Thu Tran’s cooking show Food Party is simply eggcellent. From its humble beginnings as a video art project put together by a group of friends in Tran’s Ohio apartment to the airwaves of IFC, Food Party has only gotten crazier and more hilarious. It’s a sickeningly adorable puppet show spattered with moments of intense evil, coated with a sauce of irrational genius and deep fried in a vat of unicorn poo. Even the Grey Lady is hip to Thu Tran, for good reason– the hostess and of Food Party is a fascinating character, with a deliciously demented mind that seems to come up with brilliant ideas faster than even the rococo excesses of Food Party can accommodate. Perhaps her wild origin story can help us understand the way Tran thinks:
…Whenever [our father] would make a stew he would make us guess what animal we were eating. “It’s a goat!” “It’s a kangaroo!” “It’s a deer!” “It’s an alligator!” Normally my brothers and I would be wrong, but we didn’t care, we would eat it anyway. The weirdest thing might have been cubes of solidified pork blood, or fresh coagulated duck blood topped with its chopped innards, basil, and roasted nuts.
I didn’t realize it was weird until I would talk to my friends at school about it, and they would wrinkle their faces like ogres in total disgust. I would have to change the subject immediately to something like the kind of mousse and gel combo I had to use to make my 5th grade permed hair look lustrously wet and beautiful.
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