eat bitter is a chinese proverb meaning ‘endure hardship to taste sweetness.’ for lydia pang, it embodies the struggles of her hakka ancestors, a persecuted chinese ethnic group whose ingenuity shaped a food culture rooted in fermenting and foraging.

pang reimagines eating bitter as a philosophy to confront her own challenges: burning out, testing her marriage, navigating fertility struggles and caring for a parent. through eight recipes, she shares food as memory and medicine: the silly egg noodles her father cooked when her sister was ill, the bone broth she boiled in New York while homesick and courgettes grown in rural wales as a gesture of reconnection.

a beautiful and fearless exploration of food and feelings – with bite

288 pages, hardback