“Pastry, Politics, Pivots, and More” Transcript
Kerry Diamond: Hi everybody. Welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe, the number one female focused food podcast in the universe. I'm your host Kerry Diamond. On today's episode, we're airing three special moments from our first ever Jubilee Seattle. It was an incredible day filled with delicious food, insightful talks, and lots of networking. The Cherry Bombe team and I love the Seattle Bombe Squad and so many of the city's amazing restaurants, bakeries and bars. You'll have to travel to Seattle for the food and beverage, but when it comes to some of Seattle's most interesting personalities, we've got you covered. On today's show, we'll hear how pastry chef, Crystal Chiu went from working for speaker Nancy Pelosi to making beautiful desserts at Canlis, one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. Then, Emme Ribeiro Collins tells us how she has juggled being a private chef, a restaurant owner, and a young mother of three. We'll finish with a special conversation between myself and Van Nguyen, a biohacker who tells us what that term is all about. Today's show is supported by the Cherry Bomb cookbook published by Clarkson Potter. The cherry bomb cookbook features 100 recipes from 100 amazing women in the food world, including Molly Yeh, Christina Tosi, and Mashama Bailey. Get a copy cherrybombe.com or at your favorite local bookstore. Now here's Crystal Chiu talk from Jubilee Seattle titled The Pivot from Politics to Pastry.
Crystal Chiu: So around seven years ago, about this time, I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I didn't live there, but I was given a one way ticket and I flew into the city. I didn't know a single soul, but I knew I would touch the lives of thousands by the time I left in five days. So what was going on seven years ago around this time? Barack Obama and Joe Biden were running for reelection and I was part of their advanced team that carried out their campaign events across America. Pretty cool job, right? How did I even get it? Well, much like the food industry, the world of politics is a small one. I got my connection from my first job out of college, working for Nancy Pelosi, doing her first speakership and the US House of Representatives. Now. I'm not a political junkie. I never was and never will be.
Crystal Chiu: So why did I take a job so central to it all? For the next four years my office would be in the Capitol and my office view would be of the Washington Monument dead on. So why this job? Well, damn, working for the first female Speaker of the House was going to be interesting. Here was a woman in a position with no precedent and now she was second in line to become president in a world built by men, founded by men. What was she going to do? How was she going to act? All eyes were on her scrutinizing every move. And for me, as a young female professional in my early twenties observing how she embraced this role was going to change my life and my outlook of women in power across all industries. So what was it like working for Nancy Pelosi?
Crystal Chiu: Meryl Streep, playing Anna Wintour in the Devil Wears Prada is a fairly accurate description of my typical work day. There was the energy in the office when she got to work, the kind that made you put your shoes back on your suit jacket so you look presentable at all times. She was a tough boss with us, her staff, and the 233 democratic members that she represented in Congress. You left every meeting with her feeling like you weren't doing enough. She had goals and she knew how to carry them out. She made decisions with such force and directness that you did not question the outcome and these decisions were big, like providing all Americans with healthcare and reviving the American banking system. Pelosi was in power and neither we or she doubted that. But in this position, making monumental decisions is one thing, getting others on board to make them reality is another.
Crystal Chiu: The longer I worked for her, the more I noticed what she did to make that happen. No detail too small got past her, because every detail was important. Where someone sat at a meeting, who was included in a phone call, even the order in which someone was introduced at an event, and every choice she made, no matter how small was the right one and it was genius. She recognized that it was the details that counted for each person. It was her secret weapon. She could make people feel counted, recognized, a human. It was hospitality. She could remember the details of people's lives, the names of spouses, children, grandchildren, inquiring about your health and following up on it. She would write handwritten thank you's and well wishes for important events. She lended a human touch to the role of Speaker and I am telling you that is how she has gained the loyalty of those that she leads.
