About Me:

Raised in the Chicago suburbs to a Vietnamese immigrant mother and a father from a small town nobody ever heard of in the Midwest, the foods I grew up on ran the gambit. Mom was raised by her French step-grandfather and developed a taste for the finer, rarer and high brow. Complex, layered flavors, fresh produce and exotic seasonings like lemongrass and saffron ruled her cuisine. (Understand- this was the 80's- when a kiwi was considered exotic and tofu was pretty much an alien concept. Not to date myself or anything.) Dad, on the other hand, was an artiste with a can-opener, easy mac, factory-formed meat sticks and a bottle of Heinz 57. Old and new, foreign and familiar, fine and dive- they all collided in our kitchen like a fantastic culinary six-car pile-up. And before you ask- no, they did not meet during the war...

It seems appropriate that, upon venturing from the nest, I would finally put down roots in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. Argyle Street is home to a small yet fantastic Vietnamese community and at the time I moved in, was not bordered by burgeoning gentrification, but struggling communities comprised largely of the addicted, the disenfranchised and the mentally ill. Cheap rent and, if I could get to the local grocery without being shot, something almost as good as Mom's home cooking- it was all a twenty-something artist could ask for. Now, nearly ten years in, while I still cling to a skin-of-my-teeth budget most weeks, that taste for fine cuisine instilled in me by my mother remains. Fortunately, so has the burger-and-fries sensibilities of my father- or I'd be begging for change on the street so I might dine on a bit of confit de canard.