Hungry Onion Drooling Q&A with Luke Tsai (Dec 8, 2016 8-9pm PT)

Have you had a chance to try Taiwanese places in areas outside the geographical scope of the East Bay Express, and if so, do you have any recommendations?

Lots of talk lately about rising rent. How much pressure does rent put on East Bay restaurants?

Luke,

Which food and non-food writers do you learn from or draw inspiration from?

Luke,

What are the pluses and minuses of working for an alternative weekly such as the East Bay Express?

By the way, the paper that you, Sarah Burke & friends on art and music and David Bond Graham on Oakland police and politics have been turning out at the EBX the last few years has been quite remarkable.

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If thereā€™s just one place youā€™d want to have lunch at in Oakland Chinatown, where would that be?

Have there been serious discussions at the East Bay Express about doing more video for the food and other sections?

I want to give a very warm welcome to Luke Tsai, food critic and food editor of East Bay Express, who has reviewed many of our favorite restaurants in the East Bay.

Welcome Luke! And thanks for taking the time to do the Q&A with your readers/ viewers tonight!

(sorry I am late- have trouble accessing the site myself!)

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Thanks, Iā€™m happy to be here ā€” humbled to have been asked, really, when I look at some of the giants in the food world who have preceded me in this series. Hopefully, what I have to share will be of interest to some of you.

In any case, I see some great questions here, and Iā€™ll try to get to as many of them as I can!

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Any reaction to your cultural appropriation piece?

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Have you ever heard from CBS about your Chowhound article?

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My mom, who is Chinese-Taiwanese, did all the cooking when I was growing up, and we very rarely ate out ā€” and on the rare occasions when we did, it was almost always either at a Chinese restaurant or a fast-food chain (I remember a lot of KFC and Roy Rogers). It was only as an adult that I started exploring a lot more different cuisines.

But my mom was a great cook, and food was very important in our family. I think my favorite things that she would make were her home-style Peking duck and her scallion pancakes ā€” those were the things Iā€™d request when I came home on the weekends in college. There was another dish that was somewhat specific to my family, I think, that my grandma and mom would make ā€” rou bing er ā€” that was basically a steamed ground pork ā€œcakeā€ or patty, studded with salt-pickled cucumbers, and served in a bowl of its own soy sauce-infused juices. I could eat probably five bowls of rice if we had that for dinner.

Anyway, I still gravitate toward that kind of food ā€” call it homestyle peasant Asian food. Iā€™m also a Jersey boy, so I have strong feelings (and strong nostalgia) for East Coast pizza and bagels.

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I am merciless player of Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and Boggle. Cross me at your peril.

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I wrote about this a little bit when the Bib Gourmands came out this year, but I just think Oakland embodies that spirit of great food at a reasonable price, probably more than any other American city Iā€™ve spent any significant time in. So, if thatā€™s the criteria, then it seems ridiculous that only ā€” what was it, two or three restaurants? ā€” got this honor.

I think you at the very least start with the obvious places: Hawker Fare, Miss Ollieā€™s, FuseBOX ā€” and at least three or four other places like that. But hey, if it were up to me, thereā€™d be banh mi shops getting Bib Gourmands. Maybe itā€™s best that itā€™s not up to me! :wink:

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Why not, noodle and jook joints in Asia are getting that already!

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Do I have to leave California if I admit that I donā€™t really care for kale? Especially in its raw state.

Like anyone else, I have my personal dining quirks and preferences ā€” for instance, Iā€™m almost always more excited about cooked vegetable dishes than I am straight salads. But I wouldnā€™t say thereā€™s any particular global or regional cuisine that I strongly dislike. Often Iā€™ve found that if itā€™s a cuisine Iā€™ve only had a couple of times, itā€™s just that I havenā€™t found the right restaurant yet, or ordered the right thing.

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In terms of comparing to SF, Laotian is a big one that really took root in Oakland first, to my knowledge. I think the breadth and depth and overall quality of the Korean food is much better too.

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Not a peep! Though I have gotten some emails from them lately asking me to promote their new video series!

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I never go into it with the intention to slam a place. As you rightly note, it is someoneā€™s (more than one someoneā€™s) livelihood, and itā€™s all too easy to nitpick from afar. Even with places that I donā€™t much care for, I still go into the second (and sometimes a third) visit hoping to find that ONE dish thatā€™s really awesome that I can praise, even if everything else is kind of meh.

But in terms of hearing back after a negative review: Itā€™s rare. I feel like most of the time the chefs/restaurateurs just try to pretend like it never happened in those cases. Sometimes it feels that way even when itā€™s a mostly glowing review that makes one or two small criticisms!

There are a few restaurant owners that really seem to embrace criticism, though ā€” or at least are unfazed by it. Thatā€™s always refreshing.

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How about Antoinette?

I feel lucky to have followed in the footsteps of some excellent food writers at the Express ā€” folks like Jonathan Kauffman, Jesse Hirsch, and John Birdsall, all of whom I read and admired long before I became a food writer myself. I think they were good models of critics who were interested in all different kinds of food, who had a good nose for sniffing out the out-of-the-way places, and who took a more ā€œwriterlyā€ approach to each piece. Of course, I love and am inspired by Jonathan Gold. Who doesnā€™t love Jonathan Gold? And I think Ligayan Mishan, who does the Hungry City column for the New York Times, is a beautiful writer.

Non-food writers, Iā€™m mostly a fiction guy ā€” love Murakami, of course. Have a strong affinity to Flannery Oā€™Connor and some of the Southern Gothic writers. Of course, sometimes I look at my own writing and think people like that would find it altogether too flowery and ridiculous!

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