Meet Tina Tsai of Oh Snap! Let’s Eat!

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tina Tsai

Hi Tina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, with my mom when I was 4 years old. Luckily, I got to visit Taiwan every summer growing up as I still have family there, so I got to experience Taiwanese culture and… delicious food!

In the states, my mother raised me as a single parent working as a professional Traditional Chinese watercolor artist along with all sorts of odds and ends to support us, and somehow still made sure to cook full blown meals pretty much every day.

So I grew up watching my mom cook, and this is how I learned that delicious meals do not need to be complex! Home cooked meals can be easy, tasty, and healthy. The breakdown of our usual meal was one meat dish, one veggie dish, one seafood dish, served with rice. And she also made sure there was a pot of soup on the stove too.

Growing up, outside my regular school, I was also enrolled in Chinese Culture school where I learned more Mandarin Chinese every Saturday. Technically, Mandarin Chinese is my first language, and English is my second, but when you grow up in the states, you pick up English fast and you could also forget your native language or just stop learning it as you grow.

In Chinese Culture school, I also learned and performed Traditional Chinese dancing, acting classes, and played the Chinese zither, aka Guzheng. I would say that I was very fortunate to have been exposed to all of this, and that is one very cool thing about living in Atlanta – the diversity.

Fast forward to my college years, I majored in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology – Go Jackets! After Georgia Tech, I went in to ERP software consulting for a few years, and then went in to IT Project Management for almost 10 years.

In 2012 I started a food blog for fun. I had no idea that it would take off. All I knew was that my passion has always been around food and I wanted to share it with the world.

Eventually, I realized that my recipes were starting to get a lot of attention. So I looked in to how to do it professionally. Fast forward to today – I run Oh Snap! Let’s Eat! – a website I use to teach those that want to learn how to make homecooked Asian food at home. This year I also launched cooking courses online that dive deeper than just recipes.

My goal is to share a piece of my culture through cooking at home.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There has been some challenges through out, but that is normal, I believe, for any business. Creating a website isn’t too hard, writing and posting content isn’t that hard either. But to run it full time is not easy. You have to learn a lot – website management, SEO, social media management, e-mail marketing, design, branding, analytics, and you have to continuously learn. The latest challenge is SEO algorithm updates, for example. And in the horizon I’m doing a lot of research of AI’s impact also. With technology, you just never know what’s coming next. But that’s okay – because as long as you learn and prepare and grow, it will all work out! You got to stay positive!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Well, as mentioned Oh Snap! Let’s Eat! is my platform to share Asian cooking – Taiwanese and Chinese home cooking for the most part. As for what sets it apart from others is a good question.

I, myself, didn’t completely know in the beginning either. I wasn’t sure why people wanted to come to my website for recipes when there were so many other options online.

However, I learned from one of my readers. This particular reader was born in Taiwan and moved to the States when she was young. She missed a lot of the flavors of Taiwanese and Chinese food. She thanked me for my recipes because they are home style versions. They’re not super complicated with lots and lots of ingredients that are hard to find. They were authentically home cooked dishes – with simple ingredients and easy to follow processes. Something like what my mom would cook back in the day.

I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish – when I look back and think about how I just started all of this for fun, and how much Oh Snap! Let’s Eat! and I personally have grown, it is truly something I am so joyful about.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important thing I’ve learned… is to never stop learning! There will always be changes in life, and all you can do is learn and adapt. And don’t be afraid to put your name in the hat for something you want to do or try! If you don’t get it, just remember when one door closes another one opens.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ohsnapletseat.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ohsnapletseat/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhSnapLetsEat/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ohsnapletseat
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Ohsnapletseat
• Other: https://ohsnapletseat.teachable.com/