Like any Asian-American aged zero to 75 with a TV set, I wanted to love Fresh Off the Boat from the moment ABC picked it up. For the uninitiated, the show is loosely based on NYC chef/troublemaker Eddie Huang's 2013 memoir of the same name, and it follows Huang and his family from Washington D.C. to suburban Orlando, Florida in the mid-'90s. Whether I expected to identify with (and/or have all my childhood revenge fantasies) enacted by the series are, of course, entirely other matters. That this is the first Asian-American family on TV since 1994's All-American Girl with Margaret Cho puts an undue burden on the show. I'm happy we are here, yet I can't help but fear that the torch of the Asian-American family won't be carried past this longtime impasse (a series renewal) and at last into mainstream American culture. And even if it is, what sacrifices would have to be made to get there?

Our lack of representation is remarkable when you consider that Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing American demographic. We possess a huge chunk of purchasing power. Still, an incredibly diverse set of hopes and dreams encompassing multiple ethnicities, cultures, languages, and experiences somehow hang on this depiction of a Taiwanese-American family in Florida, when there are Hmong in Minnesota, Vietnamese in Texas, Koreans in New Jersey. It's just another TV sitcom, until you look at the context and (lack of) historical representation — and then it's not.

But the truth is that Eddie Huang had already entered our American consciousness a few times before. It wasn’t through the TV set, but first through Baohaus, his gua bao shack on the Lower East Side (now in the East Village). After that, he was in our bookstores and iPads through the memoir; he was on our laptops through his Vice Munchies series Huang’s World and numerous editorials. In truth, these made for multiple entry points into American culture specifically through American food culture, with his failed sophomore restaurant effort Xiao Ye being a small blip. Watch Huang talking to journalist Ta-Nehishi Coates about ”tackling race relations through a $4 sandwich” in the video below:

Though my father wasn't a restaurateur like Huang's father, my relationship with food in the context of race also served as a life metaphor in a big way. I was born to immigrant parents from Tainan and Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and raised in the suburbs west of Milwaukee. Before I arrived, my parents had been in the States for more than a decade and had ushered into the world my three older brothers — two born in Taiwan and one in Kansas City. Assimilation was the name of the game.

There were just three Asian kids in my grade school: My Chinese-American best friend, her younger sister, and me. When my best friend suddenly started ignoring me in the third grade and instead took favor with a white girl, it was a hard lesson, but I understood why it happened. I know and feel exactly what Eddie Huang means in his book by the concept of "ascendance into whiteness," since it was a means to survival where I lived. This applied to my father's taste for American cars in a time when they were on the decline; when Chinese-American Vincent Chin was murdered by laid-off Chrysler workers in Detroit. In some ways, we needed to over-exemplify the white version of the American dream. I spoke back in English to my parents' Taiwanese, and over time, they stopped speaking Chinese in even the Chinese restaurant they frequented. And of course, this "ascendance into whiteness" also applied to food.

Eddie's father opened an American steakhouse, but we actually lived the American Dream by eating, not serving, "white people food." It's no mistake that the scene where little Eddie and his mom sought out "white people food" was prominently featured in the show's trailer, but the reality for our family was that we didn't have much access to any other kind of grocery store. When it came to lunch, my brothers had already paved the way for American lunch, with cold cuts and PB&J on Wonder Bread and a bag of Doritos or Cheetos. Sometimes a Tupperware of leftover bee hoon (bean thread noodle salad) snuck into my brown bag. But it was the snack items that got funny: Seaweed, pork sung, and haw flakes. "What's THAT?" always came before the inevitable, "That's WEIRD." Asking for Lunchables, as Eddie does on the show, was a real thing, and I got them.

I actually loved seaweed, with its paper-thin, flaky saltiness, and haw flakes, with its dry, tacky texture and plum-like taste. When I got home from school, I chewed on dried squid (which sitcom Eddie loudly rejects in episode four, calling them dog food) and fiended on black melon seeds. But my brothers and I developed largely Midwest American palates that, while not addicted to fast food, craved what our peers ate. At dinner, I regularly encountered a hybrid of cultures that largely skewed American. We had taco nights with Ortega hard taco shells and seasoning that my visiting uncle from Taiwan called the worst thing he had ever tasted (smart man). I was all about the neon-colored, marshmallow Ambrosia salad and green bean or potato gratin casseroles at the church potluck. Our collective family defied our race's tendency to go lactose intolerant; after all, we lived in Wisconsin. Cheese is still my most represented food group.

