As she took her pop-up dinners from Shanghai to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and the U.S., Gao says she saw the reactions people had to ingredients and dishes they hadn’t tasted before-at least in part because so much of the cuisine never even made it out of China. Gao founded an award-winning fast-casual restaurant in Shanghai, then moved on to cooking the foods she remembered in her private kitchen restaurant. “There’s so much depth and complexity to Chinese food, and nobody knew about it,” she says. The sauce’s creation also stemmed from her own realization that she’d drifted away from the cooking of her native Chengdu.Īfter growing up all over the world, Gao returned to Asia as an adult, working for Procter & Gamble, and realized she wasn’t the only one missing out on those specific flavors. “I wish I could sit down and tell each customer the backstory.” Gao created the sauce to help people taste Sichuan cuisine in a way they might not have before, to get them talking about the flavors and quality they might not have associated with it previously. “I want to have a dialogue,” she says, to share the flavors she loves, to exchange and engage with people about them. Customers are intrigued, and to Gao, that’s part of the point.
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