Rowena Romulo retired from 30 years in banking, then opened London's Romulo Café and later Kasa & Kin in Soho, built on her grandmother's recipes from a family compound in Manila. She hates the word authentic. Her food, she says, just has to taste like home.

A few years ago, after one of Hong Kong Film Festival UK's screenings, a woman walked up to Ching Wong. She had moved from Hong Kong a few months earlier. Until that evening, she had barely left her home. “She said she had arrived in the UK a few months before, but this was her first time really getting out of her house to be in a social occasion, because she was scared, she was feeling very unsettled. But this experience was very important for her. She felt safe and connecte

Robert Ngo spent ten years as an architectural designer before £5,000 and a market stall turned into Eat Lah, two sites that failed, and finally a Malaysian kopitiam of his own in Canary Wharf. The green tiles, the music and the coffee all came back from Malaysia with him. His mum wraps the wontons.

Twenty-seven Japanese women photographers, more than 200 works, and seventy years of a history that was mostly told without them. Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now spans four floors of The Photographers' Gallery until 27 September. Here is what to look for, and how to get in free.

Three years ago Angie and Irene got lost looking for the venue, then worried nobody would come to their first market. Fifty-odd markets later, Urban Garden Fair brings Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea into car parks and courtyards across London. We asked them why an East Asian market rather than a Hong Kong one, and what a message from a stranger in Malaysia changed.

Joe spent thirteen years in banking before he left to cook. It was Christine, his wife and co-founder, who told him to go, and her father who settled it with one sentence about happiness. Now they run SHOKUDŌ, a Japanese comfort food business built on a deliberately small menu, an ox tongue from a Hong Kong restaurant that no longer exists, and a rule about wasting nothing.

Chef Yu spent nine years perfecting a beef noodle recipe that fuses French red wine braising with Taiwanese technique. Now he's in Paddington, filling a gap he spotted in London's Taiwanese food scene.

Muri (Muriel Gonzales) is a Filipino violinist and singer-songwriter who came up through The Ransom Collective in Manila before moving to Paris alone, writing her debut EP 11ème, and performing at SXSW and Focus Wales as the sole Filipino act. We sat down with her in London — as she opened for @moonlanegardens at Dingwalls Camden — to talk jazz clubs, her grandmother, and what keeps her making music.

Masami came to London at 23 and never left. Thirteen years later, she's at Shepherd's Bush Market making onigiri with the precision of someone who believes one dish, done well, is enough. We visited Sosaku Onigiri to hear about the stall, the flavours, and the philosophy behind the name.