'If only my Cantonese parents weren't so allergic to the word love?'?A bittersweet memoir of love, culture and saying the unsayable with food.

FT - THE BEST SUMMER BOOKS OF 2025

'If only my Cantonese parents weren't so allergic to the word love...'

'A wonderfully heartwarming memoir with lots of foodie insights.' Rachel Khoo

'A real and delightful surprise - and also very funny.' Ella Risbridger

__

What is the most unsayable thing you have ever wanted to say to your parents? For newly single food journalist Candice Chung, there's been one thing on her mind lately: she has never told them, 'I love you.' Simple. Reasonable. If only her estranged Cantonese parents weren't so allergic to the word 'love'.

With a 13-year relationship coming to an end, Candice Chung finds herself losing not only her first love but also her most reliable restaurant review partner. And so when her parents offer to be her new plus-ones, she faces a dilemma: is it better to eat together in polite silence or to try to broach how, for the past decade, they've managed to drift so profoundly apart?

Through shared meals and culinary adventures, Candice and her parents begin to break their silence. Yet when a new relationship begins to bloom, it forces her to try to address what still remains unsaid. To do so, she must find a new vocabulary - a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to express all along. Not through words, but with food.

Set against the backdrop of this burgeoning new relationship, grasped-at date nights mid-pandemic and an uncertain future across seas,

Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You is packed with heart, humour and those bright-hearted moments around a dinner table that bring us together.

__

'A world-spanning love story, a book of philosophy via the dinner table, a tender portrait of family trying to communicate: Candice Chung's gorgeous memoir is all of these things and more.' Rebecca May Johnson, author of Small Fires

'Tenderly shows how food steps up to provide the emotional support, comfort, and safety that humans need, when words cannot.' Hetty Lui McKinnon

'Will undo anyone whose love language is food.' Tara Wigley, co-author of Ottolenghi SIMPLE