A Cambridge Story Decades in the Making

Tracy Chang’s fondest childhood memories are those from her grandmother’s Japanese restaurant in Cambridge. Chin-Fun Shiue immigrated to Boston in the 1980's and after having been a midwife her entire professional life in Taiwan, she decided in her late 60s, to open restaurants in Boston. She opened several, including the area’s premier Japanese restaurant in the 1990s, Tokyo Restaurant, where acclaimed sushi chefs like Toru Oga of Oga’s in Natick and Shinji Muraki of Toraya in Arlington, trained before opening their own establishments. At an early age, Tracy observed how her grandmother’s hard work and leadership created opportunities for other immigrants, who in turn helped build a hearth for the multicultural community with tasty food and gracious hospitality. It was no wonder that Tokyo’s regulars included culture influencers like Yo Yo Ma, Pat Morita, and Julia Child.

While earning her B.S. in Finance from Boston College, Tracy worked jobs in various industries, all with a focus on service and leadership, with stints in healthcare, sports and coaching. She co-founded the food and recipe column in the BC Heights with her roommate, and often hosted study groups, dinner parties and dimsum outings with friends and professors, gathering folks to participate in making homemade dumplings, noodles and dessert.

Ultimately, her hunger for restaurant experience led her to work at O Ya while she finished her finance degree. She sought to learn pastry from the crème de la crème, and went on to study with MOF Pâtissier Nicolas Bernardé at Le Cordon Bleu Paris.

From Paris, she traveled south and over the border to Spain, where she won a scholarship to cook alongside Chef Martín Berasategui at his Michelin three-star restaurant in San Sebastian. Three months in to her scholarship with Berasategui, he offered her the rare opportunity to be his “mano derecha”, and she spent the rest of the year travelling alongside him to all events from Alicante to New York. She coordinated television production with Berasategui and David de Jorge on the set of Robin Food, as well as directed his public lectures, lead his marketing and communications department, and launched his social media initiatives.

An unexpected family emergency led Tracy to return to Boston, where she spent the next year taking care of her father and her pug, Phoebe, who required spinal cord surgery. While she helped nurse her dear ones back to health, she re-grouped with her former O Ya co-workers to conceptualize and co-found Guchi’s Midnight Ramen (GMR), directing back of the house preparations as well as front of the house service and hospitality. Their GMR collaborators included Bondir, No. 9 Park, Sportello, Stir, The Gallows, JM Curley, MIT, The West End House Boys and Girls Club, Bocoup, Adelphic Mobile, Locately, Harvard Business School, The Barbara Lynch Foundation, 3 Princes Consulting and TEDxCambridge.

In the fall of 2012, Tracy officially joined as a teaching fellow with the Harvard Science + Cooking program. She coordinated public and student lectures with world-renowned chefs such as Ferran Adria, Jose Andres, Bill Yosses, Joan, Jordi and Josep Roca, Enric Rovira, Andoni Luis Aduriz, Nathan Myhrvold, David Chang, Daniel Humm, Mark Ladner, Carles Tejedor, Pere Planaguma, and Nandu Jubany. She is still involved in the program, working with Professor Michael Brenner, Preceptor Pia Sorensen, the Alicia Foundation and Pere Castells, and visiting chefs from around the world.

Opening Her own Brick & Mortar

Through hosting events in Boston and Cambridge with friends in tech, arts and university, Tracy not only met like-minded, visionaries with a common knack for gathering movers and shakers in the community, but also formed lifelong friendships. With the help of Jesse Baerkahn and his team at Graffito SP, she found the perfect home for PAGU, 310 Mass. Ave., nestled between Central Square and MIT, the hub of innovation.

In opening PAGU, Tracy also made a new lifelong mentor and family friend, Marvin Gilmore, who sold her the alcohol license for PAGU from the Western Front, a beloved night club in Cambridgeport that opened its doors in 1967. The two became good friends spending many Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners together. The two became good friends spending many Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners together, and PAGU catered Marvin's 100th birthday party, an unforgettable evening of music Tracy's own small children were also able to attend.

Enduring Through Crisis

During the pandemic, a time when many restaurant operators were scrambling to save their businesses, Tracy helped found two non-profits that helped restaurants keep employing their people by providing food through new channels. Off Their Plate gave restaurants work to create and deliver meals to front line workers, and Project Restore Us (PRU) connected restaurants with leaders in underserved communities so that those restaurants could assemble and deliver culturally specific food boxes to those in need. The initiative was helped by many volunteers who helped pack and deliver the food boxes.

Today, Project Restore Us continues to deliver on the promise to find meaningful ways to connect the community with food resources. In 2025, PRU’s goal is to launch a project that re-conceptualizes the food pantry model providing a pathway for our youth to access culturally relevant food, selected by the youth, in a dignified way. Learn more about this new approach.

Ongoing Collaborations

Through her Covid relief work, Tracy met Jonny Zackman, and together founded Roundtable, an event series convening top chefs, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and community organizers for meaningful connection and actionable social good.

Roundtable was launched to revive the energy found in creating space for idea sharing and problem solving together. Building bridges through shared plates between chefs, activists, students, designers, and other members of local communities to further a vision for equity.

In summer of 2023, we launched the Roundtable Culinary Program. The Roundtable Culinary Program is a collaboration between Roundtable, Project Restore Us and the Moses Youth Center. Our programming focuses on leadership development in parallel with the development of kitchen acumen, education on budgeting and making healthy choices, and learning of job opportunities in the food industry.

Accolades

2024 - Tracy Chang was a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for "Best Chef: Northeast".
2023 - Tracy Chang was awarded Best Chef with a Mission by Best of Boston.
2020 - Tracy Chang was a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for "Best Chef: Northeast".
2017 - Tracy was awarded Chef of the Year from the Boston Globe