the way that the creative innovation was born out of struggle and made something really like unique and yeah, delicious.

36:55So I think that very much encapsulates the haka spirit, that example. To be honest, when my dad makes wobbly like ha-ka pork, I feel like it's something changes in my body. Like I feel like my body blush when I eat it. Like it's so fatty and rich and pungent with tangerine peel and ugly and brown. And there's just something about it. It's just like so gorgeously gross. Like it's really smelly and stinky and thick and ugly. And I think the fact that it is all of those things and yet utterly delicious, just for me, completely embodies that identity. I just love that about it. It's like anti-Instagram food.

37:34Matt Rodbard:I love the way that this book is kind of structured. Every chapter is about a dish that's kind of impacted your life. And then it's connecting to this concept of eating bitter in some kind of way. And I'm curious when you sat down to write the book, if you started by coming up with the foods or if you kind of were doing more memoir work. and then brought in the food later? How did you kind of tackle that approach? Yeah, it was actually not as organized as I would like. I'm quite a sort of formulaic, strategic person. But interestingly, writing Eat Bitter was quite chaotic and messy. I spent many, many, many years iterating on the proposal for Eat Bitter.

38:15And so I really refined that structure and decided that each chapter would have a recipe that would be both the conceptual vessel for the story and the lesson, and then would also give me a different kind of note to explore visually and tonally. So the proposal took many, many, many, 14 versions, in fact, to get right. And then once I got the book deal, I just followed it, kind of like the blueprint. And actually writing it was a gorgeous experience. I sat and I followed the plan. But before that, yeah, it was a little chaotic, which maybe is the right way to create anyway, like sort of divergent, feral chaos, and then like, okay, now let's get on with it.

39:00So yeah, it's interesting because those recipes do the job of mapping the memoir arc, but they also allowed me to kind of explore different facets of Eat Bitter as well. But I look at them now and And I'm like, oh, that's funny that I wrote so much about a soggy salad.

39:19Matt Rodbard:Yeah. For the recipes themselves, how did you go about kind of chasing down the correct ratios from your family or like developing them yourself? Was it an organized process or was it kind of more involved? So I actually worked with my dad on them. He is an amazing like chef and food thinker and writer and creative in his own right. And I worked with him on them. and I'd kind of done it a little in the zine. So I knew like vaguely what they would be. And then the others I just kind of riffed on. Do you know what was really nice was to write recipes like from a guttural place versus a place of accuracy.

39:56And I say in the book, you know, cook these recipes if you like, but honestly, I don't really need you to. I would rather you go and find your own foods that embody this lesson for you. And so, you know, they're delicious and they're important to me, but I don't really need people to go and cook them or eat them, if that makes sense. It's kind of a strange thing to put recipes in a book and then not ask people to cook them.

40:19Matt Rodbard:If you're not asking people to cook them, then like what kind of storytelling work do you think the recipe is providing? I mean, I think it's interesting, like on the recipes where, for example, on bleeding banana bread where I talk about, you know, miscarriage and loss and fertility and the maternal omnipresence and my relationship with my mother, like that chapter is very like tender and it's about the characters and the feeling. It's not about accuracy at all. And so the recipe is written with that sort of tenderness and iterative nature in mind. You know, it's like four bananas or more, you know, three answers or less, like it's kind of like the tone of the chapter and the lesson is like imbued in the recipe writing style, which I think is kind of interesting as a construct.

41:11And I did the same on wontons. So like hot mess wontons about burnout. And I kind of structure the chapter with like, okay, there's methodical preparation of the filling, which is furious and necessary and, you know, needs to be exact. And then there's this kind of humble feeling, surrender in the creation of the literal parcel, which should feel like slow and simple. And so, I don't know, I suppose I play with pace and the lesson in the way I literally write the recipe.

41:42Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think that definitely comes across. And then the moments where you do choose to be exacting instead of maybe more amorphous like for the wontons I remember reading this recipe and you're talking about like hand cutting all of the meat to break it down so you have different texture and I you know have made a fair amount of dumplings in my day but I always use ground meat like the idea of like taking the time to cut the meat unevenly to have those different textures like I think you were really kind of stressing the texture and what that kind of does for the dish. I'm so glad that landed.

42:16That makes me really happy.

42:19Matt Rodbard:So you think it's worth the effort to be hand cutting the meat? 100%. But it's not even about whether it's worth it or not, in many ways. Like, you know, of course, it makes for a more diverse mouthfeel. And it makes it more unique. And you get different levels of bite or tenderness or chew. And it's the variant that makes it, you know, a beautiful and meaningful and unique thing to eat. But I think more importantly, It's about enduring the process of hand chopping the meat because eating dumplings takes like two seconds. But like making them should take a day because it's about who you make them with, why and what that is doing for you.

