The Adventures In Starry Kitchen

• Thursday 20th October 2022

SO our Garlic Noodles are available for public consumption… AGAIN!!!

You can order them now at our new website shinstarrykitchen.com (or just click Garlic Noodles (NOW) link above if you can see that👆😉)

You can cook OUR noodles at YOUR HOME🏡 AND… we improved them so it is quite literally the BEST recipe of the Garlic Noodles we’ve ever made!!! 😱🤤🍜 😭

They can be made in 3 steps (the full recipe used to take 8), and you know what we did? We FROZE THEM🥶 so that YOU can make them fresh when YOU want to.

We’re doing pick-ups (currently) on Saturdays in W.LA @ Little Fatty + Sundays in the Valley @ Creme Caramel.

We’ve been testing these out for the last 5 months, and we’ve been happily surprised by the AMAZING response of our frozen Garlic Noodle experiment and interest in our return during this new SHIN phase+chapter of Starry Kitchen #wedontdie 😭

I hope to see (because I’m still personally handing out all the pick-ups 😉)+feed you again soon 🙏🙇‍♂️🙏

Xoxo,

Nguyen Tran

Chief Instigating Officer / SHIN Starry Kitchen

• adventuresinstarrykitchen
• los angeles public library
• we ain’t dead yet
• crispy tofu balls
• starrykitchen

• Friday 13th May 2022

SOOOOOO I’m doing a Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) BIG READ “variety show” zoom/online book talk about my life through the lens of Vietnamese food this Saturday, May 14th @ 4pm PST. Come… if you’re bored and wanna support LAPL, AAPI month and maybe 🤔 🤔🤔 even me??🤷‍♂️😅😬

PS- I PROMISE I have not forgotten about all your discord server requests. We’re ALMOST done with the house keeping to bring you in… to the “inner circle of tastiness”… I think??? 😉😘🙏🙇‍♂️

The Big Read: Nguyen Tran (Starry Kitchen) Learn more about Vietnamese food with this action-packed variety show from chef/author Nguyen Tran. Nguyen Tran is an accidental chef/autho bit.ly

• adventuresinstarrykitchen
• weaintdeadyet

• Tuesday 10th May 2022

Sorry for the delayed posts… it’s now been like 3-4 weeks since we announced #weaintdeadyet AND… we still haven’t sent the discord invites yet, but hopefully SOON after we finish some discord server housekeeping ;)

Xoxo,

SHIN Starry Kitchen

• Friday 22nd April 2022

SO since you now know #weaintdead yet, (or are still questioning it) we at #shinstarrykitchen did mention that we have…plan.

…

Here is PLAN! 😉

Xoxo,

Team SHIN SK

• shinstarrykitchen

• Friday 15th April 2022

Hi,

Happy Good Friday for any good Catholics. Good news- you get to eat meat on Fridays again after today, YAY! Oh, in other Good Friday, good news for everyone- if you haven’t heard, Button Mash is NOW RE-OPEN for biz again! ^_^

…but, ummm, if you haven’t heard by now, uhhh, you can’t eat our food at Button Mash anymore. 😔

(FYI-I’m a bad Catholic since I eat meat with reckless abandon on Fridays… AND I’m a bad hypeman/person too not-so-subtly sliding in this *bomb* of Starry Kitchen news into that seemingly sincere and mostly upbeat greeting. 🤦‍♂️)

SO, YEAH, you cannot have our food at Button Mash anymore. It was NOT anything sudden, a creative or financial tiff or even a personal falling out. Quite the opposite, we’re all still buds- I even wanted to bus tables last night to celebrate Button Mash coming back to the neighborhood but instead sat by myself just being nostalgic and drowning my old memories with new taco memories instead LOL.

(not our food @ Button Mash anymore, but honestly Tacos 1986 is quite delicious)

The pandemic (sucked and) changed a whole lot. I would LOVE to leave it at that, but in a previous draft of this news someone pointed out ending this without any further explanation made it sound more dramatic and shady than it really is. (The more personal part of the story is… well, it’s more thoughtfully personal as in life changes while trying to reach actual balance, and would be the most boring VH1 “Behind The Music” backstory). The simplest and most definitive version that hopefully spells it out the best about drama that isn’t even there: from the bottom of my heart, this is the only way Button Mash was going to be able to come back.

