You may not know Jing Gao by name, but there's a good chance you've come across a jar of her chili crisp Fly By Jing, featuring its hypercharged label resembling a contemporary art piece. It could have caught your eye while perusing the aisles at a local big box store, an occasional boutique shop, or on a friend's kitchen counter.
And if it's not on your counter or in your pantry, it should be.
Certain legacy brands such as Lao Gan Ma have dominated the chili crisp marketplace internationally since the '80s, and in recent years homegrown players such as Momofuku Chili Crisp by David Chang and Boon by Max Boonthanakit have cropped up with their own deliciously sludgy takes on chili crisp.
But, in terms of value and taste, Fly By Jing's chili crisp has continued to impress yours truly so much that I always make sure I have a jar on hand.
After buying chili crisps regularly for the better part of a decade, I've become increasingly dependent on them in my arsenal of kitchen ingredients, using them for everything from frying eggs to pasta sauces. While I'm a big fan of the spicy taste and crunchy flavors, the quality of the sauce is that it never dries out, making it a real winner.
For the uninitiated, chili crisp is an essential Asian hot sauce. But it's in its own category compared to a bottle of Tapatio or Tabasco. The ingredients comprise dried chilies, aromatics, and fermented black beans submerged in chili oil, resulting in a spicy, umami-rich flavor with a textured, crunch-laden bite.
The central spice ingredient is the Sichuan pepper, known for its unique flavor profile that features a tingling, almost numbing effect on the taste buds. It can be found in various dishes, including mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, and toothpick cumin lamb.
One of the most exciting aspects about each chili crisp recipe is that every chef and sauce maker likes to put their spin on it.
Within the last decade, chili crisp has become ubiquitous across the modern American palate. Fly by Jing, ($14), is a standout in the marketplace for more than just its quality and taste: Gao is the only AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) female condiment founder in Los Angeles.
After Gao and I began following each other on Instagram, I witnessed the rapid growth of her Fly By Jing company, ascending from a small start-up to a leader in the condiment industry.
So when an opportunity to speak to Gao came up, I jumped at the chance to learn more about the journey behind her spectacular chili crisp.
Born in Chengdu, China, Gao spent her formative years moving throughout Europe and Canada. Her foray into food began as a chef and restaurateur in China, having previously worked in the tech industry in China and other parts of Asia. Upon switching to pursue her passion for food, she began hosting a series of underground supper clubs in Shanghai, where she came up with the name Fly By Jing.
In 2018, Gao left the chef life and moved to Los Angeles, where she rented an Airbnb, armed with a mission to start her own condiment company, motivated by what she describes as "a desire to share flavors and make them more accessible to western consumers."
Yes, there are places in L.A. like Bistro Na and Majordomo where Asian food is considered haute cuisine. But those are the exceptions in Gao's experience: She says she believes that in the past, to many mainstream American tastebuds, Chinese food and its corresponding cuisines were seen as cheap and plentiful.
"There was this accepted belief that Chinese food is dirty, cheap, unhealthy, and not worth paying for,” she told me, adding, “And so, of course, anyone who manufactures in China would never export anything of quality because people are told that no one's willing to pay more than a dollar or two for Chinese food."
It's part of the assumption that food from foreign countries, especially non-European companies, should be inexpensive. Similar attitudes stem back to the 19th century when Chinese immigrants first arrived in the Americas during the Gold Rush and were seen as inferior to their white counterparts. It's a similar fate to Mexican food, and the perception in some corners that a taco shouldn't cost more than $5.
So, when starting her condiment company, quality was essential to Gao, who wanted to subvert any Westernized assumptions surrounding Chinese food.
An example that Gao uses during our conversation illustrates this fact, detailing how she sourced the condiment's tribute pepper, a single-origin pepper only grown in one place in the world, located about four hours away by car from Chengdu. Gao detailed for me how she spent years studying and building relationships with the farmers who grow the pepper on a single plot of land, and how it's only harvested once a year.
To Gao, chili crisp was the perfect vehicle for broadening people's sense of taste due to its popularity in China and because, as she puts it, "it's good on everything."
Running a successful Kickstarter campaign allowed Gao to establish the financial footing needed to get the company off the ground. After gaining a viral appeal, selling her chili crisp online eventually led to larger retailers like Costco and Target reaching out to stock her jars.
Traditional usages of chili crisp tend to be found in dishes such as noodles, soup, or vegetables. But as the condiment's popularity has recently grown here in the United States, it's not uncommon to see it used on pasta, pizza, salads, ice cream — and even donuts.
As her chili crisp empire has grown, so have the business opportunities.
Most recently, she collaborated on a pineapple passion fruit Sichuan chili crisp donut for Holy Grail Donuts, the Hawaiian taro donut company with a cult-like following, with outposts in Santa Monica and Larchmont Village. The made-to-order donut is fried in coconut oil, then covered in a tropical fruit glaze, and finishes off with a smack of heat from the chili crisp.
Gao has also landed similar partnerships with Panda Express, for a limited spicy Wagyu beef dumplings and Shake Shack, which featured a burger and chicken sandwich drizzled with some of Gao's signature sauces, along with a successful collaboration with a tinned fish company of the moment, Fishwife, for a smoked salmon with chili crisp that seemed to be on everyone's table last year. Gao's also published a cookbook, "The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp: Spicy Recipes and Stories from Fly By Jing's Kitchen," in 2023.
Like the many uses of her chili crisp, Gao subverts categorization as she expands her brand beyond chili crisp. In addition to a line of saucy condiments, Fly By Jing also offers vinaigrettes, chili oils, dry spice mixes, and a hot pot starter kit.
Most recently, she's expanded to an actual market and cafe space.
Partnering with lifestyle influencer Stephanie Liu Hjelmeseth, the cafe space, located in the neighborhood of Larchmont Village, Suá Superette, boasts an all-day menu that showcases a variety of organic grab-and-go items, all inspired by Sichuan-style fare and flavors, reimagined.
Inside the space, among the minimalist decor, diners can dig into a variety of dishes that include a vegan mapo tofu made with wild mushrooms, spicy chili-and-cumin grass-fed beef wraps, and cold soba noodles tossed in a sunbutter sesame dressing, to name a few.
The fluidity of cultures comes naturally to Gao, having spent most of her life abroad before calling Los Angeles her home. Throughout her experiences, Jing wanted to offer a product that would appeal to like-minded consumers looking to spice up their lives, a spoonful of chili crisp at a time.
With Suá, a throughline is coming into sharper focus. Gao describes the common thread: "A similar philosophy that's rooted in tradition, but made for the way we eat today, it's modern."