Crystal Chiu: How did she become Speaker of the House again? It's not because of tactical skill, it's because she's found ways to connect with you as a person. My four years working for her, help me see what women are capable of at the highest levels of leadership and pressure and that one of the most important qualities that we have more so than our counterparts is that we are better at nurturing relationships and it is a quality that we should embrace in our leadership roles. As for me, I didn't have to quite tap into this just yet in my professional life because things were about to change. How did I pivot from politics to pastry? It wasn't so much a pivot as it was the ground shifting below me. As a result of the 2011 elections, the Democrats lost power of the House. Speaker Pelosi lost her post and I lost my job. And remember when I said I wasn't a political junkie, losing my job was the universe telling me to stop living someone else's dream, that I had other interests and now the curtain was lifted.
Crystal Chiu: It was nudging me towards something that I was a junkie about, food. Baking had always been a hobby for sure, but it was hardly the source of my career change. It was the wider world of food that drew me in and being curious about food was my hobby. Was there an article about a farmer who was growing apple varieties from the days of George Washington? I read it. Was there a documentary about how the Vietnamese first started making fish sauce? I watched it. And was there a recipe calling for fresh coconut milk? You better be sure I went out, bought a coconut, and smashed it on my kitchen floor with a hammer. So during this period of unemployment I realized I needed to take this eagerness to learn about food and turn it into something tangible. And so I thought might as well make it my job.
Crystal Chiu: And there it was. I was 29 years old when I made the switch. 29 years old is when a cook has been cooking in a kitchen for 10 years and becomes an executive chef. I was old and new at the same time and I knew I needed to fast track my career. So my strategy was twofold, to work in the best restaurants in the world and to travel. And in a span of five years, that's what I did from Chicago to New York, across the Pacific Ocean to Asia and Australia, I did not stop. I went to school, I staged, I worked, I worked for free, I worked in countries that I legally wasn't allowed to. I sacrificed my time, my finances, and my family and poured my heart and soul into experiences that I opened myself up to because there was nothing more I wanted to do.
Crystal Chiu: This was it. Then I became a chef. I was a cook, became a chef, but really that's just a title, but it is a title that screams a responsibility to lead. And now I thought, "How do I want to lead? What kind of leader do I want to be? I'm a woman, an ethnic minority, of an immigrant family entering late into an industry dominated by men. How many predecessors do I have to look up to? Not enough, that's for sure." But I had to remember, I had the ultimate example to look back on. Speaker Pelosi did not see herself as the first woman in a man's job, she simply saw herself as the best person with the skills, intellect, and humanity for the job. And this is what enabled her to be Speaker as she saw fit, without second guessing herself in regards to her gender.
Crystal Chiu: She has become one of the most effective Speakers in recent history. Because of that, Donald Trump will see that for himself soon enough, I am sure of it. The key to her longevity and leadership, recognizing the little details that make up our humanity to cultivate loyalty. That is her strength and that is how I want to lead. Coincidentally, we as an industry are in a period of time where we are reevaluating how we treat people. Gone should be the days of physical, verbal, mental abuse, treating people as if they weren't people at all. We can still demand perfection and excellence, but how do we do it in a more dignified way? There's no easy answer and it is going to take a long time for us to change our culture, but I do believe women are the ones with the instincts to shape it into something better. How? Just like my old boss, look for the details, find the humanity, and lead with it. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond: That talk was absolutely dynamite. Thank you Crystal for being a part of Jubilee Seattle. Now we'll hear Emme Ribeiro's talk titled A Young Chef on Raising Kids, Raising Money, and Raising Eyebrows. Introducing Emme is Cherry Bombe cover girl, Sophia Roe.
Sophia Roe: So I'm here to talk about Emmy, who you guys know. She's this wonderful woman that represents diversity, storytelling, and heritage, and family. Storytelling I really want to talk about, she has an insane story. I don't even really want to get into it because I don't think anyone's going to be able to tell it the way that she's going to tell it. I'm half Brazilian, she's a Brazilian American, so I feel we feel, I feel so tied to her in that way. I was in LA before I came here and I was able to have a wonderful phone conversation with her and the way that she feels about Brazilian food, the way that she's made other people feel about Brazilian food is the most special thing in the world.
