Third-culture cooking? Inside TikTok star Jon Kung’s nostalgic new recipe book, starring authentically Asian-American fusions curry mac and cheese, dan dan lasagne, Hong Kong chicken and waffles …
- US-based chef Jon Kung went viral on TikTok with his deeply personal approach to food – his new cookbook Kung Food: Chinese-American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen collects his greatest hits
- Born in Los Angeles and raised in Hong Kong and Toronto, Kung studied law at the University of Detroit Mercy, but found a passion for cooking home-grown, cuisine-blurring dishes instead
Jon Kung, the Detroit-based chef who went viral during the pandemic, didn’t ascend to TikTok stardom through the usual dance or lip-synch routines favoured by most influencers on the platform. Instead, he found fame through cooking – more specifically, his deep-seated passion for “third culture cuisine”.
With over 1.7 million followers on TikTok and 267,000 followers on Instagram, Kung’s cooking tutorials are imaginative and performed in a witty and engaging way, with often nostalgic dishes that combine his Chinese heritage with his American and Canadian upbringing.
While some culinary traditionalists might raise an eyebrow at the mention of unconventional dishes like curry mac and cheese, dan dan lasagne or Faygo orange chicken, these gastronomic creations are likely to resonate profoundly with a particular audience: “third culture kids” – people whose lives have been shaped by a number of cultures.
Born in Los Angeles, raised in Hong Kong and Toronto, and currently living in Detroit, Kung’s journey embodies this multicultural – and multi-culinary – mélange. His upbringing informs the recipes that fill his cookbook, Kung Food: Chinese-American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen.
Kung, 39, spent his early years in Hong Kong and later returned to the city for the final two years of his high school education at an international school, before moving back to the US to study theatre and creative writing at Eastern Michigan University and law at University of Detroit Mercy.
“I taught myself how to cook at the same time that I was in law school,” he says, “Cooking was the only creative outlet that I felt justified in doing that took me away from my studies.”
But Kung was also beginning to miss Hong Kong’s cuisine. “Detroit at the time, and to an extent now, severely lacked the kind of food I was missing from Hong Kong,” he says. “So that was also my motivation”.
