Maybe she is barging through the dawn crowds at Tsukiji, maybe she is chasing a noodle cart down a rain-glossed alley in Taipei, but what Susanna Chow really wants to do is feed you. Breakfast gets steam and sizzle, lunch gets slurp and crunch, and dinner gets fire and a little karaoke swagger. For years, she has ferried notebooks and chopsticks from Penang to Hokkaido to Saigon, testing, tweaking, and snapping bowls and platters until they taste like memory and mischief.
Here are brothy mornings, smoky midnights, and every bite between: Aunt Mei-Lin's ginger-scallion chicken, five-minute sesame scallion eggs that are silky without cream, a miso-butter corn that proves restraint is overrated, and Uncle Victor's wok-fried crab drowned in black pepper. Salty, spicy, sour-bright, and always a little outrageous, these dishes are for noisy tables, two-person feasts, balcony parties, and those life-is-a-meeting days when only a cucumber smash will do. You will learn why Sichuan peppercorns matter, how to season a wok like elders do, how toasted sesame perfumes a home better than candles, the easiest way to wake up a pot of rice, and how not to overthink soy sauce or bok choy. Because for Susanna, travel, appetite, love, and the clatter of plates are the same map.
