Food Passport Origin Story
The MySGV Food Passport is a curated guide, stamp, and discount book for the best, locally-owned shops in the San Gabriel Valley.
SGV Food Passport
For over four years we ran the podcast with zero money coming in. We kept going because we believed in our vision to unite and bring a sense of pride to the San Gabriel Valley.
Our goal was simple: keep telling the stories of our people and keep building community. In November 2024 we held a small in-person event at Paris Baguette San Gabriel and the community showed up.
In March 2025 we held a bigger event at Blossom Market Hall, the 2025 Taste Challenge. It was fun and full of support, but it didn’t help support the show in a meaningful way. We started planning an even larger event at Haven City Market in West Covina, but that eventually fell through. The lift felt huge, and me and our team of volunteers were burned out.
So we pivoted.
We saw the Red Dining Book and the Pasadena Coffee Passport circulating on social media feeds, and a new idea clicked.
We had interviewed more than 35 restaurant owners. Why not ask them to create special deals for our listeners and the SGV?
I reached out, and every single owner said yes—and they were excited!
The hard part was logistics, especially finding a stamp vendor who could deliver on time. I even learned that three out of four Etsy “vendors” were companies in China posing as people in the States.
WTH!?
From our host...
Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, I didn’t just live among different cultures—I experienced them. I tasted them at friends’ dinner tables, heard them in playground jokes and afterschool stories, and saw them in the way we celebrated birthdays, weddings, and holidays.
It wasn’t just diversity as a concept. It was in our games, our families, our friendships. It was life.
That kind of experience stays with you. It gets in your body.
When I joined the Army at 17, I left the SGV behind and started to see the world. I lived across the country and overseas. But no matter where I went, nothing ever felt quite like home. Nowhere else held that quiet magic I grew up with here—that effortless way people of different backgrounds shared space, food, laughter, and struggle.
While stationed in Germany, I grew close with a Mexican American soldier from Southern California—tough, principled, and grounded. One day, some guys were talking trash to me because I was Asian. Without hesitation, he said, “Just because I’m Mexican doesn’t mean I’m your brother. And just because he’s Asian doesn’t mean he’s my enemy.” I’ve never forgotten that.
That moment hit deep. It reminded me of where I came from—of the way we looked out for each other back in the SGV, how we found family across culture lines. That wasn’t new to me. That was home.
When I returned to live in the SGV again, I felt something rising in me—a mix of gratitude, pride, and urgency. I saw how fast things were changing. I saw stories getting lost. I saw how easy it was for the richness of our lives here to go unnoticed or unspoken.
I wanted to create a space where regular people could tell their stories. People who’ve lived, worked, struggled, and grown up right here in the SGV. I wanted to reflect back the beauty of our community—not as nostalgia, but as truth. There is something rare and worthy here. And I believe we deserve to feel proud of it.
So I started the MySGV Podcast—not to promote anything, but to preserve something.
The podcast isn’t about fame or followers. It’s about voice. It’s about memory.It’s about that line in a poem from one of our guests—Mike Sonksen—who said:“The Chang’s live next door to the Diaz’s in the San Gabriel Valley.”That line hits differently when you’ve lived here.It’s not just poetic. It’s real.
I’m not here to speak for the SGV. I’m here to listen.
To help capture what’s already been happening across decades and generations.
I just happened to be the one holding the mic.
"Love softens the ego."~ Russell
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