Transcript:
So, for those who don't know, basically: BonAppetit, a food network, posted a video where Philadelphia Chef Tyler Akins teaches 20 million viewers how to prepare a bowl of pho.
He gives all the wrong instructions
While twirling the noodles spaghetti style.
He claims that sriracha ruins the flavor.
I really don't know if he's just trying to say that it's too spicy.
He also claims that pho is on the rise to replace ramen,
You know, as if there can only be like,
One Asian phenomenon at a time.
And for a review on Vietnamese cuisine,
You would've thought the producers would've picked someone...
I don't know,
Vietnamese?
Or Japanese?
Or Chinese?
Or someone they can't tell the difference between??
Is there a reason why the YouTube video still shows a man who cannot pronounce my father's name correctly?
Why didn't they show someone who looks at a bowl of pho like salvation?
What is religion to a starving man?
What does a white god and good table manners mean
To a country at war with itself?
Tyler,
Have you ever made soup from bones,
Fed the children first,
And still starved the family?
Maybe we drown our soup in sauce
Because we remember a history seasoned in tears.
We remember when uncles bit their wrists
Just to taste the salt?
See, even cooking
Becomes its own trauma.
The grip of the ladle,
Both trigger warning and deliverance to an immigrant,
I've never seen my father cry unless he talked about his own father.
My father can be a quiet man.
My mother, on the other hand, tells me, and I quote:
"The universe will give you a pimple
For every speck of rice
You don't eat off the plate."
She's a funny woman.
She thinks if she smiles in an interview,
The employer won't notice the accent.
But they always do.
They know she does not belong.
Her eyes are a dead giveaway before she even opens her mouth,
And every night,
She cooks the family a memory,
Kitchen practice to remember where she came from.
One night, she cooked me a week's worth of pho,
Only to have it be called worms,
The food for savages,
By the same white boys who now post my culture on Instagram,
But my food
Is not a fashion statement,
My father
Hates talking on an empty stomach,
So really, we only ever speak over dinner,
My food be a bridge,
Made of chopsticks,
Be the bread blessed by ancestors,
How many have died for me
To live on for them?
My food be
A survivor's guilty pleasure,
And I am tired
Of listening to my history
Being told by someone who does not look like me.
I am tired
Of my bullies asking me to try an overpriced dish
That my mom makes better.
And I want to say a day where my future son
Can smile wide
And not be called gook,
Or coin slot,
Or the failures of America,
And he will tell me about his first day at school,
Where all the other kids tell him
How lucky he is to have parents that cook him a meal.
And he will look at me, smiling,
A source of pride,
The hero I never got to see in the movies,
And for whoever decides to consume this story
Without my consent,
This future,
Without my consent,
I say go for it.
Have your fill.
Bite off more than you can chew,
And then gag
At the roots.