The Bold Italic’s 2020 Awards
This article is part of The Bold Italic’s 2020 Awards, which celebrate the Bay Area’s small businesses and local residents who have hustled and shown creativity throughout 2020. See all the award winners here.
Ten years ago, C-Y Marie Chia was working at l’Arpège, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Paris, when its famous chef/owner, Alain Passard, instructed her to stage in his vast vegetable gardens.
“For someone who had never grown anything before, it was eye-opening,” Chia tells the Bold Italic. “For me, this was when it made sense — the colors I had been missing … the potential for storytelling and identity exploration.”
Her journey took her to New York City to do just that: explore her interest in plant-based cooking (she was vegan at the time and still is) and her culinary roots. That’s where she met her partner Shane Stanbridge. Together they moved to the Bay Area where they — on top of working other restaurant jobs—launched a pop-up: S+M Vegan. Working events, catering jobs, and as guests in other kitchens, the pair experimented in creating food that felt true to their heritages and personal loves, creating flavorful, texture-rich vegan fare that mixed Chia’s Teochew Chinese-Singaporean roots with Stanbridge’s “bread-obsessed Cali-Italian.”
The result was food that attracted vegans and nonvegans alike. Fans would seek out their pop-ups and wait eagerly for the next. These were fans who, when it came time, happily funded their Kickstarter campaign to open up a storefront restaurant in uptown Oakland.
Lion Dance Cafe — our Best New Restaurant in the East Bay in 2020—was born in the middle of a pandemic but surrounded by love. And when we say the love for Lion Dance Cafe is real, we mean it. Customers anxiously await the reveal of their menu every week on Instagram, and it sells out easily. This affinity for Lion Dance Cafe is why readers chose it as Best New Restaurant in the East Bay and why they selected Chia as the Chef of the Year not just in Oakland but in the entire Bay Area.
When we told Chia about the nominations, she said, “I can’t believe this nomination, or any nomination, no matter the outcome. As a pretty clumsy queer immigrant woman of color, it took me years to feel like I could cook my own food and that anyone would be interested.”
Interested we are. Everything about Lion Dance Cafe and Chia’s cooking feels right at this moment in time. There are no rules — no strict definitions for what type or kind of food Chia creates. Do not try to box her in.
“Lion Dance Cafe was born from us learning from my Singaporean aunties’ recipes, my childhood memories, and our experiences together visiting my birth country and cooking as a team,” Chia said. “Our food isn’t traditional or fusion; it’s an authentic-as-in-genuine, often vulnerable reflection of who we are, where we come from, where we are, and an acknowledgment of who came before us.”
The menu changes weekly, but you’ll always find a Shaobing sandwich. San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho called the one she had from their pop-up the best sandwich in the Bay Area, though that exact one will likely never be re-created. The sandwich changes weekly, but the one constant is the mouth-watering Asian-style focaccia bread baked by Stanbridge, who uses sesame oil and tops it with sesame seeds. You can also find a laksa, (noodle soup), which also has countless variations. Other recent items include burnt Mala broccoli (with peanuts, shallot, and a Sichuan pepper vinaigrette), crispy Hodo tofu nuggets (with Samal mayo, curry leaf, and pickles), and their famous almond-sesame-shallot cookies.
Hours at Lion Dance Cafe are limited. Dinner is offered Friday and Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., with preorders starting Wednesdays at 12 p.m. The sandwich on the menu almost always sells out. Brunch is also now available on the second Sunday of the month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with guest Tai Zhan Bakery for walk-up ordering only. The restaurant plans to continue to be takeout, with no outdoor dining, for the length of the pandemic.
We caught up with Chia to congratulate her on her win and learn more about her. Read our interview below—and keep scrolling to see the other nominees for the Bold Italic’s Chef of the Year 2020, who are all chefs in Oakland.
TBI: Tell us about your culinary past and experiences before Lion Dance Cafe.
C-Y Marie Chia:
I first started cooking in restaurants about 10 years ago at l’Arpege in Paris. I was living in France at the time as a mixed Asian with a French mom. Before allowing me in his kitchen, Alain Passard insisted that I first stage at his vegetable garden at the Gros Chesnay. For someone who had never grown anything before, it was eye-opening. I’ll never forget the aroma of the damp soil in the cold morning, the perfume of basil and tomatoes growing together, the latter bursting with sweetness unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was all new to me, and it was so stimulating. I come from an illustration background, and for me, this was when it made sense—the colors I had been missing, this path to connect with others, and the potential for storytelling and identity exploration I hadn’t managed to find for myself in visual arts. I was not in a good place in my life, and as cliche as it may seem, I think cooking saved my life.
I was already vegan at the time, and I was curious about the expansive plant-centric cooking scene in NYC, so I soon went on a student visa (so I could stay for a bit) to the Natural Gourmet Institute (Bryan Terry and Eric Tucker are among its prominent grads). There I met Shane, and we’ve been cooking together ever since.
Long story short, we moved to the Bay, where he had previously been living, and started popping up as S+M Vegan on top of our restaurant jobs. This was in 2012; over time we quit our jobs, met incredible people, catered all kinds of events, learned a lot, made mistakes, had some great food, and grew to focus on flavors meaningful to us and relevant to our backgrounds and heritages as a homesick mixed Teochew Chinese-Singaporean and a bread-obsessed Cali-Italian.
