Megan Zhang (Senior Editor, Food) is a journalist covering how food intersects with culture, environment, and identity. Her reporting has appeared in The Cut, BBC, CNN, Condé Nast Traveler, and Hemispheres, among others. Currently based in Boston, she grew up in the SF Bay Area and has lived in NYC, Beijing, and Hong Kong.
For years, Jing Gao dreamed of opening a grab-and-go market that serves prepared meals she would actually crave. Not hard-boiled eggs and cold sandwiches, but creamy sesame noodles, fiery mapo tofu, and crunchy wood-ear mushroom salad that channel the peppery, piquant flavors of her native Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan Province. Today, that vision no longer lives in her head, but on a high-trafficked shopping street in the heart of Los Angeles.
“It was very nostalgic for me to come back and have this little space, 30 years later.” Both Choi and Sivrican chose to open their superettes in enclaves that have historically been havens for Asian communities.