A five-course pop-up dinner connecting food, story, and people.
Anso is a recurring pop-up dinner I host for small groups in my apartment. Each evening is an intimate gathering built around modern Asian cooking, good conversation, and shared experience. I cook, pour wine, and serve each course myself. It gives me the chance to share my passion for cooking and the flavors shaped by my heritage and travels through a uniquely personal and authentic dining experience.
What Anso Means
My middle name, ān, meaning safe and secure in Mandarin
Enso - a Japanese symbol that represents unity and beauty in imperfection
The name Anso combines my middle name, An, with the word Enso. Anso means An’s circle—my circle. Each dinner is one continuous stroke: guests enter, we share a night of food and stories, and they leave. The circle stays open for whoever comes next.
My dishes draw from the flavors I grew up with—being half Chinese born in Vietnam, living in Queens, and traveling across Asia.
Creating Anso
I’ve been hosting pop up dinners for about two years. My first dinners were under the name Kitchen Korsmoe (my last name). The Kitchen Korsmoe menu was a stitched booklet that I printed on an office printer. I stitched and trimmed each booklet by hand.
Each open layout had a description of the course and some illustrations of the key ingredients.
Over time, I optimized my prep and cooking execution, tuned my pacing, and refined my presentation and delivery in pursuit of a fine dining experience that still felt personal and authentic.
I refined and changed some courses, and with the help of some of my talented friends, we created a new menu design and brand around the experience.
My friend Carl Anderson, an industrial designer at Steelcase and prolific woodworker, helped me build a custom food studio setup out of PVC, plywood, a carbon steel bar, and a purchased vinyl backdrop. I bought a professional lighting setup so we could photograph the dishes themselves for the Anso menu. Carl shot and edited the photos and also hand-made the sushi trays for my crispy rice dish.
The Anso Menu
Macy Sutton, another talented industrial designer and friend, helped me design a menu unique in its presentation and delivery.
Unlike typical menus, each dish has its own printed card. One side has a detailed shot of the dish and the other has a description. By the end of the night, the cards become a small collection—a tangible record that guests take home as a keepsake of the evening.
What we created was a menu system that felt thoughtful and intentional—scalable for future dinners and elegant in its simplicity.
The Joy of Hosting
Anso has been one of the most fun and fulfilling side projects I’ve taken on. It’s not a typical design project, but it is an experience I’ve intentionally shaped—one that’s required empathy, storytelling, and iteration. I’ve refined menus, dishes, presentation, and execution to seamlessly balance the roles of chef and host.
The most gratifying part is seeing the impact firsthand. Watching guests try my food, connect with each other, and sometimes even call it the best meal they’ve ever had makes every bit of effort worth it. It reminds me why I love creating experiences that bring people together.