42:55It's a meditative process that shouldn't be rushed. And so it's like if you're going to make them, make them, you know.

43:03Matt Rodbard:Totally. I think that is such a nice kind of grounding point for the recipe as well. And some of these chapters you're talking about the way the food connects to these, you know, very personal kind of experiences, whether it's burnout or trying to become a family and relationships, all of these things. I'm always kind of drawn to these kinds of kind of food memoir and also kind of aware of how much work it takes to be kind of dredging up those memories and conveying them accurately. Did you keep journals? How did you kind of look back on these periods and tell them from an honest point of view?

43:36Yeah, what was very interesting for me during this process was how easily those quite raw and vivid memories kind of poured out of me. I was shocked by it. And I found writing it actually very cathartic, like this just huge purge. urge. It was like I sat in front of my computer screen and just screamed at the page and then looked and there was the memory. And so it was very primal and like not at all methodical. I don't keep a journal. I do have a very good memory and I am able to recall scenes very viscerally because I think of my relationship to the senses. That I think was useful for me to leverage.

44:22But honestly, I look back now and, you know, I had to read it out for my audio book, which was incredibly confronting experience. And I'm proud of the immediacy of the writing. It's not labored, it's not methodical, it's quite like spicy and unedited. And there's a speed and a unadulterated, unapologetic pace to it, which I'm actually proud of now, because I recalled those memories hot in the moment. And I think that the book is better for it. It's better for that raw energy. I didn't go back and kind of like neaten up any edges. I just spilled my guts. And that's what it is. Yeah, I think doing the audio book, sometimes you write things and then you read

45:05Matt Rodbard:them out loud and they feel so differently. They land in such a different way. I'm curious if maybe the audio book or even just kind of reading the book back, like, do you feel like you have a new perspective on your life or at least the life events that you're writing about in the book, having gone through this process? I really do. It's actually been a huge journey in terms of self-compassion. I'm very hard on myself. I like everything to be perfect. I like to be exceptional. I want to be an undeniable cultural force. That is something I think about every day. And I have a big ego as a creative.

45:38I want to be undeniable. And it's something I think about. this book however has been I thought this book would just be like great I'm going to do great get a bit of money get a bit of press people will love the book awesome I can add author to my bio check but actually the opposite happened this book has been such a softening for me I feel way less pressure to be or do anything I just feel like so grateful that I have had this moment to reflect and look at her, like look at my past self with way more compassion and like kindness, because I'm such a person that's like, cool, that was good today.

46:14Like what's tomorrow? What's next year? What are my goals? And I kind of miss, my husband often says to me that I miss the point, like I miss the day because I'm so focused on the next day and the next year. And so it's been, I mean, ironically and very meta, a big lesson for me writing this book. It's been been very confronting and really quite a special thing for me because I look at her, the person who wrote it only a year ago, and I think, my God, you're brave and you worked so hard. Like I wrote this book pregnant. I had seven months to write it and I diligently woke up every morning at 6am and wrote for a few hours before running my company.

46:53And, you know, I say all that because that's not right. Like that's, that's a hard, that's a big ask. And I don't think I would ask out of myself now. Yeah, I was thinking about, you know, I'm not a mother myself, but you're

47:06Matt Rodbard:writing about family and tradition and passing things on and this desire you have to have a family. And then, you know, I'm doing my research, I go on your Instagram, I see that you have achieved that. And I'm curious if you feel like maybe reflecting on how you grew up or the traditions that were passed down to you made you feel differently about parenting and kind of taking that role on. Yeah, my gosh. I mean, I've just spent the last couple of years sitting with my parents from my childhood in my mind's eye. And I've sat here at this desk, this very desk, and thought about them as fallible beings.

47:40And it was really wonderful. I feel closer to them because of this process and grateful that they let me sort of write my version of the truth. And now that I'm a merm, I, it is, it is such a like, you know, transformative and revealing experience. Um, I've never felt more vulnerable and yet more clear about who I am. So it's very strange experience that, um, I've always been like very confident and clear about who I am. And right now I feel like I'm quite liminal. I'm quite floaty and I'm trying really hard to stay with that and not sort of, um, chase the definition. I'm trying to just allow myself to be a little bit floaty which isn't something I usually do so yeah I'm figuring it out right now honestly like even just this is a silly anecdote but for something like this this conversation with you I would have spent all day feeling nervous I would have read through as many notes as I could I would have prepped loads of answers but I didn't do that I was just looking forward to having a conversation with you and seeing what came out of my mouth and I feel like I've got more trust in myself now.

