Eat Bitter: A Story about Guts, and Food

One of the Must-Read Books To Have On Your Radar in 2026--Service95

From a dazzling new writer, a stirring memoir rooted in Hakka culture about the lesson to accept both bitterness and sweetness in life

Eat bitter is a Chinese proverb meaning 'endure hardship to taste sweetness.' For Lydia Pang, it embodies the struggles of her Hakka ancestors, a Chinese ethnic group subjected to forced migrations whose ingenuity produced a distinct food culture based on fermenting and foraging. Pang reimagines eating bitter as a philosophy to confront her own challenges: burning out, testing her marriage, navigating fertility struggles and caring for a parent. Through eight recipes, she shares food as memory and medicine: the silly egg noodles her father cooked when her sister was ill, the bone broth she boiled in New York while homesick and courgettes grown in rural Wales as a gesture of reconnection.

Comprising the satire and darkness of Netflix's Beef, the tender insight of Crying in H Mart, and the distinct magic of Ella Risbridger's Midnight Chicken, Eat Bitter is a very special book from a brilliant new voice and creative talent.

Author: Lydia Pang
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 05/19/2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.56h x 5.80w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780063487130