Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast), Her Mom's BBQ Kalbi & Dongchimi
Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle
Rachel Belle
4.4 • 709 Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2021
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michelle Zauner is famous for playing music under the name Japanese Breakfast, but it turns out she's one of those obnoxiously talented people who creatively thrives in multiple genres. Michelle just released a wildly popular memoir called Crying in H Mart, about her complicated relationship with her Korean mother who died of cancer when Michelle was 25.
Korean food plays a huge role in the book and in her conversation with host Rachel Belle. Michelle takes us to Korea, where she and her mother insatiably ate their way through Seoul every other year of her childhood. She talks about who taught her to cook Korean food, since her mother never got a chance to teach her, and how the Korean grocery chain H Mart now brings her comfort.
Immigrant parents and grandparents are infamous for not writing down recipes or measuring out ingredients, making it virtually impossible to perfectly recreate their food after they're gone. Melissa Miranda, the Filipina-American chef/owner of Seattle's Musang, opened her restaurant in an effort to preserve Filipino home cooking in the community her dad immigrated to in the 1970s. She joins the show to tell her story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Alaska Airlines has teamed up with Hawaiian Airlines to create new nonstop international flights. |
| 0:05.8 | Go to Alaskaair.com or Hawaiian Airlines.com and I'll tell you more details later in the show. |
| 0:11.6 | Cairo, Seattle. |
| 0:31.4 | I'm Rachel Bell, and this is your last meal, a show about famous people and the stories behind the foods they love most. |
| 0:34.6 | Today on the program, Michelle Zoner. |
| 0:44.3 | Michelle has released two albums under the name Japanese Breakfast |
| 0:45.6 | and the song you're listening to right now |
| 0:48.2 | is from her soon-to-be-released record, Jubilee. |
| 0:50.9 | Tell them then I'm coming. |
| 0:58.6 | Tell them count the days. Jubilee. She is also the author of a new, very popular memoir called Crying in H-Mart. |
| 1:05.2 | The book is about her relationship with her mother, who died of cancer in 2014 when |
| 1:10.0 | Michelle was only 25. |
| 1:12.0 | But the book is also about food, specifically the Korean food that connected Michelle to her |
| 1:17.1 | mother and to her culture. |
| 1:19.1 | Do you think your mom would be surprised that you've gotten into cooking as much as you have? |
| 1:23.2 | Definitely. She would be really, like, weirded out by it, probably. |
| 1:26.1 | Her mom was Korean, and unfortunately |
| 1:28.4 | she passed away before Michelle had a chance to learn any of her recipes. But this is not an |
| 1:34.0 | uncommon story. If you're the child of an immigrant, you may know that it is hard to wrestle these |
| 1:38.8 | recipes from your parents and your grandparents because they don't write anything down and they don't use measuring spoons |
| 1:45.9 | or measuring cups. Melissa Miranda, chef owner of Seattle's modern Filipino restaurant, Musong, |
| 1:51.8 | will join the show to talk about the project she did to trick these grannies into handing over |
... |
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