I wrote some words to go along with some amazing portraits by Amber Maalouf for Life & Thyme Magazine. You can view the full piece now live on Life & Thyme.
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“Six months to the day after we shut down Woon due to Covid-19, my friend Amber texted me a medium-format portrait she had then taken of me in our empty dining room. She had come by that day to pick up some of the produce I was giving away to employees and friends, in hopes of avoiding waste. We’d been planning to throw our one-year anniversary party the weekend prior—a celebration meant to be filled with free booze, tattoos, music—the whole shebang. It ended up being a very different reality.”
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“This place relies on every single person doing their respective duties. If one falls short, the entire operation follows. I’ve asked Amber to shoot a portrait series of the entire staff. Medium format film only, each individual in their environment. I hope each one of them can look back at these portraits one day and remember how fucking nuts this time was, and how awesome it has been that we’ve been able to keep the lights on, to keep serving our community as a team.”
Life & Thyme
Life & Thyme • The House We Build Our Parents
Special thanks to Life & Thyme and Melanie Loon for writing such an amazing piece on Woon and it’s story. There are too many pull quotes from Melanie that really hit home as a Chinese-American. Many of the details at Woon are intentional and personal, but we can only take that experience so far for our guests. My sister and I grew up on this food, these plates, my mom’s furniture, but it’s up to our visitors to interpret all that. From time to time there will be a guest that mentions how nostalgic Woon is to them (Melanie was one of them), and that’s when it resonates with me the most. It’s those moments that remind me why we built this place. It’s not for the reviews, Yelpers, Insta posts, it’s to tell our story and welcome as many guests as we can just like @mamafongmakes did at her home. It’s up to all our guests to interpret it from there.
Read the entire article on Life & Thyme.
Special thanks to Cody James for the photography.
