Remember that firsthand parenting book named “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” from the uber-strict, Chinese-American mom that made the rounds last year? Hours of piano lessons followed by hours of math tutoring for her children.

Carissa Coze, a partner at law firm Jenner & Block in downtown Los Angeles, thinks it was just one example of how Asian-Americans have been typecast in media.

She’s hoping to present a more diverse picture as a new board member of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Dispelling stereotypes is a principle of the festival, held in May at cinemas around the city. Coze, who is Chinese-American, joined the event’s board earlier this year when she was asked to contribute to fundraising efforts and boosting the event’s public profile.

“One of the things this tries to show is that there is a whole breadth of entertainment that Asian producers are making,” she said.

The 45-year-old mother said she also breaks with the Tiger Mom stereotype at home by encouraging her preteen kids in their chosen hobbies: One is a runner and the other’s an aerialist.

“No piano lessons and math tutors in my house,” Coze said.

Very Fresh

A small group of reporters was invited to Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant at the recently renovated Hotel Bel-Air a few weeks ago to meet Denise Flanders, the hotel’s new general manager. But meeting her was just an appetizer.

After lunch, Puck emerged from the kitchen and, seeing the reporters, seized the opportunity to impress them with an impromptu tour.

Flanders explained that the famous chef lives near the hotel, so he tends to spend more time there than he might at some of his other restaurants.

He and the group walked past long stainless steel counters and stopped at the end, where he proceeded to show what he had picked up at the fish market that morning. First, a sous chef handed him a nearly 2-foot-long Alaskan king salmon. Next, he showed a large slab of fresh-cut tuna, pointing out it was bigeye tuna, not the endangered blue fin variety.

Then, a sous chef brought over a polystyrene foam bucket of water containing live Santa Barbara prawns.

Puck picked one of them up to give reporters a closer look and, as he did, the prawn bucked and squirmed its way out of his hands and onto the floor.

Puck laughed and said, “See? He knows what’s coming!”

Staff reporters Jonathan Polakoff and Bethany Firnhaber contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].