48:49And I think that's because I'm now a mom. I'm kind of like, you got this, like you, you endured and you faced something that was like the hardest thing you've ever done, which was trying to have a family. And now I just feel like I trust myself a lot more. I've got more confidence. That makes sense.

49:04Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. And, you know, as the person having the conversation with you, I think you've already done the work of writing this book and engaging with yourself and what you're trying to say. And, you know, it's in your head, you have access to it. So I'm happy that we can have a more kind of honest conversation as opposed to trying to get every talking point across kind of thing. Right. I'm just very much meeting myself where I'm at right now. In terms of thinking about where you're at in this moment, I'm curious about the food that you've been cooking, the food that you've been eating.

49:35Did writing this book kind of bring these recipes up to the forefront of your mind?

49:40Matt Rodbard:What kinds of what kinds of foods are you kind of cooking and craving? Yeah, it's interesting because I've actually not been cooking the food from the book. I think it's because I'm yearning to create my own versions because it's, you know, the skeleton, it's a memoir. These recipes are anchored in my past. And so I think because of the transformation I've just gone through with my company, with writing a book, with having a baby, I'm yearning to figure out my next recipes. And so things are a lot more explorative right now in my kitchen with my husband like we're figuring out what my daughter will eat we're figuring out um what we can grow in the garden and what we can cook and it's like kind of gorgeous chaos so yeah I'm in a very different era with food right now um as I think about what the recipes will be for my daughter and how they will then shape her equivalent you know version of her memoir so it's funny that responsibility I now feel like I hold you know Yeah, you have to be like passing down good, good culinary heirlooms.

50:42Yeah, right. Exactly. And I want to make sure she knows that she's like, haka, but then, you know, we live in Wales and I want to make sure she, she knows that it's just, it's funny the way you feel all this responsibility to like stuff your kids like an olive with all of these experiences. And like, she's literally 10 months and is like, please just give me a potato. Right.

51:00Matt Rodbard:Yeah, we've talked a lot about haka food, but we haven't talked that much about Welsh food, how would you kind of describe, are there any dishes or flavor profiles or techniques that you think are really central? Well, what's kind of interesting is, like, you wouldn't expect this, but actually Welsh cuisine and haqqa cuisine and culture is not dissimilar. The Welsh culture is kind of, like, forgotten, you know, a little bit displaced, a little bit underestimated. And, you know, therefore, the Welsh identity and culture and therefore cuisine is also very humble, make do, homely. And so I find it funny those parallels actually.

51:36But if I had to think about a Welsh dish that feels homely, it would probably be more about produce. So the produce in Wales is beautiful because of course all it does is rain here. So it's an amazing place to grow food. My husband grows all our food. It's amazing. And then there's beautiful local produce in terms of local farms. And I think about but like lamb, because lamb is massive in Wales, like kind of like roast lamb. I feel like that feels like something that feels very distinct to Wales. That profile of like a heavy meat in like a, you know, a creamy gravy with like potatoes and veg, like things that feel really hearty and kind of fundamental.

52:17So yeah, I would say in Wales, it all tethers back to produce and provenance.

52:23Matt Rodbard:So the New Yorker in me is very jealous of your garden right now. do you have anything special growing in it? Oh, we actually have an abundance, actually I'm not a fan, but we have a huge abundance of chard, which I'm not a massive fan of, but they're so beautiful. They're like this crazy pink stem. They're amazing to look at, but I'm not a massive fan. And then we have a lot of rocket, which is arugula. And we always have a lot of zucchini, courgette. But actually what's really beautiful right now is we have tons of raspberry canes, which is so nice to take my daughter out to go and get the raspberries off them we have so many and I feel like raspberries are such a fancy fruit to me I feel like growing up they were like such a treat because they were expensive and now I mean they're still expensive but so to me to have them in abundance in my garden to pick every morning just feels like the ultimate luxury I love that I have a fixation where I can only eat raspberries I think I did this as a child probably by you know putting them onto my fingers like little hats and then nibbling them off that way I love that it's funny how the things that you do when you're small kind of become the way that they should be done that's so true it's because we're so pure yeah I need to be channeling more of that purity as an adult maybe me too so before we go into our rapid fire to close I wanted to ask you about how you've been kind of celebrating the book and bringing it to life with events just knowing that you you know are a creative director and that you probably like to expand upon things in many different ways.

