129: Third Culture Cooking, TikTok Foods, and Kung Food Cookbook with Jon Kung

For 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.

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