Very soon after I found out I was seven weeks pregnant - a pregnancy we very much wanted - I started googling "head chef + mom of three" and "restaurant owner with three kids." The results were not encouraging. Mainly what I found were stories of women chefs who were fired or pressured to leave once their pregnancies became public, who loved their jobs but saw no way to continue. Many didn't return to the industry after. I also found some gleaming examples of mom chefs, online communities and conferences to promote women and mothers in the industry. But the truth was I still felt panic as I woke up nauseous in the middle of the night: why did I think we could pull this off? Who do you think you are? MAZU was exactly 1.5 years old; our kids were 3 and 4. We had opened as three co-owners, but at this point I was essentially running the show solo.
Around 10 years ago, I flirted with opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv. What started as making Taiwanese food for friends turned into a sweet little catering business, which later developed into a supper club and founding an international food market that would bring in as many as 1,400 people in a weekend. I was slinging guabao, the beloved Taiwanese open steamed bun, with traditional pork belly, braised beef shank, and five spice marinated tofu. Unable to procure frozen baos, I made each one from scratch in our little apartment. For one event, my partner Matan biked around South Tel Aviv, dropping 2 gallon ziploc bags of frozen bao at 10 friends' houses, because our home freezer couldn't hold them all.
It was an exciting time - I was telling my story, the story of my family and my culture, to an audience that saw "bao buns" left and right, but didn't know their deep and rich history. In such a rampant foodie city, there were endless collaborations and possibilities. A couple of restaurateurs approached me, interested in opening a place together. I did some research and two terrifying facts stuck to me: 1. I was told opening restaurants ends marriages. 2. The restaurant scene in Tel Aviv was incredibly fast paced and competitive, and I was told I would inevitably need to pay several bribes to even open. I was totally overwhelmed and also deep in imposter syndrome.
What is insane to me now, as an ardent and proud feminist (with a masters degree in gender!), is that I genuinely believed in my 20s that opening a restaurant with kids was not possible. I didn't even allow myself to imagine it. When I decided at 27 to walk away from the restaurant path, I honestly thought that the opportunity was over and would never present itself again. I felt different and special in Tel Aviv, but the US meant plenty of amazing, inspiring AAPI first-generation US born food lovers like me, pissing off their parents by eschewing our graduate degrees and making our soul food instead. There would be nothing different or unique about me in the US.
My father in Colorado was in a severe accident, and Matan and I had already been talking about moving back to the States. So with a heavy (yet relieved?) heart, I literally packed away my cookbooks and notebooks of recipe ideas, my cooking gear from Taipei. We moved back to the US in 2017 and after a few months in Colorado, we spent seven months on the road, window shopping for a new life. The goal was five acres, setting up a pottery studio, getting chickens (especially Easter Eggers), living communally, and having kids.
We did all those things, and more, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where close friends successfully recruited us. With a population of around 3,500 nestled in beautiful nature and farmland, and the home of the historically progressive, creative Antioch College, we found an unexpected home that gave us the freedom and flexibility we wanted. We had two kids, 27 chickens during COVID, five acres with a yurt, and wonderful friends. But after five years, we thought it was time to move on. Neither of us wanted to commute for work, and we were both a bit stuck career-wise. It was then in August 2023 that a new friend named Jayne texted us something like, "I'm going to sell my restaurant. You guys are energetic...interested?" Matan and I read the text together and laughed. How absurd! She didn't even know I had some cooking in my back pocket (she only knew Matan really liked taste-testing her ice creams). Our kids were 1 and 2 at that point. Our parents lived in Northern Israel and Colorado. Matan was a programmer and I had only ever worked in social justice NGOs. Who opens a restaurant under those circumstances?
But I simply couldn't sleep at night. It was fantastical. I would lie awake in our yurt, hearing the owls or the coyotes, and I would visualize those notes I took all those years ago in the notebooks packed in a dusty box in my in-laws' garage. I fantasized about menus and renovating the space, the type of food we would serve, who would come in, the special events we could host. In the mornings, groggy after so little sleep, it would continue...doodling and scratching out ideas between making pottery and chasing after the kids.
Long story short, we did it. Our friend Kumar immediately felt drawn to the concept as well, and the three of us bought Jayne's restaurant and began turning it into our own. When people ask me what it was like, I say opening a restaurant is like having a baby. It is physical, mental, emotional, and exhausting. You prepare and prepare and prepare and then suddenly it's out in the world. Then you don't sleep for three months. But somehow, miraculously, it just becomes a part of your life. For me, I wasn't a mom, and then I was one. MAZU felt the same: I didn't have a restaurant, and then I did, and it was inextricably part of my identity.
