Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You

At 35, when a 13-year relationship ends, food journalist Candice Chung finds herself losing not only her first love, but also her most reliable restaurant review partner. Then her retired Cantonese parents offer to be her new plus-ones, and she faces a dilemma: is it better to eat together in polite silence, or to try saying the unsayable—to broach how, for the past decade, they managed to drift so profoundly apart?

Soon, a geographer enters her life, and the course of their relationship forces Chung to address what's still left unsaid. To do so, she must find a new vocabulary—a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to express all along. Not through words, but with food.

Candice Chung is a writer, editor and a former restaurant reviewer for The Sun-Herald. Her work has appeared in TheGuardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food, The Australian Gourmet Traveller, SBS Food, Griffith Review and more. She is a founding member of Diversity in Food Media Australia, which supports and promotes underrepresented voices in food media.

'I absolutely loved this book about all forms of love, and books and food and distance and travel. It was a real and delightful surprise, full of smart thought and deft words – and also very funny.' Ella Risbridger, author of The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things

'A touching, poignant love story about so many great loves in Candice Chung's life - at times heartbreaking, complicated and bittersweet, but also, uplifting and full of tenderness. I loved her precise descriptions of food which were so vivid and flavoursome and yet never overwritten.' Huma Qureshi, author of Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love

'A wonderfully heart warming memoir from the bottom of the stomach. Candice Chung shows us how love and relationships can be influenced by food culture, and how our dinner tables have shaped the way we understand the world, as well as ourselves.' Xiaolu Guo, author of Radical and A Lover's Discourse

'Candice Chung's memoir is poetic, delicious and full of moments of grace and beauty.' Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby

'Like a hilarious, heartfelt and incredibly perceptive conversation you have with a good friend over dinner -- the kind you think of many years after the plates and bowls get cleared -- Candice Chung's memoir stayed with me like the warmest of memories.' Lee Tran Lam, food writer and creator of the award-winning Should You Really Eat That? podcast

'This will undo anyone whose love language is food; anyone whose connection with others depends on it.' Tara Wigley, co-author of Ottolenghi SIMPLE

'A tender, wise and witty memoir of forging connections through food and love. Chung's prose is as deliciously playful as her palate.' Leah Hazard, author of Womb