Why Aren’t We Willing to Pay More for Asian Food?

The biggest Vietnamese restaurant outside of Saigon is located on Lake Washington, by way of Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park. It’s Anchovies and Salt, a stunning ode to Vietnam with the menu to match. But despite an honorable effort to redefine a cuisine often reduced to “cheap eats,” this restaurant has been an underdog from the jump.

It all started, as it often does, with one fateful TikTok made by an out-of-town visitor. The TLDR of her 30-second take was that Anchovies and Salt, while beautiful, was overpriced and portion-stingy. The effect of her take was decidedly massive—hundreds of thousands of views and a mob of commenters amassed within days. Anchovies and Salt hasn’t been able to shake the “expensive” vibes off since.

But should they?

Let’s have a conversation about Asian spots seeking to elevate Asian culture, and our role in letting them, or not.

A Cheap History of Double Standards

Picture this: You’re at a neighborhood Italian joint, so dimly lit you feel like you’re in Hollister. The waiter sets down a plate of fresh pappardelle smothered in a rich duck ragu. The dish is $34 (plus a 22% service charge). You don’t even blink. Chef gets a handshake, restaurant gets a Story post: “Gatekeeping this 😏”

Now imagine you’re at a Vietnamese restaurant, the new one on the block, and as you scan the menu, you find your favorite combination is available for—spit take—20 US fucking dollars? The server brings out a fragrant, steaming bowl of pho… and while delicious, you feel dismayed. You open Yelp, Twitter fingers ready to let loose. “What a rip-off.”

Cheap wasn’t the origin story of these cuisines, generally, but it is their origin story in the US. Some might be surprised to learn the depth of which premium seafood is used in Vietnamese dishes, or the deft techniques used to make the most famous mainland Chinese cuisine. Asian immigrants brought these traditions with them to America, quite literally with their families on their backs, trying to figure out how to feed half a dozen heads with just as many dollars and zero prospects for more.

In that way, the means was the end: Feeding people. But how do you introduce a brand new cuisine to a culture that doesn’t know it yet? You sell it cheap—curiosity comes faster at $5 a plate.

What started as a necessity became an expectation. For Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and other immigrants, “cheap eats” became a defining label, and the fight for the bottom rung of the culinary ladder dragged racial stereotypes along with it.

All of this has made its mark on Asian food’s legitimacy in American culture. And while this struggle isn’t unique to Asian food (Italian and Mexican cuisines faced similar origins), those cuisines were eventually allowed to grow, to become aspirational. Today, we celebrate $30 pasta and $20 taco plates. When will we lend Asian food the same credence?

Getting What We Pay For

Anchovies and Salt owner Quyen Phan knows this reality all too well. “Twenty years ago I thought Seattle was behind. Twenty years later, we are so much more behind than I initially thought.” He’s talking about the readiness to accept new concepts in the Asian food scene, an angle he’s been sizing up since 2012 when he opened his first restaurant Saigon Sunset, followed by the first Vinason Pho Kitchen. Now, with Anchovies and Salt, he’s forced to wonder if he’s pushed a little too far.

“We’re so used to paying a certain price point that we can’t open up our menus to show people what we really eat in Vietnam,” says Phan, while we sip water overlooking Lake Washington outside his restaurant. “I wanted to build something that would make Vietnamese Americans proud, and show Americans what Vietnamese culture has to offer them.”

Phan has built an extraordinary ode to his home country. Towering teak doors inspired by Southeast Asia welcome you in. Each wing of the restaurant reflects a different region of Vietnam, complete with curated drinks and a cornucopia of condiments—three different shrimp pastes, eight different fish sauces. The menu boasts premium ingredients, including geoduck (the coconut butter geoduck is ethereal) and wagyu beef, starring in their $24 pho. Even the rice is top shelf: Phan served me award-winning ST25 Vietnamese rice with the excitement of a dad introducing his kid to his favorite band. He wasn’t wrong—the rice is as good as everything else.

So what’s the rub? Back to the TikTok, which leveled claims concerning price and portions despite the grandeur. These are metas Anchovies and Salt cannot escape, and the battle to be understood and accepted in the community is still uphill.

So I finally asked Phan: “Why is Anchovies and Salt so expensive?”

“I hate that people feel that way. It’s not about charging people more… it’s about giving everyone the most. The only way to do that is to start opening up the menu and leading by example.” He balances pride and frustration in his face before he continues. “For instance, we eat an abundance of seafood in Vietnam, and all Americans know is grilled pork banh mi and pork spring rolls. We’re stuck at the $5 price point burned into people’s minds, and it’s holding us all back.”