Sophia Roe: We talked about imposter syndrome, which is so strange because she's got this, she's got three kids first off, how she has three kids, I don't know how this woman has three kids. And has done all the things she's done, it's crazy, when you see her, how does she have three kids? Anyway... How do you have three kids? But this Kickstarter, and we talked about the Kickstarter just briefly, but this idea that, "Oh my gosh, this community cares about me, they love me," and that's something for me as my own storyteller of my own kind of crazy, intense story. I feel like that every single day and I think that in a strange way, that's the most relatable thing because you can be reaching a pillar that you never thought you'd get to and still feel like, "Me? Why me?" It's such a relatable thing and she tells that story so, so, so beautifully. I'm not going to talk anymore. Come, come up here. Come. Come give me a hug.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: Okay. Hello everybody, I'm Emme. Thank you Sophia for wonderful introduction. Like Sophia said, I was born in Brazil and I immigrated here to Seattle with my family in '94, when I was just six years old. I was born in Salvador Bahia, Brazil, coastal city in Northeastern Brazil. My family has always been in the food service industry back home. My mom owned a catering company and that she operated out of our house. So I've been around food service all of my life. So there's no surprise that when we came here, my parents decided to open up a Brazilian restaurant and it was the first Brazilian restaurant here in Seattle, Tempero de Brasil, in '99. I was about 12 years old when the restaurant opened and I grew up there. It was my second home. I would come there after school, do my homework. Eventually when I was old enough for my parents to let me work, I was hosting, pouring water in glasses, and eventually serving at the restaurant.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: And then my teenage years hit and I wanted nothing to do with my parents. So I went off and worked at other restaurants. But restaurants have always, and food service has always been in my blood. So when I was older I knew that I was going to go off to school, study business management, and become a restaurant manager or some type of manager in the hospitality field. I applied to Howard University in DC and got in, but just three days before my flight took off to DC I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I was 19 at the time and I was 20 years old when I had my daughter. Being thrust into motherhood when you're just entering adulthood is really challenging. For me, it was even more challenging cause I got really sick when I was pregnant with my daughter. I had preeclampsia and had her two months early.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: So that was another layer of trauma and crazy experience at such a young age. But because of my experience, I am here today, so I don't think that I would be who I am or where I am today had I not had that experience. When I tell people that I have kids, you'll get the reaction that you just saw from Sophia. Usually they're like, "Oh okay, how old is your kid?" And I'm like, "Well I have three, they're 11, four, three," and it's like, "Three kids?" And it's usually even more of like a flabbergasted reaction when I'm in a work setting, as if how am I doing this as Sophia said. To me it's just second nature. At 20 I obviously didn't have a career, I was still a kid so I built my, when I built my career, I've always been a mom, so it was never a thought of can I do this?
