Jing Gao Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe magazine, and each week I talk to the most interesting women and culinary creatives in and around the world of food.
Today's guest is Jing Gao, the creator of Fly By Jing, the brand famous for its Sichuan Chili Crisp. Jing has changed the condiment game with her wildly popular and much copied product, and she's turning Fly By Jing into a brand with staying power. She's also a cookbook author now as her debut recently hit shelves, “The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp: Spicy Recipes and Stories from Fly By Jing's Kitchen.”
I sadly had COVID a few weeks ago and couldn't do this interview, so my pal Samah Dada of Dada Eats filled in for me. Samah is the author of the cookbook, “Love to Cook It: 100 Plant-Based Recipes for Everyone at Your Table.” She's also the host of “How to Eat Plants” on Peacock, and a frequent guest on “The Today Show.” They talk about Jing's culinary and entrepreneurial journey, and of course Sichuan Chili Crisp. Stay tuned.
Today's episode of Radio Cherry Bombe is supported by OpenTable. OpenTable is partnering with us for our Cherry Bombe dinner series, Sit With Us, which highlights amazing female chefs and restaurateurs in the Cherry Bombe network. Tickets are on sale for our next dinner at Chef Camille Becerra's As You Are at Ace Hotel Brooklyn on Saturday, November 11th, you can come solo and sit at a Cherry Bombe community table or bring a friend or two and we'll see you together. Tickets are available exclusively on OpenTable's website or app. Learn more at cherrybombe.com.
Also, November 11th at Ace Hotel Brooklyn is Cherry Bombe's third annual Cooks and Books Festival so you can make a whole day of it. We have great talks and demos and panels planned for you. Amazing folks like Sohla El-Waylly, Dr. Jessica B. Harris, Chef Angie Rito, Hetty McKinnon and Klancy Miller will be joining us. All tickets are $20. Everything is so crazy expensive these days, we wanted to keep ticket prices low so lots of you can join us. Let's celebrate these amazing authors and books and bring our community together in person, that's more important than ever. Head over to cherrybombe.com to learn more. If you'd like to make a weekend of it and stay at Ace Hotel Brooklyn, use code CherryB for 15% off when booking on acehotel.com.
Now here's Samah Dada in conversation with Jing Gao.
Samah Dada:
Jing, I'm so excited to meet you. I have a lot to ask you and we have a lot of ground to cover. First of all, where did you grow up and did you have an idea of what you wanted to do when you grew up?
Jing Gao:
When I was born, I was in China and my parents were academics, so we ended up moving around a lot, and moved to a different country almost every year of my life, starting from when I was 5 to 15. It was constant code switching, trying to blend in, trying to figure out where I belonged. It was also in a lot of countries where it wasn't very diverse. I was in Germany, England, Austria, France, Italy, Canada. Canada was pretty diverse, but it was when I was older, and I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, but for some reason, I don't know where I picked this up, I found a notebook from when I was eight years old where I said I wanted to be a CEO and I didn't even know probably what that meant.
Samah Dada:
Okay, eight year old. What?
Jing Gao:
I was like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I did not know what that meant, but I don't know where I got that idea from. But I guess I just wanted to do my own thing from a very young age. But at the same time, I was really lost. I didn't realize this until much later, but I was constantly in the effort of trying to blend in, I think pushing down who I really was. In my 20s, I ended up getting a job that brought me to Asia and I was working in Beijing and Singapore and Shanghai, and when I was in China, that was when I started to realize there's so much depth to my culture and I had no clue. And so I started to peel back the layers and that led me to what I'm doing now.
Samah Dada:
Especially as you're kind of in the process of peeling back layers of yourself and discovering your culture and all of that. Was there something early on that sparked that culinary curiosity for you?
Jing Gao:
So, my family, we're from Sichuan, and Sichuan is a province in China that is in the southwest part of the country and it is known for food. I mean, everywhere in China is known for food and it's great food and all the regions are so different and vibrant. But Sichuan in particular is known for its flavor and it's many, many different flavor profiles. And I'm from Chengdu, the capital where it's famous for being a food capital of China, and I feel like everyone who's born there is by default a foodie. You have to love food because it's just baseline. So it's not even discussed. Everyone's obsessed with food.
