Meryl Rothstein

This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking, and buying right now. I never thought I would be the type of person who made her own baby food. It seemed aspirational, something only a dedicated mommy blogger could pull off. But when my daughter was an infant, I realized that I was exactly the type of person who made her own baby food.

At their NYC restaurants and joint pop-up, Shy*Boyz Club, chefs (and friends) Eric Sze of 886 and Lucas Sin of Junzi Kitchen cook as a way to explore Chinese food’s past, present, and future and to celebrate the cuisine’s diversity. “China has thousands of years of history, 50-something ethnic minorities, and one of the largest diasporas in the world,” Sin says. “‘Chinese food’ could mean anything.” Case in point: beef noodle soup, which varies in most every detail depending on who makes it.