This is Amused Bouche, SAVEUR’s food questionnaire that explores the culinary curiosities of some of our favorite people. This interview series will dive deep into their food routines, including dinner party strategies, cherished cookbooks, and the memorable bites they’d hop on a flight for. 

“I love that you dream bigger than me,” Okatsuka says with a laugh when I share these scenarios over Zoom. “I don’t dare to dream that big. I was thinking of the little side containers of ranch you get to-go at restaurants, surrounding me in a circle like candles. Not stacked up so they don’t fall and spill.” She likens her viral TikTok “Drop Challenge” to her love of ranch, a condiment that gives her the same feeling as dropping down low and slow to Beyoncé’s “All Night.” Her favorite sides of ranch are from the chains Habit Burger & Grill and Denny’s, the latter of which she had stocked in the fridge at the time of our interview, ready for future dip emergencies. 

Okatsuka is an adventurous eater but likes to keep a relatively simple cooking routine with her husband, Ryan (who directed Father), when they’re home in Los Angeles between tour dates around the world. That includes finding the best gluten-free pasta, making comforting Japanese curry that reminds Okatsuka of her father, and, shockingly…roasting a whole turkey. Not on Thanksgiving—just on a random Tuesday. “I love turkey, especially turkey legs, and I wish I could have them all year,” she explains. “It’s the most American thing I can do!” Read on for Okatsuka’s answers to our Amused Bouche questionnaire.

If you could only eat one thing 24/7/365, what would it be?

Gluten-free pasta with our version of “bolognese,” which is just browned ground meat and the 365 brand vodka sauce. After my husband got diagnosed with celiac, we realized the big thing taken away from us was pasta. So we tried a lot of different gluten-free pasta and found our favorite is Jovial, which is made of brown rice. It’s so wild that I know that. Never in my life would I have thought I would become such a gluten expert. I always prefer spaghetti as a shape, and I stab it and put it in my mouth and bite it off. I’m Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. I eat like Stitch. I would love to eat with Stitch—sauce everywhere, meatballs on our heads.

What’s the first thing you learned how to cook?

Mapo tofu. I was devastatingly too old, 26, when my grandma taught me. I needed to bring a dish for a potluck, and I was scared it was a weird thing to bring to a barbecue. And I didn’t bring rice. So I was like, “Here you go! No rice. Figure it out!” and I guilted people into eating it by saying it was my grandma’s recipe.

How about your latest kitchen adventure?

I recently cooked a whole turkey because I really love turkey, especially dark meat and turkey legs. I want to know why they don’t sell turkey all year! Turkey legs shouldn’t only be available at amusement parks. Uh, hello, are we not American? This is the most American thing we can do. There was a lot of fear doing it for the first time, but I was up for the challenge. I turned into a prairie wife, like, “Yes, this is how my ancestors on the Mayflower would have done it!” and I turned into someone else. The recipe was simple with just butter, onion, garlic, and thyme, and I found the rubbing with butter, the massaging, quite soothing and comforting. 

What’s your treat-yourself splurge?

I had a whole fried lobster with lots of garlic, jalapeños, and vegetables at a restaurant in Temple City, and it was so good but gone too fast. There’s barely any meat in a lobster, and it makes me sad because it’s like oh, it’s already gone, and it was $124. I eat everything. The claws are my favorite, but I eat the head, too.

What’s your most cherished cookbook?

Sam Low’s Modern Chinese, which he generously gifted us and cooked from for us at his home while I was on tour in Auckland. The feast included his version of tomato egg, steamed chicken with ginger relish, tuna and pomelo salad with herbs, pickled persimmon with Sichuan pepper, roast pork with crackling skin, bok choy in chicken and scallop broth, spicy tofu with shiitake and pickled mustard greens, and fruits with oolong jasmine jelly and shiso granita. I haven’t made anything from the cookbook yet, but it was one of the best meals of my life.

Is there a cooking disaster that made you swear off a dish forever?

I don’t really cook enough to have too many disasters, but once I tried to cook milkfish, and I didn’t know how. So I undercooked it, it was very fishy-smelling, and we couldn’t eat it. The whole house smelled for a while, and it was hard to clean up.

Which nostalgic foods from childhood bring you the most comfort?

I always love Japanese curry. My dad would make the packaged curry with the big bricks and potatoes and carrots and stuff in it. He told me when I was a kid that it was so hot that I should stir it up to cool it off. I remember thinking that science was mind-blowing, and it also coated the rice with all the curry. It was a very bachelor mindset as a single father, but I thought he was a magician. At five or six, that was so impressive to me.

When you’re playing dinner party DJ, what’s spinning?

Music to dance to like Charli XCX, Lorde, Beyoncé, Orville Peck, Chappell Roan, Utada Hikaru, Ariana Grande, Popcaan, Lady Gaga, Shakira, and Doechii.

What is your biggest entertaining flex to impress guests?

My personality! But also I’m really good at matching the energy of the guests. If they like to sing, we karaoke. If not, we chat. If I had it my way, I would make everyone watch me lip sync, dance, and perform. On Christmas, I actually make my mom and grandma watch me perform “Santa Baby” as a strip tease down to my underwear. Every year they act surprised when the clothes start coming off, and my grandma laughs but pretends she hates it. We’re a different kind of family. We’re not normal. “Broken but good,” to quote Stitch. 

Tell me about a meal so good you would hop on a flight to relive it.

We had a 10-course meal in Hakone, Japan, at a ryokan we stayed at. They made it all gluten-free, and it was such a fabulous experience—we even got to take a private onsen bath in our room after. We had chawanmushi, sashimi and nigiri, tiny little vegetables, and even roast beef. But the thing that got me was...it was so long. I was like, “Oh my god, it’s been three hours, we gotta get out of here! I need to check on my grandma! The sun is going down!” It was the length of Titanic, the movie, and it gave me anxiety but was also fun for the same reasons.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.