And so I would really be absorbed into that, whenever we would go back and visit and I would go and hang out with my cousins or my grandparents and we would always go to these restaurants that are streetside eateries in Chengdu and they're known as fly restaurants. These are called fly restaurants because they're so popular that people flock to them like flies. They're popular because they're so flavorful and it could be anything from street snacks like dumplings and noodles to homestyle cooking, but it's just so incredible and the energy's amazing and it's such a unifier because you have people from all different backgrounds just sharing a meal and I just loved that.
So that was my earliest memories of food and I just remember these dumplings, really luscious with chili oil and noodles and it was just such a amazing core memory for me. But aside from that, when we were in Europe, because there was no ingredients from China that my mom could cook with, she started freestyling her own Chinese cooking, which didn't look like anything that you'd recognize. But my family and I'm an only child are not foodies because I think we were away from China for so long. It wasn't really until my 20s that when I was living in China that it reawakened in me.
Samah Dada:
I want to take it back a little bit because you did not start off working in food. After school, you started working at P&G and then in tech. Let's talk about Proctor and Gamble first. What was your role there and did that inform the way that you operated your business, Fly By Jing later in life?
Jing Gao:
Yeah, so when I graduated from a business program, I was told I had two options, investment banking or consulting, and then maybe there's a third for very small group of people, that's like brand management. And so that's what I went into. What I really liked about P&G was that it's running your own business because as a brand manager, you're kind of in charge of the P&L of a brand. So for me, I started out on Gillette and then CoverGirl, and to me it was just so fun to be working on those brands, these iconic household names and learning a ton. And what's really interesting about being a brand manager is that you're in charge of the P&L, but it's not possible for you to do every piece of the business. There's all these different functions like sales, R&D, marketing, everything, and you kind of have to pull it all together.
Samah Dada:
Wow.
Jing Gao:
It's a big responsibility on that role and it's a very competitive role and I was really proud to get it. So I was learning the ropes and it was really incredible. It was my first experience of working with all these different functions who all work on different brands, so the same sales person might work on five brands, but you as the CoverGirl, brand manager need to convince them to spend time on your brand, which is what a CEO does, is figuring out what people's motivations are, trying to motivate them and to do what you want them to do. That was my first job. I really loved that experience.
But soon, after two years, I was sort of itching for the next thing. I wanted to do my own thing, but I still think it was the immigrant mentality in me that my parents were like, "Oh my God, why would you ever leave a secure corporate job?" So I took the next step and went into tech. I thought that would be a little different and I worked for Blackberry. This was way back in the day when Blackberry was the number one smartphone in the world. I mean, it was iconic at the time, and this was actually pre iPhone. And so with that job, I went to Asia. It was an opportunity in Singapore and that was more of a business development role. So it was teaching me a new set of skills. And I started to approach it like I was collecting skills from different jobs.
Samah Dada:
Love that.
Jing Gao:
These were behemoth, large corporations, and I knew that I wanted to get more out of the company than they could get out of me. So when I felt like my learning curve was starting to slow down, that's when I was like, okay, it's time for the next thing.
Samah Dada:
That's a really interesting and productive way to approach work though too. You're really gaining as much as you can from every experience.
Jing Gao:
Right. And I do think that being at those large companies, you are afforded a lot of opportunity and resources to learn, and as much as I really admire young entrepreneurs these days that start businesses right out of school, I do think that I don't regret my experience because I think it was all adding to notches of my confidence belt. I did the Blackberry job for a couple of years and then another tech job, and that's where I ended up in Shanghai.
And in Shanghai, I started to really dig deep into Chinese food. I started to realize just how much depth there was to Chinese cuisine that I wasn't even aware of, and I am Chinese, but just none of it ever made its way out of China. And there was such a misunderstanding of what it is. And not only that, there was really harmful false narratives about Chinese food and most ethnic cuisines in North America. I was just fascinated by that and I was learning about Chinese food in all the different regions and also sharing it on a blog. And that's how I got into food. Initially, it was just writing a food blog.
Samah Dada:
That's so interesting because that's really early on to be blogging. I mean, especially about Chinese food in the U.S., there was probably nobody else doing that at the time.
Jing Gao:
Right. It was very few blogs in the English language about Chinese food culture. I started to get more readers in time when I started writing for some publications like Food & Wine and stuff like that. And then when chefs like Andrew Zimmern and Eddie Huang would go to China, they would call me up and I would be their onscreen guide as well.
Samah Dada:
Wow.
Jing Gao:
Yeah. So it was super fun and I was doing all that on the side.
