Ugly Delicious (2018) s01e07 Episode Script
Fried Rice
1 When I'm plating a dish, I want to capture my inner being in relation to nature.
I'm painting a canvas and representing Mother Earth.
Every ingredient captured on my plate is living and breathing.
It needs to be perfectly balanced.
It's not just about the food.
It's something more.
Have you ever seen lightning? I have.
So, when you guys go to Chinese restaurants, do you order fried rice? Is that something you eat on a regular basis? I have a soft spot for it.
One of my favorite foods growing up was my mom cooking fried rice.
So simple, so basic.
She would sometimes make a version with just scrambled egg and scallions.
And it was really good.
Fried rice, to me, is a hangover food, so I actually don't order at restaurants because my Every time I was in China and we were at a restaurant, my mom would be like, "No, rice is the filler.
" I often eat fried rice at home for breakfast.
Very often with an egg over it.
In fact, I bring cooked rice from our restaurant so that it'll be cold the next day and I don't have to cook some fresh rice.
Today, I ordered golden fried rice.
It was the number one choice.
I don't know what "golden" meant, but Fried rice is something that's humble in origin will never be a $1,000 dish, unless you put caviar and truffles on it, which I'm sure some asshole's gonna do.
- With uni and caviar.
- Fried rice with caviar is awesome.
Jesus, man.
Here's the asshole we were looking for.
He's sitting at our table.
Speaking of rice, one of my big pet peeves when people talk about Chinese food is, "Oh, I love Panda Express, but I won't eat this.
I love P.
F.
Chang's.
That's Chinese food.
" I'm like, "No, it's not.
" I love Chinese food You know that it's true I love fried rice I love noodles I love chow mein Chow m-m-m-m-mein! Chinese food is the most pervasive food on the planet.
It's served on all seven continents, even Antarctica, 'cause Monday night is Chinese food night at McMurdo Station.
There's Chinese food in space.
NASA serves sweet and sour pork to astronauts.
So, there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chickens combined.
The dishes like General Tso's chicken and egg rolls are completely indigenous to America.
Kung Pao chicken! 364 days of the year, Americans eat Chinese food, and one day of the year they eat turkey.
Thanksgiving is the number one day for Chinese weddings in America.
If our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie, you should ask yourself how often you eat Chinese food versus how often you eat apple pie.
I wanna put that egg roll in my mouth hole.
There's this idea of a monolithic Chinese food, like, "Let's go get Chinese food.
" And you go to a place and there's 250 things on the menu.
It's part of our beautiful tapestry of foods, guys.
You gotta have it all, right? I wanna know how you felt, growing up in Hong Kong, what Chinese food in America was.
What did you think or hear about it? When I came here in 1986, I see, oh, American Chinese food.
Very sweet and sour.
- Orange chicken, sweet and sour.
- Stuff like that.
I look at a dish and this is how I almost look at Chinese-American food versus Chinese-mainland food is, "Will white people eat this?" - Right.
- And I don't know.
This dish, I don't know.
I think it's amazing.
You have textural contrast I think white people will eat this in a hot second.
But you're not like a white person.
Oh, no.
You would have to explain it, give it a frame of reference.
It's like a spring roll, like a fried crab sushi roll, almost, whereas that's how you explain it.
You're talking about how you get them to sell it.
I'm talking about how you get them to enjoy it.
So, going back to what Chinese-American food is, I remember growing up and I would talk to people, they would always say, I remember when I was a kid, how bad Chinese food was in China.
Even now, I spoke to a friend of ours, a comedian, he was like, "Chinese food's terrible.
" And I was like, "Man, you are a smart, sophisticated, intelligent guy.
How do you think this?" Because he grew up thinking that Chinese food is Chinese-American, and when he goes to China, it's not remotely the same.
The food of China is extraordinarily diverse, very complex, and way more than what most people think of, like take-out delivery fried rice.
Totally.
China's more of a continent than a country, and one Chinese province is like a European country.
And I like to remember that Chinese people often talk about "Western food," and they often say "Western food" is very monotonous and very simple.
To anyone from the West, that's crazy, because you've got French food, Italian, American, everything, and you can't talk about them all in one word.
But we do that with Chinese food.
Whoa.
So, these are yuan yang.
These are Mandarin ducks, which are a symbol of marital harmony.
They're made of egg white.
They're like floating islands.
And the waitresses are dressed in Manchu costumes.
It's a throwback to the Manchu imperial court of the Qing dynasty.
Oh, and this is your favorite food, isn't it? Oh, no.
- It's more sea cucumber.
- Sea cucumber.
Yeah, and this is a real classic Shandong dish.
Easily my least favorite food in the world.
I want to convert you, 'cause I love them, and if you're going to like sea cucumber, this is the best way to try them.
It makes me nauseous thinking about it.
You especially requested this dish.
These are tendons from deer's feet.
So they're one of those texture foods.
- So, they've got that glutinous texture.
- Why would you request this? Well, I love this sort of thing by now.
I'm a total convert and I'm hoping to persuade you that you'll love them, too.
Um, would you like to get the worst bit over first and have your favorite food, the sea cucumber? Put aside all your prejudices, and just try to enjoy that sort of soft rubberiness.
Mmm.
- I don't mind the flavor of sea cucumber.
- Yeah.
It's the texture.
Texture or mouth feel, kou gan, is so important in Chinese food and it's part of the whole pleasure and experience of eating.
A lot of the textures that Chinese people really love, westerners don't like so much.
Like slimy, slippery, gristly, you know? Westerners tend to like the crispness of deep-fried foods, but in China, there's a much bigger range of textures.
So, people coming here for the first time, they're just completely outside your frame of reference for textures, right? Like myself.
And this is another kind of food that's completely baffling to Westerners, because essentially you just get dried tendons.
Completely inedible, and you have to laboriously soak them and fry them and braise them to make them edible.
I feel like a newb.
It's got a lot of chew.
I don't think I can finish this.
- Really? Do you want a napkin? - Fuck.
I really like it, but he doesn't like it.
I'm so sorry.
Can you tell him how sorry I am? He says he's really sorry, and says he's not quite accustomed to it.
I especially wanted him to eat it because I think it's interesting.
It's a good thing.
He doesn't like it.
If you're, uh, outside of China trying to get into Chinese food, these texture foods are the last frontier.
It took me years of eating in China, and politely eating all these slithery, rubbery, gristly things, and not enjoying them, to finally enjoy them.
And now I really like them and I see that the texture is part of the pleasure.
This isn't bizarre.
It's just new to me.
I'm reminded what it's like to eat something for the first time and to be a foreigner to something.
Spin the wheel.
No whammies.
I have always revered Chinese food.
And I thought it was time that New Yorkers started to take it seriously.
My predecessor at the Times didn't think about anything but European restaurants as being worthy of And they made this real distinction between the $25, the cheap eats column, and the serious column.
And I came here with a real intention of changing that.
"New York Noodletown, with its bustle and clatter, its shared tables and its chefs wreathed in billows of steam rising from the cauldrons of soup in the front of the restaurant, is as close as you can get to Hong Kong without leaving Manhattan.
Cooks from southern China are famous for their ability to bring out the essential nature of each ingredient.
This is a cuisine of simplicity and inspired combination.
Noodletown may seem modest, but notice how carefully each vegetable has been cut, the way each piece of carrot, each bit of green onion is exactly the same size.
There is nothing casual about this kitchen.
" I want them to feel like when they finished reading the review, they've been at the restaurant.
A good critic gives the reader a better way to experience it.
Being able to introduce people to something that you know is fantastic, that they've never tasted before, it's just a joy.
I'm in this business for 45 years, I've eaten a lot of great stuff, I go to Hong Kong a lot, and when you start studying Chinese food, you realize that Chinese food is probably the most sophisticated food on the planet.
Where's Chinese food's place in the world of cuisine? - Joe's skill is spectacular.
- He's out there, man.
He can make dumplings that look like animals.
And they all taste delicious.
It doesn't get the credit it deserves.
Let's just say look at Italian food, 40, 50 years ago.
Now, everyone knows about Italian food, for the most part.
They know types of pasta names.
It's crazy to me.
Do you think that in 20, 30 years, that the Gen Y generation will know more about Chinese food than anyone else, and they won't When they go to China, they're gonna be like, "Oh, this is exactly what I wanted.
" I think you're right.
We have regional Italian restaurants in New York now.
I think, in 20 years, people might know the difference between Yunnan and Hunan.
You guys are so optimistic.
That's the thing, but Italians are white, so, come on.
A lot of the regionality still happens in urban areas.
- It's true.
- LA, New York.
You don't have this variety in, necessarily, the Midwest or the South, where there aren't just as many Chinese immigrants.
So, if I'm interested in food, I'm living in suburban Knoxville, the truth is I only have maybe one, two Chinese restaurants that are available to me to try.
And the truth is, Italians have very much assimilated into culture.
And then there's still that block for Chinese-Americans because we're not white.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
- Good to see you.
- Good to see you.
When did you first move here? - Why did you come here? - Because my family is here.