We’re very thankful for the opportunity and time at Button Mash. We’re incredibly nostalgic about many of the crazier times there we hadn’t experienced before. We’re sad we’re not part of their next chapter, but we’re also very happy Button Mash could come back and be part of LA but more importantly Echo Park yet again.

(No more Tofu Balls… at Button Mash at least)

I hope that helps quell any weird mystery scenarios y’all might have in your head about this? If it doesn’t, I don’t know what else to do other than maybe write a second cookbook/memoir for the SAKE of fleshing out all the (super boring) moving parts for you. LOL (btw, that’s a joke… I’m not doing or pitching that… yet?!? ^_^)

With that said, we do realize that this FEELS very familiar to those that have followed us for quite a while now. (for those that haven’t followed us for long, yer lucky! ;D) The part where we’re at a place, then we’re not, then we’re at another place and evolve our menu and create something else you’re addicted to (the now elusive Singaporean Chili Crab comes to mind here, which we have NOT forgotten about), and then we’re not… again. Then we come back again (Dan Dan Noodles, Pineapple Shrimp Fried Rice, housemade French Fries OR our Double Cheeseburger that we spent 1 year researching anyone?!?)… then we don’t yet again. Rinse, repeat the dramatic rollercoaster and even more new, tasty dishes to miss. :(

We understand what we’ve put many of you through all too well, and this time we’re not going to play (too) coy and let you all know that,

“WE HAVE… PLAN!”

…as in a singular plan, yes. We’re excited about… PLAN #shinstarrykitchen. Hey, at least we have something in mind! :p

We promise to tell you more soon. But also wanted to reach out because this satisfies people smarter than me that advised that we “stay ahead of it” like a great episode of Scandal! (and if anything, we wanted you to hear/read it from us personally as well ^_^) Oh and we DEFINITELY have plans for things IF they go awry… part of which is “winging it!” The other part is… other crazy sh*t we’re planning = nothing out of the SK norm. ;)

For those that read my last verbose email (thank you! LOL) you already know the main plan, BUT there is more to PLAN (that our private discord server knows more about, and we’ll open up a next wave of more people in the future if you’re interested ;D) that we will tell you more about too.

Thank you so much to everyone that’s followed us and our food. Thank you to those that supported us at Button Mash. Thanks to all the staff we’ve trained, got to know and grew with (even if you don’t like me haha) over the years (before, during and after Button Mash) including our first EVER Starry Kitchen employee who’s getting married TONIGHT. Congrats!!! And a big thanks to Button Mash themselves. I don’t know if/when and what Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan multiverse (we haven’t actually seen “Everything Everywhere All at Once” yet, but everyone cooler than me tells me it’s bonkers good!) we’d EVER dream up a weird-ass collaboration of arcade games, a game culture memorabilia shop in Pwnshop (shout-out and big thx to iam8bit too!), craft beer and then ALSO Starry Kitchen.

With that said, let’s see what other weird-ass ideas+collaborations we can come up with in the future… while also making as much of our food more readily available to as many of you as possible, OUR WAY, because we do honestly owe every single one of you that much.

Xoxo,

Nguyen and Thi Tran

Chief Instigating Officer and Kitchen Ninja / #shinstarrykitchen

PS - Call me super sappy. Call me melodramatic. Call me (maybe? haha I couldn’t help it). I’ve genuinely been moved to actual tears at the endearing quality of all the responses I’ve read thus far. I… didn’t expect it or expect to be so moved by it too. Thank you so much. I hope to respond to as many of you as I can soon… and if I don’t and you don’t see this email or PS… here we come Craig’s List Missed Connections! ;)

(This photoshopped pic is HELLA old like back in our illegal+underground apartment days circa 2009… but still feels appropriate for this message if you (but no one did) ask me. ;))

• Monday 7th March 2022

Ho-ly SHIT @chowhound ! 😥😥😥

13 years ago when our illegal+underground (apartment) “restaurant” was on the rise, one of our fans that tried to post about us on CH got their post taken down BY CH, and got an official response (on slide 3) from Chowhound that they wouldn’t allow the posts about us or future unlicensed+underground places to protect all of us from getting busted (despite the fact we still did- blame it on our 5-star @yelp rating 🤣LOL).