Samah Dada:
How did you move from your work in tech, obviously you're in China at this time, to working in food?
Jing Gao:
In hindsight, all the dots connect, right? So for me, that time I had already recognized that I was collecting different sets of experiences in order to do something for myself. I still didn't know what that was. I didn't have the braveness. I wasn't brave to be able to take that leap, but I knew I loved Chinese food. And for me, the other important thread in this is that because of the way I grew up, because I really was seeking who I was, it was a very personal quest for me. And food became that vehicle that I used to try to figure out who am I and how do I express myself.
Samah Dada:
That's so resonant by the way, for so many immigrants or kids of immigrants, when you feel like you grow up without that really inherent sense of belonging, I think food is such an interesting vehicle to really explore that.
Jing Gao:
Absolutely.
Samah Dada:
Talk to me more about that.
Jing Gao:
Yeah, I was grasping at anything to help me, I don't know, take claim of my identity. That was what drove me. And the more that I was sharing about what I was learning, the more I realized that there was a greater mission here as well to change the narrative about Chinese food, to change the way people saw it and really elevate it, put it on a higher platform that it deserved to be on. And then that broader mission started driving me. I think it was just one thing after another that reinforced that and I ended up gathering the courage to quit my job and I ended up opening a restaurant in Shanghai.
Samah Dada:
So talk to me about the restaurant and how did you go from just being like, okay, I'm going to quit my job and now I'm going to be a full restaurateur.
Jing Gao:
I had met some who became my co-founder in the restaurant business. It was called Bowism. And the idea really came from me being really inspired by this fast casual model that I was seeing come up in the U.S. since particularly Chipotle and Sweetgreen actually at the time. So this was in 2000 and I think 15. I noticed that there was nothing like that in China. It was like mom and pop eateries or really fancy restaurants and nothing really in between at the time. Today, it's very different, but at the time it was nothing.
And then the other thing I observed was that there was this glorification of Western cuisine at the time. There was like salad places coming up and Italian restaurants were really popular, but I wanted to make sure that what we did was really honoring Chinese food traditions, but doing so in a modern way, in a really well-designed space. That was the concept and it was bows and bowls and noodles and sides where you can pick and choose your combos. And it was in this beautifully designed, super modern space in the middle of the city. It was an instant success and people started flocking in, writers would write about it. We won a bunch of awards and it was even on New York magazine and wallpaper like guy to Shanghai. It was a crazy journey also because here I am, I think I'm 25 at the time, and like-
Samah Dada:
My gosh, so young.
Jing Gao:
My Chinese is fine, but it's not native as I didn't grow up there. And so having to navigate all of the legal stuff and logistical stuff and then hiring a team and all of that, it was a lot. But I spent a couple of years doing that and it was super rewarding journey. I just learned a ton.
Samah Dada:
Opening a restaurant is not easy. Did you learn anything specific from that experience that you took to then starting your own brand?
Jing Gao:
Everything. I ended up closing the restaurant because what I realized was that I really enjoyed the creative aspect behind it, the brand creation, the storytelling. That's why it got so much attention as well, because there was a clear story, there was a clear why, and I love shining a new light on Chinese cuisine, but I also wanted to reach more people. First of all, running a restaurant is extremely difficult. I realize it's not what I wanted to do was like, be in China and open a huge chain of Bowisms.
But what it really lit up in me is this desire to go even deeper. I wanted to learn more about Sichuan cuisine, which is my hometown where I'm from. I ended up going to Chengdu and doing a stage like an internship with a amazing chef there called Yu Bo. And through that process I was able to, I mean he's like a Michelin level chef and he's top at his craft and he knows all of the traditions and the techniques and the ins and outs of the ingredients, which I learned from him, are so integral to flavors.
So I discovered through him the most incredible things like Sichuan pepper that was previously reserved only for the emperor called Trivi Pepper, which are so electrifying. When you go to the harvest, you can literally smell it from miles away.
Samah Dada:
Amazing.
Jing Gao:
All of the air is electric and tingly. And then you've got fermented fava bean paste, which is, it's called Doubanjiang, but in Sichuan is the only place where they use fava beans instead of soybeans for this fermented paste. And it's literally called the soul of Sichuan cuisine because so deep and it's in so many dishes, there's a million grades of it. You can have the young few months fermented paste that's really simple. Or you can have a three to five year fermented paste, that's got this depth in umami that is unbelievable and really transforms a dish. So through that, I was just mesmerized and I learned so much about these traditions, but then I also was thinking to myself, how do I express something that's unique to me? And I was trying to figure that out.
