Cooking While Sad is Such a Vibe

“You just focus on making lunch before I arrive,” James texted Andy.

The trees in the park were bare as heaven refused to offer its warmth. Caught by the wind, people rushed to leave the street, hoping for the warmth found of stoves behind closed doors, their partners’ hands, or the reminiscence offered by touches on the tongues. Unlike Andy’s hometown, here there were no street vendors roasting sweet potatoes or frying chestnuts. All that was on offer were disappointing cups of over-priced coffee.

In the crowd, most were layered up with thick winter coats, necks shielded by fluffy scarves. Some courageous and confident ones, though, embraced the ups and downs in life, running in shorts across town. They didn’t mind how their knees collided with the sharp and freezing air, going pink and sore after even just a short run. Andy wished he could be one of them.

With a backpack full of fresh groceries, Andy was ready to do food prep for the coming week, knowing he’d not be bothered by cooking later on. It was the end of term, and his assessment deadlines were piling up.

Andy swiped his finger across his phone’s small screen. The background no longer showed Lydia, but instead a tall tree near his childhood home. The crescent-shaped leaves adorning the branches showed that the photo was taken last summer, when Andy’s world was kind and cute, still generously embracing mistakes made in the heat of the moment.

It was 11am, a lazy Saturday morning after a lonely session in the gym. The sound of shuddering bushes scratched Andy’s eardrum as if it were preparing him for what was to happen next.

A parcel had arrived while he was out, and he recognised the handwriting on the white plastic package. In denial, he quickly pulled his keys out of the pocket of his dark green down jacket and offloaded the groceries with the parcel onto his kitchen table.

He was usually good at putting his shopping straight into the fridge, freezer and cupboards. Not today, though. Staring at the unopened parcel, the frozen chicken wings began to thaw.

List of items that got laid on the table: tea towels with illustrations of fruits and their names in Chinese; two photo strips with Lydia and Andy, the kind you get in instant photo booths in Berlin; three cards Andy had written in the past year; and a note with an address to a flat in Peckham, asking him to mail her the books she’d left at his place.

Andy felt a cold stream of memories running through his head. It froze him up. It felt like his body was shutting down, while simultaneously waking him up from a slumber, forcing him to reconcile with the reality that Lydia no longer wanted him.

Moisture gathered on the packaging of the frozen food as it thawed, making Andy’s bag wet. His phone rang.

“Oi. Where are you, mate?” He’d forgotten he was meeting James for tea at a recently opened Japanese patisserie.

It was at the corner of the park between where they lived. It had a pink-white interior and a giant display counter showcasing an array of desserts to enchant both the eyes and taste buds. Behind the counter, the servers were mostly Japanese girls working part-time to supplement their studies. James made a bet that he knew which one Andy would pick, while ordering himself a Matcha latte and a satisfying piece of white sesame cheesecake.

Though they were born and raised in the same city, James was so acclimatised to London that his default language was now English. Probably the impact of having a girlfriend who didn’t speak his mother tongue.

Andy told James about the package. James then asked Andy to make lunch for him.

They’d known each other from their first year of uni here in this foreign land. In that time, they’d never really gathered for the food. There was always something else that got in the way. Either it was another set-up to meet a girl of interest or the start of a new video game. In these three years, they’d treated each other like brothers. Their connection was so simple and natural that it felt like there was little to mention, except that there was always an unspoken understanding between sentences and synergy at every hug. They had never set each other as their phone’s backgrounds, but they always saw each other’s faces in the corners of the photos that ended up there.

One night out at the end of the previous summer, when Andy had just returned from their home city, they had met at a pub to watch the game. Andy had handed James a vacuum pack of miscellaneous dried mushrooms. It was huge, like a party-size pack of crisps. Andy had specially reserved a space in his luggage so he could bring it back. James had dropped it into his big backpack and gone straight back to staring at the big screen with sweaty men darting across a big grass field.

A month earlier, when James had heard of the breakup, he’d gone straight to Andy’s place with a six-pack of beer and a box of braised mushrooms in oyster sauce and shaoxing wine. Neither of them remembered too much about that night, but they had finished the horror adventure game ‘Little Nightmare’ in one go.

Now, back in Andy’s kitchen, James was finally sitting by his side again. The kitchen table was packed with familiar dishes, hot soup and two bowls of rice.

“Tell me what we’re eating,” James’s low voice said in Cantonese. Picking up the pair of chopsticks in front of him, he put some rice in his mouth.

“I was soaking these mushrooms last night, so I used the water to cook the rice in the cooker. It’s a mix of brown and white rice. I put the pak choi on top with some salt to steam. The bottom of the rice is a bit burnt, but I think it’s good.

“I put the frozen chicken drumsticks in the instant pot with a bit of chilli, diced potatoes, fermented beancurd, wine, soy sauce, and some water. It’s a shortcut for braised chicken legs. You want that meat falling off the bone texture.

“These are just steamed pork mince patties with egg and mushroom. The pork mince was marinated with the usual formula: soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, sugar and corn starch. I sliced up the shiitake mushrooms and added the water and eggs at a 1.5 to 1 ratio. Laid the meat patty on a shallow metal plate and put the egg and mushroom mix on top. It was steamed for seven minutes on high heat, then six more on medium heat. It’s a tricky dish as I have been testing the timing for this stove, but I finally got it right recently.

“The soup is just seaweed, egg, corn and tofu being boiled for ten minutes. Salt, of course. It’s simple but flavourful as long as I spend a bit more on getting the good seaweed. The key to making good soup is just to get better ingredients. There is no need for technique.”

“Were you crying when you cooked?” James asked.

“Why? Is the food bad?”

“Of course not. Did you cry?”

“Shut up.”

—

Writer’s note:

We all have a complex relationship with our comfort food. You rarely mention it. You are a bit embarrassed by it as you don’t see it as decorated. You might never serve it at a dinner party, as you don’t think it’s good enough for hosting. However, it is always in the corner of your mind and ready to give you that big hug you long for after a difficult day. You can easily whip it up, measuring by eye. Your brain is wired to the aroma and texture, making you feel like yourself again.

When writing this piece, I was combing through my entanglement of male-to-male friendship; brothers who speak the same tongue and comfort food. There is something queer and special in every male-male friendship if we are willing to be a bit less fragile. It is the same in our shyness when expressing our feelings in our mother tongues and introducing our comfort food to our foreign friends.

I hope this piece brings joy to all who, on some days, prefer to cook and eat either on their own or with just their favourite brother/sister.

This article is a contribution from one of the participants of The Gramounce Food & Art Alternative MA 2025-27. Their writing is inspired by one of our seminars, or responds to a similar field of interest within food & art.

Illustrations by Jeffrey Choy