Emme Ribeiro Collins: How am I going to do this? It was I have to do this, I have no choice. My daughter is here. I built myself a career that was centered around being a mom and focusing on my family. I went to culinary school, I knew that I wanted to work in food, but I knew that at that time I did not want to work restaurants cause my daughter is still pretty young and I didn't want to come home at 1:00 AM in the morning and not be able to see her. So what's beautiful about the food industry is that there's so many different options. It's not just restaurants. So for me that looked like becoming a private chef. I was able to do that and still be able to come home and cook dinner for my kid and put her to sleep.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: That eventually organically grew into my catering company. I fortunately, I consider myself lucky that I never had this moment that I feel a lot of women do of having like anxiety and fear and uncertainty about when is the right time to start a family and have kids. But as a mom of three, a chef, a business owner, and a person who has worked all her life, I'm here to tell you there's no right time. There's no perfect time at all. There is no perfect situation. You just have to live your life and deal with the cards that you've been dealt and make it work. Do your best. The idea of work life balance to me is a myth. Sorry. Balance I feel implies equality, so work and life will never equally balance at the same time. There'll be days where your work will consume you and take all your time and energy and there will be days where home life will do the same.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: I feel as women, especially as mothers, we have this self-imposed guilt that we put on ourselves. The guilt that you're not doing enough in your business, you're not present enough in your business, you're not there enough for your kids, you're not there enough for your husband. I've learned to counter that little voice of guilt in my head with just really trying to live in the moment and giving 100% to the task at hand, or the person that I'm dealing with in the moment. That has really for me helped quiet that noise of that guilt. I've also always had the mindset of do now and think later, which has sometimes worked for me and sometimes has not, but even when it doesn't, it's a lesson that I learned and needed to learn. So three years ago when my parents decided to close down their Brazilian restaurant, Tempero de Brasil, it was a no brainer and I took the keys and was ready for the journey to now take over the restaurant and run it as my own.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: The biggest lesson that I've learned with that journey was that it is okay to ask for and accept help. That was a big one for me, and I think that a lot of women struggle with that. We want to do everything and we want to do everything ourselves and take care of everybody ourselves. So as Sophia mentioned, I did a Kickstarter for my restaurant when I launched it and to help with opening cost and I ugly cried like every day that I would see a new donor popup, whether it was $10 up to one of my clients donated $5,000 to me. So that was like, "Wow, people believe in me," and they do. We have to be open to that support and believe in ourselves. The sense of community support has been really, really instrumental in my career. And this, I feel the most incredibly powerful thing is women supporting women.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: I've been really lucky this past month has been really hard time for me. I actually might, to make a long story short, the landlords of our restaurant space that we've had for 20 years decided to terminate my month to month lease this last month. So after taking over my parents' restaurant, I just had to close it this last October. I feel like the universe knew that this had to happen, and this past month I've been in a bunch of events and experiences where it's been really woman centered, especially women in the industry, and that has been incredibly empowering and supporting to me that people keep asking me, "Are you okay?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm fine." I don't know if I'm in shock or if I'm really fine. I think I'm really fine. And I probably... Not to say that it was a horrible situation, but I have also from finding out you're pregnant three days before leaving college had this mindset of everything happens for a reason and again you got to deal with what's happening instead of living in this, why me? Why is this happening to me mind frame.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: I think that because of that, that allows the universe to really shift for you and opportunities to arise and things to go the way that they're supposed to be. So although the restaurant did close, I have recently accepted a position with Seattle Public School District as their new district chef, which is amazing. Thanks. Which... Thank you. I'm really excited about it.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: I grew up in the Seattle Schools District and I feel like this is a full circle moment because when I came I was six years old. I started school halfway through, I think it was the spring time and when I went to school, I don't really remember my full experience moving here, learning the language and stuff like that, I don't remember very well. One moment that really sticks out in my head is at school, people would ask me, "Where are you from?" And I would say, "Brazil," and nobody knew what I was talking about. Where is Brazil? That like left such an impression on me at six years old, Brazil was all I know and to have people not know where it was really impressionable. So I feel a lot of my life I really try to tell people about Brazil, teach people about Brazil.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: That for me has manifested into teaching people about Brazil through foods. So I'm so excited to now be a part of the school district that I grew up in, to be able to first of all, improve the quality of food. And second of all, provide more diverse global options because I think that we all learn through food and it's an amazing opportunity to teach kids about different cultures and different things through food. So I'm really, really excited about that. Aside from that, as if three kids and a new job, it's not enough, I still do really want to continue to spread Brazilian cuisine and culture knowledge in Seattle and so I'm searching for a new opportunity to open a new space and be able to bring you all authentic Brazilian food and not just meat on a stick because I know a lot of people think Brazilians only eat meat and although we do, we do down south, Brazil is a huge, huge country and it really varies where you are. My city, we eat a lot of seafood and stuff so I think it's always funny when people think we only eat meat.