I later found out on a chowhound video shoot we did (when we were legit) that, THAT rule they called (I might recall this incorrectly) “the Starry Kitchen rule” internally because they had never encountered this issue until us, and on the fly they decided to protect us+others going forward (have I mentioned that the health dept printed up my ENTIRE Twitter feed with NO mention of CH when they busted us?!? I guess it worked???🤦‍♂️😅🤷‍♂️).

While I haven’t used CH in so long (SO good for ANY road trip 😫), I’m still fond of that memory and CH will always be part of our unlikely story.

Thanks so much for… ummm, TRYING to protect us and those like us, and of course for being the OG board for highly specific tasty recs+hilariously overly-serious -amongst-the-anonymous-culinary-internet-elite food fights ABOUT food too. We’ll miss y’all mucho. (And who’s going to protect us now?!?🤷‍♂️😆) FYI- we ain’t at Living at Noho anymore suckaaaaaaas 😝😏🥳 (at Living at NoHo)https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca1VdRprGPL/?utm_medium=tumblr

• kirinji
• killer tune kills me
• crispy tofu balls
• tofu balls
• garlic noodles
• starry kitchen

• Monday 20th December 2021

(You know, we KNOW we haven’t made an actual tumblr specific POST that wasn’t a IG repost in a LONG time. We actually have documented most of our history starting on tumblr since May 2009. Hit the archive HERE if you ever want to go down the deep rabbit hole ;D)

Hi.

It’s a been a while, and we’re… ummmm… doing that THING above!

We’re sorry we haven’t seen so many of you (6-7 years for some???) Honestly, we mentally checked-out since we surprisingly raised $114k with y’all during our FAILED Kickstarter campaign, and focused on just being… new parents. Some sporadic events+things here and there have happened since, but admittedly we’ve chilled out for a while and we’ve been surprisingly good.

But all this time we haven’t forgotten about y’all at all. Growing up with so many of you, all the food we made that you devoured (chili crab anyone???) and the sometimes crazy, illegal or just plain absurd happenings we’ve committed with many of you over the last… DECADE?!? What a f*cking (ach, these algorithms+filters for curse words) wild, haphazard and tasty ride of cascading dominos it’s been.

We hope you haven’t forgotten us and all that silly history together after all this time. And I know from all the texts, emails, DMs, reddit posts we’ve received from many of you that we’re making it harder for you to remember us by since you can’t find our food…ummm… anywhere in LA right now. So…

We’ve decided it’s time to make some fresh, new and potentially MORE absurd memories together, AND throw you a Balls+Noods New Years party. If you want?? ^_^

(old school SK handwritten order on post-its cabinet “system.” Each column represented a time slot in 15 min increments)

For this, we’re going back to OUR basics:

1. secret underground location
2. limited staff: just me + @skkitcheninja
3. limited food: because also, just me + @skkitchenninja
4. limited spots: because… you get it

How does a good person like ME get some balls+noods?

• Ticket / pre-orders open up (here on Eventbrite): 12.21 @ 12:21… pm… PT ;)
• Ticket / preorders CLOSE: 12.25 @ 11.59p
• Date: 1.1.22
• Time: 3p - 6p

Menu:

Only Balls. Only Noods.

(aka Tofu Balls+Garlic Noodles ^_^)

“Register” your email on eventbrite to get a reminder (if you’re seeing this before the tickets opened up, or if they close/sellout [???] add the same for a waitlist), reserve your spot when sales open up, buy+reserve your grub that we’ll (me+Thi, you and me… Cillian and Thi lol) be prepping and making for you.

We hope to catch up with y’all. To catch you up with us, and… tell ya about what we hope Starry Kitchen’s next chapter is going to be like. We might even have a plan this time… an unpredictably foolish and flavorful plan- just like how we’ve always done it. We haven’t disappeared, and hope y’all haven’t either.