My wife was UT student before.
Oh, okay, okay.
When you first came, were there many Chinese people? There were some, not that many.
- These are the things you like to eat.
- Well, yeah.
Because, uh, I come from Chongqing, Sichuan.
- Mmm.
- All gentlemen can cook.
But your own food here isn't Sichuanese.
No, no, no.
This is all American Chinese.
American Chinese? Yeah.
If I make 100% Chinese No business.
My mom said when she came here, she would call you first so that you could make her 'Cause my mom loves spicy food and Sichuan food, so she said she would call you and you'd have to make stuff.
That's right.
Do they just have to call ahead? Because here, 98% is American people.
- Just a few Chinese.
- Mmm-hmm.
If some Chinese want Chinese food, of course I have to do it.
But I cannot prepare all the Chinese food for waiting Chinese come in.
- Right? - Yeah.
So, them have to call first, then I prepare.
I don't have a Chinese menu.
Because if I got a Chinese menu, I cannot go away.
- I'd have to cook all the time.
- Yeah.
How do Americans who know that you're cooking, how do they find out? Now, sometimes them come in here eat and Chinese eat here, too.
Them say, "Oh, what's that? What's that?" Then next time, got a special.
- I see.
- Serve it like that.
About 90% of Chinese restaurant workers in America now come from one region of China called Fuzhou.
It's really interesting going there, 'cause many towns are ghost towns.
There are no men of working age.
So many of the people there go to America to work in restaurants.
They actually have English language schools that specifically teach restaurant English.
Words like "zucchini," "French fries.
" And the teacher says, "You must say 'fried rice.
' Do not say, 'flied lice.
'" It's a very practical way of responding to the economic forces that are pulling those people to the United States.
When the immigrants first came here, they set up shop.
They were a successful community.
We're sandwiched between two very iconic restaurants.
Unfortunately, they both closed.
Um, this one right here, Kan's.
The chef was Johnny Kan.
He was the one that introduced the lazy Susan to Americans.
That happened there.
The Empress of China, that is like a dream restaurant.
When I went in there for the first time, I was like, "This is amazing.
" Massive chandeliers, fully adorned dining room.
People came here for a fancy banquet dinner.
This has been part of the nightlife of San Francisco for a long time.
Having the experience of being a third-generation Chinese-American, being exposed to a lot of different things, I cooked Italian food before I cooked Chinese food.
I believe in small, organic local farms, seasonality, all these things that came out of a lot of my training in California cuisine.
When I first thought of fried rice, I thought of how my mom used to make it.
We would eat a steak restaurant and she would have a bunch of steak left over.
So this is wagyu sirloin.
We'll hit this.
We're just trying to melt some of the fat off of it and use it as a base for our rice.
One of the most classic combinations of Chinese-American food is beef and broccoli, so, this is some Italian variety of broccoli, and this is rice that's been dried out for two or three days, and then just some egg.
There's some food that isn't meant to be tweezered.
This food is about being delicious.
For me, this is about trying to speak to Chinese-Americans that want to feel a sense of pride in Chinese food again.
Mmm-hmm.
So, I think when you're a kid growing up American, you're trying to be American, you're trying to assimilate.
Where I grew up, there weren't a ton of Asian people.
In my high school, a large percentage was Latino.
We had black kids, white kids, not a ton of Asians.
So, I was trying to fit in with other kinds of people.
It wasn't like, "Let me learn the difference between Hunan and Shanghainese and Cantonese cuisine.
" - You were looking inside.
- Yeah.
I was learning about carne asada, man.
Chinese restaurants have many different levels.
A really high class, a really low class.
But people don't know that.
People don't know that there's royal, grand, banquet cuisine in China.
All the restaurants almost sell the same thing.
So you can't compare which one is the high level, which one is the low level.
To me, again, the giant, 1,000 pound gorilla in the room is racism - in Chinese food, right? - Exactly.
And why I get upset about how it's perceived is that it's always seen as somewhat inferior, or I always think about, just looking about service, - the lazy Susan, to me, is genius.
- Yeah.
Asian restaurant service, where it's curt, it's very efficient, but there's no niceties, really.
The more rude you are, the better service you're gonna get.
- It's legitimately a cultural difference.
- Right.
People think that's terrible service, right? Yeah.
And that's, to me, where it starts.
Last time I was here, it was insanely crowded.
- We had to fight for a table.
- Uh-huh.
I don't even know how I got here.
I didn't even know it was in the San Gabriel Valley, so I'm happy to be back.
I have only been here once before and I had no idea what I was doing.
I ordered three things because I read Jonathan Gold's review, and I was like, "All right.
You gotta get the lobster.
" If I come in here, where do I start? The first thing is, Chinese restaurant packed with Chinese people is a good sign.
Is this your local spot? Yeah, his local spot.
- Wendy, you hungry? - A little bit.
Come on, sit down.
- This is a cold starter? - Yeah.
- This isn't on the menu, right? - Not on the menu That's what I'm trying to get at.
- There's all this secret stuff.
- Oh, yes.
Pro tip.
There's always a secret menu.
I know that you have secret ways to cook lobster.
You just have to badger them to the point where it's like, "I'm just gonna give you something so you leave us alone.
" The peanut, um, what is it? Uh, with the soy sauce? - Can we try that, too? How do I know? - Yes.
This is a lot of work to get to the real menu.
There's no way you can do this without being an obnoxious - We never cook that.
- Oh, that's not true.
Come on.
Whoever's peacocking the largest is gonna get the attention.
What kind of, uh, rice or noodle should we finish with? Oh, I have one secret fried rice.
Yeah! If you order well, it's like Morse Code to the kitchen.
Whenever you go to a place like this, you go straight to the fish tank.
Whoa, whoa.
Oh, my God.
It's prehistoric.
And this would feed how many people? Easy.
Eight, ten.
That is unbelievably good.
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, shit.
That is your fried rice.
I can't wait to come back, and now I know how to order.
This is a lot of food.
It's a good idea to come with people.
A lot of people.
Now there's a lot of money in China.
There's true respect for Chinese food.
Why would a great Chinese chef come to America, where everybody thinks that Chinese food is supposed to be cheap and they don't really respect it? If you want great Chinese food, you are probably not gonna get it in America unless you go to Las Vegas, where they attract a Chinese audience by getting great chefs there.
In recent years, there has been a change and now the Chinese middle class is traveling the world.
They're the number one tourists in the world.
They're certainly the number one foreign tourists in Las Vegas.
So 20 years ago, it would be hard to see this kind of restaurant open.
The key to this restaurant has always been, from day one, authenticity.
In the past year, we have been very, very lucky and successful in adding to our Asian culinary talent.
We have, uh, Chef Yu, and he is from Beijing, and he is a master of northern Chinese food.
- Ah.
Look at this.
- What is this? This is hand-stretched noodles like you would get in Shandong province, China.
And then there's a mixture there of tomato and kind of like a scrambled egg.
This is so good.
- Fried sea fish.
- Wow! I'm so happy to be here right now.
My God, this food is bonkers.
This is a fish.
This preparation comes from Chengdu, China.
So this is a Sichuanese fish.
This is a sensation that I don't think ten years ago you could get in America.
I love this.
This is also one of my favorite dishes to eat.
This is as good as you can get in America.
Usually, I'm not a huge fan of having it super authentic, but I think for Chinese food, since it really hasn't been done Yep.
you actually want it authentic so you actually have a reference point.
Exactly.
How many times do you get customers that just want traditional Chinese-American dishes? What we could serve here 10, 11 years ago, and what we now can serve to a convention here, and they will appreciate, is two different things.
The climate for acceptance of this type of food has never been higher.
- Hi, Chef.
- This is Chef Su.
- How are you? - Very good.
Born in Guangdong, and then grew up, uh, cooking in Hong Kong.
Chef Su's probably been here eight, nine years at this point.
Chef, this is so good.
"Fortune cookies are not native to China.
They're from California.
" True.
"The Chinese takeout box is completely American.
It was originally designed for shucked oysters.
" "China uses 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year.
" "Chinese food's five key flavors are balanced according to traditional Chinese medicine.
" "You want gluten-free? Go fuck yourself.
" "I am a Nigerian prince.
Please send money.
" "Why don't these things have emojis?" "And the winner is La La Land.
" "This is a racist scam.
You should stop.
" "Fortune cookies are fake news.
Sad.
" In every town, basically, in America, but specifically in the South, it's a little bit surprising to find Chinese food.
Yes, well, there is actually a solid Chinese community here I grew up with.
Did you ever grow up thinking, "Why am I Chinese?" All the time.
Of course! Did you grow up and think, "Why am I Korean?" Yeah.
I was like, "Man, this sucks.
" Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was always like, "Man, I wish I was just white," because of acceptance and culture, but also acceptance of the food, because there was so much more to explain.
If you hung out with a lot of white people, you tried not to eat Chinese food or Korean food - Around them.
- around white people.
Yeah, yeah.
You hungry? - Join us.
- Uh Yeah, why not.