Emme Ribeiro Collins: Thank you all for listening to my story. It's a pretty interesting multilayered one, I feel I've given you just the basic of my story, but thank you for listening. I want to leave this with let's continue to share our story, the good, the bad. I think it's really important not to just highlight the successes and the good. I think we need to be open and honest with each other about the bad things that are happening and some hardships that we're going through because it really makes us not feel like we're going at it along because we all are going through hardships. Let's support each other and thank you for listening to my story.
Kerry Diamond: Thank you, Emme, we can't wait to see how the next part of your journey goes. For the last part of today's show, we're airing a special conversation that I had with biohacker Van Nguyen. Curious what biohacking is all about? Get ready to learn.
Kerry Diamond: I forgot why. I usually don't do interviews at Jubilee because I'm usually running around, but I really wanted to do this one for reasons I'll talk about in a minute. But first I have an exercise for all of you and Van doesn't know that I'm doing this. Ready? All right, everybody squeeze your butt. Squeeze your butt. Are you all squeezing your butts? Okay, I should do it too. I'll do it with you. Okay. Breathe out and pull your rib cage down. It's a little hard. Breathe out rib cage down. Engage your abs, 20%. Got it? 20% just 20%. Are you doing 50%? I think you are.
Kerry Diamond: All right. Set your head in a neutral position. Ears in line with shoulders. Imagine someone grabbing the top of your head above your ears. That doesn't sound very pleasant and pulling it upward. Okay? Everybody good? Butts squeezed, abs engaged 20%? All right, congratulations, you're all biohackers. That was a scientifically proven way to sit smarter. So we are here to talk with Van Nguyen about biohacking. Van is a biohacker and she is the community director of the Biohackers Collective with 8,000 members across the country and co-creator of the PNW BioHackers. Did I get that right, Van?
Van Nguyen: You did.
Kerry Diamond: You look very serious. I want to make sure I'm getting this all correct.
Van Nguyen: It's 8,000 members globally.
Kerry Diamond: Oh, 8,000 members globally. Okay, so I started to hear about the concept of biohacking on my favorite podcasts. I host a podcast and I listen to a lot of podcasts. Then I heard that Jack Dorsey, you all know Jack Dorsey, right? Twitter. Is a biohacker who believes in a concept called intermittent fasting. He only eats between 6:30 and 9:30 PM and he doesn't eat on the weekend. My first thought was not poor Jack Dorsey. My first thought was Jack Dorsey is bad for the restaurant industry. I thought of Makini and Renee and all my friends who own restaurants, and I started to think people in the food world need to know more about biohacking because Silicon Valley is obsessed with biohacking and it's not going away. So Van, tell us what a biohacker is.
Van Nguyen: Biohacking is the leveraging of the latest technology and cutting edge science to evaluate and help you achieve your personal goals, to optimize your health and your performance. So whether you're putting together a good sleeping habits, eating the right foods that work best for your genetics and your current health situation, or you're meditating, doing intermittent fasting, you could be taking supplements or even there's so many different things you could do to really help you sleep better even, just having like blackout curtains, all those things are a part of hacking. I think with your phones now, the iPhones have the night mode so you're not exposed to blue light, so that was kind of a big biohacking thing that that kind of caught on with artificial lights.
Kerry Diamond: Even Fitbit, right?
Van Nguyen: Yeah.
Kerry Diamond: How many of you track your steps? Show of hands. Come on, more of you do it than that. Hands up high. Okay. So yeah. So your all, they're all biohackers in a sense, right?
Van Nguyen: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I mean biohacking is a spectrum. You can dabble in it or you can be pretty extreme. So it does depends on what you want to put in place in your life.
