Hidden Gems: Meet Waldo Yan of Tasty Food 626

Today we’d like to introduce you to Waldo Yan.

Hi Waldo, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
For more than two decades, I watched my parents operate Tasty Food, a Chinese restaurant in San Gabriel that, like so many of the city’s best restaurants, kept a dream alive in a new land by recreating memories of home, now thousands of miles away. I saw the woks red with every order. I heard the knives gliding along the chopping block. But for the most part, I waited for the keys to rustle in the door back home.

Running a mom-and-pop restaurant is hard. The hours are long and non-negotiable. Cooking can become little more than a means to an end. But embedded in the struggle is a beautiful driving force. My fondest childhood memories are of Tuesday nights. That was when my mother, after a full day’s work, would prepare a meal for the family to enjoy together — the purest way she knew how to communicate her love and care.

From Central Texas-inspired smoked brisket to hojicha ice cream, my meticulous, forward-thinking technique diverges from that of my parents’ more traditional focus. Inspired by texts like The Flavor Bible and award-winning cookbook author and chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (whom I once had the honor of cooking alongside), there is a creative, problem-solving bent to my culinary ethos. A recent collaboration with Nova Brewing Co., the only craft sake brewery in Los Angeles, presented me with kasu (the leftover, umami-rich byproduct of sake after straining), which I transformed into an ice cream, demonstrating the versatility of flavor that rice fermentation creates.

Sake ice cream was just my latest stroke of off-beat inspiration. My kitchen experiments began early on in high school when food became the center of my universe. Everything found its way back to the kitchen; a heat gun purchased to repair my PlayStation console almost immediately found its way into the kitchen tool drawer — what better way is there to quickly crisp up the skin on a pork belly or brulee a dessert?

Still, like my parents before me, I am guided by memories of home. My first love was my mother’s Hainan chicken rice; in preparing my favorite meal, she would joke that she was enabling a blood feud between me and chicken-kind. Later in life, after my mother was taken suddenly by advanced leukemia, the dish became an obsession. I agonized over the grains of rice, over the optimal way to slice the bird, over the ginger scallion sauce that my mother perfected but never passed the recipe down to.

My actions went against my mother’s last wishes. Days before her passing, she implored me not to enter the restaurant business. Whatever you do, don’t do this. Don’t cook for a living. “She was raised to think that restaurant work was reserved for people who didn’t have any other option,” I said in an L.A. Times video. I understood why she was so adamant in her plea. I witnessed firsthand the physical, financial, and mental toll the industry took from my parents. But in taking up the mantle that my mother left, despite her reservations, I hope to point toward a different way, both as a creative exercise and as a business venture.

It took time, but my diligence was recognized and celebrated: in 2016, the Los Angeles Times ran a video feature on my family’s story; in 2018, Eater LA praised Tasty Food’s Hainan chicken rice as an essential rendition. The dish meant the world to me; it was a fitting tribute to a mother’s love.

I chose to follow my calling, an ongoing pursuit of knowledge in the kitchen, as a way to communicate my love and care the way my mother once did, as a way to keep her inspiration alive. Please allow me to share all I’ve learned with you.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely not. My mother’s dying wish was literally for me to never step in a kitchen professionally. So as much as I have an intrinsic curiosity for food, it hurt knowing I was dishonoring her memory by cooking. I don’t think I will ever shake that need to make her proud of my decision to work with food. In many ways, it’s too late now because I can never hear her say that it’s okay. As much as I am resolved to continue down this path, I struggle occasionally with the fear that my parents’ sacrifices were squandered by my doe-eyed decision to enter this industry.

We’ve been impressed with Tasty Food 626, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are a collective of cooks who were displaced by the pandemic. But, losing our formal jobs didn’t mean losing our passion for food and hospitality. We came together and explored the opportunity to serve our local neighborhoods through contactless takeout only pop-ups during the height of the pandemic. This gave us a crucial moment to step back and explore food that meant a lot to us personally. Ice cream, foie gras terrines, craft cocktails, eventually private dinners when we were all safely vaccinated, you name it and we had time and the desire to explore it. Instead of making hollow claims regarding the quality of our products, we encourage anyone with an interest to reach out to us via Instagram @tastyfood626 and taste for yourself. We would love nothing more than to take care of you and your loved ones.

The thing that we are most proud of has nothing to do with food. It is how we treat each other with kindness and respect. The pandemic also offered us a moment to evaluate the working conditions common in even the most prestigious kitchens. Overworked, underpaid, verbally and sometimes physically abused, the cooks responsible for preparing food for patrons are often dehumanized and told this is all part of the process to achieve excellence. In various ways, all of us bought into that narrative and endured those conditions, but we are learning there is a better way. Our sincerest hope is to create a work environment where compassion, teamwork, and respect drive our interactions with each other. We are laying that pivotal groundwork now, and it is what we are most proud of sustaining.

How do you think about happiness?
Sharing food with others.

No amount of fame or recognition compares to the moment of appreciation where the best part of someone’s day was a bite of food you prepared for them.

Pricing:

• Ice Cream Pints $13
• Foie Gras Terrines $20
• 3-pack Foie Gras Terrines $55

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tastyfood626/

Image Credits
@steepla @tastyfood626 @nhauforever