I don't believe anything you say unless you start eating this food.
Okay, then let's try, then.
But I'm truly hungry.
Oh.
Yes, I eat here.
And I've tried every single one of them.
I can tell I like every one.
- Is this intestine? - Yes.
Mmm.
Intestine.
See, this is what my parents did.
They serve it to me and they don't tell me what it is.
And then I start liking it, and then they tell me How'd it taste? - It tastes like intestines.
- Well - What does intestine taste like? - What I imagined.
What I just tasted.
You're telling me that people order this? - A lot.
Yes.
- A lot? I can tell you we do stuff with more intestines than our gourmet noodles.
- What? - Really? - Yeah.
No, I'm not lying.
- I know you're not lying.
Me, dummy me, had the preconceived idea that the top five things here would be egg rolls, lo mein, fried rice, - General Tso's chicken.
- Right, right.
- It's not? - No, it's not.
Well If that's what you're looking for, you're in the wrong place.
Right? Well, I think I have to go back to work now.
- Okay.
Thank you.
- Okay.
I wanna believe him, I really do.
I'm shocked, honestly.
Maybe we don't give people enough credit.
- No, no, no, no.
- No? We give people too much credit.
I don't know.
A lot of people still think, American-Chinese food, all they have are egg roll, fried chicken wing, yellow rice, right now, I don't know where they come from.
I think we're spoiled, man.
Yeah, we're in these big urban areas.
We're in big cities and we have all of these different Chinese options, but for people in smaller towns, there's one Chinese place in town, and a lot of times that one place is a Panda Express.
Here's a weird story.
There's a basketball player named Kevin Durant, one of the greatest players in the world, and he used to play in Oklahoma City.
Back out.
Durant for three! Last year, he signed with the Golden State Warriors as a free agent.
So he went on the Warriors' Reddit, and said, "Hey, man, I'm new in the Bay Area.
Where should I go?" And one of the people on Reddit said, "You should try boba.
" He's like, "What's that?" And the person explained to him, it was this tapioca milk tea with these little balls in it.
Kevin Durant is exposed to a lot of stuff, but even he hasn't had boba, which to us is a thing that's been around in LA, - it's been in New York for decades.
- Yeah.
The next day, he posts a picture of himself holding a boba tea on that Reddit.
That's amazing.
In a different context, there weren't many Jewish people in my town, so I didn't have, like, a smoked fish - until I moved to New York.
- Same with me.
So, it's just a matter of who you are living around.
Growing up, I went to this restaurant called Wu's Garden, and this is a perfect example of immigrants.
They came from the Shandong province.
It was an iconic restaurant for my family and people that lived in this Virginia area, - and then it shut down.
- Yeah.
Because the kids didn't wanna take it over.
I'm sure their parents didn't want them to take it over.
Well, that's the thing.
You work hard in the business, you want your kids to have a better life, you want them to become a doctor or a lawyer or an Indian chief.
But now you're seeing a second generation of Asian-American kids that are like, "No, I want to do it.
" We're gonna do some fried rice.
Are you gonna make one, too? - I can make one, but I'd rather - Okay.
- I'm in your home.
- Yeah.
It's always two eggs.
A little onion.
There's garlic.
Do you prefer old rice, or it doesn't matter? Fresh rice Old rice is always preferable.
Like rice out of a deli container in the fridge.
A little bit dried out.
So, at this point, I'm gonna put in the rice, and then I follow it immediately with sugar.
White sugar is something that surprises a lot of people.
Just how much goes into any sort of Thai stir fry dish, or Thai-Chinese stir fry dish.
I like to get it kind of almost burned, kind of get it really smoky.
And then just at the end now, we're gonna put in some crab.
Cuisine of Thailand is so different than anything else, I think, in Asia.
- Yeah.
- How would you explain the difference? There's fried rice.
People are using a wok I think the seasoning is the main thing.
It's sort of the combination.
Balance is something that people talk about with Thai food.
But that balance can mean different things for different dishes.
If it's fried rice, even the worst version, - I think is kind of good, so - Right.
I'm so excited.
What really interests me is how things get passed down.
My dad was in the restaurant business, wasn't a Korean, and he based his entire life to make sure I was never gonna be in the restaurant business.
All the restaurants that I would go to, they're all closed now because their kids are doing other stuff.
They're like bankers and lawyers and shit like that.
Yeah, yeah.
My parents opened up Talésai in 1982.
That's the year I was born.
My grandma was the original chef here.
It was all black and white, '80s minimalist.
I moved back here from New York in 2008 and took over, and had all these ideas for it.
I had never run a restaurant.
I didn't know anything about business.
I quickly got my ass handed to me.
It was really brutal.
Now, my dad, who built the restaurant, he was watching it slowly You know? Everyone else, like my grandma, everyone who was involved were like, "You gotta kick Kris out.
" No one was coming, no new customers.
I would literally get death threats.
People would come in and be like, "It's you, right? You're the fucker.
" Was there a breaking point with your parents and family where they're like, "This is the last straw, Kris.
You can't do this anymore"? Or they trusted you to push through this? Because, obviously, you've expanded.
Yeah.
Your restaurant group now is killing it.
What was the turning point there? I thought, "It can't get any worse.
I've already experienced the worst of the worst.
So, why don't I just give it a go?" It's funny, 'cause the food we started serving in 2010, when we opened Night + Market This is honestly the stuff that my parents would probably wanna eat, too.
You know? They felt like, "We might wanna eat it between lunch and dinner service in the back, but is anyone else gonna wanna eat it?" You know, like, "Whities aren't gonna like that.
It stinks to high heaven.
We gotta air it out.
" So, the food you're making now in the renaissance of the restaurant really was what your grandmother made and It was like staff meal food.
- You know what I mean? - That's the best stuff.
That's essentially what it was.
It wasn't thought out, it was like, "Let's put this out there.
" I think it's good and tasty.
Maybe other people are gonna like it, too.
Finally, I felt like I had something to offer.
Finally, I felt like I could do something.
I don't think there's any other culture that's as food-obsessed as the Chinese.
Right at the heart of Chinese culture, food was the way you communicated with your gods and ancestors by making edible offerings.
So people in China are absolutely obsessed with food, and it goes right from sort of imperial cooking, fancy banquet food, down to farmhouse cooking, street food, fermentation, all these things.
China just has it all.
Would you say that the food that most of America and western Europe thinks of as Chinese food is Chinese food at all? Because Chinese was one of the earliest immigrant cuisines, I think it adapted to American and also British taste at a time when people were maybe less cosmopolitan.
And they came out with a formula which kind of worked.
But since then, everyone's got more globalized in their taste, certainly in big cities.
Often for Chinese waiting staff, it's difficult to explain the food to people who don't speak Chinese.
And so I think it's just kind of easiest to give people sweet and sour pork, a General Tso's chicken, and the things that have a track record and everyone knows and loves.
It's more complicated selling more interesting Chinese dishes.
I've met people before who have said, "I don't like Chinese food, and I don't know if I can hang out with you.
" But I've also just seen around people saying online, on Twitter, whatever, reviews, "I'm scared of Indian food, I'm scared of Chinese food.
" When someone says that, I just think, "What are you scared of? Are you scared of a pork rib or a dumpling? And is it really about the food or are you just scared of the people?" There are some pretty vile things associated with food that no one ever wants to talk about.
Last year, you wrote a piece about Kings County Restaurant.
Kings County Imperial in Brooklyn.
This website did a review of a Chinese restaurant.
The chef happens to be white.
They were saying that the food was really good, but there are different options if you wanna eat Chinese food in New York and it's either you get gross and dirty in Chinatown, or go to Mission Chinese.
And then they proceeded to declare that this was the best Chinese restaurant in New York City.
And this dichotomy, like, "We love Chinese food and Chinese food is great, but it's dirty and gross, unless a white person cooks it.
" It's these old ideas of Chinese people being dirty, and Chinese food being gross, and not acceptable, and not "clean.
" I tweeted something like, "This is an incredibly racist review.
" And people started asking me, "Why is this I just don't understand.
" Why? 'Cause they just didn't see the same thing that I saw.
The history of Chinese food in America goes back to the 1850s and Chinese people emigrating here, and not occupying a very high place in society.
When the Chinese first came to American shores, they just took normal labor jobs.
It was agriculture, mining, railroads, factories.
The main problem was the Americans wanted these jobs.
These Chinese people were willing to work at a fraction of the price.
So there was a huge backlash against Chinese with immense violence.
There were shootings and lynchings.
And so the Chinese clustered around two industries, laundries and restaurants.
These are both women's work, so they're not as threatening to American men.
Americans thought these strangers ate cats.
If not cats, they ate rats.
In fact, the New York Times ran an article in the late 1800s that asked, in all seriousness, "Do the Chinese eat rats?" This idea of these people eating strange things was used to drive a wedge between us and foreignness.
What's really interesting is the Chinese Exclusion Act was when this concept of illegal immigration was born.
The Asian Exclusion Act meant no Chinese cooks legally came into this country until the GI Bride Act of 1945.
