Alice Chen Wrote 99 Ranch’s First Cookbook a Week After H Mart’s.

Alice Chen stands in a produce aisle on the cover, in a white shirt, one hand on a red shopping basket and the other holding a dragon fruit over a bin of them. The title across the top is Did You Eat Yet? Beside it, in Chinese: 你吃了嗎?

99 Ranch Market released the e-book today. Printed hardcovers are due later this fall. Chen is the company’s chief executive, and the daughter of Roger Chen, who opened the first store in Westminster, California, in 1984 after leaving Taichung, Taiwan. He had missed the marketplace he knew there, and the flavors that came with it. The chain now counts 66 stores in 11 states.

Chen wrote the introduction from her own years around those stores. The other pages set 88 recipes next to stories from people who work at 99 Ranch. Those recipes include Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, and Southeast Asian cooking, and other cuisines too. One section is a pantry guide to the sauces, wines, rice, and spices that stall a first visit. Another chapter is named for saving someone the best piece.

In the announcement, Chen said that in many of these families, parents and grandparents are not used to saying “I love you” out loud. They make a favorite dish, cut fruit, or ask whether you have eaten. That question is the title.

Last Tuesday, H Mart published a first cookbook of its own. President Stacey Kwon, whose father Il Yeon Kwon opened the first shop in Woodside, Queens, in 1982, wrote 75 Korean recipes and a guide to those aisles. That book is already a $50 hardcover. 99 Ranch’s is still an e-book.

The e-book is on sale now through Apple Books, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.