So I was experimenting and I started cooking and started this underground supper club that was roving, and I did it in Shanghai, but I traveled all over China and Asia, that supper club, I named Fly By Jing. And the Fly, obviously in reference to fly restaurants of my hometown that I was so inspired by and I really wanted to bring that sense of energy and vibrancy into my dinner events because I just loved the street side stall energy. And so my dinner events were always super vibrant, super energetic, and the flavors really what defined it. But what I realized through that process because I was doing all these popups with chefs who were Italian or Mexican or French or whatever was that Sichuan flavors really melded so well with all these other cuisines. I went to New Zealand and Australia and all over. I would always have to carry suitcases of ingredients with me because these ingredients were not accessible anywhere else.
Samah Dada:
This is the most iconic thing I learned about you because I think it is so cool. And what better way to show your reverence for ingredients and flavor than to literally carry a suitcase of ingredients with you? It's amazing.
Jing Gao:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, some countries are really strict like New Zealand, and I managed to smuggle all my ingredients past the border, but you couldn't recreate those flavors with any ingredients that were not from Sichuan. So it just became clear that there was a gap and people loved the flavors, but they couldn't access it. Eventually, instead of just the ingredients. I would also just bring with me batches of flavor bases that I would pre-make and those actually became what Fly By Jing sauces are today.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with Jing and Samah.
If you are thinking about coming to our Cooks and Books festival at Ace Hotel Brooklyn on Saturday, November 11th, be sure to check out the talks and demos we have planned with Hetty McKinnon, Rie McClenn, Abi Balingit, Karen Akunowicz, and Angie Rito. It's not every day you can hang out with culinary superstars and learn their secrets. All tickets are $20. So snag yours before these sessions sell out. Visit cherrybombe.com for more and I hope to see you there.
Samah Dada:
I want to talk about Fly By Jing as it exists today. I mean, how did you land on the brand itself in creating your products?
Jing Gao:
When I was doing all the travel, it was starting to come into my head and I was making these batches of sauces and for example, the Chili Crisp that we have now, it was a flavor base for a mapo tofu that I would make. But then it was also basically like a chili oil condiment that is very famous in China. It was my version of it. It had much more ingredients than what you would normally find in stores and much more depth. But it was basically a chili oil condiment that I realized I could jar and give to friends and family that people started asking for it.
So I started selling it locally in Shanghai, I would just hand jar dozens of jars at a time. I was like, okay, so this has some legs, people like this, and it is a way for me to make these flavors more accessible to more people. It was also such a premium product that I recognized did not exist on store shelves because when you would go to stores, because of price points that people expected Chinese food to be, there was never anything of quality. And I realized there was something radical about that and I wanted to create a space where that could exist. That was the initial thought.
And then in 2018, I was traveling in the U.S. and looking at what was on the market here, I was really shocked when I didn't see any high quality Chinese food products. I went to Expo West, which is a giant food trade show, and that's really where decisions get made by the buyers of grocery stores across the country, what people are going to purchase off their shelves, and all of these different brands are set up and demonstrating what they have. But there again, were no Asian food brands. It was very appalling because it was only five years ago, in 2018.
So what I did was when I went back to Shanghai, I started with a Kickstarter campaign because I'd had some friends that had had successful campaigns, and I realized it was a really good way to get the word out and see if there's any appetite for this. But also, I needed to get the money from somewhere to do my first big batch in a factory. I wanted to see whether this was at all feasible. So I went to Sichuan with a couple friends and we did a week there and just filmed the beautiful scenery, the food, the sights and sounds. We put together a video. Took me about a month to put this Kickstarter page together.
Also, by the way, I was figuring out how do I scale a production because I was just making everything in my kitchen up until that point. That was a whole other journey. The Kickstarter started to have some legs and I was like, okay, I think I have a solution and I think it's going to take me this amount of time. I think I need this amount of money. And then put the campaign up. And I reached out, actually cold email two writers in the U.S. One was a writer for Saveur and one was a writer for New York Magazine. They both wanted to write about it, which was insane to me because I think, at the time my proposition to them was that I'm going to bring premium Chinese flavors to America for the first time, and I'm going to do so through this chili oil condiment that really doesn't exist in America today, but it is the number one hot sauce in China.
