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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 16:51:04 JST Adrianna Tan

   There’s a pizza slice place my wife really likes. She goes sometimes and she gets them and they’re $8 for a large slice (yes, sf prices); $10 with tips.

   Every Sunday morning I get a Too Good To Go order and I get their last 2-3 slices for $5.97. I pick Sunday because they close early then, it’s easier for me to walk there, and there is frankly less competition on that day (they’re located at the ikea food court). It’s been a good mix of things, and it’s also the only pizza slice store my wife likes, so I’m happy to do it. But holy shit the price of buying anything is $$$$

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 16:54:23 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I spent most of my life in cities with ‘eat out every day’ cultures and sometimes it is very difficult for me to switch out of that mode. Exploring ‘outside food’ has been a thing that I’ve loved for as long as I’ve been aware and breathing. It’s very challenging for me to switch into a ‘mostly eat in’ culture, and now that we are on a budget while I’m figuring out what to do next, doing stuff like this helps me scratch that itch a little.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:01:10 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I have friends / distant relatives who don’t come from these food cultures, and we really struggle to travel together. I am super uninterested in and uninspired by ‘go to a salad bar or deli and get random cold / hot food’ that some of them do, and they’re not interested in ‘I never want to repeat a cuisine in a single week’ mindset that I just can’t ever get rid of (in growing up in mega diverse megapolises). Also, I deeply dislike salad bars and delis. Just can’t do it. Cold food, in general, that isn’t Sichuan cold chicken, is hard for me. Especially if it’s.. cold vegetables. Cannot.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:04:58 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I was telling my wife today that I feel like when I order snacks from the Asian grocery, I feel so excited in a way that.. isn’t just about the snacks.

     I think it’s that since becoming an immigrant, I’ve become acutely aware that most grocery store standards here were made for people who don’t have the same taste as me. I don’t like the candy, I dont even like the potato chips, I don’t have comfort snacks. (Not just a I don’t like American food thing; it’s a flavor profile thing)

     Things are sour when I want savory; things are sweet when I want salty. Things have the wrong texture. Not having snacks I want to eat make me sadder than not having the food I want to eat. They make me feel very far from all of the warmth and deliciousness that I associate with being ‘back home’, where ‘back home’ is ‘Singapore / Malaysia / Thailand / Indonesia’ and all of the incredible foods that I have been so lucky to have experienced.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:09:29 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @mayintoronto I don’t understand how people eat so many sandwiches. I think I can eat one sandwich a month.

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     May is Seasonally Seasoned (mayintoronto@beige.party)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:09:30 JST May is Seasonally Seasoned

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     @skinnylatte Sichuan cold chicken. ❤️ I also like cold yellow chicken (走地雞). The mainland Chinese child salads are fantastic too. Seaweed salads, etc.

     I've never loved a stereotypical salad. Mediterranean ones are better.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:16:32 JST Adrianna Tan

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     More than anything else, I long to be back among people who make me feel like my food habits are normal. That when I tell an auntie (any auntie, even the ones I’m not related to), ‘I traveled 50 min and stood in line for 45 min for one bowl of noodles’, her response isn’t ’omg why?’ But rather ‘was it worth it?’

     I want to visit my friends in KL, who promise that we will probably still go out for supper at 2 am when I visit, and that’s just a thing that normal people do. I want to be warm. I want to speak Malay and Cantonese and Hokkien at the same time.

     I want to stand in line at my mom’s cousins’ Michelin Bib Gourmand winner wanton noodles shop, and see the jealous faces of people who think that I’ve ’cut queue’ when they feed us first.

     I want to go to Mangalore and eat fish coated in semolina and fried and coated in the most amazing coconut masala.

     I want to walk by the fried crickets lady at Soi Nana as I walk to some amazing sushi or yakitori or Italian restaurants spot at midnight in Bangkok.

     I want to sit under a dirty tarp by the side of the road in Surabaya and eat an empal goreng with my oldest friend in the world as she tells me her boy problems that I’ll never understand.

     I want to not feel like having food play an outsized role in my life is a strange thing, that it’s just perfectly normal and the right amounts in the places that I call home.

     I want to go home again. Right now, I can’t.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:16:54 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:
     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @va2lam @mayintoronto I can make an exception for good banh mi

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     Patrick Lam :tinoflag: (va2lam@mastodon.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:16:55 JST Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

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     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @skinnylatte @mayintoronto I've had four banh mi's in a weekend.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:20:30 JST Adrianna Tan

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     Back home, I tell people that people not like them exist.

     ‘Did you know that they don’t understand why I would stand in line for 45 min for the best noodles in the world?’

     ‘Apparently liking food a lot is weird?’