So, food for that almost 100-year period was inexperienced cooks dreaming of what they had eaten at home.
This is why, for so many Americans, Chinese food is not worthy of serious consideration.
Honestly, racism against Asian people is kind of okay.
We don't have that much political voice.
We don't have many famous people, though there's 15, 20 million of us.
It's pretty fucked up.
And one of the things that I think is most fucked up about fried rice, Chinese food or Asian food in general is MSG.
These Chinese is noted for MSG in the food, one of the reasons people have headaches when they get through eating Chinese.
It used to be that every customer who came in to our Chinese restaurants - would say, "You use MSG?" - Yeah.
- How do you feel about MSG? - I'm the biggest apologist ever for it.
You like it? I love it, and I think that if it's gonna be vilified, then all other food ingredients should be vilified and scrutinized just as much.
And immediately, when people say, "I don't like Chinese food," I'm like, "Why?" And they're like, "Oh, they add MSG.
" I'm like, "Oh, do I eat dog, too?" It gets a bad rap, but it's not worse than a lot of salt.
Yeah, MSG is a glutamic acid that's attached to a salt.
It is naturally occurring in the world.
When people are shaving Parmesan on pasta, it's like you're shaving MSG on food.
You had immigrants coming from China that didn't know how to cook, but if you add MSG to something, it's going to make it taste better.
- Maybe it was too much MSG.
- Yeah.
That's another thing about people getting sick.
People are more likely to think Chinese and other Asian foods made them sick than European foods, even though, statistically, the percentages are about the same.
No one ever says Doritos made them sick.
Look on the package.
There's MSG.
Hi, I'm Dave Chang.
Hey, I'm Ian Mosby.
I'm a food historian.
We're here to talk about monosodium glutamate, or MSG, as it's better known.
I get, kind of, that dull headache thing.
I feel dehydrated sometimes for a minute.
This terrible clamp, like it was closing in on my head, and a numbness around my jaw.
I still actually walk by some Chinese restaurants, and have these memories.
I start shaking.
Do you eat junk food? Or no? Why don't I just start this out right now? I'll go for the can.
- You have another Ruffles? - I have another Ruffles.
Yes.
Thank you.
- What about you? - More Ruffles.
Oh, my God.
Mmm! You have sour cream and onion, too? Ah, that's what I got.
When you wanna switch, just let me know.
This is one of the problems with MSG research.
Most of the food you're eating has MSG in it.
All those snacks.
Do any of you feel anything? It's happening right now with these Doritos.
These are really spicy.
- It's really spicy, right? - Yeah.
MSG is one of the most used food additives in the US.
Millions of tons of that stuff get used every year.
But most of it doesn't get used by Chinese restaurants.
Most of it gets used by the food processing industry.
But maybe it's about quantity.
If I'm indulging in a snack like this, it's not a meal.
Whereas I'm having an entire meal at Chinese restaurants, - I'd go crazy.
- Yeah.
I will make a meal out of that.
In some of the early studies, this was a disease they called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
" They didn't call it MSG Syndrome.
Maybe if you start thinking, "What are some of the things people associate with Chinese restaurants?" Like mystery meat and You know what I'm saying? You see a meat dish and it's $4.
95, you're skeptical, like, "Where is this sourced from?" When I was growing up, we lived near a Chinese restaurant, and everyone said, in the dumpster behind it, there are always lots of cat carcasses, which I'm sure was a rumor.
It's worth thinking about other cuisines of people who are racialized.
If you look at Mexican cuisine in the US, what are some of the health associations that people have with Mexican food? You have to eat it on the bowl, because you won't make it to the bathroom.
That's basically the assumption.
I never have that problem.
I love Mexican food.
I look at this, and I'm not the scientist, I'm not Ian.
But I'm like, "Wait a second.
Something's not right here, guys.
" It's not people individually being racist.
It's racist assumptions that are held on a pretty large scale.
We develop those biases because we just keep hearing about it, assume it's true.
Could be psychological.
Whether it's, "Don't go to this restaurant because you're gonna get sick," I tend to see more of that run by not just Chinese people or Korean people, but essentially anyone that's ethnic.
And, yeah, I definitely think that puts a ceiling in how far cuisine can go.
In America, when you think of a fancy restaurant, you think French, or maybe you think sushi, maybe you think Japanese.
But you don't usually think of a Chinese restaurant.
I think there's something to that.
Part of it is that there are more wealthy Japanese immigrants coming to the US.
Whereas the mass of Chinese immigrants is still more working class.
Like New York City, there are a lot of working-class Chinese people here.
That's part of the reason Chinese food hasn't reached that level yet.
This could be the best Chinese restaurant in New York City, and it will never get four stars in the New York Times.
It'll always get two stars.
Right.
It has that block.
Because of the decor, because of the service, because it's always gonna be viewed by essentially a white prism of what is a certain - The lens is always white.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
Toronto has six Chinatowns.
You see Chinatowns in cities, but they're probably not real Chinatowns anymore.
Chinese immigrants moved, and then they got displaced, then they went further and further out.
Markham is probably the predominant Chinese suburb.
"China-burbs.
" And the food there is spectacular.
I was always surprised at why didn't more non-Chinese people eat there.
Restaurants used to be effectively segregated.
There were white-people, Korean, Chinese, Ethiopian restaurants.
And people did not mix.
Criticism was the same.
If you were writing for the big, national newspaper, you were writing for white, rich people.
- I've never written about this place.
- Why not? Because I missed it, and I hang my head in shame.
- I missed it.
- You should.
How many people for the lobster mountain? For the lobster mountain, we have 15, 25 and 50 pounds.
- And it's about this high, right? - Um This high, I think, 50 pounds.
Yes.
It would be huge, the lobster.
Okay.
I'm scared.
I'll bring the 25-pound lobster.
- Okay.
- All right.
So much of traditional super high-end restaurants is about European decor that looks, for the most part, it fell out of a Williams-Sonoma catalog or Polo.
There is still a discounting of international food, or as old-guard critics would call it, "ethnic food.
" I fucking hate that term, but they would call it "ethnic food.
" As a layperson, I would say the waiter could punch me in the face if the food is good enough.
If the food is really good If it's a really good piece of pork, or whatever it is, dude, they could insult my family I got a place you're gonna love.
Oh, my God.
Here it is.
Jesus.
- We could eat that.
- So ridiculous.
I love it.
Oh, the heads are really key.
Part of life.
Taking photos of food.
- All right.
- Man.
I'm just gonna go in.
He's gonna do it.
The batter is so light.
Doesn't absorb any oil.
- I'm shocked.
- This is crazy.
Why isn't all lobster prepared this way? Is this not the best thing in goddamn - anywhere? - Yeah.
It's hard to beat, man.
I'm a classicist at heart.
I love French, three-Michelin-star dining.
I love all of that stuff.
But for me, this is equal or more joy now than eating anything that's super fancy.
I don't know if I've pronounced it right.
It's Lobster Clubhouse Fishman Boathouse? - It's a joke, right? - No, I'm serious.
I said it every way.
Which is it? It's Fishman Lobster Clubhouse.
- There's no Boathouse? - No.
There's no boat.
The name is actually My brother, who is not quite fluent in English, and he likes this long name.
- Like a law firm.
- Like a law firm.
Exactly.
The decor.
The chandeliers and the color scheme Is it Chinese? Have you felt any pressure at all to change what you do? To change your decor or food to appeal to white folks from downtown? I would like to stick with the recipe that works.
You believe in yourself that you can.
You just stick to it.
That's your belief.
Stick to what you believe, and eventually it will come through.
There's a point where you start losing your edge.
You learn too many rules.
You learn you're not supposed to do this kind of thing, and when you're younger, you're too dumb to know that stuff.
You're too dumb.
You're trying stuff that shouldn't work, and that's when new stuff gets invented, right? Right.
Now that I'm married and hopefully have a family, I wouldn't have started Momofuku.
- Too much at stake.
- Too much to lose.
That being said, I'm not married, and I don't have a family.
And I'm gonna try to eke the remaining years out of my lack of responsibility before I'm just old and dumb like you.
The goal now is to create an environment where people are gonna be happier.
And I'd rather take away from the cutting-edge edginess, and just have more nourishing, delicious food.
I'm really stripping away everything and trying to focus on the human emotion.
How someone's gonna feel about this.
I feel like how I can help is getting people to eat stuff that they might not normally want to eat.
I can't change their politics, but maybe I can by opening up their viewpoints to food.
Yes.
You can get them to eat Asian food, I can put brown and yellow people on TV.
Let's do the best we can, right? That's literally how I've been meditating on this.
- Like, "This is how I can do it.
" - Yeah.
It's true, man.
It's true.
There are foods that I grew up loving, but I was embarrassed to publicly love.
It's like, "Oh, that food, you like that? That's gross.
You're inferior culture.
" Some of that is just our default setting in who we are as human beings.
And I think it behooves us to fight those urges, and be a little bit more sympathetic to what's going on.
