Meet C-y Chia

We recently connected with C-y Chia and have shared our conversation below.

C-Y, thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s jump right into something we’re really interested in hearing about from you – being the only one in the room. So many of us find ourselves as the only woman in the room, the only immigrant or the only artist in the room, etc. Can you talk to us about how you have learned to be effective and successful in situations where you are the only one in the room like you?

The fine dining industry is notoriously cutthroat and vastly made up of able-bodied, cisgender white men, and navigating it as a visible minority caused additional, specifically targeted hostility.

Marginalization in this industry doesn’t end with coworkers, making the everyday environment difficult to focus or peacefully evolve in. It extends to employers and management, who can delegate or withhold and make career-affecting decisions. It affects how you interact with customers, who may presume that you can’t possibly be the one in charge. It weighs on other peers’ opinion of you, of your worth and capabilities. It changes how some press and media outlets perceive you -or don’t.
Every aspect of your experience is shaped by the treatment and opportunities you are granted by others, which is informed by the perception of you that they shaped for themselves, something you often have very little influence or control over.

I’ve been in those situations, and am often reminded of these isolating and demeaning experiences -when a contractor only speaks to and makes eye contact with my partner, a white man, or a customer loudly makes a comment about how Southeast Asian or Chinese food should never cost this much (little do they know how thin our margins are) while a Euro-centric restaurant nearby is charging much more, other such small things that keep me acutely aware of the systems at play in the world we live in.

This used to really eat at me. Over time, I’ve thought myself to recognize and accept my frustration and anger as justified responses, rather than try to bottle them up only to let them eat at me and explode (or implode) at inopportune moments, and rather than let it consume me or lead to despair and powerlessness, to turn that into energy for change. Some days it’s absolutely easier said than done!

A lot of what I witnessed in fine dining and conventional restaurants lead to my realization that it’s simply not for me.
Based on that among other factors, my partner and I decided to start our own pop up, now almost a decade ago, and eventually open our own restaurant, which we could operate according to our values to our best ability, with sustainable sourcing practices and living wages.
All our employees ended up also being of marginalized identities -POC with many Southeast and East Asians like myself, LGBTQ+ folks, femmes…

The wording of the prompt “how have you learned to be effective/successful even when you are the only one in the room that looks like you?” made me reflect on when I was in fact the only one in the room like me, and thought that I could overcome the gap through sheer perseverance and hard work as tools to assert myself.
Until I saw that I wasn’t stuck. With my time and energy, I could build a different room, one that I could invite others to, that were more like me, in experience and in spirit.
There are ways, big and small, to create community -safer spaces and opportunities for ourselves, and for one another. I’d much rather do that than beg for a spot in a room that suffocates me.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My partner Shane Stanbridge and I are Storm Now (fka S+M Vegan) and Lion Dance Cafe, an Oakland, California based micro-catering company, food, sustainability and recipe development consulting agency, and pop-up-turned-award-winning-restaurant-turned-pop-up.
Despite the success of our brick and mortar, which earned us a Michelin and James Beard Award listing, we closed earlier this year to make more time for family, life, and other projects.

What sets us apart is how we tell our stories through our Italo-Chinese-Singaporean cuisine, inspired by our heritages, with a focus on responsible sourcing. We cook from scratch (including our breads and ferments such as aminos, doubanjiang and chye poh) and source our produce from local family farms. As a restaurant, we were driven by our notion of radical hospitality, one that takes care of our team and broader community rather than just our paying customers, and always provided hot meals on demand for our less privileged neighbors.

Now that we no longer operate as a standard restaurant, we are still doing all sorts of pop ups and events.

We just collaborated on a series of dinners with fantastic like-minded chefs and drink makers such as Manuel Galvan of Bolita Masa, Nelson German of alaMar, queer Palestinian winemaker Terah Bajjalieh, and brewmaster Thomas Vo of Vietnamese-American co-owned brewery Calicraft just to name a few. We have more coming up that we will post to our website and instagram!

Additionally, we are working on more ways to be involved with food justice projects, and are kept busy with catering, consulting (try the fully vegan bar food menu at new martini hotspot Tallboy!), and private events. There is a form on our website that can be used to inquire about our catering services.

We are also developing a cookbook which will feature all our most popular recipes from our pop up and brick and mortar days, so stay tuned for that. We have been getting requests from our regulars to write one for years and are beyond excited to finally be able to make time for it!

Our website: liondancecafe.com
Our instagrams: @liondancecafe and @stormnowcreative

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

What has helped me overcome challenges and get to this point in my path are perseverance, my insatiable curiosity, and, in retrospect, my rage.

Perseverance is obvious, but not easy.
To most of us, results don’t come easily. It takes a lot of work to get things done to a satisfactory standard, but it’s worth it, and sometimes giving up simply isn’t an option. Perseverance should be paired with discernment, adaptability and humility, and is not to be confused with stubbornness or pride, which can lead to seeing bad decisions through even after they’ve been identified. Adaptability can be difficult to learn, and is a skill that we’ve had to develop through almost a decade of doing pop ups and catering in improbable settings and improvised kitchens.
My partner once had to saw a pan of lasagna in half at the last minute because the oven, which we were assured by the client was standard size, was too small to fit it fully! Another time, we had to figure out how to serve a multi-course plated dinner for a wedding out of an antiquated kitchen with holes in its ceiling during a torrential downpour… We have stories.

Restaurant life demands a lot of sacrifices and back breaking work, and sometimes it would really bring me down. Curiosity has kept me going through it all.
It has pushed me to always be learning about new (to me) foods and techniques, always be trying to improve as a cook and person, always be checking out what my peers in the local food and drink scene and beyond are doing, always keep looking at art, listening to music, talk to our farmers about what they’re growing next. It’s helped stay inspired, stay creative, and build community, which is so important because we are more capable when we put our skills and perspectives together, and more resilient in this oppressive society when we can count on one another for help, resource-sharing and advice.

Lastly, my rage is a part that’s always been with me, and one that I thought I needed to silence in order to be functional and appropriate in this world.
In reality, it’s my strongest and oldest ally. Anger is a healthy and appropriate response to specific situations. It signals to me that something is wrong, that an injustice is being committed, and by making it almost unbearable to ignore I am pushed to action. (I’m not saying to actually act out of sheer anger! Hand off the decision making to a different part of you, ideally one that can strategize.) Without my anger, I don’t think I’d still be here today.

Everyone is different and has different goals, experiences and strengths.
When someone who is newer to the industry asks me for advice, what I tend to say is to be consistent with your work and patient with yourself, and recognize when you need a break or to ask for help. You don’t have to push so much that it breaks you -this is a marathon- and you don’t have to do this alone. There are people rooting for you.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

We are currently welcoming all sorts of projects.
We love taking on consulting, whether it’s developing vegan recipes for a restaurant, food startup, or cookbook, adding a few more sustainable options to an existing menu, or veganizing the whole thing. It’s always a stimulating new challenge that we enjoy applying our experience and expertise to.

We have been collaborating on dinners with several esteemed chefs and drink makers and have a few more scheduled, and we are always looking to do more of these. It’s great to meet and work with peers who share similar values, and create a beautiful and delicious experience to be enjoyed by our guests.

We are also open to doing more food justice and education projects. In addition to cooking at every level, we have a background in nutrition, and are interested in anything that pertains to making “greener” eating more attainable and exciting.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Shane Stanbridge @escalashane / @stormnowcreative
Emma K Creative www.emmakcreative.com / @emmakcreative

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