Blogger Interview 9: Yen Ha (Lunch Studio)

This Summer we present a series of short interviews here on Pop-Up City. We invited a number of our favorite bloggers to answer six questions not only about their passion for blogging, but also their city, work experience and inspiration. The result is a collection of stories on blogs and the people behind them. Number 9 in this series is Yen Ha, New York-based architect at Front Studio and co-founder of the blog Lunch Studio. Along with her colleague Michi Yanagishita, Ha reviews every lunch they eat in the cafés, shops and restaurants of Manhattan. Lunch Studio has become a source full of food and lifestyle-related inspiration.

When and why did you start blogging?
“We started in 2007 one winter day when architecture was making us restless. We decided it would be fun to keep an online journal of the way we eat lunch, which is to say we’ve always eaten lunch outside of the office, the blog became a method of recording our lunches.Lunch helps us find new inspiration and refresh our brains.”

How would you label yourself?
“Architect. Eater. Reader.”

What does your typical day look like?
“It starts in the morning like this: take phone calls, respond to emails, go on a site visit, have a meeting, more phone calls. Stop. Leave the office for lunch. Blog about it. Then more of the same: phone calls, emails, meetings, more email, more phone calls. A short break for afternoon dessert and coffee and then repeat the same cycle until finally around 6pm when things quiet down and we can actually get to some drawing and being productive.”

Which spot(s) would you recommend to a first-time visitor of your city?
“It’s impossible to recommend just one! But we could suggest a good day in New York City for a first time visitor. Start by having breakfast in Central Park, walk down through Times Square, hop on a subway to the West Village for lunch, meander up to the High Line for sunset.”

What is your top 3 of favorite online sources of inspiration?
Flickr, Edible Geography, Serious Eats.”

What shoes do you wear?
“Anything we can walk to lunch in!”