There's something about Thailand I can't explain to people who haven't been. It's not the temples, though they're incredible. It's not the beaches. It's the energy of the place — the way people move through it, the way food is everywhere and taken seriously and also completely casual at the same time.

I've been going back for nearly a decade. And it has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. It's about finding a way to connect with people on a human level, around the things that feel good everywhere. Being in America, everything is black and white — literally. Traveling gives me room to breathe. To dig into myself and ask: how do I connect here?

Suddenly we're both laughing about how hard it is. That's the whole thing right there. That's the meal before the meal. I trained in Bangkok. Bangkok trained me in everything else.

LA has more little towns than most people realize. I grew up around them — Leimert Park, Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Little Ethiopia, the Piñata District. These neighborhoods taught me that a block can be a whole country if you let it. That food is how culture stays alive when everything else tries to erase it.

Some places teach you through the meal. LA taught me through neighborhoods, through movement, through the way a city can hold a hundred small worlds at once.

I'm not someone who goes looking for soul food specifically. But I will always look for fried chicken. I think there's an art to making fried chicken. There's an art to making a burger. And no matter where I go in the world, those are the two things I'm tracking down — because you can learn everything about a place by how seriously it takes the simple thing.

There may be a whole series on pancakes, burgers, and fried chicken. Consider yourself warned.

I went for the architecture. Rotterdam was bombed flat in World War II and rebuilt from scratch — you can feel that in every block. Clean, bold, unapologetic. A city that had to reinvent itself and went all the way with it. I love looking at architecture when I travel. The way buildings tell you everything about a place's history and its sense of itself.

And then I ate. I stayed for the meal I didn't expect. That's always how it goes when you're paying attention.

Amsterdam too — yes, I tried the cannabis, walked the red light district, did the things. But mostly I just walked and ate and paid attention. Europe has been underrated on food for a long time by people who weren't looking in the right places. I want to go back. There's something I haven't fully gotten to yet and I can feel it.

When THICC Burger went national — 20+ cities, a full pop-up tour — people saw the wins. They didn't see me in cities I'd never thought to visit, eating my way through every neighborhood I could get to, tapping into Black food culture in places where it looked completely different than it did in LA.

Hungry Nomad is me finally opening the archive. Some stories will be new. Some will come from old photos, old meals, old voice notes, and mental notes I never had the room to write down. I want this to be honest, not precious. A place to talk to people through food, memory, travel, and the things I am still figuring out.

I want to build community through my words the same way I do at the table: by telling the truth, making room, and trusting that the right people will pull up.