53:51Matt Rodbard:Have you done any kind of book events or conversations that have been interesting to you? Yeah, I really enjoyed the kind of marketing and kind of like book tour process because I'm a marketer and I love building worlds. As I said, it was like, you know, something that I was super invested in. I wasn't interested in doing like the traditional sort of publishing marketing rollout. And my publisher was incredible, like so open minded and like unique and creative. And we really partnered really well in it. So we did a ton. Like, like I said, I wanted to build law around the philosophy of Eat Bitter.

54:24So I designed a bone broth candle, which was so cool. And then I partnered with Bow London, which is an amazing chain of restaurants. And I did an Eat Bitter Bow special, which was like black and had Tarsu in the middle. It was amazing. So that was really cool. And then I did some really nice events. Like I did a story slam event in New York at Jing Fong, iconic dim sum parlor Jing Fong. And I hosted that with Danny Bowen and Sophia Lee. And we just did a story slam where I did a reading and then people got up and like spilled their guts about a topic that felt tender and sensitive to them. And it was so perfect.

54:59Like the chaos of Jing Fong with like the waiters pushing past us with like a cart with a massive duck on it. And then people like crying and like sharing their most tender stories amidst all of that chaos. It was just like chef's kiss, eat bitter, playing out. It was perfect. And then I did a really lovely event with Slanted in Welcome to Chinatown, which was basically like, you know, thinking about memoir writing. And so I hosted a writing workshop with that community, which was really beautiful. So yeah, I've actually been quite, not so many like readings and signings, which I find a little passive and a little boring.

55:34I did a lot of things where it was kind of like building on the book. and bringing the community in a way that felt a little bit more active. So yeah, and I loved it. And I'm naturally very introverted, actually. Like, I feel like I enjoy it while I'm there, but then I have to recover, like, pretty hard after being with a big group of people. But I actually found all of the events with Eat Bitter very nourishing. And I think maybe because I felt really stood in my authenticity, and I really was enjoying all of the connection around the book um especially lots of hacka folk coming out and being like i'm hacka too like that felt

56:09Matt Rodbard:really good yeah i think it seems so special to to have a concept that maybe so many people in the community can feel connected to be to be able to kind of come together around that and then by extension the book feels kind of very true to that spirit yeah exactly hey it's christy from lululemon i'm here at the office and we just dropped some really fun new summer colors in the Flow Y styles. If you're like me, you've loved the Flow Y tank and bra for years, and as of this year, it also comes in a dress and a crop tank. These are made in our buttery soft Nulu fabric, and my favorite part is the built-in bra.

56:44Matt Rodbard:It makes it super easy to wear for yoga or honestly as an everyday basic. You can find Flow Y styles in store or online at lululemon.com. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's freedom to be.

57:22Use as directed. And we're live on match day as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it.

57:34Matt Rodbard:It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Okay, I want to play a rapid fire game to close. So I'm going to have you pick some favorites and you can just tell me the first answer that comes to mind. Okay. A favorite cookbook. Oh, I love Fat Boyzine. Fat Boyzine's great. Your go-to drink order. oh i don't drink booze but i love a really strong matcha or i like a um like a vinegar type drink what are they called a shrub yeah a favorite family recipe oh that's a really hard question uh probably tartu a favorite like classic welsh dish or british dish pie like a savory pie Yeah. Yeah, sorry.

58:23I should be very explicit. It is definitely not sweet. It is full of meat. Your go-to breakfast? Fried noodles with egg and red onion and lots of soy. Your favorite ice cream flavor? Oh, I usually go for like black cherry or something sour. Your dream birthday cake or like birthday dessert? I always have red velvet. That is my birthday cake. I've been the same for like 15 years.

58:54Matt Rodbard:Seems like in a very appropriate color way for you as well. Oh my God, I'm so painfully consistent. It's horrible. A favorite restaurant to visit when you come back to New York? I mean, I do usually go Jing Fong. There's a few places I need to tick off. It's always Jing Fong, Siam Famous Foods, but I will always go to Jing Fong. It's a very good place to go. A favorite restaurant when you're in London? oh that changes but at the moment i really like miga which is a family-run korean spot in uh dalston okay final question is a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie or something made up that you wish you could magically eat in real life oh my god definitely the uh studio ghibli um spirited away scene where her parents turn into pigs because they're eating at that amazing stall and everything is like steaming and salty and delicious.

59:49Matt Rodbard:You would risk it to turn into a pig. 100%. It's such a classic answer. I feel like watching that movie, it just looks so delicious. And this was such a fun conversation. Lydia, thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh, my God. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

1:00:10Matt Rodbard:This is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergang Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skrzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.