It's easier to be ignorant.
It's easier to cast aside things.
I think we're all guilty of that.
I'm painting a canvas and representing Mother Earth.
Every ingredient captured on my plate is living and breathing.
It needs to be perfectly balanced.
It's not just about the food.
It's something more.
Have you ever seen lightning? I have.
So, when you guys go to Chinese restaurants, do you order fried rice? Is that something you eat on a regular basis? I have a soft spot for it.
One of my favorite foods growing up was my mom cooking fried rice.
So simple, so basic.
She would sometimes make a version with just scrambled egg and scallions.
And it was really good.
Fried rice, to me, is a hangover food, so I actually don't order at restaurants because my Every time I was in China and we were at a restaurant, my mom would be like, "No, rice is the filler.
" I often eat fried rice at home for breakfast.
Very often with an egg over it.
In fact, I bring cooked rice from our restaurant so that it'll be cold the next day and I don't have to cook some fresh rice.
Today, I ordered golden fried rice.
It was the number one choice.
I don't know what "golden" meant, but Fried rice is something that's humble in origin will never be a $1,000 dish, unless you put caviar and truffles on it, which I'm sure some asshole's gonna do.
- With uni and caviar.
- Fried rice with caviar is awesome.
Jesus, man.
Here's the asshole we were looking for.
He's sitting at our table.
Speaking of rice, one of my big pet peeves when people talk about Chinese food is, "Oh, I love Panda Express, but I won't eat this.
I love P.
F.
Chang's.
That's Chinese food.
" I'm like, "No, it's not.
" I love Chinese food You know that it's true I love fried rice I love noodles I love chow mein Chow m-m-m-m-mein! Chinese food is the most pervasive food on the planet.
It's served on all seven continents, even Antarctica, 'cause Monday night is Chinese food night at McMurdo Station.
There's Chinese food in space.
NASA serves sweet and sour pork to astronauts.
So, there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chickens combined.
The dishes like General Tso's chicken and egg rolls are completely indigenous to America.
Kung Pao chicken! 364 days of the year, Americans eat Chinese food, and one day of the year they eat turkey.
Thanksgiving is the number one day for Chinese weddings in America.
If our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie, you should ask yourself how often you eat Chinese food versus how often you eat apple pie.
I wanna put that egg roll in my mouth hole.
There's this idea of a monolithic Chinese food, like, "Let's go get Chinese food.
" And you go to a place and there's 250 things on the menu.
It's part of our beautiful tapestry of foods, guys.
You gotta have it all, right? I wanna know how you felt, growing up in Hong Kong, what Chinese food in America was.
What did you think or hear about it? When I came here in 1986, I see, oh, American Chinese food.
Very sweet and sour.
- Orange chicken, sweet and sour.
- Stuff like that.
I look at a dish and this is how I almost look at Chinese-American food versus Chinese-mainland food is, "Will white people eat this?" - Right.
- And I don't know.
This dish, I don't know.
I think it's amazing.
You have textural contrast I think white people will eat this in a hot second.
But you're not like a white person.
Oh, no.
You would have to explain it, give it a frame of reference.
It's like a spring roll, like a fried crab sushi roll, almost, whereas that's how you explain it.
You're talking about how you get them to sell it.
I'm talking about how you get them to enjoy it.
So, going back to what Chinese-American food is, I remember growing up and I would talk to people, they would always say, I remember when I was a kid, how bad Chinese food was in China.
Even now, I spoke to a friend of ours, a comedian, he was like, "Chinese food's terrible.
" And I was like, "Man, you are a smart, sophisticated, intelligent guy.
How do you think this?" Because he grew up thinking that Chinese food is Chinese-American, and when he goes to China, it's not remotely the same.
The food of China is extraordinarily diverse, very complex, and way more than what most people think of, like take-out delivery fried rice.
Totally.
China's more of a continent than a country, and one Chinese province is like a European country.
And I like to remember that Chinese people often talk about "Western food," and they often say "Western food" is very monotonous and very simple.
To anyone from the West, that's crazy, because you've got French food, Italian, American, everything, and you can't talk about them all in one word.
But we do that with Chinese food.
Whoa.
So, these are yuan yang.
These are Mandarin ducks, which are a symbol of marital harmony.
They're made of egg white.
They're like floating islands.
And the waitresses are dressed in Manchu costumes.
It's a throwback to the Manchu imperial court of the Qing dynasty.
Oh, and this is your favorite food, isn't it? Oh, no.
- It's more sea cucumber.
- Sea cucumber.
Yeah, and this is a real classic Shandong dish.
Easily my least favorite food in the world.
I want to convert you, 'cause I love them, and if you're going to like sea cucumber, this is the best way to try them.
It makes me nauseous thinking about it.
You especially requested this dish.
These are tendons from deer's feet.
So they're one of those texture foods.
- So, they've got that glutinous texture.
- Why would you request this? Well, I love this sort of thing by now.
I'm a total convert and I'm hoping to persuade you that you'll love them, too.
Um, would you like to get the worst bit over first and have your favorite food, the sea cucumber? Put aside all your prejudices, and just try to enjoy that sort of soft rubberiness.
Mmm.
- I don't mind the flavor of sea cucumber.
- Yeah.
It's the texture.
Texture or mouth feel, kou gan, is so important in Chinese food and it's part of the whole pleasure and experience of eating.
A lot of the textures that Chinese people really love, westerners don't like so much.
Like slimy, slippery, gristly, you know? Westerners tend to like the crispness of deep-fried foods, but in China, there's a much bigger range of textures.
So, people coming here for the first time, they're just completely outside your frame of reference for textures, right? Like myself.
And this is another kind of food that's completely baffling to Westerners, because essentially you just get dried tendons.
Completely inedible, and you have to laboriously soak them and fry them and braise them to make them edible.
I feel like a newb.
It's got a lot of chew.
I don't think I can finish this.
- Really? Do you want a napkin? - Fuck.
I really like it, but he doesn't like it.
I'm so sorry.
Can you tell him how sorry I am? He says he's really sorry, and says he's not quite accustomed to it.
I especially wanted him to eat it because I think it's interesting.
It's a good thing.
He doesn't like it.
If you're, uh, outside of China trying to get into Chinese food, these texture foods are the last frontier.
It took me years of eating in China, and politely eating all these slithery, rubbery, gristly things, and not enjoying them, to finally enjoy them.
And now I really like them and I see that the texture is part of the pleasure.
This isn't bizarre.
It's just new to me.
I'm reminded what it's like to eat something for the first time and to be a foreigner to something.
Spin the wheel.
No whammies.
I have always revered Chinese food.
And I thought it was time that New Yorkers started to take it seriously.
My predecessor at the Times didn't think about anything but European restaurants as being worthy of And they made this real distinction between the $25, the cheap eats column, and the serious column.
And I came here with a real intention of changing that.
"New York Noodletown, with its bustle and clatter, its shared tables and its chefs wreathed in billows of steam rising from the cauldrons of soup in the front of the restaurant, is as close as you can get to Hong Kong without leaving Manhattan.
Cooks from southern China are famous for their ability to bring out the essential nature of each ingredient.
This is a cuisine of simplicity and inspired combination.
Noodletown may seem modest, but notice how carefully each vegetable has been cut, the way each piece of carrot, each bit of green onion is exactly the same size.
There is nothing casual about this kitchen.
" I want them to feel like when they finished reading the review, they've been at the restaurant.
A good critic gives the reader a better way to experience it.
Being able to introduce people to something that you know is fantastic, that they've never tasted before, it's just a joy.
I'm in this business for 45 years, I've eaten a lot of great stuff, I go to Hong Kong a lot, and when you start studying Chinese food, you realize that Chinese food is probably the most sophisticated food on the planet.
Where's Chinese food's place in the world of cuisine? - Joe's skill is spectacular.
- He's out there, man.
He can make dumplings that look like animals.
And they all taste delicious.
It doesn't get the credit it deserves.
Let's just say look at Italian food, 40, 50 years ago.
Now, everyone knows about Italian food, for the most part.
They know types of pasta names.
It's crazy to me.
Do you think that in 20, 30 years, that the Gen Y generation will know more about Chinese food than anyone else, and they won't When they go to China, they're gonna be like, "Oh, this is exactly what I wanted.
" I think you're right.
We have regional Italian restaurants in New York now.
I think, in 20 years, people might know the difference between Yunnan and Hunan.
You guys are so optimistic.
That's the thing, but Italians are white, so, come on.
A lot of the regionality still happens in urban areas.
- It's true.
- LA, New York.
You don't have this variety in, necessarily, the Midwest or the South, where there aren't just as many Chinese immigrants.
So, if I'm interested in food, I'm living in suburban Knoxville, the truth is I only have maybe one, two Chinese restaurants that are available to me to try.
And the truth is, Italians have very much assimilated into culture.
And then there's still that block for Chinese-Americans because we're not white.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
- Good to see you.
- Good to see you.
When did you first move here? - Why did you come here? - Because my family is here.
My wife was UT student before.
Oh, okay, okay.
