Asian Culinary Traditions

The Captive Man - Episode 9: Asian Culinary Traditions from Christopher Kim on Vimeo.

I was a restaurant baby. I spent a good deal of my childhood in the kitchen of our parents' Chinese restaurant. I gained a lot of memories and just a couple of scars from those days.

If I close my eyes, I can still hear the overwhelming din of that busy kitchen, smell the garlic on my clothes.

There was a storage area in the back. Its shelves were packed with giant cans of water chestnuts and baby corn and Hoisin sauce. There was no light back there. I used to challenge myself to stand in the very back, blind in the dark, for as long as possible just to see what I could endure, see how long I could push back the panic. It was never very long.