A beautiful and fearless exploration of food and feelings with bite for fans of Crying in H Mart and Midnight Chicken.
Touching, absorbing and unflinching shows you how to stomach lifes shit, celebrate the ugly, and keep going' Angela Hui
Eat bitter is a Chinese proverb meaning endure hardship to taste sweetness. For Lydia Pang, it embodies the struggles of her Hakka ancestors, a persecuted Chinese ethnic group whose ingenuity shaped a food culture rooted in fermenting and foraging.
Pang reimagines eating bitter as a philosophy to confront her own challenges: burning out, testing her marriage, navigating fertility struggles and caring for a parent. Through eight recipes, she shares food as memory and medicine: the silly egg noodles her father cooked when her sister was ill, the bone broth she boiled in New York while homesick and courgettes grown in rural Wales as a gesture of reconnection.
Arvustused
'A beautiful book about family and food ... potent, honest, and unapologetic ...I wolfed it down' * Emma Gannon * 'Bold, honest and utterly relatable ...shows how food can be medicine, memory and a lifeline all at once.' * Service95 * 'A riveting nosedive into the blood and guts of food, family and self compassion. Lydia Pang writes with raw passion straight from the heart, leaving us well fed, but still ravenous for more. A beautiful book.' * Tobi Coventry * 'What Lydia Pang fearlessly captures in Eat Bitter is a glimpse into the life of a creative. Nurturing and brave, her story inspires and her recipes warm.' * Danny Bowien * 'Incredible... Pang beautifully explores whats really important in our lives, while offering recipes that bring solace. Youll be handing this book out to everyone you know.' * Stylist *
Lydia Pang (She/Her) is a Frankenstein, misfit Creative Director with a decade of experience in brand building. Lydia is the Co-Founder of MØRNING, a London based, creative strategy and cultural foresight studio. She judged Clio Awards, D&AD and was a Cannes Lions delegate. Shes worked in media, advertising agencies and brands in New York and Portland, always in hybrid creative roles honing her passion for digital storytelling and trend mapping. She has given talks on ethical commissioning and the future of branding at Instagram and NYTimes, and written articles for Refinery29, Riposte, Vogue, Elle, and Dazed.
