Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging

A warm and poignant narrative about finding one’s self amidst the grind of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a daughter’s attempts to connect with parents who have always been just out of reach. When she was three years old, Rachel Phan met her replacement. Instead of a new sibling, her parents’ time and attention were suddenly devoted entirely to their new family restaurant. For her parents—whose own families fled China during the Japanese occupation during the Second Sino-Japanese War and then survived bombs and starvation during the war in Vietnam—it was a dream come true. For Rachel, it was something quite different. Overnight, she became a restaurant kid, living on the periphery of her own family and trying her best to stay out of the way. While Rachel grew up, the restaurant was there—the most stalwart and suffocating member of her family.