Sherry Cola Used To Hide Her Mom’s Cooking. Now, It’s Her Love Language.

Sherry Cola is beaming. But we're not at some glitzy Hollywood party — it's 9 a.m. at an old strip mall in San Gabriel Valley and she's giving me a tour of her family’s beloved order-at-the-counter restaurant. She points out each dish with pride: curry chicken, crispy pork chop, spicy bamboo shoots, wok-fried peanuts, tofu skin meatballs, the list goes on. “Every order comes with a milk tea and seaweed soup, on the house,” she adds with a smile. Cola said she used to work the counter after school, sometimes making the milk tea for the customers. But it wasn’t always like this — the food, yes, but not the pride.

“I remember bringing dumplings with extra, extra chives [to school] and feeling embarrassed they smelled,” she says. “Embarrassed that my parents had an accent. I’m ashamed I was ashamed. It was a testament to how hard they worked despite not knowing the language. They made something from nothing — and that is the American dream. Now, I get to carry on that legacy.”

These days, Sherry isn’t behind the counter as often as she was in high school — and for good reason. She’s busy filming the next season of Apple TV+’s Shrinking, Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, and starring alongside Keanu Reeves in Good Fortune. But she still finds ways to show love for her roots — like bringing her mom as her date to red carpet premieres, including the recent Bride Hard premiere.

In this episode of Fam Style, Sherry and I sit down over plates of nostalgic Shanghainese comfort food to talk about family, cultural identity, coming out — and why the food she once hid is now her greatest source of pride.