One food creator is experiencing a newfound love for her Korean heritage and its food after years of being shamed for it. Sarah Ahn, 28, can vividly recall the times she was mocked during lunch while attending a predominately white school as a child.
The other kids would make fun of her lunches, such as kimbap, which was one of the meals her Korean-born mom used to pack for her. The shaming affected Sarah so much that she got to a point of not wanting to take any Korean foods for lunch anymore. But today, through her platform, she embraces her culture's food.
"Kids asked me why I brought that to school and [said] it looks disgusting," Sarah told Good Morning America. "This was something that a lot of students had never seen. And when I opened my lunch pail and revealed the kimbap, everyone was shocked."
"I went home and told my mom to never make me the kimbap again and to just pack me a sandwich instead," she continued. "I never told her the kids thought it was disgusting — for two reasons — I didn't want to embarrass her, but I also had this immature resentment and just told her to pack the sandwich instead."
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But today on her platform, which she uses for creating food content, her mom plays a big role. In many of the videos, her mom is featured making various Korean dishes.
In February 2023, Sarah made a video of her mom making a roast beef sandwich. In the voiceover, she told the story of how she used to be shamed for the lunches she brought to school.
"It wasn't until I made that reel that I revealed it to my mom that that happened at school, and she was so heartbroken," she explained. "She's not used to that type of bullying because she grew up in Korea where it's a very homogenous country and everyone's Korean, so she would have never expected that people would shame a food that she grew up with."
The video ended up going viral, bringing a lot of attention to Sarah's story and food content. As Korean food started becoming more popular in American culture, Sarah began to appreciate it more and more. "I started to appreciate my mom's food more, so when Korean culture became very popular in the United States, once I saw that Korean culture was just growing everywhere and people were loving it, I started to appreciate the depth of Korean culture that I live in," she said.
"Some of my friends, now that I'm older, they have kids and they will always ask their parents to bring something from their culture to school, because they're now considered the cool kid," she said. "That is just so amazing because it's changed so much. And I'm so proud that, you know, things are changing like that."
Through her platform, Ahnest Kitchen, she hopes to show people that "there's so much labor of love that's hidden between" the steps of creating food that people often think are fairly easy. "Those little extra steps that will really show people the beauty of Korean cuisine."