So I believe it's going to take off here too because it's superior, I think, to other types of hot sauces. And there's a reason why it's the number one hot sauce in China because it goes well on so many things, and it's such a great carrier flavor. It's got salt, fat, acid, heat, it's got all the things and it's great with Chinese food, which is why it's so popular. They wrote about it on the day that the campaign launched and it just blew up. I couldn't believe it. It was just-
Samah Dada:
Like went viral.
Jing Gao:
Went viral. Yeah. And within a day it was fully funded and then it kept climbing from there.
Samah Dada:
And you launched with the Chili Crisp. Now obviously Fly By Jing has expanded so much. How many SKUs do you have now and what do you have on your product line? There's so many amazing things.
Jing Gao:
Chili Crisp is definitely what we're known for, and it's still our bestseller. It's the majority of our business, and we now have an extra spicy version, which is really great.
Samah Dada:
Yum. And this goes on everything. Let's be honest with our audience. It tastes good on everything, even ice cream.
Jing Gao:
Yes. And that was something I really wanted to make clear when I launched, because I knew that the reason why people didn't understand Chinese food was because they were scared of it. They had no idea how to approach it. For the most part, they had to go to Chinatown or an Asian grocery store far away, and when they get there, they don't know what's on the shelves. And it just wasn't approachable. People are suspicious of what they don't know. So I wanted to really remove the barriers.
So from day one, I was really intent on telling people that they did not need to cook Sichuan food to eat this sauce. They don't even have to have Chinese food to eat this sauce. You can make it fit your life, the way you're living it. So if you're having scrambled eggs in the morning or a taco or burrito or even a salad, you can put the sauce on that and it will enhance what you're eating instead of masking it or hiding the flavors, it'll enhance the flavors.
And when I first launched it, I actually reached out to a couple of ice cream shops in New York and L.A., and I partnered with them to showcase Chili Crisp and ice cream. And I think that really also helped to drive the message home. If you can even put this on ice cream, what else can you put it on? So it kind of enabled people to experiment wildly with the condiment, and that was exactly what I want them to do. And I think that is a key thing that's helped Chili Crisp go from a obscure Chinese condiment to something that is really starting to hit the mainstream.
Samah Dada:
Are those product collabs? I know you mentioned the ice cream, and then also I know you did a tinned fish collab with Fishwife. Are those collabs a big part of your strategy and your brand?
Jing Gao:
We get asked about that a lot because we have done so many amazing collabs, but it really wasn't my intention from the start. A lot of these collabs came from organic friendships and just Becca, the founder of Fishwife is amazing and is a friend, and we actually shared an office together in L.A.
Samah Dada:
Oh, amazing.
Jing Gao:
We were sitting together one day and we opened up a can of her smoked salmon and put some Chili Crisp on it and we're like, oh my God, this is really great. And that's kind of where a lot of these collabs come about. We've also done collabs with restaurants and we did a collaboration with Shake Shack in U.K., and it's about to come to the U.S. later this year.
Samah Dada:
Thank you for that.
Jing Gao:
It is such a good menu, so I'm so excited for more people to have that. Yeah, there's just a ton of fun things, and it again, drives home and showcases how versatile the condiment is. It goes on anything.
Samah Dada:
I'm so excited for you because you wrote a full cookbook, “The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp: Spicy Recipes and Stories from Fly By Jing's Kitchen.” Congrats.
Jing Gao:
Thank you. I mean, I think anyone who's written a cookbook knows it is a labor of love. It's like birthing a child and usually takes as long. For me, I wrote it probably in the busiest year of Fly by Jing, which was last year. It was definitely a feat, but it was really important for me to tell this story, and especially at this time, I think we're really at this inflection point, and Chili Crisp is coming into the mainstream consciousness. My goal has always been to see Chili Crisp in every single household.
At Fly By Jing, our mission is to evolve culture through taste and to elevate consciousness by expanding palettes in minds. So this book was sort of a key part of that, to not only tell my very personal story and hopefully inspire more people to find their identity through self-expression and however they want to do it, but also to just make this condiment and these flavors, these beautiful flavors more accessible to the home cook. So yeah, that's what drove me and I'm just so excited to see it out there. I also wanted to showcase Chinese food in this really elevated light. So if you see the photos, I actually worked with an amazing team, Yudi, my photographer is actually a fine arts photographer, she's not a food photographer. And that was on purpose because I wanted to really showcase this food as if it were fine works of art.
