129: Third Culture Cooking, TikTok Foods, and Kung Food Cookbook with Jon Kung
Release Date: 05/28/2024
142: What Role Does Food Play in Fiction Writing? with Margaux Vialleron
AnthroDish
One of the most frustrating parts of watching Gossip Girl growing up was witnessing the elaborate breakfast spreads that the families had each morning, only for the main characters to grab a piece of toast and run away with anguish. When we think about fiction, food isn’t always central to how a story is told. But what happens when it is? My guest this week is Margaux Vialleron, a French-born and Glasgow-based interdisciplinary writer and cook. She is the author of two novels: Breaststrokes (May 2024) and The Yellow Kitchen (July 2022). Her story, Fernanda’s Fish Soup, was runner-up...
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141: Uncovering Medieval Pictish Foodways through Paleobotany with Dr. Shalen Prado
AnthroDish
Oftentimes, when we think about plant-human relationships, we’re thinking about our contemporary lives and how plants factor into it – be it North American plant-based diets or what we’re growing in our apartments. But our relationship with plants goes back for millennia, and accessing this historical and prehistoric knowledge is a glimpse into what life looked like for ancient humans. My guest this week is Dr. Shalen Prado, who is here to explore what we know about plant-based eating during the medieval period of Scotland. Shalen is a settler-archaeologist living in Saskatoon and...
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140: Recovering from Restrictive Online Diet Myths with Dr. Sarah Ballantyne
AnthroDish
Diet culture on the internet is excellent at sensationalizing our food to the point of panic. I’m sure many of you have seen the videos across TikTok and Instagram where someone positions themselves as an expert and demonizes strawberries, bread, or my beloved potatoes. But what happens when we take a more proactive and less restrictive approach to looking at food? My guest today is the delightful Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, the founder of Nutrivore.com and the New York Times bestselling author of Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need from the Food You Eat. She...
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139: What Makes for Good Food Policy? with Chef Joshna Maharaj
AnthroDish
One downside I find when I spend too much time on the internet is that there’s an overwhelming viewpoint that the system is broken and there’s not much we can do to change that – or that food, in general, is disconnected from all other components of our lives. But I think these attitudes forget that a lot of empowerment comes through advocating for better policies across the board. My guest today is absolutely LEGENDARY when it comes to just that: Joshna Maharaj. Joshna sees food as our common denominator as humans and understands it holds the power to solve many problems we’re...
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138: Fish, Wine, and Letting Go of Ego in Southern France with Steve Hoffman
AnthroDish
In the daily grind of work under capitalism, I’m sure I’m not alone for dreaming of something more to life. Usually, this takes the shape of going somewhere new in the world on vacation or picking up a new language and imagining what life would look like if you lived in that country and spoke that language with ease. For my guest today, this dream became a concrete and humbling reality. Tax preparer and food writer Steve Hoffman details his journey with his family in his beautiful new memoir, . Steve is a French speaker and shameless Francophile who tirelessly works in his...
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137: Transformations through Fermentation and Oracle Decks with Julia Skinner
AnthroDish
As far as public conversations around fermenting, we’ve come a long way as a society in our understanding of what that is in 2024. So with that, deeper explorations into the practice of fermentation and its role in building communities get a lot more interesting. Dr. Julia Skinner is returning to AnthroDish today to discuss the magic and art of fermentation, a central theme in her latest work, The Fermentation Oracle. This book is an oracle deck, recipe guide, and meditative practice that combines the understanding of magic, metaphors, and transformation in the small moments of our...
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136: Beer (and Everyone) Still Has a Diversity Problem with Ren Navarro
AnthroDish
If you’ve listened to AnthroDish regularly over the last few years, you’ll know that Ren Navarro is a champion of diversity and inclusion within the beer industry and beyond. When I first interviewed Ren back in 2020, we looked at her Canadian consulting services through B.Diversity, and the diversity problem within craft beer in Ontario. We’ve lived truly a lifetime of unprecedented times since then: we saw the proliferation of Black Lives Matter movements and heavy pressure for more equitable change, and DEI initiatives take stronger footing through many industries reckoning with their...
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135: Growing Olive Trees in Texan Heat with Dr. Vikram Baliga
AnthroDish
Climate change is a daunting reality for many of us – there’s a lot of anxiety around understanding what’s happening and how it affects our communities and the foods we grow. While there’s no magic bullet, there is a lot of great scientific researchers working hard to share what they know about this. For example – you may not immediately think of Texas when you think of olive oil production, but this is one of few American landscapes suitable for growing olive oil trees! My guest today is Dr. Vikram Baliga, a horticulture professor in Texas. He studies conservation and has...
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134: The Art of the Plant-Based Table with Chloé Crane-Leroux and Trudy Crane
AnthroDish
Eating is so central to our ways of connecting as people and communities, but how we show up and make space around food is a practice of care and art. My guests today, Trudy Crane and Chloé Crane-Leroux are a mother-daughter duo best known for their individual foods, fashion, and lifestyle content. Montreal natives, these two are bursting with creativity and a deep appreciation for romanticizing the little moments in life. They’re here today to talk about their stunning new cookbook, a collection of recipes inspired by their European travels and the lessons around fresh, local...
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133: How to Break Down Diet Culture and Live Nourished with Shana Minei Spence
AnthroDish
Spend too much time on the internet these days and you can walk away with a lingering sense of body shame, dietary uncertainty, and overall not-great-vibes. To me, this means it’s all the more important to reflect on our relationships with food and re-assess how we think about them. My guest today, Shana Spence, is one of the central people that I take a lot of inspiration from when it comes to healing relationships with food. Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut book came out this past August 2024, titled . She currently works in public...
info_outlineFor our last episode this season, we’re exploring what it means to cook from a third culture kitchen. There’s been growing discussions online of what it means to be a third culture kid or a third culture individual. My guest today, Jon Kung, is one of the best people to speak to how third culture experiences can play out through food, cooking, and kitchen spaces.
Jon is a popular Chinese American chef, content creator, and podcast host of 1 For the Table with legendary drag queen Kim Chi. Jon has amassed a following of over 2 million people for their unique style of third culture cooking, which blends cultural traditions, flavours, and ingredients that hold personal meaning to them. After graduating from Eastern Michigan University with a bachelor’s degree in theatre arts and creative writing, and then earning a law degree from University of Detroit Mercy, Jon changed career paths to focus on cooking. They worked in some of the top Detroit kitchens before launching their successful Kung Food Market Studio pop-up. As the pandemic forced the pop-up to shut down, Jon turned to social media to create instructional and entertaining cooking videos that explore the vast Chinese diaspora, and apply culinary techniques of traditional Chinese cooking onto global flavours and ingredients.
Jon is on the show today to discuss their debut cookbook, Kung Food: Chinese American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen. We explore what it means to cook through third culture lenses, the 2010s rebrand of American fusion cooking and its impact on the idea of authenticity and third culture expressions in food, TikTok food landscapes, how Jon translated their dishes and videos into a cookbook format, and Toronto’s early 2000s obsession pizza obsession.
Learn More About Jon:
- Jon's Cookbook: Kung Food: Chinese American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen
- TikTok: @jonkung
- Instagram: @jonkung
- YouTube: @jonkung
- Threads: @jonkung
- Website: https://www.kungfood.kitchen/