After a stint at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Taiwan, Jessie YuChen moved to New York City and hit the ground running. In the past seven years, they’ve gotten degrees in food studies and photography; worked at Bon Appetit and Saveur; styled food, developed recipes, and photographed both people and food for countless projects; and thrown pop-ups all over the city, including one for the James Beard Foundation. “Food is the language I use to tell stories,” says YuChen. “My career represents my desire to express and also to explore others’ journey through food and visual storytelling.”
Somehow, they’ve also found time to start importing craft beers from Taiwan to New York City and have a popcorn brand, Boomipop, that features a spice blend found on Taiwanese popcorn chicken. Her latest project is For the Love of Kewpie, a cookbook that commemorates the 100-year anniversary of Kewpie, an immensely popular Japanese brand of mayonnaise.
You have a medical degree. How did you pivot and embark on your career in food?
I grew up in Taiwan, and I wasn’t encouraged to be in the kitchen. I was encouraged to read books and do things that the adults thought would make me smart, but I always liked cooking. My mom is a really good cook, and I enjoyed watching her cook and would stare at the process of food making in any kitchen. But it wasn’t until high school that I started to learn more about cooking. I would watch cooking shows on TV. We had Food Network there, even though I was in Taiwan. I would also watch Jamie Oliver cook, who made cooking, especially Western-style, more approachable.
Photo: Grace Ann Leadbeater
I started to like cooking in high school, because when I cook, it’s an excuse to gather people I love, have them over, and share a meal. I imagined having a career in food, but I had this pressure of following someone else’s — my parents’ — expectations. So I got into medical school, and I got a degree in nutrition. It’s all useful knowledge, but it’s not really the path for me. I went through some internships in a hospital, but I couldn’t see myself doing it long-term. When I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, I saw a Facebook ad that said Jamie Oliver was hiring for his new restaurant in Taipei. I applied, and somehow, I got a job there with zero experience in food or restaurant kitchens.
Did you experience pushback from your family when they found out?
They definitely didn’t think I could make it. Or they thought that, Oh, you’ll see how hard it is and how it’s not a “legit” career for you. They thought that after I tried it, I would fail, or I would not like it, or I would just give up.
Do you still keep in touch with them now?
Not really, sadly. I grew up in a family that’s not super open-minded. That’s partly why I moved to New York — to be away from that and have my own life.
How does your cultural background inform your work today?
After I left Taiwan, it became a way to reconnect with my roots through food. I moved to New York in my 20s around 2018 to be away from the homophobia that I grew up with. That distance from home and the act of building my own life here definitely shaped how I think about food and my identity. In Taiwan, food is an everyday language of care. We show love by cooking, by cutting fruit, and by making sure that someone else has eaten. Instead of saying hi, we say, Have you eaten yet? But growing up queer, I also learned what it feels like to be unseen, even in a culture that’s built around so much care.
Being queer and Taiwanese informs everything that I do. It makes me attuned to nuance, to stories that exist between categories, and it’s why I’m drawn to explore different themes of under-represented and minority communities — not just queer and Asian stories, but any experiences that are often unseen and deserve tenderness and visibility. When I cook, style, or photograph, I’m always asking how tradition can evolve and how food can hold both nostalgia and transformation.
Photo: Kazumi Fish
You speak a lot about “chosen family.” What does that mean to you?
It means everything to me. I wouldn’t be here without them. Finding my community in New York gave me a sense of belonging I didn’t know was possible. We can fully be ourselves. We celebrate each other’s work and we share food that is both comforting and a form of resistance. My chosen family has taught me what it means to create from a place of honesty and care. They remind me to be authentic and to embrace myself and others with the same kind of generosity we bring to the table as chefs.
How would you describe your approach to cooking?
Cooking is caring. It’s like sharing a piece of my life with you. Cooking is a way of connecting with my heritage and with my community. It’s how I care for others and for myself, which is to nourish other people and to allow myself to express myself in a form other than speaking. There’s something really grounding about sharing food, especially when words are not enough, or when I’m not the best talker.
Photo: Grace Ann Leadbeater
Where do you source Asian ingredients in the city?
I love getting food from farms growing Asian vegetables. A lot of them are upstate, and I obviously shop in Chinatown. When I’m looking for flavors from home, I pick up some fruits like guava, Asian pear, or whatever is available from the stands by the streets of Chinatown. I often get a bowl of wontons mid-shopping. I really love Deluxe Food Market, which has really high-quality, fresh pork and other kinds of meat as well. For pantry staples like sauces, oils, and condiments, I go to this shop called Chinatown Supermarket of Manhattan.
How did your new cookbook come about?
My friend Elyse Inamine, whom I worked with at Bon Appetit, and her agent were in conversation with the people at Kewpie mayonnaise. It’s Kewpie’s 100-year anniversary, and they asked Elyse if she wanted to do a cookbook. But they needed a recipe developer. Elyse thought of me, and when I got the call, I was food shopping somewhere. And I was like, “What? Kewpie book? Sure, yes, let’s do it.” It’s a really cool team, because Elyse is Japanese-American. She’s an Okinawan. And I’m from Taiwan, and Taiwan is a country that was colonized by Japan, so there’s a lot of Japanese influence there. Plus I have the cultural context I got here in America I needed to produce this book that is for Americans, using a condiment that’s very American and Japanese,
Photo: Grace Ann Leadbeater/Grace Ann Leadbeater
What has been your most surreal career moment so far?
One of the surreal moments that I can think of right now was on the way to Andy Baraghani’s cookbook launch party. I was in a shared ride with a couple of colleagues from Bon Appetit, and I was like, Wow, I’m in a car with such talented people. I recognized in that moment how far I had come.
Another time was when I was shooting a Lunar New Year campaign for Rémy Martin with Michelle Watt. When I first came to the states, no one in mainstream food media was really celebrating Lunar New Year. To be a part of the making of an enormous commercial made for the Asian American community, alongside mainly Asian American talents who are excellent at what they’re doing, was great. I don’t know if it can get any better than that. I felt like we all made it somewhere where we can be ourselves.
If you could speak to your younger self before you knew that building a career and community like this was possible, what do you think you might tell them?
Just to explore, to believe in yourself, and that there is a community out there for you.
