‘Every time I go home to the Philippines, I realize that I can’t quite replicate the flavor. I think it’s the chicken; they’re a lot smaller and leaner in the Philippines.’ 

‘It reminds me of family and how we always sat around the dinner table and shared laughs, jokes, heartaches and pain as much as food’

‘My mom basically only ate this cabbage omelet while growing up in Taiwan. Thing is, she really hated it, but she told me, ‘We had nothing else.’’

‘It’s an amazing feeling to blend things together that you feel has no way, no right, to be delicious’

‘You can smell the oyster essence through each bite, but once in a while, you get a big hunk of oyster, and as a kid, that flavor was just mind-blowing’

‘When I asked her how to make it, she told me, ‘If I taught you that dish, you’d have no reason to come home because you wouldn’t need me to cook it for you anymore’’