As soon as I step through the door of the Rice Residency, known colloquially as a hacker house, a piping hot hotteok — a Korean fried spiral of dough with a cinnamon and nut center — is passed to me by Nathan Kwon, a Will Rice College junior.
A question swiftly follows the snack: “Would you buy it for a dollar?” He isn’t just a gracious host. It’s product testing.
Apparently, the flow of feedback is continuous. He asks Lana Yepifanova, the house’s founder and a Will Rice senior, if the recipe is better than yesterday’s. It transpires that the nuts are new…