#ChineseFoodiesofIG: Andrew Doro of Every Country Every Food

Andrew Doro of Every Country Every Food

This is part of an ongoing series of interviews I’m doing with my favourite Chinese foodies that I follow on Instagram. Come and follow the #ChineseFoodiesofIG hashtag on Instagram and leave a comment showing your support for these talented folk!

Where are you from? Where are you really from?

I'm from New York City. I grew up in Lower Manhattan and went to elementary school in Manhattan's Chinatown. My mother is from Taiwan. Her father was from Shanghai and her mother is from Kaohsiung. My mother moved to Brooklyn when she was 15. My father is from Philadelphia. His grandparents were from Ireland (now Northern Ireland) and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic).

What does home taste like?

My grandmother's chicken soup with rice. She grew up on Cijin Island in Kaohsiung. I grew up eating this everyday and I still ask her to make it when I visit her.

Rice or noodles?

Noodles. There's so much variety in the geometry of pasta. Noodle soups (la mian, ramen, pho) in particular are my comfort food.

Share a food memory:

When I was around 12 years old my mom took my brother and me to eat snake when we were staying in Wuhan for the summer. There was a whole show of it where they decapitated the snake and then gave us the blood and bright green bile to drink. They made the snake into a soup with chicken which was called ‘dragon and phoenix soup’. Experiences like this might have helped me become an adventurous eater.

The most underrated Chinese ingredient:

Duo jiao (salted chopped chillies). So easy to make (it's just chopped chillies and salt), but it's the key to one of my favorite Hunanese dishes, duo jiao yu tou (salted chillies fish head).

Who’s your Chinese food legend?

Chef Wang Gang. I love watching his videos. I love that his stove looks like a jet engine and he uses a tree stump as a cutting board.

Dream dinner party guests:

Björk

Sun Ra

Ai Weiwei

Nina Simone

Tricky

Oliver Sacks

Christopher Hitchens

Last meal on earth:

Omakase with fugu, rare steak, raw oysters with caviar, lobster, san-nakji

Know any good Chinese restaurants?

Manhattan Chinatown:

Ping's
Hwa Yuan
Spicy Village
Tasty Hand-pulled Noodles

Flushing:

Daxi
White Bear
Szechuan Mountain House

Sunset Park:

Yunnan Flavour Garden

What does Chinese food mean to you?

Chinese food means something different to everyone. Even though my girlfriend is also part Taiwanese like me, being from Southern California she sometimes ate Panda Express, while in New York we didn’t have Panda Express- my family would just walk to Chinatown for Chinese food.

Chinese food has been popular in the US for over 100 years but paradoxically it's seen as both comfort food and also perpetually foreign.

My own concept of Chinese food changed a lot after living in China for a few years after college, traveling around and seeing the huge regional variations. The variety and creativity are what makes it my favorite cuisine.