In Seattle, a popular congee shop knows this story well. When Akavin Lertsirisin (AKA “Boss”) and his brother Jakkapat (“JP”) opened their first congee concept in 2017 (Congeez), they wanted to highlight what Boss calls “family food” in Thailand, a meal commonly shared before school, work, or trips—familiar flavors for the value. Today, the shop has evolved into the Instagram-darling, Secret Congee, which conversely offers remixed renditions of porridge for a premium price, including grade-A seafood that can run up to $25 a bowl.

“After serving congee for five years, we felt we could show everyone, Thai people included, how beautiful even our simplest foods can be,” says Boss.

For the brothers, reimagining congee with the most premium ingredients available was not only a business decision, it was an opportunity to push forward a cuisine calcified into the core memories of them and their customers. The Thai congee of their childhood was typically served with pork meatballs, liver, and egg. At Secret Congee, you can get a heaping bowl with wild-caught halibut, Hokkaido scallop, or lump blue crab, so it’s a flex too. Boss reminds me that restaurants across the city charge $40 for two crab cakes, while Secret Congee’s blue crab congee boasts three times the amount at only $23.

Cracking the Code

Not every new-age Asian spot in the city has had the same “luck” as Anchovies and Salt. One Asian American chef-owner who has seemingly cracked the code is Melissa Miranda of Musang and Kilig notoriety. The James Beard semifinalist has worked tirelessly to reshape the narrative of Filipino cuisine in America, a reintroduction perhaps. With a vision to bring to life an enduring example of her family’s cooking, Miranda’s fresh take on Filipino classics has amplified and fortified Filipino culture in America. They serve familiar favorites while challenging us to see them anew.

It’s at Musang where you’ll order a serving of chicken adobo for $34, not including rice, a price that has bewildered old-school Filipinos since their doors first opened in 2020. Musang’s rendition includes modernized ingredients—roasted garlic, coconut milk tamari, brown butter, and black pepper poivre—but these skeptics have been making adobo for decades, and as such have hardened opinions about how it should be cooked, how it should taste, and more relevantly, how it should be priced. This includes my own mother, a proud Pinay who started out Musang-skeptical. But just like every diner before her, one night at Musang rejigs your paradigm of what a Filipino meal can be while reminding you what you have loved about it all along. Mission accomplished, Musang.

So what about Musang earns respect, where Anchovies and Salt does not? The answer is community buy-in.

For Musang, the proof is in the proverbial ginataang pudding. Supporting Musang feels like a community-aligned initiative to have a great meal and move the culture ahead while doing so. To that end, almost poetically, Musang was incepted by a Kickstarter. But Musang appears to be the exception, not the rule. We denigrate Anchovies and Salt and Secret Congee for some of the same things we celebrate Musang for, and it’s not entirely the fault of the shops. In fact, I think it’s largely ours as patrons.

Let’s Talk About Us for a Second

Asian Americans often claim to want representation, but we balk at the idea of “elevated Asian cuisine.” It’s worth asking: Is there an internalized shame that keeps us from supporting our own cuisines? Are we scared to pay more because we don’t think we deserve it?

If you ask Boss, he’ll tell you that Thai people are well aware that there are different levels to congee. The poor family knew they weren’t eating the same bowls as royalty. And as is human nature, folks who were eating something fancier than the average were either admired or hated. And maybe the same thing exists here today. Looking at how we treat ambitious concepts, it feels like we’ve internalized a sort of caste mindset where we think we only deserve what we deserve and where ambition is frowned upon.

Maybe you’re thinking, “It’s not that deep bro. I just don’t wanna pay $20 for pho.” Fair enough, but elevation aside, have we considered that our local mom-and-pop shop is barely making ends meet selling their food for anything less? Do we think the broth magically simmers itself overnight, and the ingredients assemble themselves from some celestial pantry? (The same ingredients that now cost +40% since last new year?) Voodoo Donuts’ recent usurping of real estate previously occupied by Asian businesses (including a pho shop) make these questions even more important to think about. Locally owned noodles making way for “elevated” donuts is the manifest destiny of a city that follows hype more than culture.

Let Asian Food Be Great—At Any Cost

This is a call to action to think deeper about how we support new businesses. Every time we dismiss spots like Anchovies and Salt, we reinforce a mindset that keeps Asian food and culture stuck in the “cheap” box, and every failed concept is another nail in the lid.

I’m not asking you to blindly love every “elevated” concept, nor calling for Asian restaurants to raise prices without reason. Instead, I’m curious about what makes us comfortable spending up for pasta or pastrami but not for rice or banh mi. What’s stopping us from building an environment where chefs like Phan, Lertsirisin, and Miranda can thrive? They’re not just selling food; they’re keeping stories alive.

That’s worth some extra bucks to me.

Thanks for reading,

Michael Wong