personal essay

Self Acceptance with a Side of Ketchup

Keya Wingfield
Keya Wingfield
Equal parts chef, entrepreneur, instructor, and mother, Keya Wingfield is as dynamic as the food she creates. While her formal culinary education took place in Richmond, Virginia, her love and passion for food began in her hometown of Bombay, India. The reigning champion of Food Network’s “Spring Baking Championship”, Keya not only enjoys baking (her first love), but is also involved in other ventures, such as recipe development, as well as her own brand of potato chips, aptly named “Bombay Chips.” While thousands have enjoyed Keya’s food, her biggest challenge to date is getting her three-year old to eat something other than mac and cheese.
published Jan 21, 2023
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Illustration of ketchup on scrambled eggs.
Credit: Jessie Wong

In Bombay where I grew up, the street food scene is ridiculously vibrant, and no street food is complete without ketchup. There’s a very popular dish known as egg bhurji, which is a hot, steaming plate of spicy eggs; heavily buttered bread buns; and, you guessed it, a generous squirt of ketchup. It’s life.

When I moved to the U.S. in 2005, I realized that ketchup on eggs didn’t really translate. I was now married to a tall, handsome American from Richmond, Virginia, who grew up a little differently than I did. One morning we were having breakfast with his family, and I was having eggs. I squeezed a small amount of ketchup on my eggs. OMG. There was cringing, side-eyes, and, in some cases, total avoidance. It occurred to me that perhaps putting ketchup on eggs was a faux pas in this neck of the woods. 

Not wanting to look like a complete immigrant weirdo, I scraped the ketchup off my eggs and sloppily spread it on my potatoes. Crisis averted. We may have moved on, but I was never more aware of this cultural divide.

I could handle the staring and the cringing, but what I couldn’t handle was eggs without ketchup.

Eventually I learned how to bridge the gap. I was getting really good at making these “hybrid” meals where I would take a traditionally “American” food and put the “Indian” in it. Things like putting tadka in my pasta, or adding cardamom and ghee to my apple pie. Where self-acceptance meets public approval: That’s where I lived.

Why did it feel riskier? What made it so … dangerous? Because I never saw ketchup on the table! Salt, check! Pepper, there it is! Butter, you got it! Ketchup? Ketchup? No ketchup! I couldn’t just get up and go get it, could I? I knew that if I did, I’d be happy, but I’d also be an outcast. 

After a while, though, the constant pressure to be myself was beginning to outweigh the need for acceptance. Whereas before I would never dare to put ketchup on my eggs in public, now I wasn’t so concerned with what others thought. I could handle the staring and the cringing, but what I couldn’t handle was eggs without ketchup.

Sometime in 2019, I decided that enough is enough. I was having brunch with friends, and I reached for the ketchup. Feeling the stares, I unapologetically put ketchup on my eggs. No longer would I hide my true self. I forcibly made eye contact with everyone while I kept adding ketchup. Yeah, this is me … you got a problem with that? I don’t think so! We’re doing this! The ketchup flowed!

I quickly realized that in my zeal to add ketchup, I added about five times the amount I would normally add. My eggs were now drowning in ketchup! So I scraped some of it off, and offered onlookers (yep, they were staring) a chance to try ketchup with their eggs (no takers). 

Maybe we need more ketchup on eggs, maybe not. All I know is that I had a front-row seat to the clash of two cultures, courtesy of ketchup and eggs.