#i made one specific risotto a lot as a kid so i’m excited to make something similar and use my old skills hehe

[amethystsoda]

coming back from a successful grocery run dungeon crawl 🤗 items secured for the next 2 dunmeshi recipes!

^ senshi shoulder angel for all your photo edit needs 😇

[brittanyinterviews]

Brenda Ton, Homecook

Brenda Ton, Homecook

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This interview was conducted via Google Hangouts on May 15, 2020.

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Brittany: Can you tell me a bit about yourself? 

Brenda: I was born and raised in the Bay Area in the city called Hayward, which is also where I grew up. I've never left the Bay Area and have no desire to because I love it here so much. My heritage background is Vietnamese and I am the first generation born here in the US. I grew up in an average sized family and am one of five kids. I'm currently living in San Pablo with my husband Patrick and our two rescue dogs. Professionally, I am a digital marketer and have my own consulting business. However, I spend most of my time thinking about food and what I'm going to cook next because food is my creative outlet and how I express myself. 

My love for cooking stems from my mom. She cooked for us every single day and made everything from scratch. Food is a big part of the Vietnamese culture. Feelings and emotions were never big in my family and oftentimes they were suppressed. We were never the type of family that hugged, but we were the family who could eat. So, love was always expressed through my mom's cooking, and was how my family bonded. I was actually the kid who hated to cook or help out in the kitchen, but I sucked it up and did it because I wanted to help out my mom. And looking back, I have very fond memories of that. It wasn't until ten years ago that I met Patrick, my husband now, that I really started to enjoy the art of cooking.  

Brittany: It sounds like your family laid the foundation for your love of food and then you really got into cooking with Patrick. I'm wondering if you can describe your first food memory.

Brenda: When I was a kid, my parents would drag me to San Jose to go grocery shopping. Some might think that's crazy to drive over an hour to San Jose from Hayward just to shop for groceries. But back then in the early ‘90s, that was the only city you could go to in order to find the necessary ingredients to make Vietnamese food. So, we did that every single week to get the freshest vegetables, butchered meats, and bread. My favorite memory is picking up a fresh French baguette, being the first to break the bread, and enjoy it during the car ride along our many Vietnamese food stops. From this day, I still make the occasional trip down to San Jose and still stop by the places my parents took me, which are mostly all still in business.

Brittany: Delicious Vietnamese food and San Jose are synonymous in my mind. Moving forward in time a bit, what was your original motivation in starting your food blog and associated Instagram? 

Brenda: I started my food blog (which no longer exists) and my Instagram to really just document my food experiences and share that experience with others. It was like a personal food diary. I was always the person people came to for recommendations on where and what to eat, so it was originally focused mostly on food that I ate at restaurants. But over the last few years, it evolved away from restaurants and turned into a platform where I share my cooking journey and my favorite things to eat, and any personal stories or memories associated with that. 

Steamed Silken Tofu

Brittany: It seems like you experiment with making food across a wide variety of cuisines. Upon a cursory glance at your Instagram, I see homemade bagels with lox, Hakka-style soft tofu, Oxtail quesabirrias, and a Japanese katsu sandwich. How do you approach making food from a new culture?

Brenda: I'm often driven by my own curiosity and love being introduced to new food cultures and flavors that I'm not familiar with. I spend the majority of my free time reading recipes and learning about different foods from all over the world. I read recipes like it's a menu at a restaurant. I approach choosing what I cook based on how much desire I have to want to eat that specific thing. Instead of thinking, "What should I cook?," I think, "What do I want to eat?" This mindset lets me go out of my comfort zone for that reward of tasting something new. I put in that effort because it's worth it to me. 

Oxtail Quesabirrias

Brittany: What ingredients do you get the most excited about? Have you ever met an ingredient you didn't get along with?

