{"id":68119,"date":"2026-07-12T14:21:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T06:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=68119"},"modified":"2026-07-12T14:21:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T06:21:59","slug":"granola-for-breakfast-but-make-it-chinese-an-american-digs-deep-into-her-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=68119","title":{"rendered":"Granola for breakfast but make it Chinese? An American digs deep into her heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"


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For most Americans, breakfast looks like cereal, bagels, oatmeal, yogurt and fruit smoothies or the classic spread with eggs, bacon and pancakes.<\/p>\n

For Cindy Lam, a Chicago-born first-generation Cantonese-American entrepreneur, these options felt, in her words, \u201c70-80 per cent\u201d complete \u2013 a sentiment captured by the Cantonese phrase \u201cchat chat baat baat<\/em>\u201d (literally \u201cseven seven, eight eight\u201d), meaning almost there, but not quite.<\/p>\n

The phrase resonated with her own sense of identity, too: caught between the traditions of her immigrant family and the mainstream American culture around her, forever navigating a space where neither side felt hers entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was caught between two worlds,\u201d Lam says from her home base in Brooklyn, New York. \u201cThe breakfast options here never had the depth of flavour I grew up eating. It was always missing something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her craving for something entirely different in the morning turned out to be umami<\/span> \u2013 the fifth taste \u2013 and she had to dig deep into her Cantonese heritage to bring it to the table.<\/div>\n
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\"Cindy<\/div>
Cindy Lam, a first-generation Cantonese-American entrepreneur, launched Umami Granola on May 1, 2026. Photo: courtesy of Cindy Lam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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For most Americans, breakfast looks like cereal, bagels, oatmeal, yogurt and fruit smoothies or the classic spread with eggs, bacon and pancakes. For Cindy Lam,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[295,2321,107,5418,18714,26389,2382],"class_list":["post-68119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-american","tag-breakfast","tag-chinese","tag-deep","tag-digs","tag-granola","tag-heritage","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}