Samah Dada:
I also was reading in your book this idea of how you're not about this whole tradition and authenticity of certain foods and how you don't think that pushes the culture forward. I love that because sometimes even when I'm creating Indian food, I'm like, is this "authentic"? But no, this is my version. I grew up in the U.S., my iteration of food and Indian food is going to be different than how my grandma made it. So can you just talk about that?
Jing Gao:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think growing up as Indian-American or Chinese-American, you often grow up feeling like you're neither Chinese nor American.
Samah Dada:
100%.
Jing Gao:
But I think what more and more people are starting to embrace and realize is that you can be 100% Indian and 100% American. Your experience is true to you. And we're refusing to let ourselves be put into a box where in the past, people have really tried to flatten our cultures and put it in a box and say that it cannot evolve beyond this because this is my experience of it, and therefore anything other than my experience of it is wrong. And people are learning to reject that because it's just silly. So when we started Fly By Jing, when we launched the sauces, we had a ton of resistance and just negative reactions. People were like, "How dare you charge $15 for a Chinese sauce?" The number of comments we've gotten on Instagram that this should be $1 or like-
Samah Dada:
And you clap back, which I love for you and your team.
Jing Gao:
Yes, we do. And it's crazy because nobody ever questions, like a white chef who may have gone to China once and started a Chinese restaurant-
Samah Dada:
Influenced by something, right?
Jing Gao:
Yeah. And is cooking an elevated version of something. For me, that experience was really eyeopening. We oftentimes hold up a mirror and instead of berating someone or talking down to someone about their beliefs, we often just turn it around on them. What makes you think that Chinese food doesn't deserve to be premium? Or that Chinese people don't deserve to profit from their craft?
Samah Dada:
Which I think is the most effective way to "clap back" because then you're allowing someone to examine why they're even questioning this in the first place.
Jing Gao:
Exactly, exactly. After a couple of years, we did a rebrand on the jars, and that's what you're seeing today on the jars, and we decided to tell a much more clear story about who we are and what we stand for, because I knew that one day we were going to be on grocery shelves. I wanted people who picked it up to get a sense for who we are instead of just, this is another chili crisp. So if you look on our jar, we have a tagline, which is not traditional, but personal. And I think when people read that, they instantly know what that means.
The number of people that have said to me, "Oh my God, I love that, that spoke to me," and they're not Chinese. They just understand. Everyone has felt the sense of belonging for belonging and just intuitively know what that means. And then we have this Venn diagram underneath that has Sichuan people on one side and everyone else on the other side and in the middle, the commonality is that this tastes different. And that is because-
Samah Dada:
I love that.
Jing Gao:
... of a very personal anecdote of mine where when the first time I served my sauce to my family in Sichuan, they were like, "Oh, this tastes different. They were like, this is good, but it's just not what we're used to." And I was like, yeah, this is illustrating that even in Sichuan, where this is really reflective of Sichuan like, it is more reflective of Sichuan than most products because all of the ingredients are sourced from that area. But even there, it can taste different because it is one person's story that it's one person expressing it, and it's really a radical thing to claim space and to take up that space where we've been told before that there is no space for you.
Samah Dada:
I know it's really tough to single out one or two recipes from the book because I know they're all children, you just love them all so much. But can you walk me through one or two recipes that are the most personal to you?
Jing Gao:
I think mapo tofu is my favorite food in life. I would eat that every day if I could. A lot of people don't realize how easy it is. It actually takes five minutes to come together. Once you have the ingredients, which it's key, Doubanjiang is the soul of Sichuan cuisine. That's key to it. And then Chili Crisp is sort of a shortcut to the layers of flavor in that dish. So if you have Doubanjiang and Chili Crisp, that dish literally comes together in a flash, and it's so cheap, especially if you're doing a vegan version with mushrooms instead of pork roast beef. I love that.
Another, I'm going to say two dishes that I love is the Zhong Dumplings, which is really famous ancient Chinese Street snack from Chengdu that is dumplings in this garlicky, sweet, savory, umami sauce. That was the inspiration for Fly By Jing Zhong sauce. So that dumpling is just to die for. And then related is another street food dish called Sweetwater noodles, which are these hand pulled really thick and chewy al dente noodles that are almost like maybe even three times the size of a bucatini. It's really thick. And is one of the rare noodles in Chinese food that's super al dente. That noodle is bathed in this sauce that's quite similar to Zhong sauce, but with a tahini creaminess.
