Lisa Ling is sitting at a table loaded with Cantonese and Taiwanese delicacies, platters of glazed char siu (roast pork), succulent spare ribs, a medley of seafood, a bowl of pigs feet. The feast is set in Locke, California, outside Sacramento, although it could be just about anywhere in the United States.
That’s the point of Ling’s new show "Take Out with Lisa Ling" on HBO Max, which premiered last week. Asian food is an intrinsic part of the American experience. In cities big and small, in every corner of the country, locals can eat steaming bowls of Vietnamese pho and line up at a Taiwanese bubble tea shop and eat Korean barbecue off the tabletop grill. It’s hard to fathom how different the landscape was 20 years ago, when Yesoon Lee — who, as co-owner of the acclaimed Washington, D.C., restaurant Mandu, has been called the godmother of Korean food — had to work in a Chinese airport restaurant, because there was no other outlet for her cooking.
Viewers can learn more about that in Episode 6, which centers on Fairfax County, Virginia; Ling observes that it's home to the third-largest Korean population in the U.S. She also introduces the audience to Korean karaoke, drinking games and to a couple whose dry-cleaning business keeps them so busy they don't have time to cook. But food producers are the underlying engine of the new series, which highlights the untold stories and inner workings of various Asian communities, from New Jersey’s Journal Square to southern Louisiana, eschewing Chinatowns in favor of less obvious enclaves. Each show features multiple voices from a community in which Ling embeds.
In Episode 1, Ling travels to Jean Lafitte in the Louisiana bayou to highlight the vibrant Filipino community that has played an integral role in the shrimp industry. They were “the first Asians to settle in America,” says Ling in a phone interview. Over tables covered with boiled shrimp, and later at the acclaimed New Orleans restaurant Pêche, Ling notes that without the contributions Filipinos made to the local seafood industry, New Orleans cuisine would undoubtedly look different.
"Take Out" offers a format similar to those of other food-travel documentaries, such as the late Anthony Bourdain’s "Parts Unknown" and "Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi." In it, a highly curious host travels to a location, meets with local experts, and — over a tantalizing meal draws out the history of the food for the audience. But Ling comes to the series with a fresh perspective, leaning on a journalistic background rather than a culinary one. The dishes often take a backseat to the dialogue among the people with whom she’s enjoying the meal. What's most engaging is their stories and her observations about the darker, overlooked moments in Asian American history. It also dismantles the notion of a monolithic “Asian cuisine”; the series includes an episode showcasing a Bangladeshi community, for example. All Asians – East Asians, Southeast Asians and South Asians — are part of Ling’s conversation.
At the helm is Helen Cho, an executive director ("Parts Unknown"; "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman") who brought in a mix of well-known and up-and-coming Asian American directors to lend personal touches to the stories.
While "Take Out" is creatively shot, some episodes feel frenetic as the focus jumps from scene to scene. A montage of pedicure close-ups is dazzling, but it’s not the imagery food lovers might expect to lead into a meal of com thang, or Vietnamese “monthly food.” Still, there’s a story behind it, and these are minor quibbles in an otherwise dynamic visual and narrative series that gives each episode its own flair.
The most engaging episode, “Lisa’s Story,” features an intensely personal meal at Hop Sing in Folsom, California, with Lisa and her family (her dad, mom, aunt, husband, and two daughters), who ended up running this restaurant despite having multiple advanced degrees and plans for other careers. Similar stories are sprinkled through the episodes, but Lisa’s discovery of her own cultural bias against herself, “growing up with a lot of shame around being Asian and Asian food,” as Ling says, is dished out over egg foo young and chop suey. It feels cathartic.
This theme will resonate for many Asian Americans, as does the underlying message of discrimination by omission. Asian American history and culture is not taught in schools. “When you have no frame of reference for a community's inclusion, it becomes so easy to overlook or dismiss or even dehumanize an entire population,” says Ling
In many ways, the dishes Ling chronicles act to preserve identity for Asian Americans whose history in the U.S. has ranged from fraught to forgotten.
Ling’s message about the universality of Asian food in America comes as hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders continue to rise. In the show, Ling points out that Korea dominates the world’s culture, from "Squid Game" to BTS. At the same time, the San Francisco Police Department has reported that hate crimes against the Asian community rose 567% in that city in 2021. “That's been the thing that's been really bittersweet about all of this,” says Ling about the show. “There have been incredible triumphs in the last couple of years, yet attacks have increased so exponentially.” She believes this is one reason it’s so important to tell people’s stories. “Otherwise, you might continue to see members of that community as foreigners or un-American.”
"Take Out" is a reminder that every Asian meal, even if it's the dinner on a sofa evoked by the show's name, has people behind it — and stories to tell. We should listen while we eat.