When you first came, were there many Chinese people? There were some, not that many.
- These are the things you like to eat.
- Well, yeah.
Because, uh, I come from Chongqing, Sichuan.
- Mmm.
- All gentlemen can cook.
But your own food here isn't Sichuanese.
No, no, no.
This is all American Chinese.
American Chinese? Yeah.
If I make 100% Chinese No business.
My mom said when she came here, she would call you first so that you could make her 'Cause my mom loves spicy food and Sichuan food, so she said she would call you and you'd have to make stuff.
That's right.
Do they just have to call ahead? Because here, 98% is American people.
- Just a few Chinese.
- Mmm-hmm.
If some Chinese want Chinese food, of course I have to do it.
But I cannot prepare all the Chinese food for waiting Chinese come in.
- Right? - Yeah.
So, them have to call first, then I prepare.
I don't have a Chinese menu.
Because if I got a Chinese menu, I cannot go away.
- I'd have to cook all the time.
- Yeah.
How do Americans who know that you're cooking, how do they find out? Now, sometimes them come in here eat and Chinese eat here, too.
Them say, "Oh, what's that? What's that?" Then next time, got a special.
- I see.
- Serve it like that.
About 90% of Chinese restaurant workers in America now come from one region of China called Fuzhou.
It's really interesting going there, 'cause many towns are ghost towns.
There are no men of working age.
So many of the people there go to America to work in restaurants.
They actually have English language schools that specifically teach restaurant English.
Words like "zucchini," "French fries.
" And the teacher says, "You must say 'fried rice.
' Do not say, 'flied lice.
'" It's a very practical way of responding to the economic forces that are pulling those people to the United States.
When the immigrants first came here, they set up shop.
They were a successful community.
We're sandwiched between two very iconic restaurants.
Unfortunately, they both closed.
Um, this one right here, Kan's.
The chef was Johnny Kan.
He was the one that introduced the lazy Susan to Americans.
That happened there.
The Empress of China, that is like a dream restaurant.
When I went in there for the first time, I was like, "This is amazing.
" Massive chandeliers, fully adorned dining room.
People came here for a fancy banquet dinner.
This has been part of the nightlife of San Francisco for a long time.
Having the experience of being a third-generation Chinese-American, being exposed to a lot of different things, I cooked Italian food before I cooked Chinese food.
I believe in small, organic local farms, seasonality, all these things that came out of a lot of my training in California cuisine.
When I first thought of fried rice, I thought of how my mom used to make it.
We would eat a steak restaurant and she would have a bunch of steak left over.
So this is wagyu sirloin.
We'll hit this.
We're just trying to melt some of the fat off of it and use it as a base for our rice.
One of the most classic combinations of Chinese-American food is beef and broccoli, so, this is some Italian variety of broccoli, and this is rice that's been dried out for two or three days, and then just some egg.
There's some food that isn't meant to be tweezered.
This food is about being delicious.
For me, this is about trying to speak to Chinese-Americans that want to feel a sense of pride in Chinese food again.
Mmm-hmm.
So, I think when you're a kid growing up American, you're trying to be American, you're trying to assimilate.
Where I grew up, there weren't a ton of Asian people.
In my high school, a large percentage was Latino.
We had black kids, white kids, not a ton of Asians.
So, I was trying to fit in with other kinds of people.
It wasn't like, "Let me learn the difference between Hunan and Shanghainese and Cantonese cuisine.
" - You were looking inside.
- Yeah.
I was learning about carne asada, man.
Chinese restaurants have many different levels.
A really high class, a really low class.
But people don't know that.
People don't know that there's royal, grand, banquet cuisine in China.
All the restaurants almost sell the same thing.
So you can't compare which one is the high level, which one is the low level.
To me, again, the giant, 1,000 pound gorilla in the room is racism - in Chinese food, right? - Exactly.
And why I get upset about how it's perceived is that it's always seen as somewhat inferior, or I always think about, just looking about service, - the lazy Susan, to me, is genius.
- Yeah.
Asian restaurant service, where it's curt, it's very efficient, but there's no niceties, really.
The more rude you are, the better service you're gonna get.
- It's legitimately a cultural difference.
- Right.
People think that's terrible service, right? Yeah.
And that's, to me, where it starts.
Last time I was here, it was insanely crowded.
- We had to fight for a table.
- Uh-huh.
I don't even know how I got here.
I didn't even know it was in the San Gabriel Valley, so I'm happy to be back.
I have only been here once before and I had no idea what I was doing.
I ordered three things because I read Jonathan Gold's review, and I was like, "All right.
You gotta get the lobster.
" If I come in here, where do I start? The first thing is, Chinese restaurant packed with Chinese people is a good sign.
Is this your local spot? Yeah, his local spot.
- Wendy, you hungry? - A little bit.
Come on, sit down.
- This is a cold starter? - Yeah.
- This isn't on the menu, right? - Not on the menu That's what I'm trying to get at.
- There's all this secret stuff.
- Oh, yes.
Pro tip.
There's always a secret menu.
I know that you have secret ways to cook lobster.
You just have to badger them to the point where it's like, "I'm just gonna give you something so you leave us alone.
" The peanut, um, what is it? Uh, with the soy sauce? - Can we try that, too? How do I know? - Yes.
This is a lot of work to get to the real menu.
There's no way you can do this without being an obnoxious - We never cook that.
- Oh, that's not true.
Come on.
Whoever's peacocking the largest is gonna get the attention.
What kind of, uh, rice or noodle should we finish with? Oh, I have one secret fried rice.
Yeah! If you order well, it's like Morse Code to the kitchen.
Whenever you go to a place like this, you go straight to the fish tank.
Whoa, whoa.
Oh, my God.
It's prehistoric.
And this would feed how many people? Easy.
Eight, ten.
That is unbelievably good.
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, shit.
That is your fried rice.
I can't wait to come back, and now I know how to order.
This is a lot of food.
It's a good idea to come with people.
A lot of people.
Now there's a lot of money in China.
There's true respect for Chinese food.
Why would a great Chinese chef come to America, where everybody thinks that Chinese food is supposed to be cheap and they don't really respect it? If you want great Chinese food, you are probably not gonna get it in America unless you go to Las Vegas, where they attract a Chinese audience by getting great chefs there.
In recent years, there has been a change and now the Chinese middle class is traveling the world.
They're the number one tourists in the world.
They're certainly the number one foreign tourists in Las Vegas.
So 20 years ago, it would be hard to see this kind of restaurant open.
The key to this restaurant has always been, from day one, authenticity.
In the past year, we have been very, very lucky and successful in adding to our Asian culinary talent.
We have, uh, Chef Yu, and he is from Beijing, and he is a master of northern Chinese food.
- Ah.
Look at this.
- What is this? This is hand-stretched noodles like you would get in Shandong province, China.
And then there's a mixture there of tomato and kind of like a scrambled egg.
This is so good.
- Fried sea fish.
- Wow! I'm so happy to be here right now.
My God, this food is bonkers.
This is a fish.
This preparation comes from Chengdu, China.
So this is a Sichuanese fish.
This is a sensation that I don't think ten years ago you could get in America.
I love this.
This is also one of my favorite dishes to eat.
This is as good as you can get in America.
Usually, I'm not a huge fan of having it super authentic, but I think for Chinese food, since it really hasn't been done Yep.
you actually want it authentic so you actually have a reference point.
Exactly.
How many times do you get customers that just want traditional Chinese-American dishes? What we could serve here 10, 11 years ago, and what we now can serve to a convention here, and they will appreciate, is two different things.
The climate for acceptance of this type of food has never been higher.
- Hi, Chef.
- This is Chef Su.
- How are you? - Very good.
Born in Guangdong, and then grew up, uh, cooking in Hong Kong.
Chef Su's probably been here eight, nine years at this point.
Chef, this is so good.
"Fortune cookies are not native to China.
They're from California.
" True.
"The Chinese takeout box is completely American.
It was originally designed for shucked oysters.
" "China uses 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year.
" "Chinese food's five key flavors are balanced according to traditional Chinese medicine.
" "You want gluten-free? Go fuck yourself.
" "I am a Nigerian prince.
Please send money.
" "Why don't these things have emojis?" "And the winner is La La Land.
" "This is a racist scam.
You should stop.
" "Fortune cookies are fake news.
Sad.
" In every town, basically, in America, but specifically in the South, it's a little bit surprising to find Chinese food.
Yes, well, there is actually a solid Chinese community here I grew up with.
Did you ever grow up thinking, "Why am I Chinese?" All the time.
Of course! Did you grow up and think, "Why am I Korean?" Yeah.
I was like, "Man, this sucks.
" Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was always like, "Man, I wish I was just white," because of acceptance and culture, but also acceptance of the food, because there was so much more to explain.
If you hung out with a lot of white people, you tried not to eat Chinese food or Korean food - Around them.
- around white people.
Yeah, yeah.
You hungry? - Join us.
- Uh Yeah, why not.
I don't believe anything you say unless you start eating this food.
Okay, then let's try, then.
