Finding Flavor: Irvin Lin on Pivoting Careers and Perfecting Taste
By Kelli Luu | 05 May, 2025

Irvin Lin shares how he traded graphic design for baking and blending creativity into every recipe he develops.

Transcript is listed below:

Kelli Luu (00:00)

Irvin Lin went from being a graphic designer to writing a cookbook that was chosen as the best baking cookbook of 2016 by the New York Times. Today, he's here to share how he transitioned careers and became a celebrated food writer and award-winning photographer. Hi, Irvin.

Irvin (00:17)

Hi, how's it going?

Kelli Luu (00:18)

Good, thank you so much for being here with us today at Gold Sea. I'm so fascinated by your journey and I'm so excited to be talking to you.

Irvin (00:26)

really honored to be a part of this.

Kelli Luu (00:28)

Awesome. Thank you. So let's get right into it. Let's start from the very beginning. You became a chef. Was that by choice or by accident?

Irvin (00:37)

So just to clarify, I actually don't identify as chef. usually refer, yeah. So I usually refrain from that mostly because I view chefs as people who work back of house at restaurants. So that's kind of like a distinguishing mark for me. But I have always been a baker. I've been a baker since I was a child. Yeah, so I was a baker.

Kelli Luu (00:40)

Okay.

Baker.

Irvin (00:55)

when I was in third grade, I took a baking class. My mom was always trying, know, Asian parents, they're always trying to keep you occupied during the summertime and maximize your, life. So during the summertime, my parents always put me in summer school and

Kelli Luu (01:08)

Okay.

Irvin (01:09)

in third grade, I went into a cooking and baking summer school class at my elementary school and I became obsessed with baking. I've always been really into food in terms of that. I you know fast forward through high school, college, I was baking away and in college

I found myself, I used to call it procrastid baking, where whenever I had like a paper or a project due or whatever, instead of actually studying or writing it, I would be in the kitchen, like baking stuff. my roommates would come home and be like, everyone's baking cookies, I guess you a test tomorrow or whatever. that kind of happened. ⁓ Yeah,

Kelli Luu (01:38)

You

That's so cool.

Kelli Luu (01:44)

made you walk away from graphic design and fully get into

Irvin (01:47)

I went into design did that for like 15 years and I kind of did not like my job my day job and somebody

I'd done a series of design jobs. I was working a design job and this particular job I thought was very ideal for me. It had a lot of food related clients. So when I what you know, I love food. So I was like, I'm a designer. So I went and started working for them. But it turns out the majority of people who can pay designers, especially at that level, were not like the small, cool, hip, independent, small food, slow food.

Kelli Luu (01:58)

Okay.

Okay.

Irvin (02:19)

companies I was more interested in, it was usually like fast food or quick service restaurants. So I worked with a lot of chain restaurants, which was fine. Some of them were better than others, but there was a point where I was like kind of depressed and I realized as I was doing design work for a fast food, major fast food chain, I was literally designing garbage. I was designing the fast food packaging that gets thrown away. It's like the burger box that gets tossed.

Kelli Luu (02:23)

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (02:42)

Yeah, so there

was like this kind of heartbreaking epiphany that I had where I was like, I'm literally designing garbage. So I remember coming home one day being super depressed and talking to a friend of mine. And they're like, you know what, instead of like being like depressed about the project that you're working on and your job,

Just do more work, but do something that's fun, like start a passion project. And so that's when I started blogging. So I started my blog in 2010. I kind of like did it for a year or two and realized that I was at my day job actually thinking about my blog. So I kind of decided to make a

switch and I left my day job, started freelancing as a graphic designer and kind of started doing food stuff on the side as a side gig. And then that slowly, it went from like 90 % freelance design work and 10 % food work and switching over slowly to like now it's about 100 % food work. And I very rarely do the design project.

Kelli Luu (03:33)

Okay, interesting. Okay, so you kind of got out of your day job so that you could do something that you love. That's awesome. how did your career choice measure up to your parents' expectation in the beginning?

