I will say that the version that we sell today is very much the same as what I was making back then in my kitchen. Over probably two years of doing the Fly By Jing supper clubs and the traveling pop-ups, that’s when I started to bottle it, give it away to friends and family at first, and then started selling it locally in Shanghai. That sauce was, like, so good to me, and I wanted to capture it and apply it to a lot of different things. The Zhong sauce was inspired by a favorite dish of mine growing up called Zhong dumplings, a street snack. The chili crisp alone has 18 ingredients, so it’s saving you a lot of time and work to be able to easily add those flavors to whatever you’re cooking. It’s extremely hard to find some of these ingredients that we put into our products-they’re literally from the countryside in my hometown. At what point did you finalize the recipe for what you’re selling now? You talk in the book about how chili crisp is very personal-each version depends on the textures and flavors you like. And, they were completely inaccessible anywhere outside of China. They were flavor bases that I was making in big batches, because I had to travel with them. Also, chili crisp, Zhong sauce, mala spice… they all came from those recipes. A lot of the recipes from the book are inspired by the dishes I was making during that time period. I started doing these underground pop-up supper club dinners in Shanghai and also across China, across the world, really. Through that experience, I realized I wanted to do something that reached even more people. It ended up doing well, like winning awards-it was on Wallpaper, and New York Magazine covered it. That restaurant was called Baoism-it was a regional Chinese fast casual eatery that featured baos and bowls and sides that you could mix and match, like a Chipotle or something like that. I ended up quitting my job and opening a restaurant. It was back in 2016-I originally moved to Shanghai for a tech job, and it was when I was there that I started to reconnect to my roots through food, became a vessel for me to find identity and also self expression. Jing Gao: That was my first venture in food. Can you tell us a little more about that? For example, I didn’t know that you’d started a restaurant in Shanghai. VICE: Hi, Jing! I learned a lot about you from reading this cookbook. (If you got even slightly excited by that previous sentence, just go ahead and smash the order button on her new book here.) Below, we talked to Gao about why her chili crisp is so unique, where to start cooking in her new book, and the weirdest things she’s seen people put chili crisp on. Today, Gao is releasing her first official cookbook, The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp, which contains not only a ton of her favorite classic Chinese comfort dishes (think mapo tofu, fish-fragrant crispy eggplant, and Kung Pao shrimp), but also the recipes for Fly By Jing’s most beloved products, like Sichuan chili crisp, tribute pepper oil, mala spice mix, Zhong sauce, and chili crisp vinaigrette. Within a few years, she was running pop-ups all over the world, and taking first steps to branding and retailing her beloved chili crisp. Gao’s success story began almost a decade ago, when she moved to Shanghai to start a restaurant. Today, her products can be found everywhere from Whole Foods and Target to Costco, all of whom sought her out-a pretty rare thing for businesses fighting over valuable shelf space. Welcome to 2023.įor Jing Gao, the founder and CEO of Fly By Jing, it's all been part of a journey to reconnect to her roots through food. (It’s hard to believe, but the brand even has 15,000 more followers than Pavement!) The company’s addictive, spicy sauces (for the record, we love them) have made it a legitimate social and cultural force. As far as popular condiments go, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise has about 35,000 Instagram followers, Tabasco has 102,000, and Fly By Jing, by comparison, has a whopping 120,000 followers on the social media platform. Or, take Fly By Jing, a company that makes Chinese condiments and pantry staples-like Sichuan chili crisp, Zhong sauce, mala spice, and Tribute Pepper oil-and has become so popular that it’s covered on CBS Mornings and ( pretty regularly, actually) in The New York Times (which also covers, you know, stuff like presidential elections, climate change, and the economy). Example: The late Jimmy Buffett (RIP, marg king) was on the cover of People last week, but for the upcoming October 2 issue, it’s chef Gordon Ramsay who will be taking center stage. Chefs, creators, and even food business owners reach the same levels of stardom as bands like Pavement Led Zeppelin once did. These days, people get as excited about food as they used to about rock n’ roll.
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