Xoxo,

Team SHIN SK

https://beacons.ai/starrykitchen <- for a SINGULAR way to find all the social media you prefer to follow us on (other than tumblr ;D), contact us or get e-mail/txt updates too. (it’s kind of in beta stages so let us know what you think we should change)

PS- this event is meant to be… low-key. No weed dishes. (I know, sad!) No press. No…t many double-entendres, and potentially karaoke. ;) We’re doing this to see as many of YOU that have graciously become part of our history and lives… Before the megaphone armed banana suit rains back down on the city. :)

PPS - IMPORTANT: this is gonna be outside. We want you vaxxed and masked when in proximity to others that ain’t with you. AND covid sucks (other) balls. Thems OUR rules.

PPPS - you’ve read this far, part of me wants to share more of my anime+videogame nerdiness that I’ve regressed back into, BUT I feel like this feels more right. SO chill out to this tune I’ve been SO addicted to for months. I love this song. Please enjoy “Killer Tune Kills Me” by the musical stylings of… Kirinji ;)

• Monday 20th December 2021

Hi Daniel. I THOUGHT I replie to this. That sounds awesome. I’d love to check it out if the offer still stands (if it doesn’t… no worries, sounds awesome either way). You can email me at [email protected] ;)

• Monday 20th December 2021

Sorry for the late reply to this. ANY Korean grocery store, or any 99 Ranch in LA carries it too. Yeah, the roux is as lot of work. Java > S&B in my opinion LOL. Hope that helps, and sorry again for the delayed response

• Friday 23rd July 2021

I would like to commemorate this incredibly momentous day I never thought would ever come in my or Cillían’s lifetime… we found our very first 24 hr @popeyes today!!! 🙌🙌🙌😭😭😭🍗🔥💫⚡️🌈🏖 (at Oxnard, California)https://www.instagram.com/p/CRrxPTWsEaL/?utm_medium=tumblr

• Monday 3rd May 2021

Ok LA- there’s literally NO excuse now. Let’s get our city back to being normal.

Get vaccinated, get (MUCH closer) to getting rid of quarantine restrictions! 🙏🙇‍♂️🙏 (at Los Angeles, California)https://www.instagram.com/p/CObki3iD8wB/?igshid=l7vtqhprz0cf

• Saturday 13th February 2021

Chúc mừng năm mới aka Happy Lunar New Year 😘

Pssssst - if you want to see ALL that we’ve been eating literally the entire pandemic go follow @skkitchenninja and go WAAAAAAY back. There’s a LOT of food, and she’s more active on social media than I have been since I’ve been kind of ambivalent and honestly it’s better for my mental health🙋‍♂️😉🙏

Bye for now 😘😘😘https://www.instagram.com/p/CLQhJABj1Fh/?igshid=gzuxq61hdnar

• Tuesday 9th February 2021

(from my pandemic social media slumber I come back out to tell you…)

I am doing this thing TODAY (Tues, 2.9.21 just to be clear) @ 4pm (and making Garlic Noodles FYI 😉) with @lapubliclibrary . JOIN, even if you aren’t a teen!👍

(Disclaimer: I am in LA right now, and not in Singapore eating a delicious, FRESH durian in the blistering heat in my banana suit like I was in this picture taken 5 years ago… 3 Hainan chicken plates, 1 pepper crab and 1 chili crab later that day😋) (at Los Angeles Public Library)https://www.instagram.com/p/CLFupscjnDA/?igshid=1tpjw2trdhm93

• bidenharris2020

• Saturday 7th November 2020

I’ll take this win… for the future our son+kids every where. (Aka I’m so FUCKING RELIEVED RIGHT NOW+FULL OF WAY TO MANY EMOTIONS TO TYPE ABOUT) #bidenharris2020 🙌🙌🙌🇺🇸 (at Los Angeles, California)https://www.instagram.com/p/CHTiVLlj-ei/?igshid=14sd465yjg2c5

• votela

• Monday 19th October 2020

👋👋👋YOOOOO Everyone in LA 👇👇👇 (now going back into social media slumber after this 😉) #VOTELA (at Los Angeles, California)https://www.instagram.com/p/CGi5QoTjlK_/?igshid=lh85b14mhidr

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