This book translates the Fuzhounese-American Chinese restaurant into a loose leaf book experience, using the familiar structure of the front-of-house takeout menu to move toward the back-of-house lived reality of Fuzhounese families. Through the perspective of a child growing up in the restaurant, the book reveals how labor, sacrifice, and cultural memory exist behind Americanized representations of “Chinese food,” reframing comfort food as a site of survival rather than consumption.
All writing, drawings, and photography are created by me, taken from my own family’s restaurant and the memories held from growing up there.