Samah Dada:
Ooh, that's for me. That is for me. Also-
Jing Gao:
You got to try it. Also really easy to make.
Samah Dada:
No, I am fully prepared to cook completely out of your book, so thank you so much for that. That sounds delicious. Also, I love saying bathed in sauce because that's the correct way. Do you feel like when you were writing the book, there was a recipe that you were like, okay, I think this is going to be really popular.
Jing Gao:
Strange flavor sauce. And strange flavor is actually a type of, it's a real flavor profile in Sichuan cuisine. Sichuan is known for literally dozens of flavor profiles. The most famous one is Mala, which is spicy and numbing, and that's what everyone thinks of as Sichuan food. But there's so many more, and my favorite is Strange Flavor, and it's called that because it's this equal balance of sweet, savory, spicy, nutty, and tingly. And it's so perfectly balanced that you can't really tell what you're eating, but you just know it's good. And that's why it's called Strange Flavor, and it's such a versatile sauce. You can put it on poached chicken, salads, dress noodles, dumpling, literally anything.
Samah Dada:
You talk a lot about identity in the book, and you've been very open about community and belonging. As your brand evolved, you evolved too. You used to go by a Western name, Jenny and reclaimed your birth name Jing. Can you talk to me about that moment in decision of reclaiming your name?
Jing Gao:
Yeah. So when I was five, we moved to Germany. It was not long after that that I decided to change my name because I think none of the kids could pronounce my name. It was being made fun of, and so I was like, okay, I'm just going to be one of you guys. I'm going to take on a Western name. I don't know where Jenny came from, probably TV. And then I became Jenny for over 25 years, almost 30 years.
Samah Dada:
Wow.
Jing Gao:
And I got to the point where I was uncomfortable with my birth name. It was still my legal name. It's my name on my passport and stuff, but I was known as Jenny everywhere else. Yeah, there was something about me that just always felt a little bit uncomfortable with that. But when I started Fly By Jing, I obviously named it Fly By Jing, even though I was still Jenny at the time, because it was like, I think I was already starting to grasp at identity and trying to figure out where my name belonged in there. But what was really interesting, I had a very spiritual experience that came with reclaiming my name, it was during COVID, I think it was like two months in. It was right around the time, and I was in my house for months at that point, didn't leave my house, didn't put on makeup, didn't get out of my sweatpants.
And one day, I think I just realized when I looked in the mirror, oh my God, I just felt different. I was like, why do I feel the sense of ease? Why do I not feel contracted? There's something different. And what I realized was it kind of struck me. I was like, oh my God, I haven't gone outside and I haven't had a conversation with investors or whoever where I felt the need to prove myself and to fight back, because I constantly felt pushback, telling me that I didn't belong or Fly By Jing didn't belong. The number of investor conversations I've had where they're like, "Oh my God, this is never going to go anywhere." And no, I felt like this refreshing feeling that I didn't have to fight for my right to exist for so long. I just really felt this sense of self-acceptance when I looked in the mirror.
Samah Dada:
You felt like seen by yourself.
Jing Gao:
Yeah, I am okay with who I am. I don't need to prove my right to exist to others. And it was like that realization coupled with meditation session where I just got this download. I don't know where it came from, just this knowing that I need to go back to Jing. When I came out of that meditation, I felt like a different person.
Samah Dada:
Wow.
Jing Gao:
I realized also that I was the only one that had a problem with Jing. I felt very comfortable calling up my friends the next day and telling them, hey, I'm Jing now. You should call me Jing from now one. And it took some of them a while to adjust, but everyone was like, "Yeah, you feel like more of a Jing than a Jenny, anyway." And then I realized I was the one that had my issues with that, and I just completely let that go. That felt like taking the first step to reclaiming myself.
Samah Dada:
What is next for you? Are there more products? Does Larchmont Village ring any bell perhaps?
Jing Gao:
Now that you bring up Larchmont, I am opening a, so I'm getting back into the restaurant space, but it's a little different. I'm opening a place called Sua on Larchmont Village in L.A. And you're from L.A., so you know Larchmont is one of the rare communities in L.A., where it's walking families.
Samah Dada:
It's so cute there.
