If personality reflected palate, my conversations would never move past today's weather or perhaps the whitish color of your shoelaces. Anything spicy makes my nose itch and my head turn away; give me a dish visibly garnished with garlic, ginger, cilantro (why, Chipotle?) or green onions, and I will politely extricate the offenders when I think no one is looking.
Before you decide never to dine with me, or inquire whether I eat anything at all, let me tell you that four years ago it was 10 times worse. I ate salad without dressing, instant noodles without seasoning, and Subway with only meat and bread (the sandwich builders loved me). Growing up in a Chinese household, I loathed Asian food: The dishes were too saucy, scattered and flavorful to be filling, and plain rice simply wasn't satisfying. I dreamed of Boston Market while my parents passed around the soy sauce and tofu, which my three sisters ate happily. I ate any sort of bread that I could get my hands on. It was not until my first year at Stanford that I realized food could be more than a means to an end—and so much more than refined flour.
In the way that the words serendipity, ephemeral and cellar door are euphonious to an English speaker's ears, the clatter of forks and knives against porcelain plates is pure music to mine. Those crisp, metallic clinks, which bamboo chopsticks and rice bowl could never create, meant that, somewhere, roasted chicken and mashed potatoes were being consumed. Because my mother cooked only Chinese food, I savored dining scenes in American movies and TV shows; in the third grade, I wanted to be an actress so I could eat roasted chicken and mashed potatoes 25 takes in a row. I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, so I could bake bread, churn butter and eat pork fat for supper; I wanted to be Almanzo Wilder, so my little house would forever hold a pantry of pies. Instead, I was Grace Chao, age 8, and stuck in 21st-century Silicon Valley, where Asian cuisine abounded and one could never look forward to dinner.
I wanted to live with bread in perpetuity, and when I was 18, it seemed my wish had been granted. Sure, Stanford's Wilbur Dining Hall featured a DIY pho bar, but it also proffered an endless supply of 9-inch-long, lightly seasoned breadsticks. Each day culminated at 5:15 p.m., when I would enter the arena and load my yellow plate with chicken, pasta and those holy golden breadsticks. For dessert I might spread two slices of white toast with Smart Balance. On a particularly hungry day I'd eat six breadsticks in a row, followed by the chicken, pasta and my buttered-toast dessert. Other students seemed to grow tired of eating at Wilbur after a month, but I never wanted to leave.
Around the same time, my friends introduced me to the greater world of restaurants. When dining hall fare failed to entice (blasphemous, I thought), we'd take a Zipcar or the Marguerite to University Avenue, or sometimes to Castro Street in Mountain View. Eating out was new to me. Back at home, my family and I would go to Hometown Buffet on my birthday, because that was the closest I could get to my Little House on the Prairie dreams. My high school friends frequented local, order-at-the-front cafés, but because wings were too spicy, pearl milk tea was too sweet, and ramen was just not doughy enough, I frequented sitting and watching.
We traveled to Chinese, Japanese, Mediterranean and Indian restaurants. Perhaps it was around the 350th breadstick—assuming I averaged 2.5 per day—that I began to appreciate the vibrant colors, sharper flavors and smaller portions of Eastern cuisine. Perhaps it was the fear that I would soon resemble Homer Simpson, when the rolls I devoured reincarnated as rolls on my stomach. Maybe it was the fact that I could order for others in mangled Mandarin at Chinese restaurants, or that I missed home (just a little bit), but by the beginning of spring quarter of my freshman year, I wanted to eat rice. It felt clean, discrete and sophisticated. It reminded me, in a warmly ironic way, of those third-grade days when I would sit in the kitchen and mourn that my parents had not descended from the Pilgrims.
A friend once interviewed me for his product design project on chopsticks; he thought I had "strange eating habits" for a second-generation Chinese-American. He asked if I'd ever felt estranged from my heritage, which surprised me. I'd never intended to rebel against my culture or my people; I simply enjoyed the heartiness, the blandness, of American dishes.
I still love all types of bread, of course, but I've come to eat a lot more rice, and much more Asian food. I love sushi, which is a most American thing to say, but four years ago, the only part I'd eat was the strip of processed egg on top—provided there was one. I'm struck by a feeling of familiarity now when my father brings home Chinese-takeout breakfast on Saturdays, and by an almost resistant one when my mother bakes chicken potpie for the days that I visit. I have an unhealthy habit of scrolling through Yelp when I don't want to work.
In the end, my heart lies with my family. But deep down, my palate will always lie with a big, brown, one-pound round of Pavel's nine-grain, three-seed bread. (Pass the butter, please.)
Grace Chao, '14, majored in English and will begin work on her master's degree this fall.