Irvin (03:44)

That is a very good question. I think my parents didn't quite understand what I was doing, I've always challenged my parents in terms of what I've done. I'm the middle child of three. my older brother, went the very traditional classic Asian child immigrant.

child where he went to med school and like he's like a forensic psychiatrist. He like has like a family. And he's really like the picture perfect child. I mean, he has his own issues, obviously, but he's he definitely like went the more traditional route. I went into art. I went into graphic design. have a degree in painting, a degree in English literature. there's

Kelli Luu (04:01)

Right.

Irvin (04:18)

there's

always been kind of a challenge for my parents my mom...

You know, she grew up in Taiwan, but then she moved to the United States as a woman, a young woman, went to a top tiered school, she was from a small town. So she was very much pioneering. so I think there's this level of understanding that you have to make your, forge your own path. So it was challenging. think my parents have always thought, like always been worried that I...

Kelli Luu (04:36)

right.

Irvin (04:42)

wouldn't be able to sustain myself. And 2010 was definitely a very early period of time in the blogosphere, in the blogging world. influencers weren't a thing, Pinterest So it was all this like career path stuff that didn't quite make sense to them.

Kelli Luu (04:52)

Yeah.

Irvin (04:57)

I think when I got my cookbook deal that kind of solidified the fact that, this is actually a career. That kind of like gave them an understanding that there is, like I said, I'm still not 100 % sure they understand what I do, to be honest.

Kelli Luu (05:04)

Okay. ⁓

Irvin (05:13)

But I think that there's a little level of legitimacy. I can talk about certain things. can say I'm on the James Beard committee or I judge for this IACP awards or book awards. I have these milestones. I can say I've been able to achieve this. And they can at least understand, well, you're getting some recognition and you don't come to us asking for it. I'm doing something. I'm keeping busy. So there's that.

Kelli Luu (05:35)

You're doing something. Right?

and you're succeeding at something. That's all they want. So what did your childhood kitchen smell like? And would you say your childhood can influence your recipes today?

Irvin (05:41)

Yes. Yes.

So my mom almost always had a home cooked meal for us. Like she was very like old school that way. we grew up in the Midwest. So we grew up in St. Louis and, it was challenging because my parents were both immigrants. They're both from Taiwan, and growing up in St. Louis,

Kelli Luu (06:00)

Okay.

Irvin (06:06)

in the 70s and 80s, there weren't, there were Asian markets, but they weren't prolific. And so my mom would make a lot of Asian stir fry, Taiwanese influenced food, but it was always like a little bit of a twist with Americanized ingredients.

sometimes you couldn't necessarily find bok choy, so she'd be like stir frying this or that. She couldn't find Taiwanese lettuce, so she'd use romaine lettuce, which is fairly similar. there was lot of influencing in terms of what we could get, also one foot in the United States, but one foot also in Taiwan. So growing up, there was always a lot of Taiwanese food. There was always a lot of Chinese and Asian food.

Kelli Luu (06:36)

great.

Irvin (06:41)

And that has definitely influenced me a little bit. the majority of my baking is very comfort foodie, very Midwestern,

I tend to skew a little bit less sweet, for instance. That's like the classic Asian compliment, like, ooh, not too sweet. Yeah, yeah, that's like the classic Asian, like the best compliment you can ever get from an Asian, ooh, not too sweet. So my desserts tend to skew a little bit less sweet.

Kelli Luu (06:51)

Ooh, okay. Right? Not so sweet. Yeah.

Irvin (07:04)

I live really close to an awesome market that works directly with farmers. So I'm constantly finding ingredients that are harder to get or are super seasonal. And so I do a lot of that as well. Yeah.

Kelli Luu (07:12)

Right.

I love

Okay, so your first cookbook got a ton of love from the New York Times and even Oprah. So what kind of doors did that open up for you?

Irvin (07:26)

Yeah, that's another great question. the cookbook was an awesome experience and people, I think people don't quite understand that you don't get a huge amount of money when you write a cookbook, but you do get a lot of opportunities and it definitely does open up doors. a cookbook.

Kelli Luu (07:33)

Okay.

Irvin (07:45)

is basically like a very large, very expensive business card. And once you have it, you will always be able to say you're a cookbook author. it also gives you a certain level of authority. once my cookbook came out,

I started doing a lot of freelance writing for different websites. So currently, for instance, I'm an ongoing contributor to Serious Eats. I've written for Food and Wine, for Simply Recipes, for The Spruce Eats, for Fine Cooking, like a bunch of different publications and magazines.

