There’s a quiet truth you learn if you sit down and listen long enough at a table that isn’t yours. I’m talking about food—the real kind. The kind that doesn’t come with laminated menus, mood lighting, or some Instagram-ready plate presentation designed to be photographed more than eaten. I like food the way it was meant to be cooked. Not dressed up for the American palate, not hollowed out of spice and soul, not twisted into something that feels “safe” for the suburbs. No. I want the unfiltered version. The authentic, in all its greasy, spicy, loud, proud, home-cooked glory.
So when I get that itch—when I want Thai that actually burns, or birria that makes you sweat and sigh and say something profane under your breath—I don’t walk into a chain restaurant that’s polished its identity clean off. I ignore the neon signs, the catchy slogans, the smiling mascots. I go looking for them. The people who know it best. The ones who were raised with it, who smell a particular spice and remember their grandmother’s hands, who understand that food isn’t a product—it’s inheritance.
So I ask. I walk up, sometimes awkward, always respectful. Where do you eat when you want the good stuff? And almost without fail, the answer is the same: my mother’s house.
And listen—if they’re willing to take me? I go. You better believe I go. Because that house, that kitchen, that woman—she’s the final boss of flavor. Her curry will humble you. Her pho will make you question every bowl you’ve ever had. Her dumplings will taste like someone finally told the truth.
But if that invite isn’t on the table—and it usually isn’t—I ask for the next best thing. The real-deal hole-in-the-wall. The strip-mall treasure with the chipped menu and plastic chairs, where the spice level isn’t adjusted to your comfort, where grandma is still in the back with a ladle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That place. And when I find it, I sit down, shut up, and eat.
But I can’t always go out. As it turns out, life is full of dishes that have nothing to do with food. So when I can’t chase it out in the wild, I chase it in my kitchen.
And when I do, I don’t cut corners. I don’t swap the Sichuan peppercorns for black pepper because it’s easier. I don’t use pre-minced garlic from a jar or ditch the fish sauce because someone on Reddit said it smells weird. I try to cook it their way. Because it’s not mine to change. Because what right do I have to remix someone else’s survival?
These recipes—their recipes—were forged in kitchens without much to spare. They came out of migration, colonization, desperation, and adaptation. They were stitched together over generations, passed down in pinches and palmfuls, in scents and stories. And here I come, with all my privilege, trying to “improve” it?
Nah. That’s not what this is.
Cooking someone else’s food the way they do is my way of showing up with my shoes off and my mouth shut. It’s reverence, not recreation. I don’t want to make it mine. I want to understand it—just a little.
And in doing so, I find that food is maybe the last honest language we still speak. It tells you who someone is, where they’ve been, what they’ve lost, and what they’ve held onto with white-knuckled grit. You just have to listen.
So no, I don’t want the watered-down version, the sanitized, culturally bleached, deep-fried-in-mayo, made-for-mass-appeal rendition. I want the dish that was never meant to be sold. I want the one your mom makes on a rainy Tuesday. I want truth.
And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to sit at that table.
But if not, I’ll light the burner, open the cookbook, and try to honor it—one clumsy chop, scorched pan, and heartfelt bite at a time.
Because that’s how you show respect when you can’t speak the language.
You taste it.
And you don’t dare change the damn thing.
By. Kyle Hayes
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