Heal turn

Long Vo unpacks his time spent on the Food Network reality series Chef Dynasty: House of Fang.

Reality shows have confessionals—the shot when one cast member faces the camera alone. Plays have soliloquies, a speech the actor makes to themselves with the audience as voyeur. Wrestling has promos. All three forms of speech move the storyline forward. You get the character’s history and motivation. You understand the stakes for the performer.

But on June 27th, 2011, when professional wrestler CM Punk began his promo, he sat with his legs crossed, opened his mouth and let six years of frustration out. He lashed out at the industry, calling out figureheads like WWE chairman Vince McMahon. He lashed out at WWE’s go-to guy John Cena.

This was not a regular promo after all, it was “a pipe bomb”––a scripted speech that went so far it genuinely felt unscripted. It broke the fourth wall with wrestling fans who felt sucked into his emotion, implicated even. And most importantly, Punk’s frustration was real: He blurred the line between a shoot (real, in wrestling) and a work (scripted). Now, “pipe bomb” has become its own term to throw the finger at the establishment. Consider this mine.

You might know me from the reality TV show Chef Dynasty: House of Fang, which ran on Food Network for one season in 2022 and 2023. Probably not. But if you did watch the show, you likely don’t think highly of me, and would expect an outburst like CM Punk’s to be completely within character.

Let me start at the beginning. I knew that House of Fang was going to be important and groundbreaking. It would be the only show on Food Network with an all-Asian cast. Of course, there were predecessors. I watched Tyrese Gibson’s web-series K-town (2012) in preparation for filming, along with 2020’s House of Ho, which follows a rich Vietnamese-American family in Houston, Texas. I even watched international hits like the Japanese reality show Terrace House.

Interestingly, all of the cast members on the Western shows have American first names. My name, Long, has always marked me as different, in addition to my short stature and features. If this was a problem with the audience, I thought, it certainly wouldn’t be with my castmates, who would understand. Prior to the show, I was Kathy Fang’s personal trainer and I remember our shared glee when Crazy Rich Asians became a blockbuster hit.

As I prepared for my appearance on the show, I also watched a lot of wrestling. I relived old matches with the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret Hart. They helped me build my voice: being flashy and confident. The same traits that set wrestlers apart, set reality stars apart. In wrestling, “stars” are the ones that win matches. “Jobbers” are the ones employed to lose.

The premise of Chef Dynasty: House of Fang is that Kathy Fang, who grew up in her father Peter’s landmark San Francisco establishment House of Nanking, must get out of his shadow to run Fang Restaurant, the restaurant they co-own. I was cast somewhere between a maître d’ and a manager, which was familiar to me, as I’d previously pitched in to help the short-staffed Fang Restaurant during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To be in a reality show, you are always on. You spend a good amount of prep time getting your mic fastened. You make sure that your jewelry is not hitting the microphone; you make sure that your clothes are always dry cleaned.

The cameras, too, are always on. Since we weren’t in Los Angeles, where it is normal for reality shows to be shot in the open, customers were not patient for the show. That added extra work for me. 

But the biggest problem was one I realized early on: I was the jobber. I could feel the original production staff trying to catch me off guard, to manufacture some drama in what would otherwise be a heartwarming family series with a few cranky father-daughter moments.

When we shot the pilot for House of Fang, all of my aspirations for my appearance on the show were thrown out the window. I would not be allowed to talk to the women on set. At times, the bartender would be asked to flirt with the girls while I was assigned more work. In group texts with the production team and cast, everyone was praised for being hot or gorgeous while I was told to introduce myself with the line “My name is Long and I know I’m short but….”

One episode centered around a private dinner Fang Restaurant was catering. I felt like Steve Urkel as a vase I needed was poised on a ladder for me to drop. For me to be laughed at. For me to be the Long Duk Dong.

Guess they are gonna try to Long Duk Dong me, I thought.

DIRT ON “REALITY” TV