Though my family had been in America more than a decade before I was born, there were still traditions that came around, like my mom’s crispy egg rolls. Everyone was accustomed to restaurant egg rolls with the extra-thick fried skin, but my mom’s were super light and flaky. And unlike Jessica Huang’s stinky tofu, the dish was really popular at potlucks, so mom taught the ladies at church how to make them in a sort of board-approved cultural exchange. For us, she made bah-tzang, or Taiwanese tamales, taking sticky rice and adding black mushrooms, pork, peanuts, tiny shrimp, and chunks of tea egg, before binding them in banana leaves in a three-point pyramid and tying it all up with string. I always had a window, however small, into my heritage through my mom’s batches of bah-tzang.

But it all changed the moment I got the letter from UCLA. I had applied to the university on a low-chance whim, but it didn't dawn on me until I was accepted that I could finally stop putting my head down. I could not only stop short-changing my heritage; in LA, I would define it.

It took growing pains. After I had spent the first 17 years of my life not being white enough, I had to then cope with not being Asian enough. UCLA's self-segregated student body, 40 percent of which was Asian-American and from in-state, was incredibly disillusioning my first few months. I wanted the melting pot, but I realized LA was a salad bowl. I was often dismissed as "whitewashed" whenever I'd disclose I was from Wisconsin. My Midwest demeanor was too nice, even off-putting. I was a bananas foster — not only "yellow on the outside and white on the inside," like a banana — but I also had a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream on top for extra whiteness.

But I started finding a commonality with others through food, specifically, a shared obsession with boba. With no car, I hitched whatever ride I could to Monterey Park and Alhambra for boba milk tea. And then dedicated boba stands popped up — including a Westside first called Relaxtation, which essentially cemented boba's status as mainstream. In the San Gabriel Valley, there's a Taiwanese spot, Old Country Café, that we frequented for boba, sweet rice, and glutinous meatballs. If we could get up early enough on the weekends, we'd do push-cart dim sum at NBC or 888. We'd get shaved ice at Shau May and late-night cafe food at Garden. I learned about Hakata ramen at Shin-sen-gumi Rosemead and pho at Golden Deli. I discovered Koreatown through 4 a.m. trips to Hodori or Naekwon House, and all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ at Manna, bumping with Korean pop music.

Having access to intentionally and culturally curious people became the reason why I moved to Los Angeles, though I couldn’t articulate that when I did it. So I can’t help but wonder how Fresh Off the Boat is being received in parts where there are few Asian-Americans — because despite all the Facebook discussions by friends in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and other metropolitan areas, this show needs to be a cross-over hit and appeal to the wider demographic in order to stay on air.

I'm encouraged that the sixth episode, which aired on February 25, was #3 in viewership for its time slot after longtime powerhouses The Voice, which debuted the same day, and NCIS. (Tuesday's episode also registered more viewers than the season-three finale of MasterChef Jr., a show that's already been picked up for its fourth and fifth seasons.) So maybe Fresh Off the Boat is really working. A gua bao stand wouldn't work in most parts of America, but a meticulously sanitized ABC sitcom can. Put in the scenes with the sizzling fajita plates and the awesome blossoms (dishes the Huang family serves at their fictionalized steakhouse Cattleman's Ranch), but also the ones with Eddie being called a "Chink" and Louis hiring a Bill Pullman-like host so that you can show the current power system in place. Set aside the licensing money for the kick-ass hip-hop soundtrack to sonically induce that ride-or-die nostalgia. Let slide the scenes where the parents actually verbalize "I love you" to each other, no matter how incredible, and the ones where everyone is wearing shoes inside the house. Leave out Eddie's violent incidents with the white Greek fraternity as detailed in his memoir — at least, for now.

Everyone, no matter his/her race, religion, or sexual orientation, can relate somehow to this immigrant experience of being an outsider, a fish out of water and an underdog, hopefully making the Asian-American experience more universal so those who are actually feeling this way might feel a little less so. I hope these, the round characters way beyond Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles, are people everyone can get behind. Because whether or not you had lunchtime anxiety as a kid or built friendships over late-night Chinese cafe food and boba milk tea, our stories need to be told so that they're rightfully woven into the fabric of our collective American culture. We all have a voice.

Esther Tseng is a freelance food and drinks writer with a taste for adventure. She is based in Los Angeles. Her blog is e*starLA.com . She tweets at @estarla and Instagrams at @estarla .