Asian-American representation comes in many forms, but Chef Mei Lin’s Szechuan hot chicken is unequivocally the tastiest. At Daybird, her fast-casual spot in Silver Lake, she pays homage to her Chinese heritage – taking fried chicken to new heights with the same assiduity exercised at her elegant Arts District restaurant, Nightshade.
For Lin, an increasingly prolific Asian-American voice in the industry, food is a gateway to discovering and appreciating new cultures, which feels more important now than ever. Lin and other chefs have shaped Southern California into one of the world’s most exciting, ethnically diverse dining landscapes today. Call it an experiment in culinary cross-pollination that reflects our melting pot of flavors.
The “Top Chef” winner tells us how she engineered LA’s most sought-after sandwich, what her fellow chefs can do to support the AAPI community, and why you don’t need to get on a plane to enjoy a wonderful gastronomic adventure – because it’s available right here.
Last year, the pandemic forced you to close Nightshade. Is it permanently closed?
Nightshade is still figuring things out, but I’m really focused on Daybird right now.
You opened Daybird in March to huge fanfare. How did the idea originate?
The love we’re getting for Daybird has been really overwhelming. As far as how it all started, I just wanted to see if I could make a really good Chinese-style fried chicken sandwich to get us some representation out there. Chinese people and chicken go way back – there’s a lot of fun culinary history on the way chickens have been prepared in Chinese cuisine.
And when it comes to fried chicken, Chinese cuisine takes it very seriously. To give you an idea, KFC has more locations in China than it has in the States. So how do I translate this love of fried chicken into a sandwich that’s representative of my Chinese-American heritage, and come up with a spice blend that’s kind of like Nashville hot chicken, but more Chinese in its DNA?
I thought of Sichuan pepper and a Chongqing-style spice blend. If you pay close attention to the technique, you can get that chicken thigh really over-the-top crunchy. Marry the two with a nice slaw on a plush Martin’s potato roll that’s soft like a bao, and you got yourself a sandwich.
You come from a fine-dining background, but Daybird is takeout only. Do you miss fine dining, and what has the shift to a more casual restaurant concept been like for you?
Fine dining is a bit of a loaded term – I miss all the restaurants. From the mom-and-pop shops that aren’t with us anymore because of the pandemic, to the ones that are temporarily closed and still trying to figure out how everything is going to work, I just miss having my go-tos.
I think a casual restaurant concept is just a new challenge – you’re thinking about ways to scale the quality of something you’re making so that if you do decide to make the operation bigger, you’re doing it the right way without compromising the experience for your customers. Fine dining is definitely challenging, and you get to work out your creative muscles daily and work with so many different interesting ingredients.
With a more casual concept, it’s more like engineering: Understanding how to build a machine that consistently puts out something amazing. The creativity involved is more up-front with casual, as opposed to the everyday challenge you’d have with a tasting menu. But the demands of the creativity for casual are more intense and the stakes are way higher.
You think of things everyone likes and how to sustain it at a level that sets you apart. For instance, how crunchy the batter is and how to keep the meat consistently juicy, even if you’re transporting it, say, a half-hour back to Orange County. The spice level of the slaw, the way you keep the experience relatively tidy by using a hinge cut on the potato roll – all of this needs to be figured into the engineering so that folks want to come back over and over again. It’s a new exercise in thoughtfulness, and the transition from fine dining to casual is not for everyone.
This challenge is also a lot of fun from an operations standpoint; just seeing the passion from the team. You feel like you’re at a startup of something incredible, and even though the hours are hard and the lines seem like they never end, everyone seems to realize we’re onto something really special. Most people don’t experience that in their lifetime, I’m really blessed that we’ve found it here.
What else have you been up to over the last year?
My Umamei chili oil is selling out so fast! Right now we’re looking at ways to scale this up, so we can keep up with demand. My friend sent me a link the other day where someone re-sold a jar of our chili oil on Grailed. That tells me we might be having a bit of a supply problem, so I’m looking at ways to get this in the hands of as many folks as possible.
Do you have any dream projects?
I’m living the dream! I’ve done some filming and I’ve started so much already with Umamei and just helping out with my friends’ projects in the industry, so it’s really about pursuing things I’m passionate about and making myself as available as I can for anything that might come my way. Cooking delicious food that people want to eat over and over again is at the core of who I am. Where that ends up taking me, who knows?
You’ve always championed AAPI interests, but more and more people are looking to you as an advocate – especially amid the #StopAsianHate movement. How important is it to you to be a voice for our community?
It’s extremely important, and I’m really not the only one. There are so many strong, outspoken voices in our community that are much better spoken on the subject than I am. I just try to make good food and want people to treat each other better and help out where I can. If that moves the needle so that Asian-Americans can live in a safer, kinder and more accepting America then, yeah, I’m all over that.
How do you think the culinary world can mobilize for the AAPI community?
To my fellow AAPI chefs: Don’t be afraid to make food that you like! You’ll be surprised just how much all of us have in common. It starts there. From there, people get curious. They want to know why something they’re eating is a certain way, or what kind of work or process goes into it. And most importantly, don’t be cynical. There are no shortcuts or easy ways to make money in the restaurant industry, it’s just good, old-fashioned hard work.
I think the biggest unifier in America is recognizing good, old-fashioned hard work. It’s the backbone of the American Dream. If we work hard, people will find a way to respect it, since we’re all working out here to make a living.
Most people who engage with the various Asian cultures at restaurants through our cuisines will recognize this. It’s sweat, muscle aches, dehydration, legs are buckling and bags under your eyes-type work. And it’s all fueled by passion – we feel so strongly about creating something delicious for people, and it only takes a moment while you’re enjoying the food to think and really want to appreciate the culture.
When that happens, you think good things about what we have in common – like the fact that we all work, that we all love good food – and it’s way easier to appreciate what the AAPI community brings to the table. There are better-spoken people than I when it comes to educating folks about the AAPI community, but I do know how to cook up some food so we can all enjoy and share in this experience together.
How can the power of food expand people’s minds?
Honestly, it’s that trying new things will always be exciting. Trying a different cuisine, and then liking a dish or two, and then trying different takes on that dish – do you see where I’m going here? It never ends, and it’s just constant learning and you get to knock out your hunger at the same time. Who wouldn’t love that? Food is really the most accessible way to learn about a different culture for a reason, and it’s the one thing Southern California has a tremendous wealth of.
You don’t even have to leave Orange County if you want to try some of the best naengmyeon in the world at Mo Ran Gak in Garden Grove, or flat-out amazing birria in Santa Ana, or amazing banh it ram at Ngu Binh or Ben Ngu in Westminster.
If you’re serious about being a chef, you are constantly learning about other cultures’ preparations of food and you’re constantly on a search for what makes these preparations special. You want to absorb these techniques and reimagine ways you can employ some of those flavors. But if you’re a diner, you just get to experience all of these in Southern California without even getting on a plane. How amazing is that?
Asians are often stereotyped as submissive and docile. In your work, have you ever had to combat that perception?
Nope. If you know me, you know better.
