Asian American Chefs Talk MSG (Making, Sharing, Gathering) in SF Chinatown

You don’t have to go far back to remember when MSG was the most vilified ingredient in America. At the peak of this hysteria, in the ’80s and ’90s, the flavor enhancer was frequently maligned as a grotesque transmitter of heart palpitations, migraine headaches and assorted other maladies — though, curiously, only when consumed in Chinese takeout and not, say, a bag of Doritos. These days, of course, these sentiments have largely been debunked as bad science (undergirded by a healthy dose of racism), and a new generation of young Asian American chefs have proudly taken up the MSG banner. (One trendy Cantonese American restaurant in Brooklyn incorporates it into almost every dish.)

It’s with a knowing and pointed wink, then, that Edge on the Square, a contemporary art hub in San Francisco Chinatown, named its new series of food workshops “MSG” — only in this case, the letters stand for “making,” “sharing” and “gathering.” And while monosodium glutamate itself won’t be a primary subject of discussion, those kinds of broader cultural narratives around Asian Americans and food very much are.

In other words, says Edge on the Square head curator Candace Huey, “If food is your primary point of contact about this culture, what types of myths and stereotypes can we dispel?”

Toward that end, MSG: Making, Sharing, Gathering will feature six talented Asian American chefs, cookbook authors and pop-up entrepreneurs from around San Francisco and the East Bay, each of whom have their own particular relationships to food nostalgia, the Asian diaspora and, in some cases, San Francisco Chinatown itself. Joyce Tang, the Chinese American pastry chef behind Oakland’s Bake Sum, will kick off the series on Saturday, Oct. 19.

Future editions will star Tracy Goh of the Malaysian restaurant Damansara (Dec. 8), chef Babo Waheed of Babo’s Kitchen (Jan. 18), James Beard Award–winning cookbook author Kristina Cho (Feb. 8), Batik and Baker’s Audrey Tang (April 12) and Taiwanese dumpling specialist Henry Hsu of Oramasama Dumplings (May 18).

The workshops are meant to provide a critical lens on how food acts as an “identity marker” and how it helps shape the narrative of Asian America, Huey explains. “We’re thinking about questions related to immigrants and the different threads of colonization, as well as when you move through the pathway of diaspora, how that changes the rituals and the practices related to food preparation.”

“Edge’s mission is always about how we can shift the narrative and how art” — and, in this case, food — “can be a vehicle for this widening of the aperture,” Huey says.

Each session will be different, but at the most basic level, there will always be a personal storytelling component and a Q&A. Each chef will share samples of their food (either cooked while guests watch or prepared ahead of time) that connect in some way to the story of their immigrant experience or their cultural heritage.

For the inaugural workshop, Bake Sum’s Tang will pass out a small box of pastries to help elucidate her theme of “Past, Present and Future.” Attendees will receive a green onion croissant that evokes Tang’s childhood memories of eating green onion pancakes in Chinatown, an okonomiyaki Danish that speaks to the present day and her interpretation of a mooncake, which points toward the future of Asian American diasporic cooking.

Guests will sit at long banquet tables inside the gallery, in the heart of Chinatown, surrounded by the artwork in Edge on the Square’s current exhibition, Walking Stories — which, fittingly, is also centered on stories and storytellers.

Tickets for the workshops are pay-what-you-can, with a suggested donation of $20 — though Linda Lui, the art hub’s communications director, stresses that they don’t want the cost to deter anyone from coming. Past Edge on the Square events, like a mahjong night and a concept barter shop, have drawn college students, prominent Asian American intellectuals and activists, and the local “popo” who walks past the Chinatown gallery every night.

While the MSG series itself will run through May, that won’t be the end of the project. Edge on the Square is also collaborating with the Emmy-nominated San Francisco director James Q. Chan, who will be on hand to film the workshops, with plans to turn them into a six-part documentary series.

The MSG: Making, Sharing, Gathering workshops will be held approximately once a month, through May 2025, at Edge on the Square (800 Grant Ave., San Francisco). Tickets for each session will be released online 30 days in advance. The first workshop, featuring Joyce Tang of Bake Sum, will be on Saturday, Oct. 19, 4–5 p.m. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, but must be reserved ahead of time, as seating is extremely limited.