Meet Liana
Hi there, I’m Liana! I’m a cheese industry veteran and food scholar with several years of experience contributing to culinary magazines and other online publications. Queerness, race, and community are at the heart of my work, and their intersection with food is my prime area of focus.
Born in China and raised in Los Angeles by two Jewish-American adoptive parents, I’ve always had an interesting relationship with identity. Luckily, I was smack-dab in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley, a predominantly Asian community that has gained much acclaim in the food scene, largely due to the influence of the late food writer, Jonathan Gold. My parents took me to every restaurant in the area, and with each bite I took, I developed a deeper comprehension of the traditions from my home country without ever having visited.
I attended UCLA, studying psychobiology as an aspiring pre-med student, but it wasn’t long until I snapped and finally got my foot in the culinary door. After graduating, I accepted a position at an artisan cheese shop and fell in love with the artisan cheese industry, not just for the delicious cheese, but for the fascinating, inspiring, and loving community whose dedication to tradition and storytelling has kept it alive for decades.
Since that fateful introduction, I’ve worked as a cheesemonger and affineur, offering my funk and flavor to the teams at Milkfarm in Los Angeles and at Foster Sundry and Crown Finish Caves in New York. I’ve worked as a line cook at LA’s Eagle Rock Public House, and have produced (and consumed) many a beer with the team at Eagle Rock Brewery. I’ve dipped my toe into the writing sector, working on the editorial teams at Culture Cheese Magazine and OutWrite Newsmag. In 2022, I earned my Master’s in Food Studies from NYU, culminating with Adopting Taste, my capstone project that combined ethnographic studies and interviews in a formal book proposal about the intersection of food, cultural identity, and adoption. Unsurprisingly, this project brought me right back home: to the San Gabriel Valley, where I dove into the history and significance of Chinese-American food and its parallels to the identity of Asian American adoptees, myself included.
Presently, I’m located in Seattle, Washington, spending most of my days click-clackin’ away on my laptop in coffee shops and most of my evenings heating up my tiny kitchen with new recipes to share with friends. My goals are to continue investigating the world through food, whether it be through writing, podcasting, video production, or simply, eating.