I need to take a moment to apologize in advance for all the photos of Jan’s cat…Daigoro.

Tacoma, Washington: The epicenter of the modern world.

It’s around Christmas and I’m standing in Jan Parker’s living room in Tacoma’s Proctor District. The light this time of year can be amazing or non-existent. I luck out with the prior as I park my mom’s bicycle out front of Jan’s place.

Jan is a chef. When I met Jan, she worked in Whatever/Whenever. What’s that, you’re surely asking. Let me explain.

“A warm welcome to Whatever/Whenever. This is Jan, what’s your wish?” That is how Jan would have answered the phone if you needed anything while staying at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, Washington. Whatever/Whenever is essentially the hotel operator…on crack.

The deal with the W Hotel is (was?) that no matter who you talked to, and no matter what you asked for, as long as it was legal and moral (big grey area alert), and no matter WHEN you wanted it, we had to do it for you. You could call Jan, or you could ask me, your Welcome Ambassador (bellman on crack), or the Welcome Agent at the Welcome Desk (receptionist at the front desk), or the Wheels Agent (valet). Man, this sounds SO lame, but we all kind of drank the Kool-Aid. Man…the housekeeping department was called “Style”. This is wild, but at the TIME, somehow this was cool. When I started our uniforms were by Kenneth Cole…it doesn’t sound cool, but trust me, this was cool (for Seattle in the early 2000’s).

Jan was amazing. Most of the people I worked with for that decade at the W Seattle were amazing, but Jan and I REALLY got along. Jan is super sweet and polite, but just like a Nicki Minaj track, she will drop-in from a sweet verse and with smooth transition, growling hilariously with the best-voiced “fuck”, “shit”, or ”bitch” you’ve ever heard. All while eloquently holding her coffee and smiling as though it never happened. It’s BEAUTIFUL delivery.

Sorry Jan, I’m done digging up dirt.

So, right, Jan is a chef. Or as she’s asked to be listed, a “Kitchen Queen”. One of my goals in this anthropological adventure named “Context” is to see how many people’s living rooms I can get into, and secondly to see how many people I can get to make me a (free) coffee. It’s working really well, but with Jan, I decided I couldn’t stop there.

I told Jan I’d never had Filipino food. This was true, somehow. A massive share of the Filipino diaspora has settled around the Puget Sound, and I had many Filipino/a/x friends, but weirdly had never tasted the food. Jan was going to fix that.

I invite myself over again in the end of July and Jan makes me dinner. Jan has been a contestant on both Chopped and Ciao House, so I’m treated with a meal that exceeds my expectations. I remember when I left Jan’s house after our first shoot in December of last year, I asked if she could make me Filipino food the next time, and I do believe her response was, “Fuck it, let’s barbeque!”

She barbecued. She fed me Chicken Inasal with Atchara Pickles. She fed me Champagne mango with heirloom tomatoes and a fish sauce vinaigrette. She served me Shrimp Kinilaw, and fresh fettuccine chili garlic noodles. I ate about 4000 calories of amazingness, and I was sent home with the rest for my mom.

Jan is in the process of opening a restaurant in Tacoma, an event which will give her career in food a new foundation and bring Filipino cuisine to Tacoma’s growing culinary and cultural scene.

I used to be a bit embarrassed about where I was from. Tacoma surely wasn’t Seattle, and for many it was best known for the euphemistic “aroma” from the papermill, and for at one point in time, being the axe-murder capital of North America. The hometown of Ted Bundy to put the cherry on top! Yet every time I return to Tacoma, it seems like the city is having a bit of a renaissance and it’s people like Jan who are the driving force behind bringing this town back to life.

Thanks, Jan.