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A few people asked me why I presented Stephen Chow’s GOD OF COOKERY at the sold out Alamo Drafthouse event in Austin last week. Why a Chinese movie paired with vegetarian food? The reason is simple: Stephen Chow changed my life.

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Yes, this guy. I made life decisions based on him.

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“Because I am so cool.”

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Back when I was at NYU, my husband and I started going to the Music Palace, which was a rundown Chinese movie theater on the Bowery. Tickets were $6 for a double feature and they showed the latest movies from Hong Kong. We didn’t know from Hong Kong, but it was cheap and fun and so we started going. The first two movies we saw were okay (I don’t remember them) and we went back a few weeks later and saw a double feature of the weird comedy, ALWAYS BE THE WINNER, which was fun but then we saw Stephen Chow’s LOVE ON DELIVERY and we never went back. This was a movie so bizarre, so strange, so ridiculous that it was like visiting another dimension.

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GOD OF COOKERY is one of the best food movies ever
made, by the way. Kicks BABETTE’S FEAST right in the butt.

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We went back to the Music Palace religiously after that and, after graduating, we moved to Hong Kong because we loved the movies so much. We were there for a year and a bit and that was when I realized how amazing vegetarian food could be. Hong Kong is crammed with vegetarian restaurants, most of them doing Chinese Temple Cooking, and I realized how much more you could do with vegetables than I’d ever imagined. I ate better in Hong Kong than I have anywhere else on earth, and after I came back to the US I couldn’t get it out of my head. About two years later I was enrolled in cooking school and now I somehow own a restaurant.

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“That’s right, little girl. I want you to become a chef.”

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All thanks to Stephen Chow.

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“Food is exciting!”

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Read a review of GOD OF COOKERY. Then watch some of Chow’s funniest scenes.

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