Christopher O’Leary grew up in Hong Kong and the Philippines before moving to Liverpool and eventually London, carrying with him a lifetime of flavours that existed mostly in memory. When he lost his mother, those memories became urgent. He started writing down the recipes she had made, the dishes he had eaten, the food that connected him to a heritage he was afraid of losing. What began as therapy became, in 2019, a zine called FatBoy — a self-described greedy attempt to document a very small part of Asian food and identity.
Each issue is built around a geographic place or an abstract theme. The first two explored O’Leary’s personal history in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Issue three, Palette & Politics, examined Hong Kong’s communal food culture against the backdrop of the democracy protests. Issue four abandoned geography entirely to explore multiple heritages — the shared experience of belonging to more than one culture at once. Issue five travelled to Taiwan, where O’Leary and his partner, photographer Emily Leonard, spent time with food designer Slow Chen and illustrator Frank Huang. The visual identity shifts radically with every edition: one issue draws on ceramic patterns and internet memes, the next explodes into neon gradients and 3D sculpture. Illustrator Ze Lai drew directly over the layouts of the Taiwan issue, because the experimental energy of Taipei’s art scene demanded it.
The format is deliberate: staple-bound, printed on G.F Smith paper, small enough to get messy in a kitchen without feeling like a loss. O’Leary, a graphic designer by trade, wanted something personable and un-precious — not the heavy, untouchable cookbooks that end up as shelf decoration. Six issues in, featured by It’s Nice That, magCulture, Elephant Magazine, and the Los Angeles Public Library, FatBoy Zine has become one of the most distinctive food publications in the UK: part cookbook, part diary, part love letter to the flavours that make us who we are.
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