Awkwafina added the term “restaurateur” to her already lengthy resume – and the cameras were rolling as she figured out how. The AP reports that the actor-rapper’s new Apple TV+ series, Awkwafina: The unlikely cook, Traces it from a culinary rookie who says she once would have dismissed soup as “just a hot liquid” to someone confident enough to revive her family’s former Queens restaurant, Lum’s, first as a one-night pop-up and now with plans for a permanent location. Over the course of eight episodes, she trains at the Culinary Institute of America, waits tables in Los Angeles, and learns dishes from chefs including Roy Choi and television pioneer Martin Yan.
What begins as an Asian-American food journey concept evolves into a personal exploration of heritage, heartbreak, and work, especially as Awkwafina reconnects with the Cantonese recipes that sustained Lum’s four decades and attempts to honor her father, grandmother, and late mother. The AP notes that the show’s common thread is accessibility: Viewers watch her go from fumbling with ramen and Spam to critiquing sauces and commanding a kitchen. Cooking, she says, is “so accessible. It truly is a world you can enter at any time. No one will tell you that you can’t do it or that you’re not good enough.” Read more about his culinary left turn and the rebirth of Lum’s here.
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