Eat Drink Asia
Eat Drink Asia is a monthly podcast that dives deep into the forgotten history of some of Asia's most popular and globally savored dishes. It’s hosted by SCMP culture journalists Bernice Chan and Alkira Reinfrank, who speak with chefs, restaurateurs, and food experts from across the world. It won Asia’s Best Entertainment Podcast award in 2019.
I was the producer, editor, and sound designer of the show.
Listen on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your pods.
Jjapaguri – or ram-don, as it is known in the Academy Award-winning film Parasite – is a super easy and cheap dish that simply mixes two kinds of instant noodles together. In this episode of Eat Drink Asia, we look into the food references in the film and explore how a dish only known to Koreans quickly became something global audiences salivated over.
As popular and ubiquitous as curry is around the world, the word “curry” does not exist in India. We look into an all-time classic — butter chicken. Its origin story is one of hard work, resilience, and hope.
We take a closer look at two equally iconic KFCs — Kentucky Fried Chicken and Korean fried chicken – by way of the Korean war, the first cookbook documenting the making of fried chicken, the Atlantic slave trade, and even the origins of the bird itself, following all the breadcrumbs along the path of this golden gastronomic achievement.
Banh mi – an iconic Vietnamese dish that is also one of the world’s most popular sandwiches. While the French baguette stuffed with Vietnamese ingredients might look simple, there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Born at the end of the Great Depression and made famous during World War II, more than eight billion cans of Spam have been eaten over the past 82 years.
How did Spam become popular during the war, and then manage to stick around for almost a century? Where did Spam get its name, and is that related to spam emails? (It is.) In this episode of Eat Drink Asia, we’re all about that Spam.
Bubble tea, which has its roots in 1980s Taiwan, has become something of a global sensation. So we ask ourselves: what's special about bubble tea? Who invented it? How did it become a global phenomenon? And why is it accepted by the mainstream so much faster than dishes such as General Tso's chicken or chop suey? Listen in to find out.
When the animated film Mulan was released in 1998, McDonald’s launched its Szechuan Sauce, marketed as an accompaniment to their chicken McNuggets. Almost 20 years later, the long-forgotten sauce regained its mainstream popularity thanks to the cartoon Rick and Morty. But there is no such thing as Szechuan Sauce in Sichuan province, China.
In this episode, we spoke with Titima Runguphan, founder of the Thai Culture Association of Hong Kong; Griffin Hammond, filmmaker of Sriracha (a documentary); and David Tran, the owner of the legendary sauce, to follow its winding journey – and find out why you’re probably pronouncing it wrong.
The iconic pad thai has roots that are as political as they are culinary. It was imposed upon the populace more than 70 years ago as a cornerstone ingredient of a nationalistic agenda. And if you ask Thais today whether pad thai is a national dish, you may not get a straight answer.
Have you ever wondered why dim sum is served in trolleys? Or what the most authentic experience of dim sum is, and how much work is there behind a simple har gau?
The sushi we know today neither looks nor tastes like it did centuries ago. First of all, the rice was not supposed to be eaten. It was used to preserve the fish and was thrown away, leaving just the fish to be eaten. Second, it wasn’t even originally from Japan.
A Hong Kong bakery started selling mooncakes that send political messages via the embossing on them. It’s not a modern invention to have mooncakes bear political messages. More than 600 years ago, revolutionary notes were stuffed inside the baked goods with intent to end the Yuan dynasty, when Han Chinese rebels were stoking plans to overthrow their Mongol overlords.