I don't want to say a lot of that probably came about because I had written this cookbook. I think that was kind of an opening door.

Kelli Luu (08:20)

it.

Irvin (08:22)

there was a lot of like me knocking on the door first. like I'll pitch to people or I'll get introduced to people or I'll network with them and then they'll find out that I have a cookbook. And then it goes from there. So it definitely was one more resume builder in my career.

Kelli Luu (08:29)

Mm-hmm. Got it.

Yeah, something to add to your portfolio Okay, I see. ⁓ That's cool. Was that your first cookbook that you ever wrote? ⁓ awesome. Wow, I love that. what was the inspiration for that? How did your inspiration come about?

Irvin (08:39)

Yes, yeah.

It was, yes. ⁓

up.

So the cook was called marble swirled and layered, and it kind of came about by the fact that I just really love combining flavors. one of the things that I do, I used to do a lot more on my blog and I still do, was I was always finding like super fun flavor combinations. instead of like throwing everything together at one, if you actually have different components and you

swirl them or you marble them, you actually your mouth can taste those different flavors a lot more there is a more interesting combination that happens when you take a bite of it versus throwing it all together where it can potentially become kind of muddy. plus it's also pretty like I'm a graphic designer I'm a you former art director painter so there is so it has to be beautiful so there was that level of that as well.

Kelli Luu (09:25)

It's gotta be beautiful. Awesome.

You're so creative and I love how it's just a whole different medium. You can take it from graphic design to food. That's awesome. Can you walk me through your thinking process when it comes to a new recipe? it taste, texture, then presentation? Or what do you think about first?

Irvin (09:48)

So I always think about how the flavors are gonna combine first. And that could also be like texture as well. I'm always thinking about how you eat it and how much you enjoy it.

I can usually tweak a recipe to make it look pretty. So that's not a conservative mind. I know people, think nowadays, especially with Instagram and TikTok, think in terms of visual first. But for me, I'm much more interested in food that tastes good versus looking good.

a lot of times it'll happen when I'm at a farm or a circuit or at the grocery store or even when I'm at a restaurant and I'm like, even if I don't order dessert or even I'll look at what they offer for desserts or I also, I don't just recipe develop.

Kelli Luu (10:18)

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (10:26)

baked goods. also do savory foods too. So oftentimes I always look at the menu. I And then I will take inspiration from that oftentimes, or combine those, or be like, oh, I never thought about, know, coriander, ground coriander with blueberry. What does that sound like together? And like, you know, it'll start playing around.

Kelli Luu (10:28)

Okay.

Irvin (10:42)

with things. And so once I started doing, ⁓ absolutely.

Kelli Luu (10:43)

Okay, so you do test them out. You like see some ingredients and test them

Irvin (10:46)

Yeah,

Kelli Luu (10:46)

out. Okay.

Irvin (10:47)

yeah, so absolutely. once I get the inspiration, I'll test it out. You say a recipe I'll make the recipe two, three, four or five. And these are recipe in my blog on my cookbook that I did like seven or eight times. So it really varies on how complicated the recipe is or what I'm trying to achieve.

I'm usually able to nail it by the third time or the fourth time. it's not that the first time is bad. It's just that I know I can get it better.

Kelli Luu (11:06)

Okay.

Okay, so how do you know when it's complete?

Irvin (11:13)

That's a good question. I typically, I think part of it is the kind of wow factor that you have when you eat it. But there's also like, I know what I'm looking for. Like if I want a cookie to be like crumbly, I want it to be like buttery and crumbly. So I'll eat it and I'll be like, there's something that's not quite working with this. I need to shift it this way or that way. Or I might make something and be like, that the texture is exactly what I'm looking for, but it's not pretty enough.

Kelli Luu (11:13)

He

Irvin (11:38)

So let me see how I can tweak it to make it a little bit more attractive

have these goalposts in my mind when I'm making a recipe Where I'm developing it where I want to be able to hit that goalpost So usually at that point there's a level of like if I've gotten to the point where I'm happy with it That's what I'm like. Okay, I'm done with this.

