Tiger and the Horse is a new pop-up dinner series by chef Jonathen Liu. Its menu is dedicated to sustainability.

Los Angelese Times
Date: July 26, 2019
By: Hadley Tomicki

As a kid growing up in Upland, Jonathen Liu spent weekends fighting carsickness on trips to the San Gabriel Valley, where his Taiwanese parents drove every Sunday to buy groceries.

“Born and raised in America, I was like, ‘I just want cheeseburgers,’ ” he said. “I felt really disconnected to the Taiwanese culture that I grew up with.”

Liu began cooking when he was a teen, taking on a number of kitchen and front-of-house restaurant jobs. He moved to New York in 2013, where he sang in a punk rock band. The young chef also worked at the Manhattan bistro Estela and began to apply the techniques he was learning there to the food he grew up with. A trip to Taiwan in 2016 cemented his interest.

“I visited my dad there for a month and explored all the street food stands and places I could find, including an incredible Taiwanese/Japanese omakase restaurant,” Liu recalled. “It was an amazing reconnecting and learning experience for me.”    [FULL  STORY]