The madness is back!!! We partnered with our again with our podcast cousin InfatuAsian and bookshop home On Waverly on our second annual March Madness of Asian Cuisine! This year we went with pan-Asian bangers in a round of 16 that was far, far from inclusive, but so much fun!

This year we kicked it up a notch with bites and prizes from new and old friends:

Apisol with refreshing honey seltzers, Mama Lam's yummy Malaysian sauces, Lunar Bakery with some delicious baked tarts, Lulu's Asian Kitchen with some of their just-released frozen dumplings, and HEYDOH with their small batch soy sauces.

With special guests:

Hannah Chea (Miss SF Chinatown 2025) and Adonis (Food recommender and culture keeper).

Listen in to see if your favorites made the top 16, how egregious our audience may or may not have been with their votes, and what Asian favorite went all the way!

We’re absolutely freaking delighted to be joined by Laurence Louie, chef/owner of Rubato and current Top Chef contestant.

We talk with Laurence about his beloved Chinese bakery staple bolo bao, how it shaped his culinary career, and its place on his current modern Chinese American menu.

Plus, growing up around his mom’s canto rock band, his journey from AAPI activist to hand-pulled noodle apprentice, and of course, representing the culture on Top Chef.

The lightest of spoilers for the first couple of episodes of season 23 of Top Chef, so listen with caution, but also go catch up immediately.

It might be 80 degrees out here in the Bay Area but we’re drooling over this episode’s dish, oxtail beef stew with Christina Wong Singh, founder of AAPI Empower Hour. On this episode we talk with Christina about her childhood disdain turned adult love of this arguably American Chinese dish.

We go hard on junior high school with New York City public school lunches, Jamaican beef patties, and math talents. Freesia can barely wrap her head around growing up in New York while Sam and Christina are incredibly nonchalant about it.

Plus, raising mixed Asian kids–as in, two Asian ethnicities–men who cook, and keeping culture and language alive through a generation or two of assimilation.

This episode we welcome Satsuki Ina, author, psychotherapist, producer and so much more! We talk with Satsuki about one of her favorite childhood and new year’s foods, inarizushi and her mom’s special take on it.

We spend some time talking about her very important book The Poet and the Silk Girl, which chronicles her parents' experience as Japanese Americans imprisoned during WWII, and talk about how so much of those experiences is still relevant today and the work for Satsuki that that continues to fuel.

We also talk about Satsuki’s experience as a kid running around Japantown and San Francisco in the 1940s and 1950s and her family’s weekend Chinese restaurant routine, which honestly sounds pretty great.

We are so delighted to have graphic novelist Thien Pham on this episode. We discovered his book Family Style thanks to one of our kids and it turned out to be a book that us grownups love too.

Thien shares how he finally came to write his book after so many years of wanting to tell his family’s story, the through line of food and memory, and the impressiveness of his parents in building a whole new life by an age at which Thien himself was still playing video games.

Plus we talk about the heartbreak of assimilation, his stint as a food critic comic artist, and the incredible state of school lunchrooms today.

Definitely pick up a copy of Family Style for your middle grade readers or anyone curious about immigrant stories in a wonderfully accessible graphic novel.

It finally happened! We finally get to talk about everyone’s favorite party/potluck food: lumpia!! This episode we’re joined by Eleanor Mooney, co-founder of New York-based Verdant Lingerie and hapa Filipina.

We talk to Eleanor about growing up watching the titas roll lumpia at parties, each one having a slightly different recipe, and how growing up around this community of women shaped her career in service and lingerie.

Plus we talk about when it’s okay to be slightly illegal in job interviews, looking exactly like a parent but still somehow not enough, and her sister’s long con that somehow worked on us and will have her ruling us all.

In this live episode recorded at the Asian Art Museum on Bruce Lee Day, we talk with author Jeff Chang about his tremendous new book Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America.

Just ahead of what would’ve been Bruce’s 85th birthday (which is today!), we talk about his impact on Asian American representation in media, what he meant to generations of fans, and the intertwined rise of the AAPI identity that Jeff so beautifully weaves throughout the book. True to form, Freesia gushes, but this really is one of the best books she’s read in a very, very long time. We really cannot say enough good things about it.

Plus, we talk about one of Jeff’s childhood comfort dishes, which just so happens to be a Hawaiian version of our childhood comfort dish, his experience growing up in Hawaii, and the culture shock of leaving the island for California.

Big thanks to the Asian Art Museum for helping to make this happen and for a great book talk earlier in the day.

Whether you’re interested in Bruce Lee or the Asian American movement and identity, we can’t recommend this book enough.

We’re back with another live episode. This time we’re talking with Irene Yoo about her new cookbook Soju Party, a gorgeous collection of cocktail and food recipes that is blueprint for many a fun and delicious night.

Irene takes us through an epic night of drinking with her cousins in Seoul, gives us (mostly Freesia) tips on how to participate and keep up/bow out as an alcohol light-weight, and gives us the lowdown on both drinking etiquette and drinking games.

Plus we talk about Irene’s experience growing up with soju as an essential part of family gatherings and traditions, learning to cook for herself from the Food Network, and the difference between developing food and cocktail recipes in an extremely truncated timeline.

Pick up Soju Party wherever you get your books and plan your own epic night of feasting.