But I'm truly hungry.
Oh.
Yes, I eat here.
And I've tried every single one of them.
I can tell I like every one.
- Is this intestine? - Yes.
Mmm.
Intestine.
See, this is what my parents did.
They serve it to me and they don't tell me what it is.
And then I start liking it, and then they tell me How'd it taste? - It tastes like intestines.
- Well - What does intestine taste like? - What I imagined.
What I just tasted.
You're telling me that people order this? - A lot.
Yes.
- A lot? I can tell you we do stuff with more intestines than our gourmet noodles.
- What? - Really? - Yeah.
No, I'm not lying.
- I know you're not lying.
Me, dummy me, had the preconceived idea that the top five things here would be egg rolls, lo mein, fried rice, - General Tso's chicken.
- Right, right.
- It's not? - No, it's not.
Well If that's what you're looking for, you're in the wrong place.
Right? Well, I think I have to go back to work now.
- Okay.
Thank you.
- Okay.
I wanna believe him, I really do.
I'm shocked, honestly.
Maybe we don't give people enough credit.
- No, no, no, no.
- No? We give people too much credit.
I don't know.
A lot of people still think, American-Chinese food, all they have are egg roll, fried chicken wing, yellow rice, right now, I don't know where they come from.
I think we're spoiled, man.
Yeah, we're in these big urban areas.
We're in big cities and we have all of these different Chinese options, but for people in smaller towns, there's one Chinese place in town, and a lot of times that one place is a Panda Express.
Here's a weird story.
There's a basketball player named Kevin Durant, one of the greatest players in the world, and he used to play in Oklahoma City.
Back out.
Durant for three! Last year, he signed with the Golden State Warriors as a free agent.
So he went on the Warriors' Reddit, and said, "Hey, man, I'm new in the Bay Area.
Where should I go?" And one of the people on Reddit said, "You should try boba.
" He's like, "What's that?" And the person explained to him, it was this tapioca milk tea with these little balls in it.
Kevin Durant is exposed to a lot of stuff, but even he hasn't had boba, which to us is a thing that's been around in LA, - it's been in New York for decades.
- Yeah.
The next day, he posts a picture of himself holding a boba tea on that Reddit.
That's amazing.
In a different context, there weren't many Jewish people in my town, so I didn't have, like, a smoked fish - until I moved to New York.
- Same with me.
So, it's just a matter of who you are living around.
Growing up, I went to this restaurant called Wu's Garden, and this is a perfect example of immigrants.
They came from the Shandong province.
It was an iconic restaurant for my family and people that lived in this Virginia area, - and then it shut down.
- Yeah.
Because the kids didn't wanna take it over.
I'm sure their parents didn't want them to take it over.
Well, that's the thing.
You work hard in the business, you want your kids to have a better life, you want them to become a doctor or a lawyer or an Indian chief.
But now you're seeing a second generation of Asian-American kids that are like, "No, I want to do it.
" We're gonna do some fried rice.
Are you gonna make one, too? - I can make one, but I'd rather - Okay.
- I'm in your home.
- Yeah.
It's always two eggs.
A little onion.
There's garlic.
Do you prefer old rice, or it doesn't matter? Fresh rice Old rice is always preferable.
Like rice out of a deli container in the fridge.
A little bit dried out.
So, at this point, I'm gonna put in the rice, and then I follow it immediately with sugar.
White sugar is something that surprises a lot of people.
Just how much goes into any sort of Thai stir fry dish, or Thai-Chinese stir fry dish.
I like to get it kind of almost burned, kind of get it really smoky.
And then just at the end now, we're gonna put in some crab.
Cuisine of Thailand is so different than anything else, I think, in Asia.
- Yeah.
- How would you explain the difference? There's fried rice.
People are using a wok I think the seasoning is the main thing.
It's sort of the combination.
Balance is something that people talk about with Thai food.
But that balance can mean different things for different dishes.
If it's fried rice, even the worst version, - I think is kind of good, so - Right.
I'm so excited.
What really interests me is how things get passed down.
My dad was in the restaurant business, wasn't a Korean, and he based his entire life to make sure I was never gonna be in the restaurant business.
All the restaurants that I would go to, they're all closed now because their kids are doing other stuff.
They're like bankers and lawyers and shit like that.
Yeah, yeah.
My parents opened up Talésai in 1982.
That's the year I was born.
My grandma was the original chef here.
It was all black and white, '80s minimalist.
I moved back here from New York in 2008 and took over, and had all these ideas for it.
I had never run a restaurant.
I didn't know anything about business.
I quickly got my ass handed to me.
It was really brutal.
Now, my dad, who built the restaurant, he was watching it slowly You know? Everyone else, like my grandma, everyone who was involved were like, "You gotta kick Kris out.
" No one was coming, no new customers.
I would literally get death threats.
People would come in and be like, "It's you, right? You're the fucker.
" Was there a breaking point with your parents and family where they're like, "This is the last straw, Kris.
You can't do this anymore"? Or they trusted you to push through this? Because, obviously, you've expanded.
Yeah.
Your restaurant group now is killing it.
What was the turning point there? I thought, "It can't get any worse.
I've already experienced the worst of the worst.
So, why don't I just give it a go?" It's funny, 'cause the food we started serving in 2010, when we opened Night + Market This is honestly the stuff that my parents would probably wanna eat, too.
You know? They felt like, "We might wanna eat it between lunch and dinner service in the back, but is anyone else gonna wanna eat it?" You know, like, "Whities aren't gonna like that.
It stinks to high heaven.
We gotta air it out.
" So, the food you're making now in the renaissance of the restaurant really was what your grandmother made and It was like staff meal food.
- You know what I mean? - That's the best stuff.
That's essentially what it was.
It wasn't thought out, it was like, "Let's put this out there.
" I think it's good and tasty.
Maybe other people are gonna like it, too.
Finally, I felt like I had something to offer.
Finally, I felt like I could do something.
I don't think there's any other culture that's as food-obsessed as the Chinese.
Right at the heart of Chinese culture, food was the way you communicated with your gods and ancestors by making edible offerings.
So people in China are absolutely obsessed with food, and it goes right from sort of imperial cooking, fancy banquet food, down to farmhouse cooking, street food, fermentation, all these things.
China just has it all.
Would you say that the food that most of America and western Europe thinks of as Chinese food is Chinese food at all? Because Chinese was one of the earliest immigrant cuisines, I think it adapted to American and also British taste at a time when people were maybe less cosmopolitan.
And they came out with a formula which kind of worked.
But since then, everyone's got more globalized in their taste, certainly in big cities.
Often for Chinese waiting staff, it's difficult to explain the food to people who don't speak Chinese.
And so I think it's just kind of easiest to give people sweet and sour pork, a General Tso's chicken, and the things that have a track record and everyone knows and loves.
It's more complicated selling more interesting Chinese dishes.
I've met people before who have said, "I don't like Chinese food, and I don't know if I can hang out with you.
" But I've also just seen around people saying online, on Twitter, whatever, reviews, "I'm scared of Indian food, I'm scared of Chinese food.
" When someone says that, I just think, "What are you scared of? Are you scared of a pork rib or a dumpling? And is it really about the food or are you just scared of the people?" There are some pretty vile things associated with food that no one ever wants to talk about.
Last year, you wrote a piece about Kings County Restaurant.
Kings County Imperial in Brooklyn.
This website did a review of a Chinese restaurant.
The chef happens to be white.
They were saying that the food was really good, but there are different options if you wanna eat Chinese food in New York and it's either you get gross and dirty in Chinatown, or go to Mission Chinese.
And then they proceeded to declare that this was the best Chinese restaurant in New York City.
And this dichotomy, like, "We love Chinese food and Chinese food is great, but it's dirty and gross, unless a white person cooks it.
" It's these old ideas of Chinese people being dirty, and Chinese food being gross, and not acceptable, and not "clean.
" I tweeted something like, "This is an incredibly racist review.
" And people started asking me, "Why is this I just don't understand.
" Why? 'Cause they just didn't see the same thing that I saw.
The history of Chinese food in America goes back to the 1850s and Chinese people emigrating here, and not occupying a very high place in society.
When the Chinese first came to American shores, they just took normal labor jobs.
It was agriculture, mining, railroads, factories.
The main problem was the Americans wanted these jobs.
These Chinese people were willing to work at a fraction of the price.
So there was a huge backlash against Chinese with immense violence.
There were shootings and lynchings.
And so the Chinese clustered around two industries, laundries and restaurants.
These are both women's work, so they're not as threatening to American men.
Americans thought these strangers ate cats.
If not cats, they ate rats.
In fact, the New York Times ran an article in the late 1800s that asked, in all seriousness, "Do the Chinese eat rats?" This idea of these people eating strange things was used to drive a wedge between us and foreignness.
What's really interesting is the Chinese Exclusion Act was when this concept of illegal immigration was born.
The Asian Exclusion Act meant no Chinese cooks legally came into this country until the GI Bride Act of 1945.