Brenda: I get really excited about working with freshly harvested, caught, or butchered ingredients. For people that follow me, it's no secret that I'm in love with live sea urchin from [Stephanie Mutz] @seastephaniefish. When a product is that beautiful, the creativity in my cooking just flows naturally to me: from live uni in its own shell still moving or using uni for handrolls, risotto, or tostadas. I love working with ingredients that can stand and shine on its own; something you can just eat straight up without needing anything else.

As for ingredients that I don't get along with... there's actually nothing that comes to mind. But I'll let you know if something does come to mind for that. I think there is a use for most ingredients and using each one to its strengths.

Uni Risotto

Brittany: How has living in the Bay Area influenced your cooking?

Brenda: I am very fortunate to be living in the Bay Area. It has exposed me to a melting pot of cultures and that's the reason why I can never leave this place. We are spoiled to have access to nearly every type of ingredient to make any type of food. Just a few miles away from us is my favorite grocery store Las Montañas that sells the most amazing flour and corn tortillas, fresh masa, salsa of nearly every kind. A city away from us in Berkeley is Tokyo Fish Market and Yaoya-san, where we get all our fresh Japan-imported fish and koshihikari rice. Those are just two examples of many. Depending on what type of food I'm making, there's a special grocery store I go to just to procure the ingredients I need. 

Brittany: Where are some of your favorite places to eat in the Bay Area?

Brenda: That's a hard one to narrow down. I have a huge list depending on where I'm at and what I'm craving, which I'm happy to share with anyone. If we were hanging out and you asked me to take you around, we'd go to San Jose and hit up the following spots: 1) Huong Lan: The best banh mi deli spot. I've been going here since I was a kid. 2) Hue Restaurant: My favorite restaurant for food from Hue / Central Vietnam. Tapioca dumplings and turmeric noodles. 3) Thanh Son Hien Khanh: Vietnamese sticky rice and dessert heaven.

Brittany: Now I’m craving sticky rice. In normal times, you've done quite a bit of traveling—to Japan and Mexico, for instance—and you consume a lot of local favorites. How do you know what to eat? Do you research and prepare ahead of time or figure it out once you've arrived?

Brenda: It depends on the place we travel. I am an INTJ, so when I can, I plan everything out months in advance before a trip. I do a lot of reading and research and put all my plans in a custom Excel template that lists out exactly where we're going to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert / snacks in between for each day based on where we'll be. Now that's easy for a place like Japan or Italy, where it's mostly restaurant establishments. I usually refer to local review sites.

But for a place like Mexico or Vietnam where the food scene takes place on the streets, it's all based on the senses. It's less about where you want to eat and more about what you want to eat. If there's a crowd and the food looks good, and it smells good, then I'm eating there. This is actually my favorite way to experience the local food scene. Oftentimes, I'll also ask friends who have travelled to the countries I'm going to for recommendations.

Brittany: A lot of people, myself included, are cooking and baking a lot more than usual. Has being in quarantine affected your cooking or baking?

Brenda: Thankfully, our lifestyle hasn’t been impacted much from quarantine. As people who cook every single day, we've always had a full fridge, freezer, and pantry stocked with all our essentials. Patrick works in produce, so we're grateful to be able to get fresh vegetables every day to cook with and also to provide for our families. The one area where I'm seeing the biggest change for us is putting in more effort to make things completely from scratch, like making banh mi bread or bagels. It's an important time to keep social distance and not go out unless it's absolutely necessary, so we are doing our best to work with what we have at home and be creative with it to fulfill any of our food cravings. I really do miss seeing my family and enjoying my mom's cooking. This time has made me realize how much I've taken for granted. I have been learning how to cook a lot of Vietnamese food more recently to fill in the void, and comfort me during this time.

Brittany: What can we look forward to seeing from you in the future?

Brenda: I am working on launching a YouTube channel to inspire and help people build confidence to cook in the kitchen. In the meantime, you can expect to go down memory lane with me and see more of my Vietnamese cooking over the next several weeks on IG.

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Photos provided by Brenda Ton.

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Special thanks to Brenda for discussing her cooking with us. You can follow her on Instagram.