"Food is so important to being Asian," Lum reflects, speaking to the camera with a mix of reverence and hesitation. "You can\u2019t talk about being Asian without food being the thread that pulls it all together." But for the 38-year-old star, the question remains: what happens when that thread is severed? What happens when you are someone who, by her own admission, cannot even successfully steam an egg?<\/p>\n
The inquiry into her own culinary incompetence is not merely a superficial pursuit; it is deeply rooted in a complex family history. Raised in Forest Hills, New York, Lum possesses significant "Queens cred"\u2014a reputation cemented by her hit Comedy Central series, Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens<\/em>. Yet, beneath the veneer of her public persona lies a heritage tied to local restaurant royalty. In 1952, her great-grandfather, Jimmy Lum, opened the family\u2019s Chinese restaurant in Flushing. At the time, it was one of the first establishments of its kind in the neighborhood, serving as a pillar of the local community.<\/p>\n "If you lived in New York, not just Queens, at a certain era, almost 10 out of 10 times, you remember Lum\u2019s," she says. The legacy of the restaurant is still felt today; when she speaks to industry veterans or long-time New York residents, they often respond with vivid, sensory memories of the iconic pupu platters, the signature lobster egg rolls, and the restaurant\u2019s glitzy, neon-lit aesthetic that defined a generation of Chinese-American dining in the city.<\/p>\n However, for Lum, this history feels distant. While she previously explored her mother\u2019s Korean roots during an appearance on No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski<\/em>, her connection to her father\u2019s side of the family and the defunct Lum\u2019s restaurant remains thin. The business closed before she was even born. "When they talk about it, it\u2019s like they\u2019re talking about a long-lost family member," she admits, highlighting the emotional disconnect she feels toward a legacy that is both hers and entirely foreign to her lived experience.<\/p>\n Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook<\/em> follows Lum as she traverses the country, meeting and working alongside a diverse array of Asian American chefs and restaurateurs. Many of the people she encounters share a similar trajectory to her own: they are "restaurant kids" who initially left the family business behind, only to find their way back to the kitchen on their own terms. <\/p>\n "A lot of their families did not want them to go into the industry. They\u2019re subverting the stereotype in a way," she notes. She points to chefs like Cory Ng and Zhan Chen of New York City\u2019s The Potluck Club as prime examples of this shift. Through the series, these chefs help her attempt to resurrect the spirit of her great-grandfather\u2019s restaurant by hosting a one-night-only pop-up, a gesture that bridges the gap between her past and her present.<\/p>\n Lum confesses that she always harbored a secret dream of being an "intrepid restaurant worker," but her upbringing left her feeling alienated from the kitchen. Within her family, the domestic sphere was a closed circuit. "Whether it was dishes or cooking, no one trusted me with it," she explains. "I convinced myself that I\u2019m just not a cook."<\/p>\n The process of filming the docuseries, which required her to zigzag across the country, forced her to confront these self-imposed limitations. Her journey was nothing short of a culinary baptism by fire. She found herself blowing up a duck at the renowned Mister Jiu\u2019s in San Francisco, manning a commercial wok at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and touring the heart of Texas barbecue country with her friend and fellow comedian, Jimmy O. Yang.<\/p>\n The Texas leg of the journey proved particularly eye-opening for the star. They visited Curry Boys BBQ in San Antonio, where traditional Texas brisket is served over bowls of fragrant green Thai curry, and later stopped at Eaker Barbecue in Fredericksburg to sample bulgogi sausage. For Lum, these stops were not just about the food; they were about observing how immigrant cultures integrate into American landscapes. "Seeing Asian people in this environment that\u2019s so Texas, where the two cultures are very different," she says, helped her realize that chefs can layer their influences in ways that feel authentic rather than like a compromise.<\/p>\n The charm of the show lies in watching Lum navigate these unfamiliar waters with a mix of genuine curiosity and comedic bewilderment. In one memorable episode set in Hawaii, she meets chef Mark Noguchi, who informs her that they will be using an imu<\/em>\u2014a traditional underground pit oven\u2014to cook a whole hog. When she asks, "Like the bird?" she is momentarily confused, a mistake that is played for laughs but also highlights the show\u2019s underlying tenderness. <\/p>\n Her ignorance is a source of vulnerability that makes the series resonate. She is perpetually game for the challenge, even when she has no grasp of the techniques or traditions at play. "It\u2019s like one of those school nightmares where you hadn\u2019t completed the class and then you\u2019re just walking in for the test," she says, laughing at the recollection of her own ineptitude. <\/p>\n While the show does not spare her from the discomfort of failure, Lum was surprised by the environment of professional kitchens. She found the master chefs to be far more forgiving than the pressures of her own family\u2019s expectations. "I\u2019ll cook for a chef any day," she notes. "With my family, I\u2019ll order out."<\/p>\n As the project winds down, Lum is still in the process of finding her footing in the kitchen. She has been spending time lately trying to perfect her Bolognese, though she is careful not to overstate the impact of the show on her life. She avoids the trope of the "culinary awakening," preferring to view the experience as a multifaceted journey. <\/p>\n "As much as it was a journey of food and collective Asian culture, it was also self-discovery," she says, before catching herself and adding a characteristically wry, self-deprecating addendum: "Probably in a narcissistic way\u2014there\u2019s still a question mark as to what it all means."<\/p>\n Ultimately, Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook<\/em> is less about the technical mastery of food and more about the search for identity through the act of trying. For Nora Lum, the journey has not turned her into a professional chef, but it has certainly made her feel more comfortable in her own kitchen, one charred, mismanaged meal at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the pristine, high-end kitchen of her Los Angeles home, Nora Lum\u2014the actor, comedian, and rapper globally recognized as Awkwafina\u2014finds herself in an all-too-familiar state of domestic chaos. She stands over a stove equipped with two active burners, yet she is clearly losing the battle with both. On one side, a pot of ramen boils […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[540],"tags":[3852,3850,543,947,541,964,544,994,1485,3851,542,903],"class_list":["post-2745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eastern-cuisine-and-culinary-arts","tag-ancestral","tag-awkwafina","tag-cooking","tag-culinary","tag-eastern-cuisine","tag-exploring","tag-food-culture","tag-journey","tag-kitchen","tag-novice","tag-recipes","tag-roots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Awkwafina](\"https:\/\/assets.bonappetit.com\/photos\/6ac90ead1f5e6e140b4bf495\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/1126_lede_Bon-Appetit-Aquafina_292A.jpg\")
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