So, food for that almost 100-year period was inexperienced cooks dreaming of what they had eaten at home.
This is why, for so many Americans, Chinese food is not worthy of serious consideration.
Honestly, racism against Asian people is kind of okay.
We don't have that much political voice.
We don't have many famous people, though there's 15, 20 million of us.
It's pretty fucked up.
And one of the things that I think is most fucked up about fried rice, Chinese food or Asian food in general is MSG.
These Chinese is noted for MSG in the food, one of the reasons people have headaches when they get through eating Chinese.
It used to be that every customer who came in to our Chinese restaurants - would say, "You use MSG?" - Yeah.
- How do you feel about MSG? - I'm the biggest apologist ever for it.
You like it? I love it, and I think that if it's gonna be vilified, then all other food ingredients should be vilified and scrutinized just as much.
And immediately, when people say, "I don't like Chinese food," I'm like, "Why?" And they're like, "Oh, they add MSG.
" I'm like, "Oh, do I eat dog, too?" It gets a bad rap, but it's not worse than a lot of salt.
Yeah, MSG is a glutamic acid that's attached to a salt.
It is naturally occurring in the world.
When people are shaving Parmesan on pasta, it's like you're shaving MSG on food.
You had immigrants coming from China that didn't know how to cook, but if you add MSG to something, it's going to make it taste better.
- Maybe it was too much MSG.
- Yeah.
That's another thing about people getting sick.
People are more likely to think Chinese and other Asian foods made them sick than European foods, even though, statistically, the percentages are about the same.
No one ever says Doritos made them sick.
Look on the package.
There's MSG.
Hi, I'm Dave Chang.
Hey, I'm Ian Mosby.
I'm a food historian.
We're here to talk about monosodium glutamate, or MSG, as it's better known.
I get, kind of, that dull headache thing.
I feel dehydrated sometimes for a minute.
This terrible clamp, like it was closing in on my head, and a numbness around my jaw.
I still actually walk by some Chinese restaurants, and have these memories.
I start shaking.
Do you eat junk food? Or no? Why don't I just start this out right now? I'll go for the can.
- You have another Ruffles? - I have another Ruffles.
Yes.
Thank you.
- What about you? - More Ruffles.
Oh, my God.
Mmm! You have sour cream and onion, too? Ah, that's what I got.
When you wanna switch, just let me know.
This is one of the problems with MSG research.
Most of the food you're eating has MSG in it.
All those snacks.
Do any of you feel anything? It's happening right now with these Doritos.
These are really spicy.
- It's really spicy, right? - Yeah.
MSG is one of the most used food additives in the US.
Millions of tons of that stuff get used every year.
But most of it doesn't get used by Chinese restaurants.
Most of it gets used by the food processing industry.
But maybe it's about quantity.
If I'm indulging in a snack like this, it's not a meal.
Whereas I'm having an entire meal at Chinese restaurants, - I'd go crazy.
- Yeah.
I will make a meal out of that.
In some of the early studies, this was a disease they called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
" They didn't call it MSG Syndrome.
Maybe if you start thinking, "What are some of the things people associate with Chinese restaurants?" Like mystery meat and You know what I'm saying? You see a meat dish and it's $4.
95, you're skeptical, like, "Where is this sourced from?" When I was growing up, we lived near a Chinese restaurant, and everyone said, in the dumpster behind it, there are always lots of cat carcasses, which I'm sure was a rumor.
It's worth thinking about other cuisines of people who are racialized.
If you look at Mexican cuisine in the US, what are some of the health associations that people have with Mexican food? You have to eat it on the bowl, because you won't make it to the bathroom.
That's basically the assumption.
I never have that problem.
I love Mexican food.
I look at this, and I'm not the scientist, I'm not Ian.
But I'm like, "Wait a second.
Something's not right here, guys.
" It's not people individually being racist.
It's racist assumptions that are held on a pretty large scale.
We develop those biases because we just keep hearing about it, assume it's true.
Could be psychological.
Whether it's, "Don't go to this restaurant because you're gonna get sick," I tend to see more of that run by not just Chinese people or Korean people, but essentially anyone that's ethnic.
And, yeah, I definitely think that puts a ceiling in how far cuisine can go.
In America, when you think of a fancy restaurant, you think French, or maybe you think sushi, maybe you think Japanese.
But you don't usually think of a Chinese restaurant.
I think there's something to that.
Part of it is that there are more wealthy Japanese immigrants coming to the US.
Whereas the mass of Chinese immigrants is still more working class.
Like New York City, there are a lot of working-class Chinese people here.
That's part of the reason Chinese food hasn't reached that level yet.
This could be the best Chinese restaurant in New York City, and it will never get four stars in the New York Times.
It'll always get two stars.
Right.
It has that block.
Because of the decor, because of the service, because it's always gonna be viewed by essentially a white prism of what is a certain - The lens is always white.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
Toronto has six Chinatowns.
You see Chinatowns in cities, but they're probably not real Chinatowns anymore.
Chinese immigrants moved, and then they got displaced, then they went further and further out.
Markham is probably the predominant Chinese suburb.
"China-burbs.
" And the food there is spectacular.
I was always surprised at why didn't more non-Chinese people eat there.
Restaurants used to be effectively segregated.
There were white-people, Korean, Chinese, Ethiopian restaurants.
And people did not mix.
Criticism was the same.
If you were writing for the big, national newspaper, you were writing for white, rich people.
- I've never written about this place.
- Why not? Because I missed it, and I hang my head in shame.
- I missed it.
- You should.
How many people for the lobster mountain? For the lobster mountain, we have 15, 25 and 50 pounds.
- And it's about this high, right? - Um This high, I think, 50 pounds.
Yes.
It would be huge, the lobster.
Okay.
I'm scared.
I'll bring the 25-pound lobster.
- Okay.
- All right.
So much of traditional super high-end restaurants is about European decor that looks, for the most part, it fell out of a Williams-Sonoma catalog or Polo.
There is still a discounting of international food, or as old-guard critics would call it, "ethnic food.
" I fucking hate that term, but they would call it "ethnic food.
" As a layperson, I would say the waiter could punch me in the face if the food is good enough.
If the food is really good If it's a really good piece of pork, or whatever it is, dude, they could insult my family I got a place you're gonna love.
Oh, my God.
Here it is.
Jesus.
- We could eat that.
- So ridiculous.
I love it.
Oh, the heads are really key.
Part of life.
Taking photos of food.
- All right.
- Man.
I'm just gonna go in.
He's gonna do it.
The batter is so light.
Doesn't absorb any oil.
- I'm shocked.
- This is crazy.
Why isn't all lobster prepared this way? Is this not the best thing in goddamn - anywhere? - Yeah.
It's hard to beat, man.
I'm a classicist at heart.
I love French, three-Michelin-star dining.
I love all of that stuff.
But for me, this is equal or more joy now than eating anything that's super fancy.
I don't know if I've pronounced it right.
It's Lobster Clubhouse Fishman Boathouse? - It's a joke, right? - No, I'm serious.
I said it every way.
Which is it? It's Fishman Lobster Clubhouse.
- There's no Boathouse? - No.
There's no boat.
The name is actually My brother, who is not quite fluent in English, and he likes this long name.
- Like a law firm.
- Like a law firm.
Exactly.
The decor.
The chandeliers and the color scheme Is it Chinese? Have you felt any pressure at all to change what you do? To change your decor or food to appeal to white folks from downtown? I would like to stick with the recipe that works.
You believe in yourself that you can.
You just stick to it.
That's your belief.
Stick to what you believe, and eventually it will come through.
There's a point where you start losing your edge.
You learn too many rules.
You learn you're not supposed to do this kind of thing, and when you're younger, you're too dumb to know that stuff.
You're too dumb.
You're trying stuff that shouldn't work, and that's when new stuff gets invented, right? Right.
Now that I'm married and hopefully have a family, I wouldn't have started Momofuku.
- Too much at stake.
- Too much to lose.
That being said, I'm not married, and I don't have a family.
And I'm gonna try to eke the remaining years out of my lack of responsibility before I'm just old and dumb like you.
The goal now is to create an environment where people are gonna be happier.
And I'd rather take away from the cutting-edge edginess, and just have more nourishing, delicious food.
I'm really stripping away everything and trying to focus on the human emotion.
How someone's gonna feel about this.
I feel like how I can help is getting people to eat stuff that they might not normally want to eat.
I can't change their politics, but maybe I can by opening up their viewpoints to food.
Yes.
You can get them to eat Asian food, I can put brown and yellow people on TV.
Let's do the best we can, right? That's literally how I've been meditating on this.
- Like, "This is how I can do it.
" - Yeah.
It's true, man.
It's true.
There are foods that I grew up loving, but I was embarrassed to publicly love.
It's like, "Oh, that food, you like that? That's gross.
You're inferior culture.
" Some of that is just our default setting in who we are as human beings.
And I think it behooves us to fight those urges, and be a little bit more sympathetic to what's going on.
It's easier to be ignorant.
It's easier to cast aside things.
I think we're all guilty of that.