Eat With Your Hands
Annie Faye Cheng x Subway Hands
Photos by Sravya Balasa
March 2025
That’s how Annie Faye Cheng initiated her collaboration with Subway Hands. She recounts, “I had followed Subway Hands for a while, just as a citizen of the internet, and I really liked their approach to image and storytelling.”
Annie, a New-York based butcher, chef and writer, is a firm believer in shamelessness—the kind that drives her to cold message artists, chefs and collaborators with improbable, sometimes a bit eclectic, ideas.
Annie’s audacious DMs worked. An unconventional partnership formed. “Hannah had never done anything related to food, but I actually thought there were so many things that we had in common,” Annie explains. “We both really cared about storytelling. We both really care about context.” In fact, on their first call, Annie recalls using “this jumping off point of a subway car—how many people fit in a subway car? What kind of venue would help us tell the story?”
There is a rhyme and rhythm to this collaboration, reminiscent of play, yet that acknowledges the storied legacies and lineages of class and colonialism. “You think about the origins of British colonialism in India, and how eating with your hands is frowned upon, and the way that eating with your hands is an indicator, often, of class and racial division—at least in the Western world, it is these days,” she prefaces. “But there are so many cultures that have a really rich heritage around hand-eaten foods, whether that's in the Levantine region or in eastern Africa or Southeast Asia or the Pacific Islands.”
At Lichen, a home goods and design space in Queens where the dinner collaboration takes place, the setup is intimate and interactive. No overhead lighting, only hanging lamps casting warm glows. And of course, not a single utensil in sight. Guests are encouraged to sit wherever in the furniture showroom. “They really want their furniture to be used,” she says. Coupled with an immersive setting, Annie prepared an incredibly tactile and playful menu, reflecting her personal past and present.
The first course: five-spice boiled peanuts—a nod to the many road trips through her home state of Florida.
“I'm doing whole shelled peanuts. So you gotta crack them and peel them yourself. You gotta use your teeth. You gotta use your hands,” she says. “Things taste better when you work for them.”
She spent six months studying abroad in Chile, another two weeks learning alongside local community organizations and activist groups gathered for the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25, organized by the Chilean government, and several months across different years helping a Chilean vineyard develop their tasting room menu.
Instead of tossing the salad in the air, Annie serves it as a wrap, inviting each guest to assemble their own. She sources the hamachi belly for the Yucheng prosperity wrap from a longtime New York sushi chef, Robin Kawada from Takesushi Sunnyside. “It was really cool to work with him and support a neighborhood monger,” Annie says with admiration.
Pushing it a step further, she infuses it with the peppery heat of Sichuan spices. It’s a dish that speaks to both her Southern upbringing and her Chinese roots. The seafood boil is made with málà spices, beef tallow and an assortment of Vietnamese herbs, then served with coconut rice.
Head-on shrimp and fish balls—all a deliberate encouragement for the guests to get their hands reaching, tearing, digging for their foods. The entire course replicates the communal element of hotpot and Southern and New England (home of her alma mater) seafood boils
As a business-savvy pre-teen, Annie sold ice cream bars to over-heated garage-sale goers in the depths of suburban Florida. She has since upgraded from slinging Drumstick’s Ice Cream Cones from Sam’s Club to churning her own ice cream. The creamsicle is made with satsuma mandarins, pineapple buns and candied sudachi.
Annie’s approach to food is deeply influenced by what she calls a “citational practice” — the idea that every dish, every spice blend, every technique comes from a tradition.
“I've always wanted to be very true and very transparent about my influences and where I'm sourcing from, where I'm drawing from,” she says.
“I believe in referencing: Where did I get this idea? Who did I work with? Where am I sourcing this from?”
For the curious readers, Annie maintains a list of references that have informed her work on her website.
This ethos carries into how she works with ingredients. Much of our conversation was laden with references to other people and places. The beef tallow she renders for her Sichuan-inspired hot-pot-seafood boil ties back to her grandparents’ culinary lineage. She sources the rich beef tallow from the butcher shop where she works.
The bright sudachi fruits hail from M-W (Monday for Wednesday), an aggregate of local farms in New York. The pineapple buns, pillowy and golden, arrive from Land to Sea. And the bouncy, briny fish balls are made fresh at Yi Zhang Fishball in Chinatown.
Annie claims, “The food world is in a really interesting moment right now. A lot of people are recognizing the importance of food and the way it ties into our own personal histories and our collective sovereignty.” However, she clarifies,
“I don't want to mistake my own work for activism. And I don't want to mistake, at least, my own lane of culture work as activism. But I do love doing it. And I do love hearing that people resonate with it. I do enjoy how it informs the other parts of my political life and identity as a person.”
Never wanting to be too “didactic” or “head-y,” Annie wants to be intentional in her work, building a community of mutual aid and care.
Another project on her plate is a six-week residency in Germany, as part of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s program, to introduce scientists, academics and journalists to different industries with which they would otherwise not be in contact. This year’s theme? The future of food.
She admits to feeling a level of imposter syndrome: “To my knowledge, I'm the only food industry person there. Everybody else is a scientist or an academic.” But, Annie adds, “I know I'm bringing a voice. I want to tell these people what industry people care about. I'm trying to bring a labor perspective into it.”
For now, Annie remains rooted in the immediacy of her work—prepping, cooking, planning. She says, “I don't think that I have a very defined voice yet as a cook. And I think that's okay. It's okay to own the tenuousness of being 20-something and exploring. For right now, the only thing I know for certain is that I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I'm able to do the projects that I can do, and encounter the people that I can encounter.”
And of course, she’ll keep sending her cold DMs.
You can keep up with Annie’s upcoming projects on her Instagram @achg.kitchen
Thank you to Annie, Hannah of Subway Hands, and Lichen for letting us capture this beautiful event.
Sravya Balasa is a New York City based photographer whose body of work delves into the intimacies of life—shadows on the street, squeezes of the hand, smiles of her people.