When Tammy Greenspon-Levin made business trips to California, her father would meet her at the airport with a bag of Mexican take-out. After consuming a couple of burritos in the terminal, they would head for the nearest taqueria for lunch.
'Once I ordered three set meals to go,' Ms Greenspon-Levin says. 'The man asked if I needed utensils for three, but I said one would do. 'It's all for me', I said.'
Ms Greenspon-Levin grew up in Los Angeles, where tacos are as common as hamburgers. The thing she misses most when away from the Golden State is the Mexican food. 'We don't think of it as an alternate cuisine in California,' she says. 'It's as much a part of California cuisine as Asian food.'
The neighbourhood in which Ms Greenspon-Levin grew up provided a distinctly multicultural environment, and she was encouraged to try every kind of food at least once.
Her grandmother's next-door neighbour was Mexican-American, and an excellent cook. 'She'd offer us tacos, and she'd cook everything the old-fashioned way,' Mrs Greenspon-Levin says. 'She'd explain things to us, and we all helped.' As a result, she learned not just to appreciate Mexican food, but also how to cook it - from scratch.
Ms Greenspon-Levin and her husband, Adam Levin, are what she calls 'restaurant people'. They have lived and worked not only in various parts of the United States, but also in Switzerland and Beijing. 'We missed Asia, so when Adam was offered a job at the Great Eagle Hotel, we jumped at it,' she says.
Accompanying her husband, a professional chef, to Hong Kong in 2001, she found a job working as a headhunter, placing chefs at hotels. 'I started at an inopportune time - just before September 11, when the bottom fell out of the hospitality industry. I realised that I had to do something else.'