Kerry Diamond: So Van, why did you decide to become a biohacker?
Van Nguyen: At the age of 25 I started getting a lot of food allergies and I never had allergies in my life and I had a lot of gut issues. I wasn't able to eat. I ended up with diagnosed with allergies, the shrimp, casein, whey. I also had an EpiPen episode at the age of 30, so my coworker had a stab me with an EpiPen, not knowing I was going to be allergic to shrimp and I was like, "What's going on with me? Why is my body going through all these changes? Why am I not able to eat these foods anymore?" So I dove into allergies, trying to understand what's going on with my body, and a lot of it had to do with stress. I think a lot of you know stress kills a lot of your good bacteria in your gut and not knowing that your gut has more neurons there than there are in your spinal cord, which is pretty amazing why they call it your second brain. So having studied a lot, about allergies and health, I was introduced to intermittent fasting, the ketogenic diet. I also was called, my nickname was Dory, like from finding Nemo, because I had a horrible memory. I couldn't even remember people's names, birthdays. I was like, "What's going on with me?" And people thought I had dementia type two it was pretty bad.
Van Nguyen: Really bad brain fog and having gone on the ketogenic diet introduced by my friend, I pretty much, that got eliminated and now people are like, "Wow, you're a beast launching three brands." I'm super productive now, I'm able to focus and it was just having all those good habits in place from meditation to diet really helped a lot.
Kerry Diamond: Can you, I hear keto all the time, I'm starting to see it on labels of food. I truly do not understand everything I should about keto. Can you tell us?
Van Nguyen: Sure. There's a lot of different types of keto diets. There's three. There's a standard ketogenic diet where 75% of it is fats. You got the 10 to 20% or 10 to 15% protein and then the rest can be carbs, and then there's the targeted ketogenic diet. There's a slight variation between the three ketogenic diets between like a five to 15% of fats that you can consume.
Van Nguyen: Then there's the cyclical ketogenic diet where you can cycle it so that on the weekends or on certain days of the week, you can add a little bit more carbs. As women also, it's different than men, when you do do the ketogenic diet, not having a lot of carbs in your diet can dry you out. As women, we need it for the mucus. We need more carbs than men do and it helps us produce a mucous membranes in our body. What I found is when I was on the keto diet for three years, I started to feel really dry, my eyes were really dry, my mouth was really dry, so I had to get off of it and go onto the paleo and then cycle back into the keto when I needed to.
Kerry Diamond: So for all of you who are like, "Ugh, another diet is a trend." A few years ago a lot of people rolled their eyes at gluten free, and now if you work in the restaurant industry or food service of any kind, you know how many people are seeking gluten free options these days. So what we're talking about right now are things that could very well be infiltrating the food industry in lots of different ways. What about people who say that this is just disordered eating?
Van Nguyen: I'd say if you're obsessed with it and you're counting and you're keeping track of every little thing, then that can be very stressful. But if you are approaching it in a more health conscious kind of way, I think it's healthy for you. There's that saying where if you eat bad food with a good attitude is you know better than eating a good food with a bad attitude, so that mental or the psychology, your mindset is so important in your health. I don't think you should obsess over it. It does take some time to get used to the different things and it's just changing one thing at a time and eliminating the foods that you're intolerant to makes a huge difference. I know it did for me, especially sugar and stuff like that. So...
Kerry Diamond: It's been very interesting for me getting to know Van because I am fully team buttercream, afraid to admit. But Lyndsay, where's Lyndsay Sung? Lyndsay knows that and Charlie Dunn Meyer. There you are Lyndsay. Okay. Okay, another reason I wanted Van to come up here was because running a restaurant is a business and as the more I talked to her I realized that as biohacking takes hold, restaurants are potentially missing an entire segment of this business. And I'd said to Van, I'll ask her right now, do you feel welcome at restaurants?
