Recycling Bin

Extraneous Cooks

ครก • Our logo is a Thai mortar and pestle known as a "Krohk". It is used for making chili pastes and dishes like Somtam, the Thai papaya salad. Pounding the papaya in the "Krohk" blends the flavors of all the different spices added to the dish, making it a perfect metaphor for our kitchen, which is at times a melting pot of different cuisines around the world, fusing exotic flavors and foreign ingredients. At other times, it is a kitchen that uses unexpected substitutes for ingredients that cannot be found in the little American city of Pittsburgh. We are the extraneous cooks: foreign, and very minimally extra.

ex·tra·ne·ous
/ikˈstrānēəs/
adjective

- irrelevant or unrelated to the subject being dealt with.
- of external origin.

This is BamBam. She's from Thailand. She studied Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She's been living in the States since 2010, and has been cultivating her cooking skills in a dorm setting. BamBam has always been an extremely picky eater, so she realizes that she must cook for herself to survive. She has a handful of phobias including spiciness, many red foods, and hummus, so there are several obstacles that she must overcome in the kitchen. She has a habit of taking five thousand pictures of each dish she makes, which is what started this project. She is very sensitive to onions, and sometimes wears safety goggles while cooking. She has trust issues with the dishwasher.

This is Gunn. He's half Thai, half Chinese. He speaks fluent English and hates it when people compliment him on his pronunciation. He's a polyglot who also speaks Thai, Mandarin, and some Shanghainese. He took seven years of Spanish since middleschool and is trying to minor in Japanese at university. He sometimes sings in French and Portuguese although he often doesn't know what the lyrics mean. He's studied architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and does the graphics for this account. He doesn't always go home over breaks, and he cooks Asian food to cure his homesickness, and says phrases in different languages when he cooks. He's got an identity crisis.
https://gunnc.com/