Eat Bitter: A Story about Guts, and Food

One of the Must-Read Books To Have On Your Radar in 2026--Service95

From a dazzling new writer, a stirring memoir rooted in Hakka culture about the lesson to accept both bitterness and sweetness in life

Eat bitter is a Chinese proverb meaning 'endure hardship to taste sweetness.' For Lydia Pang, it embodies the struggles of her Hakka ancestors, a Chinese ethnic group subjected to forced migrations whose ingenuity produced a distinct food culture based on 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.

Comprising the satire and darkness of Netflix's Beef, the tender insight of Crying in H Mart, and the distinct magic of Ella Risbridger's Midnight Chicken, Eat Bitter is a very special book from a brilliant new voice and creative talent.

Lydia Pang (she/her) is a Frankenstein, misfit creative director with a decade of experience in brand building. Lydia is the cofounder of MØRNING, a London-based creative strategy and cultural foresight studio, working with clients like Nike, LVMH, Margiela, YSL. Previous creative leadership roles include her most recent at Nike HQ in Portland. Prior to that, she was the group creative director of Refinery29 in New York. She judged Clio Awards, D&AD, and was a Cannes Lions delegate. She's worked at advertising agencies in New York (Anomaly) and London (M&CSAATCHI), always in hybrid creative roles honing her passion for digital storytelling and culture trend mapping. She has given talks on ethical commissioning at Instagram and the New York Times, and written articles for Refinery29, Riposte, Vogue, Elle, and Dazed. She lives in Wales.