Van Nguyen: There's not a lot of restaurants I can eat at, and sometimes it can be difficult to ask for a lot of the modifications and I'm sure chefs and cooks aren't really happy about me asking, "Hey can you leave out the toast?" Or, "I can't have cream or the sugar. Do you have sugar free drinks or is it organic?" It can be rather difficult to eat out. A lot of the people in my biohacking group cook at home mostly because of that. There's 650 of us in the community. So we cook mostly and there's a handful of restaurants we can eat at here. So it'd be nice if there was just even one menu item that we could eat at. We'd probably eat out more.
Kerry Diamond: Aside from having one menu item, what could restaurants do to make you feel more welcome?
Van Nguyen: I mean obviously, definitely the service. Gluten free, soy free, having some dairy free options.
Van Nguyen: I think Plum Bistro is great for that because there are a lot of organic sustainable options, wild caught fish, pasture raised meats, grass fed meats. I think that's all really great options to have. If there are going to be bread, sourdough breads a lot more digestible than other types of bread. Even with people who are gluten intolerant.
Kerry Diamond: Shout out to Sarah Owens. Where's Sarah Owens? Is she in the room? Is she downstairs manning her bread. Okay, womanning her bread. Hopefully you all met her. She's at the Kerrygold station and is one of the queens of sourdough bread.
Van Nguyen: Biohackers love Kerrygold. They only buy Kerrygold unsalted butter.
Kerry Diamond: The Kerrygold people here to hear that? They're not here either. Oh my God. Okay, Van, I'm going to make you repeat all of this downstairs.
Van Nguyen: They stock up on it when it's on sale.
Kerry Diamond: Oh yeah? So for people listening who are like, "I can't do what Van is talking about," is it an all or nothing mentality?
Van Nguyen: No, I don't think it's an all or nothing mentality. I mean for some people I think just even in eliminating one thing, maybe it's Coca Cola or if you're gluten intolerant, I think that elimination diets are really good for that. Because you can kind of figure out what your body likes and doesn't like. And then once you reintroduce one at a time, after three months of being clean, you can see how your body feels. When you start to feel better, you want to keep feeling good. Right? So, I mean, how many of you want to live longer, be more productive, feel happier. For me I was, not to go off on tangents, but I was previously diagnosed with ADHD, depression, anxiety. I didn't want to be on medication and food was pretty much my medicine other than lifestyle habits.
Kerry Diamond: All right, well I have a feeling that this has raised more questions than it has answered, but I did just want to jump up here with Van and just because I knew, like I said, you'd be hearing this term biohacker if you haven't heard it already. But thank you. It's been great talking to you.
Van Nguyen: Thank you so much for having me.
Kerry Diamond: That's it for today's show. Thank you to Van for sitting down with me and giving us a glimpse into biohacking. Thank you to everyone who made Jubilee Seattle possible. It was a beautiful day and you all helped us bring it to life. Interested in attending Jubilee yourself? Our next Jubilee is on Sunday, April 5th at the Brooklyn Expo Center. Tickets are on sale right now on cherrybombe.com and we'll be announcing our lineup very soon, so keep an eye out for that. Also, scholarship applications for Jubilee NYC are open visit cherrybombe.com to apply. Radio Cherry Bombe is edited and produced by Jess Zeidman. Our theme song is All Fired Up by the band Tralala. Thanks for listening everybody. You are the bombe.
When Harry Met Sally Clip: I'll have what she's having.
Tiff Bryant: Hey there. This is Cherry Bombe member Tiff Bryant, a baker living and working in New York City. I think Moonlynn Tsai owner and GM of Kopitiam is the bombe. Not only do her and chef Kyo Pang bridge culture through serving Malaysian food in the lower East side, she's always doing the most for her community and supporting local queer and women of color run businesses. Whether it's feeding her community at cultural events or supporting local Chinatown businesses, Moonlynn is the definition of an engaged community member. Thanks for all your commitment to your community and New York at large. You're the bombe.