It all started when the world ended...
and live music disappeared from existence. Up until 2020, you could find Wesley performing in bars, clubs, and music venues with the Oakland funk band Trace Repeat. His experimentation with food stems from the same fascination that he has for songwriting.
The way a song “works” (what makes it catchy, and why we want to keep listening), follow the same principles of cooking. Deconstructing a recipe, finding the ingredients that catch our attention, and manipulating them to play our heartstrings is the kind of fascination that ticks in Wesley’s brain at all hours of the day.
Woo Can Cook is a series where Wesley reproduces fun foods and recipes from his childhood. Some are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but many are odd Americanized versions that he inherited from his parents and grandparents while growing up in the California Bay Area. The popular “Chinese American Hack” series uses this knowledge of authentic Chinese cuisine to deconstruct “Americanized” Chinese food, identify its American qualities, then reconstruct those dishes with a more traditional Chinese approach to wok cooking.