I have recipes that I've been working on and tweaking for years that I've never released, quote unquote. I'm working on this recipe and I like it. It's great, but it's not like I think I can make it just a little bit better. But I've also been working, you know, I've made like four iterations of it and I can't eat another blueberry muffin. So I'll just stop it and I'll go back to it in like six months or whatever. So there's a lot of steps that go into developing a recipe. And for my blog, I have the luxury of not

Kelli Luu (11:59)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (12:24)

having deadlines. I won't put anything on the blog unless I'm super comfortable with it and I love it. If I am working with a client, then I have to develop a recipe over and over again. That's when I'm eating it over and over again and that can get tedious. But that's the deadline. That's part of freelance.

Kelli Luu (12:30)

Got it.

Mmm.

Okay, All right. So with so many tricks up your hat, know, graphic design, photography, food, I'm asking this question for those considering a similar path and they might want to be interested in knowing the economic side. So can I ask you what activities produce the most income?

Irvin (12:58)

Ooh, that is a challenging question because it can vary per person. So I am not a major influencer.

I do occasionally get sponsored work for my Instagram stuff. you know, starting out, you can be getting anywhere from just a free product all the way up to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. I've gotten five figures for sponsored work with a very small, you know, like 10 to 11 to 12,000 followers, which isn't much, I do have high engagement. but it really varies on your engagement and the company and

Kelli Luu (13:17)

Mm.

Irvin (13:28)

they're looking for and how complicated the recipe is and what their budget is. With recipe development and editorial work it's significantly less.

So if I'm working for an outlet and I'm recipe developing for a magazine, I'm lucky if I'm getting maybe like $400 for it or $500. Usually it's like 350, 250, depending on what the project is. So they're very small. So it can vary a lot per outlet.

And then there's like this in-between thing where I'll, I do a lot of stuff for like kitchen equipment reviews stuff, which is not recipe development stuff. And that could vary between a thousand to $2,000 per project, depending on what the project is, ⁓

Kelli Luu (14:03)

Right.

Okay.

Irvin (14:10)

it's a challenging question to answer, because it could vary so much in the person and the budget and the company.

Kelli Luu (14:15)

Right,

okay, got it. coming again from a financial standpoint, which part of your career would you recommend to somebody who's just getting out of college and searching for a viable profession to earn a living?

Irvin (14:28)

You know, I guess my best advice is to not necessarily put all your eggs in one basket.

I think it can be really challenging because things are always shifting. Like the influencer world, there was a peak of the influencer work where everything was like doing, people were doing great and there tons of like projects. And then, every time the algorithm shifts and every time the engagement shifts, all of a sudden, you hear people complaining or it's my reach is gone or I have to pay for it if you're like blogging and you're doing your own like sub stack or your own like website, all of a sudden Google changes.

Kelli Luu (14:40)

Totally.

Right.

Irvin (15:00)

SEO your traffic plummets So my biggest...

advice would be to just kind of like diversify.

you kind of have to have your foot in like everything, but if you've got a great personality, then you should be on TikTok. You should be doing Instagram reels. You should be doing these things, you YouTube, do it all. But like, it's a lot of work, right? you do need to like focus and try to figure out, like don't do everything, but you also can't just focus and do one thing. I know that's kind of a vague answer,

Kelli Luu (15:12)

Yeah.

Right.

Okay, so since you've been in the food space for so long and we were just talking about how it's just changing all the time, how do you keep up with that as far as trends go?

Irvin (15:36)

You get exhausted by that is what you do. It's a lot. One of the best things I always tell people also is to make friends within your community, within your niche.

Kelli Luu (15:38)

I'm sure.

Mm.

Irvin (15:47)

That way you don't necessarily have to feel like you're always the one being on top of things You have other friends who also kind of keep track of things as well because they're they have invested interest in it I've been blogging for 15 years But I also have friends who've been blogging just as long or less time or more time and we all talk to each other I have a whatsapp

Kelli Luu (15:51)

Okay. ⁓

Irvin (16:04)

channel. I have a bunch of text threads with various friends of mine and a lot of it's not industry stuff. We're just, you know, talking and, you know, gossiping and just say, hey, did you see this TV show?