This is how Lion Dance Cafe was born, from us learning from my Singaporean aunties’ recipes, my childhood memories, and our experiences together visiting my birth country and cooking as a team. Our food isn’t traditional or fusion; it’s an authentic-as-in-genuine, often vulnerable reflection of who we are, where we come from, where we are, and an acknowledgment of who came before us. It’s a long and uncatchy description, but we get a lot of messages from folks who connect with our food and share that it somehow reminds them of home. That our cooking can bring warmth, comfort, joy to others is essentially what motivates us to keep going no matter what.
Tell us about your philosophy behind the restaurant’s menu.
Our goal is to showcase the Chinese-Singaporean flavors I grew up with and the recipes in my family, not necessarily in traditional form, and in that way, it’s very personal and kind of selfish. At the same time, Shane and I always work on the menu as a team, so it is always a result of our sensibilities and ideas mixing and complementing each other’s skillsets (without him, there would be no shaobing, and that’s just one example). But we’re also inspired by the waves of Chinese-American restaurants that paved the way for us and by local produce and seasons because we don’t exist in a vacuum. What we cook, we cook with heart, and we’re always trying to improve.
What has been difficult about 2020?
2020 was hard for everyone who matters as far as I’m concerned. No tears for the billionaires getting richer while we continue having to rely on having each other’s backs to live in this exploitative, fascist, homophobic, ableist construct that is capitalism, going about its absurd route through the pandemic, through the murders of Black and Indigenous folks while people are continuing to be denied housing and basic rights.
I have a lot to mourn this year, and I miss my family dearly as they all live overseas. That said, the biggest challenges of 2020 are not about me, and I don’t indulge in the narrative that 2020 happened out of nowhere. We can’t forget this in 2021. Everything that led us here needs to change.
What has been rewarding about 2020?
I still can’t believe that this is the year we opened a restaurant. It’s not yet everything I hope it will become, but every time someone tells us our food gives them something to look forward to during a difficult week or that the flavors soothed their homesickness for an instant, I tear up.
I can’t believe this nomination, or any nomination, no matter the outcome. As a pretty clumsy queer immigrant woman of color, it took me years to feel like I could cook my own food and that anyone would be interested. This is a recognition of the hard work we’ve been putting in as a team. I’m by no means doing all this on my own, far from it. It’s been Shane and I building this for years and us three co-owners showing up all day every day.
I got to work with many extremely talented chefs, artists, creatives, and food people on a zine (Storm Now, and all proceeds went to Movement for Black Lives and People’s Breakfast Oakland; they might do a second print soon), and I still can’t believe any of them got back to me when I slid into their DMs.
As someone prone to depression, anxiety, and PTSD, I finally started therapy again, and this is something that should be normalized in this industry (and made affordable).
Other nominees for the Bay Area’s Best Chef in 2020
1. Reem Assil of Reem’s California
Assil is a force in the Bay Area—and national—food industry. She came into the national spotlight when she opened Reem’s California, an Arab bakery, in Fruitvale, Oakland, in 2016. This year, she opened a second location in the Mission District of San Francisco. Assil has been a vocal advocate about the inequalities and issues within the restaurant industry. When the pandemic hit, she almost immediately turned Reem’s in Oakland into a commissary kitchen working with the World Central Kitchen to serve hundreds of meals every day during the pandemic to vulnerable populations.
Assil wrote on Instagram at the beginning of the pandemic, “I have went from panic to exhaustion to sickness and then grief. For my family, for my employees, and for the state of working people and communities of color all around the world — and for not being able to control circumstances and take care of everyone.”
She went on to explain her decision to change into a commissary kitchen. “I have no wish to restore the restaurant industry the way it was. It is plagued with inequity. In many ways I hope restaurants don’t get a bailout without changing their ways. Instead, I hope to take advantage of this time to things a little differently…what matters to me is that Reem’s fulfills its mission to remain an anchor in the community — to provide nourishing food, good jobs, and sanctuary space, no matter what that looks like.”
2. Matt Horn of Horn Barbecue
Horn is the most famous pitmaster in the Bay Area and the only one serving up authentic central-Texas-style barbecue. Oakland had been eagerly awaiting a permanent restaurant to dole out his mouth-watering brisket and beef ribs — for years, he ran pop-ups that would attract massive lines. After many delays, Horn finally opened a brick-and-mortar location in West Oakland: Horn Barbecue, one of the nominees for TBI’s Best New Restaurant in the East Bay.
“This year has been an unexpected daily battle, not just to get the restaurant open but the uncertainty of the industry. It feels like you are underwater and every time you try to come up for air, you aren’t able to. So what do you hold onto? Hope,” Horn told The Bold Italic. “We are staying hopeful and are doing our best to make sure our staff is safe and taken care of. We must endure at all cost and not give in to losing hope. No matter how challenging it may be, we must be resilient.”
3. Annabelle Goodridge of Coco Breeze
Opened in Fruitvale neighborhood, Coco Breeze is a heart-felt, warm new community gem from Goodridge and her daughter, Merissa Lyons. Together they are bringing authentic traditional recipes from Trinidad and Tobago to Oakland, like roti with goat and potato curry, pholourie (split pea fritters), roti wraps, and pelau, the classic Trinidadian rice dish.
It is the Trinidadian eatery in Oakland. Goodridge—aka Chef Ann—has a history of cooking and operating a business in the East Bay, including running Trinidadian restaurant LaBelle’s in Berkeley in the late ’90s and early 2000s. She also has extensive experience catering events in the Bay Area—in fact, she started getting involved in catering as a preteen helping her mother’s catering business in Trinidad and Tobago.
With a brand new restaurant opening to rave reviews, Coco Breeze is definitely offering some of the most exciting food in the East Bay right now.
Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week.