     ‘One time, I met someone who told me she doesn’t like food with flavor, and that she comes from a place where everybody is like that!’ (This is a true story, and everyone made me tell them that again, like a ghost story they were terrified of)

     Some days I feel like I straddle many worlds, and it is most immediately obvious when it comes to.. what and where I eat, and how I have to make the things in between that I cannot have.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:24:47 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • kirakira

     @kirakira for one, they often feel more intimate than the big box stores

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     kirakira (kirakira@furry.engineer)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:24:48 JST kirakira

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     @skinnylatte it's not the same thing you're talking about but in a weird way, my asian grocers & shops have become a big part of home for me & i wonder how i would feel without them if i did leave here. one of them temporarily closed once and that much was an adjustment, and that was while i still had the other ones. i go there more than i go to american ones

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:27:16 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:
     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @va2lam @mayintoronto I have 8 good banh mi shops within 2 blocks. They each have a different style. I pick one depending on what I feel like. One has a sunny side up egg inside along with the classic combo. Another has curry chicken. One has a deconstructed one with the bread to dip into a stew that has all the things the sandwich usually contains.

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     Patrick Lam :tinoflag: (va2lam@mastodon.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:27:17 JST Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

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     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @skinnylatte @mayintoronto this was this best banh mi (in Winnipeg)

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:29:32 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:
     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @va2lam @mayintoronto my wife still talks about how one of the best things she ever ate was at a restaurant in Wellington on our honeymoon. It made everything including brussel sprouts in a Josper oven, which I always like. It has a unique char I don’t really taste in other ovens. I’ll have to see if that place still exists but it was close to the place that had all the LOTR props

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     Patrick Lam :tinoflag: (va2lam@mastodon.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:29:33 JST Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

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     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @skinnylatte @mayintoronto Wellington is not that. There are a couple of places with acceptable banh mi, but I wouldn't write home about it.

     Wellington does have a lot of Malaysian places. (https://thespinoff.co.nz/kai/07-01-2025/how-wellington-became-a-cornucopia-of-malaysian-food-2)

     Kitchener, Ontario has one quite good banh mi place that has been around for a while, which makes classic banh mi, as well as a decent new place. Maybe others that I don't know about.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:32:13 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • atighrada

     @atighrada yes! That’s exactly it. Punishment. I don’t like punishment food. I don’t like taking pride in doing the bare minimum in feeding myself. (Different for people who have challenges, I mean this really only towards a broader culture of ‘liking food too much is not allowed’)

     https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/07/10/1185780577/this-is-not-a-joke-chinese-people-are-eating-and-poking-fun-at-whitepeoplefood

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     atighrada (atighrada@zirk.us)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:32:14 JST atighrada

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     @skinnylatte maybe a far reach but I relate. I'm a Spanish living in UK and after years working at a same place they are still in shock for me having prepped a full meal for lunch (to mw at the kitchenette) almost everyday. I'm still in shock that I learned when their kids are fed something cooked / warm in school they switch the dinner to sandwiches. They see my culture as excess, I see theirs as self punishment. In addition food *is* culture for me, doesn't feel is the same for (most of) them

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     Patrick Lam :tinoflag: (va2lam@mastodon.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:35:47 JST Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

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     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @skinnylatte @mayintoronto this sounds plausible: https://www.parkkitchen.co.nz/menu in Miramar, though no Brussels sprouts currently on the menu?

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 17:35:47 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:
     • May is Seasonally Seasoned

     @va2lam @mayintoronto I feel like it was a more industrial chic dim dark place although I would be surprised if more than one place in a small area had a Josper!

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     paris :verified: (paris@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 03:22:23 JST paris :verified:

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     @skinnylatte just downloaded and will take it for a spin :)

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     paris :verified: (paris@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 03:25:14 JST paris :verified:

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     • atighrada

     @skinnylatte @atighrada an ex of mine in LA is vegan by birth and we just didn’t work out on food alone. i don’t mean the vegan part either but he didn’t like going out to eat, didn’t like figuring out what was next to eat, he was just totally ok with eating soylent for all three meals. i just couldn’t do it. his relationship with food was punishment for me.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 07:47:45 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • Deb Chachra

     @debcha I was in an email thread a few years ago with him! Yeah love his stuff. Thanks!

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     Deb Chachra (debcha@saturation.social)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 07:47:46 JST Deb Chachra

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte In case it’s not on your radar, my friend Tse Wei Lim is from Singapore and is a chef and in tech and an (incredible) writer, and his book about Singaporean food is just coming out. I don’t think he’s sorted out US book events yet but I’m sure the Bay Area will be on the list. https://letthemeatcake.substack.com/