Talking Taiwan Episode with Trigg Brown and Josh Ku about Win Son a Taiwanese Restaurant in NYC
The Talking Taiwan podcast is BACK! As we relaunch around the holiday season, I’m sure we are all thinking about what’s for dinner so I thought this would be a good time to share the interview I did with Trigg Brown and Josh Ku, the duo behind Win Son, a Taiwanese restaurant located in east Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
When I sat down to interview Trigg Brown and Josh Ku about their Taiwanese American restaurant, Win Son, they talked about their shared a love of food, and how they used to trek all the way out to Flushing just to get good Taiwanese food. They used to get into discussions about what makes food uniquely Taiwanese vs. Chinese or Chinese American, and somewhere along the way they started tossing around the idea of opening up a restaurant together.
At first it seemed like just talk, but then Trigg inherited a commercial stove which they decided to keep- initially in the lobby of Josh’s building. The funny thing is that once this stove showed up, talk of Josh and Trigg’s restaurant idea seemed more and more real. Later the stove was moved into a former restaurant space that Josh was dealing with as a property manager. As fate and a Kickstarter campaign would have it, that former restaurant space ended up being where they opened Win Son.
The two spoke to me about how the challenges of dealing with a cuisine that most have never heard of before, and how the research they did in Taiwan before opening Win Son was less about replicating Taiwanese dishes exactly, but more about understanding Taiwan’s history, culture and food. Both Josh and Trigg understand the subtext they are dealing with by running a Taiwanese American restaurant. Sometimes, loaded political implications can come with the label of being “Taiwanese.” In recreating Taiwanese dishes at Win Son, Trigg and Josh have taken care to pay homage to Taiwan’s culture and cuisine.
Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in the podcast:
How they met and bonded over their common love of food
How a stove that Trigg inherited led to the idea of opening a Taiwanese American restaurant concept to becoming a reality
Where the name Win Son came from
How Taiwan’s complex history influences Trigg’s understanding of how Taiwanese dishes are prepared
The research they did in Taiwan before opening up Win Son
What it means to be a Taiwanese restaurant in New York and how it’s hard not to be political
How they interpret and pay homage to Taiwan’s history and culture through food
The challenges of being in the restaurant industry
Recommendations for people interested in opening up a restaurant