Which is not to say it wasn't hard, having two kids and opening a restaurant. My in-laws came and saved us: for six weeks they alleviated all the guilt I had of not being with the kids. A few times I'd work 18 hours and they would be asleep when I got home, and they would already be in daycare the next morning when I woke up. After our first soft opening event, I sat outside and cried loudly, feeling like a failure of a mother and a failure of a restaurateur. Our youngest Miko only wanted me, so I tried to make the food one-handed, which of course ended in disaster and Miko being carried out of MAZU bawling for his mama. But month by month, we learned how to be restaurant owners and parents and actually enjoy the sum of it.
So as soon as life at MAZU became a little easier, a little more routine, I started asking myself if we wanted a third child. We always did; Matan and I are both the youngest of three and always imagined three. But could we imagine it, truly? This type of life and responsibility, but with another baby? And even more so, could I imagine doing my job (and doing a good job) while being pregnant, and post-partum, and breastfeeding, and having a tiny human with me essentially all the time? At the time I was pulling a lot of doubles, 12-13 hour shifts, and also kind of loving it. But my body did not, and I started to have chronic pain in my hip and lower back. No, we couldn't have another baby if I was working this much. But what were my long-term life goals? As soon as I asked myself that, the answer was clear.
The first person we told that I was pregnant was our invincible, ultra-talented kitchen manager Lily. She squealed with happiness and excitement, and said she couldn't wait to see me with a baby bump - I was so moved by her response. It made me realize how much guilt and self-doubt I carried, like having another child was selfish. Like if I really cared about the restaurant, I would settle for two kids and keep investing myself in the business. I already had kids to care for and a staff and family and friends. This would spread me even thinner; this would make me less capable caring for all those already in my orbit. I almost felt embarrassed telling people I was pregnant, and oftentimes their responses just vocalized my self-critique: three kids and a restaurant, you are crazy, Angie! People meant well, but I often heard it with judgement. Again that voice: Who do you think you are?
It was around then that I kept thinking about how men do this all the time, throughout time. Have three kids and their job, and no compromises are made, and I assume way less self-doubt and judgement than I was loading on myself. Men have kids and career aspirations, and no one tells them they're crazy. How was it that I was suddenly wrapped up in this thinking, in 2024, as a feminist, a business owner, a mother already? It's because women still constantly feel the weight of having to choose, to sacrifice, and then to feel the weight of their choices with their own bodies and their consciousness. And even with loving and supportive people around us, the narrative is so strong that it infiltrates our minds: don't be selfish, don't ask for too much, don't want too much.
I spoke recently to a class of business students at a local university. Kind of funny, given my very clearly stated lack of business experience. It was fun and easy. Somewhere near the end, I felt so compelled to say it. I told the young women in the class that they can do whatever they want: business with kids or no kids, it's not anyone's choice but their own, and it is all possible. I swear to you, every single one of them suddenly looked me in the eye. Some had been taking notes (or doodling), some had their heads down resting on their arms (it was a 9 am class)...but as I said those words, each woman in the class was totally locked in on me. These words that I thought didn't need to be said anymore in 2024, that I didn't need to hear. But it turns out I needed to say and hear them, and these young women were listening too.
I'm 28 weeks pregnant and I have carpal tunnel in both arms, fingertips to shoulders. I have daily pain in my left hip area in the piriformis and sciatica. I have acid reflux and round ligament pain if I walk for more than 5 minutes (I won't even say how much I pee). Even when I work only 2-3 hours, it means I may wake up in the middle of the night in so much pain I can't sleep. But I am so lucky. I still get to go to a job I love, with co-workers who will do anything to help me out and adjust how we work to make this pregnancy fit into our MAZU world. I have not had to hide my pregnancy, or change what I wear, to make sure I keep my job. I have a deeply supportive partner and social network, and financial stability. I have the absurd luxury of planning my pregnancy leave with my kitchen manager, knowing this restaurant will be run with love and care while I take care of this new baby, and our two boys, with the love and care they deserve as well. In the last 20 some weeks, I have stopped feeling embarrassed to say I'm pregnant, to say that I want three kids. I believe it takes a village, so I know when I come back to work, this little one will be showered with attention by our staff and our customers. Conveniently, we are next door neighbors with the local Senior Center, and already our regulars there have told me they're ready to hold the baby.
We live in a country that provides no guaranteed support for new mothers and no recognition (financial or otherwise) for the care work done predominantly by women. We live in a country where we women are braced to fight to make decisions about our own bodies, to defend our right to decide if and when we want children. So it is a great privilege to live and work the way I do right now, with an overflowing amount of support to be a pregnant woman in the restaurant industry. It is on all of us in the industry to do what we can to create a culture that supports women chefs who are pregnant or new mothers. And while we are just a little corner in the big world, we are showing my boys an example of true and active feminism in our days. That voice asks again - Who do you think you are? I am a woman doing exactly what I want.