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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 10:17:54 JST Adrianna Tan

   I mean yes you can go through life without ever going to any of these types restaurants. That’s totally fine! But the cost of eating ‘normal food’ is also pretty high now! A cup of coffee ‘outside’ is like $7.50, before tax! (Yes, I also make my own coffee..)

   The one good thing is that groceries can be reasonably priced if you shop at the right places, primarily ethnic markets and at the good farmers markets (they’re not all good)

   That’s still cheaper than many other cities, I think (just coz of variety and easy access to a lot of produce)

   I can get a week’s supply of fresh veg for $5-8, from the farmers market, $8 if I’m splurging on nice things

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 10:18:56 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I’m always so depressed when I come to LA. The food quality and variety is incredible. I want this.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 10:35:36 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     A part of my cultural struggle is also that I come from a place where we eat out maybe 80% of the time. It challenging for me to flip that when I got here. In Singapore / Taipei / KL / Bangkok it is consistently easier and cheaper to eat out. I feel I always have to provide this background info in a place where eating out is seen as some luxurious thing (we also have $200 pp places, and those places are usually world class)

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 10:41:43 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     My wife has a snarky theory about the emotional regulation skills of Chinese people like me: all of it is food-related. We can’t say anything difficult or emotional, but we will plan meals outside together. We can’t deal with how sad or angry we feel, but having a good bowl of noodles helps us feel better. When we have some mega family feud, nobody ever apologizes, but will plan some kind of huge dimsum or banquet gathering. The apologizing person pays. In some ways I think she’s right. It captures my own experience perfectly. I know I’m not alone.

     There are many deeply encoded messages and meaning in meals we plan with other people, and meals that we have on our own. When I left that environment and I lost the ability to map all of my external food based emotional regulation skills to a type of food or restaurant (because eating out is rarer / more expensive / doesn’t map to the same things), I felt like I lost access to a major part of myself. I no longer had the one dish that I ate every time I felt sad, because they don’t have it here in exactly the same form, and everything closes too early in San Francisco. It took me a long time to learn how to untangle my cultural and emotional expectations of food in this way.

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     SnoopJ (snoopj@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 10:52:51 JST SnoopJ

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte there's a bit in 1000xRESIST where a character's (immigrant) dad makes her 伊面 for her birthday and Big Emotions surrounding the noodles and it hit so hard for me that I just kinda had to sit there for a bit and process how much more potent that theme would be if I had lived experience with this cultural relationship to food rather than from-afar shallow awareness of it

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 10:54:10 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • SnoopJ

     @SnoopJ hah, my dad also made me the same models (same words even). It was always an involved process. He didn’t do our daily meal prep coz do work, but when he did those noodles it was a no holds barred, all the top quality ingredients he’d been hoarding, it takes 90 min to prep and cook and at the end of it it’s so special that I remember all of those moments he ever made those noodles very distinctly, right down to how much white pepper he used and how he carefully did the eggs in a specific way.

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     Bryan Redeagle :bc: (bryanredeagle@beige.party)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:06:32 JST Bryan Redeagle :bc:

     in reply to

     @mayintoronto @skinnylatte Literally everything. When my wife got out of surgery last year, the first thing she said was, "You know what, sounds good? Pho."

     Apparently she was also talking about it while conked out on anesthesia.

   • Embed this notice
     May Likes Toronto (mayintoronto@beige.party)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:06:33 JST May Likes Toronto

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I have witnessed first hand that a giant bowl of soup noodles makes everything better for everyone, even not Chinese people.

     I call bias on that one!

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:08:19 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     @cos yes! Familiar!

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     cos (cos@aus.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:08:20 JST cos

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I experienced that “the solution to a family argument (over dinner!) is to have another family dinner the next night” phenomenon with my ex-Chinese family a long time ago. Fascinating. I didn’t quite understand at the time.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:46:07 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Cristin Pescosolido

     @rocketdyke yes those are amazing

     Also the many Korean cafes I love, from trendy drinks to super old school aunties tile traditional hot beverages

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     Cristin Pescosolido (rocketdyke@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:46:08 JST Cristin Pescosolido

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte

     We have a huge variety of taco stands/trucks/sidewalk tables as well :)

     Big fan of the food variety here in LA.

   • Embed this notice
     SnoopJ (snoopj@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:51:02 JST SnoopJ

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte yea, and textually in the game you experience those moments as that character's own memory of them, and it's… a lot

     those Big Emotions come her struggles with a dual identity and wanting to individuate herself from her parents as all do, and their own HKer trauma (and general *gestures* absorbed from the culture like fish in water)

     it's a lot, in an amazing (and also heart-rending) way

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:53:43 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Bryan Redeagle :bc:
     • May Likes Toronto

     @mayintoronto @bryanredeagle well I’ll extend my claim to ‘having one of hundreds of different types of soup or dry noodles’

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     May Likes Toronto (mayintoronto@beige.party)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 11:53:44 JST May Likes Toronto

     in reply to

     • Bryan Redeagle :bc:

     @bryanredeagle She's not wrong! @skinnylatte

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 13:32:37 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • monstreline

     @monstreline thank you for sharing, that's a lovely memory! my dream is to be able to do regular dimsum meals with people who have never experienced this. but i'd also love to find a way to include people who are lonely but who can't leave the home or be physically in the same place, somehow. maybe some kind of virtual dumpling club.

   • Embed this notice
     monstreline (monstreline@ottawa.place)'s status on Thursday, 26-Mar-2026 13:32:39 JST monstreline

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte some my earliest memories are of dim sum. Sitting in my tiny, white, interloper family of just my mother and me. We’d be sat at the table the staff used for folding napkins and filling condiment pots as it was the only table for two.

     The rest of the hall would be full, every table brimming with a family. Some families quiet, others rowdy, many easy and funny, and the odd one stern. But each family was the same in that they had convened for dim sum and would use that time to be together. I adored those meals. It was a great early lesson that generations don’t have to exist in lonely little silos. If I hadn’t had that exposure, I’d probably be so lonely right now, trying to live the same generationally isolated life that all my white peers adopted. Because it’s still just me, and her.

     My dream for the future, from a young age has always been to enough participants for a standing dim sum appointment! A group large enough and enthusiastic enough that when the available members arrive, a table can always be filled.

     I feel like (as an outsider) Chinese family meals allow for more moods and individuality…if it’s a bad week and one’s feeling quiet, the group is large enough to support conversation while the weary recharge with food and silence, while the next event provides opportunities to join in!