Kelli Luu (16:10)

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (16:15)

Like SEO seems to be changing or what about the influencer or like, hey, you know, this company reached out to me, do you know anything about it? And you kind of get that information. I don't want to say back channels, but you kind of like are able to share information with each other. And that's really, really useful. So I think that works with any niche, right? Like if you're in travel or if you're in, you know, business or tech or whatever, like if you make friends, if you don't view these people as competitors, but more as like colleagues,

Kelli Luu (16:26)

Right.

Yeah, totally.

Irvin (16:39)

one, it's more fun and two, there's less pressure for you to like always stay on top of things. Cause if you have an issue, you could be like, Hey, something's going on right now. Can you guys give me advice? And there's like bam, bam. They could do that and help you.

Kelli Luu (16:50)

Right.

it's like a whole community and you guys, you you have to stick together because you guys are all going through like the same struggles.

All right. Okay. So I have just a few more questions and then we wrap this up. Do you feel pressure to choose between honoring your heritage and fitting into the American food culture?

Irvin (16:58)

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Hmm, well, I'm a little spoiled because I live in San Francisco, which has a very large Asian population. I think growing up in St. Louis in Missouri, where there was less of a...

Kelli Luu (17:18)

Right?

Irvin (17:24)

Asian population and community, it was more of a struggle. So you're, that point, you're always like, I don't, I want to be like, like all my white friends, but also like my parents are making me to the Taiwanese community, like, you know, potluck. And so always like you're being pulled in both directions. I don't feel that as much.

Kelli Luu (17:26)

Yeah.

Irvin (17:41)

Now, I think growing up in the 80s, you definitely felt a lot more because not only was I in the Midwest, but also I had to deal with, you know.

like the 80s, people aren't, it's not as multicultural and people aren't aware of things. And there are, there's representation on TV and movies. And I think now I feel less pressure for that. And I feel like there's the community, like social media has been a blessing and a curse to a certain extent, but there is still a level of it's much easier to find people in your community. It's much easier to reach out even no matter where you live, you can always find people that are part of your community. And I am very lucky to

Kelli Luu (17:51)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (18:18)

and privileged to live here in San Francisco, where I have a larger Asian community.

Kelli Luu (18:23)

Yeah, I love

Okay, so you've been in this world way before Asian food, Asian culture was considered trendy now. How do you feel about the way it's being represented?

Irvin (18:32)

I think I'm always wary of things that have become trendy and part of the reason why is because once things become trendy there's also that shift of things can no longer be trendy and and I think Asian food in general is kind of and like like all community

Kelli Luu (18:36)

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (18:48)

based foods, there's a timelessness to it. So I think one of the things that I find a little sus about trendy foods and Asian foods is just the idea that like this has been around for ages, forever. And then the idea that people are like discovering it or it's super trendy is frustrating for me. But I also think that Asian food

Kelli Luu (19:01)

Forever.

Irvin (19:10)

I'm glad that people are discovering it. Like I'm glad that it's there and I'm glad that people are like are more open to it. And I'm I actually love seeing one of the things I actually hate is I hate the word authentic and mostly because I feel like everything shifts even if you try to go back I was just in Taiwan this past summer. I was eating food that was like amazing and some of it reminded me of my childhood and some of it didn't remind me of my childhood and some of it reminded me of food that I ate when I traveled there in like 2000 and some of it was like mind blowing like this is totally

Kelli Luu (19:14)

course.

Irvin (19:38)

different and new and this is not what I've had before but it was all Taiwanese food it was all like you know quote-unquote authentic and I think there's always going to be an evolution of food and so I think the idea of Asian food being trendy is a double-edged sword I think the idea that people are discovering it is wonderful and I think people are like open to this idea of having different types of flavor profiles but I also think that it can be a little dangerous in terms of like all of a sudden like it's trendy now that

Kelli Luu (19:43)

Mm-hmm.

Irvin (20:07)

next month you move on to the next food which I you know it's always going to be there it's always going to be fantastic.

Kelli Luu (20:10)

Great.

I totally agree.

Awesome, I love it. But that's all the questions that I have for you today, Irvin. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us at Gold Sea. I really appreciate your time.