Jing Gao:
It's really cute. And the thing is, it stayed the same largely for the last, I don't know how long. There's great Asian food in L.A., but nothing really in the city center. And Larchmont is right in the middle of the city. My business partner, Stephanie and I, we started talking. Stephanie's also from Sichuan, and her family used to run a Sichuan restaurant in L.A. And so we started talking about what we wanted to see, and she lives in Larchmont and started talking about Sichuan flavors and how it's lacking in the food landscape. And before with Bowism, I was really inspired by Chipotle.
I have always thought that Pret A Manger, it's an amazing model as well, right? You've got convenience, prepackaged food, grab and go, which are all things I love, and I think we all need it in our lives today. But there's very few of those places where the food is healthy and tastes amazing, and definitely nothing that was Asian. That was kind of where the idea came about, was to combine amazing Sichuan flavors, powered by Fly By Jing with organic Californian produce, which reflects where me and Steph live today and make it something very uniquely our own, which is called Sua. And Sua is a Sichuan dialect word that means to be playful, to be joyful. And that's what this place really, I hope it is.
And it's all in super convenient, grab and go, environmentally friendly packaging, things like Sichuan chicken tenders with chili crisp honey mustard vinaigrette, cumin beef, broccoli bowls, and mapo tofu on jade bamboo rice, just really delicious flavors. Also a retail section where we're going to be showcasing high-end pantry goods made by Asian founders.
Samah Dada:
Amazing.
Jing Gao:
Yeah. So I'm really excited about that. Yeah, just can't wait to bring those flavors to the neighborhood.
Samah Dada:
I cannot wait to come visit. I will be eating there. I'm so excited. I want to end with a bit of a speed round. One of your favorite books on food or cookbook?
Jing Gao:
Ooh. I would say a Michael Pollan book.
Samah Dada:
Best food movie?
Jing Gao:
“Ratatouille.”
Samah Dada:
There we go. Agree. Favorite self-care practice?
Jing Gao:
I have an infrared sauna, which is very much-
Samah Dada:
Iconic.
Jing Gao:
It is very decorative, but I love it.
Samah Dada:
It's so good for you.
Jing Gao:
Yeah.
Samah Dada:
I'm jealous. I'm coming over for that too. Favorite-
Jing Gao:
Oh wait. I will say breathwork is the other one. Breathwork, and that's free.
Samah Dada:
Love that. Favorite kitchen tool?
Jing Gao:
A spatula.
Samah Dada:
One thing that's always in your fridge?
Jing Gao:
Pickles.
Samah Dada:
Oh.
Jing Gao:
Spicy Chinese pickles for kanji.
Samah Dada:
Yum.
Jing Gao:
Yeah.
Samah Dada:
Snack food of choice?
Jing Gao:
I really like this dried tofu snack. It's again, a spicy snack from Sichuan, but it's in a little package and a little protein hit with a ton of flavor.
Samah Dada:
That's delicious.
Jing Gao:
Yeah, you can get it at 99 Ranch.
Samah Dada:
Love that for me. Okay. Footwear of choice in the kitchen?
Jing Gao:
My Crocs.
Samah Dada:
Yeah. That's all I have to say. Do you have a live by motto or mantra?
Jing Gao:
Well, it's tattooed on my arm. It's Hara Hachi Bu, which is Okinawan for eat until you're 80% full.
Samah Dada:
Oh my God. Oh my God, I thought you were my favorite person before you said that. Oh, wow.
Jing Gao:
But I never follow it. I never stop at 80.
Samah Dada:
I love the idea of that. But in practice, when you're faced with food, very different story. If you had to be stuck on a desert island with one food personality, who would it be and why?
Jing Gao:
I'll say you.
Samah Dada:
Aww, really?
Jing Gao:
Yeah. Because we besties now?
Samah Dada:
We're besties. I will bring medjool dates and tahini.
Jing Gao:
I'll bring the Chili Crisp.
Samah Dada:
Jing, thank you so much for taking the time. It's just been a pleasure to talk to you, and you are such an inspiration.
Jing Gao:
Likewise. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Samah for filling in for me and to Jing for stopping by. Want to stay on top of all things Cherry Bombe? Sign up for our free newsletter at cherrybombe.com and be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcast or Spotify. If you're a longtime listener and haven't subscribed yet, it's time. Our theme song is by the band Tra La La. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producer is Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.