Finding bicultural sweet spot
With Asian American bakeries sprouting, kids of immigrants discovering a taste of home
OAKLAND, Calif. — For some Asian Americans, the dim sum cookie at Sunday Bakeshop will taste like childhood.
It looks like a typical sugar cookie except with sesame seeds on top. But bite into the creamy, red bean center and it’s reminiscent of the fried, filled sesame balls served at a Chinese dim sum restaurant.
The concoction is pastry chef Elaine Lau’s nod to her grandmother, who would often make them. The baked goods that Lau’s team churns out — like hojicha chocolate croissants and Chinese White Rabbit candy cookies — aren’t going to be found in any bakery in Asia. There’s an intrinsic American sensibility at the nearly 3-monthold shop.
“Talking to some of the Asian Americans and other people that have tried some of our pastries, we get a lot of comments where they’re just like ... ‘Oh this took me back several years,’ when they were growing up,” said Lau, 35, who was born in Oakland.
From ube cakes to mochi muffins, bakeries that sweetly encapsulate growing up Asian and American have been popping up more in recent years. Their confections are a delectable vehicle for young Asian Americans to celebrate their dual identity.
Ingredients they found embarrassing as children are being blended with European or “traditional” American pastries into something new. Some of the bakers welcome the chance to dispel culinary and societal misconceptions, especially given months of anti-Asian hate.
The experience of being an immigrant kid in between two very different cultures is what inspired the name and concept behind Third Culture Bakery, a few miles away from Sunday Bakeshop, in Berkeley. Open since 2018, it’s the brainchild of husbands Wenter Shyu, 31, and Sam Butarbutar, 32. Nine months into their courtship, they decided to open a bakery together and expand Butarbutar’s mochi muffin business beyond wholesale and pop-ups. The mochi muffin, still a signature item, is influenced by Butarbutar’s Indonesian roots.
The operation has blossomed, with two locations in Colorado and a second San
Francisco Bay Area store planned. Their menu includes mochi brownies and butter mochi doughnuts with glazes like matcha, ube and black sesame.
Shyu said many non-Asian patrons have never been exposed to some of the ingredients.
“It’s a lot of educating. Even when you educate and share where it comes from, people are judging it. It’s a very mixed bag. It’s also very rewarding because then you get to see their reaction trying this new thing they’ve never had in their life,” he said.
Rose Nguyen, a 34-year-old former nurse, switched careers and opened Rose Ave Bakery in Washington, D.C., just before the pandemic shutdown. Nguyen was peddling morsels like strawberry lychee rose doughnuts and ube cake. She won over enough foodies to keep going with online orders until reopening this June.
Born in Rhode Island to Vietnamese immigrants, Nguyen said it sometimes hurt when, growing up, her white friends thought her food from home was weird or gross. So, it’s gratifying now to showcase Asian flavors unapologetically.
“It was never about trends or satisfying other people,” Nguyen said.