In this episode of The Culinary Leap, I sit down with my longtime friend Angela, who I’ve known for almost a decade since our early corporate days together at Applied Materials. We talk about how our careers took us through places like Tesla, Google, and Apple, and how reconnecting after years apart unexpectedly brought us back together through food.

Angela joins me to reflect on my latest tasting menu — an East and Southeast Asian-inspired Bangladeshi fusion dinner where I explored Burmese, Chinese, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Bangladeshi influences through a deeply personal menu. We talk about the energy around the table, what it’s like inviting strangers into my home for a private dining experience, and how hearing feedback from guests with different cultural backgrounds helps shape the way I think about flavor and storytelling. ...