Founder

CRYSTAL CHIU | chef & researcher

Crystal Chiu, a native Texan, began her culinary career in the United States, starting from Chicago (French Pastry School, Blackbird) to New York City (Daniel). After a few years time, in order to expand her kitchen experience, Crystal began a year-long journey staging at numerous restaurants and establishments throughout the Asia Pacific (Narisawa, Brae) and documented the experience on her blog, www.chewyfoodlife.com.

Crystal’s work experience with Chef Will Goldfarb at Room4Dessert Ubud provided the opportunity to live in Indonesia. It was here that her interest in local ingredients expanded, particularly because sourcing was a notorious challenge in the geographically expansive country. She also soon discovered that information on indigenous plants was scattered, resources for area chefs to learn more were limited, and interest from Indonesians to appreciate their native plants were minimal. As a result, Crystal launched ASLI FOOD PROJECT ft. Indonesia with the objective of improving those factors and operated the project from 2017-2019 to great success.

Crystal currently resides in Seattle, Washington where she served as Canlis’ executive pastry chef for two years. During that time, she observed parallels between indigenous Indonesian ethnic groups and the Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast, and thus the ASLI FOOD PROJECT ft. Northwest Coast chapter was created.