The Bay Area seems to have a unique ability in fostering an innovative drive of self-expression within its residents. Almost everyone differentiates themselves through their own unique perspective, and there's no better setting to witness this than the Bay Area food scene. While new, shiny restaurants seem to open up every other month, Breadbelly, a small eatery in the Richmond district, is rethinking the notion of what an all-day cafe can be.
Founded by Clement Hsu, Katherine Campecino-Wong, and James Wong, Breadbelly is challenging the avocado toast-filled brunch landscape with personalized Asian-American food that reflects a humbling, yet strikingly innovative culinary vision. Using flavors of their home, personal makeup, and storied past, the founding trio is demonstrating that genuine creativity isn’t always about making something wildly new—rather, it’s about projecting a vision that reflects the creator.
The Food
In discussing Breadbelly’s culinary ethos, Clement Hsu states that this seemingly simple cafe is always about “taking something that is familiar and transforming it to be Breadbelly.” Every pastry and menu item embodies this notion of transformation from the familiar, with powerful pointers towards the novel that acknowledge their conceptually recognizable points of origin.
For instance, the seemingly simple “Char Siu Sandwich” projects the familiar char siu, a Chinese barbecued pork, through a contemporary lens by sandwiching the meat between house made milk bread, char siu sauce, cucumbers, and bok choy—bringing forth a reinvented experiential composition of simple, known ingredients. Similarly, an innocent-looking square treat coated in crushed peanuts passes the Western concept of browned butter through a non-Western vehicle of delightfully chewy mochi—entwining two popular culinary thoughts in such a way that evokes a striking cross-cultural point of view.
As you eat these, and other gems including the eye-catching kaya toast, it becomes clear that as Breadbelly is channeling non-Western ingredients and flavors into compositions befitting an everyday cafe, the founders are constructing a new idea of Asian-American food—one that does not try to masquerade as exotic, but rather as personal, comforting, and informal.
In the Larger Conversation
This small cafe challenges any notions surrounding Asian-American food that might revolve around a lack of “authenticity” or quality. As some people rail against the dichotomy between, for example, the food in China and America’s Chinese food, Breadbelly quietly creates a space in which Asian-American food can be seen not as a replication of the cuisine found in other countries but rather as a standalone culinary genre of Asian-Americans who grew up with one hand in the foods of Asian cultures and another hand in the foods of Western, American culture.
While other Asian-American establishments, including Third Culture Bakery and Mister Jiu’s, offer singularized perspectives relating to baked goods and high price point respectively, Breadbelly’s congenial, all-day concept of Asian culinary influence stands apart as it signifies the Asian-American genre’s entrance into the mainstream San Francisco palate. Through it’s all-day nature, precise cooking, and homey, gustatory satisfaction, Breadbelly uniquely materializes the Bay Area’s rich Asian-American roots into a contemporary space tightly interwoven into the city’s everyday fabric.