Japan’s famous noodle dish has swept America by storm, with diners waiting hours to slurp a bowl of noodles, and we travel across the country to reveal this mania. The episode kicks off with a ramen tutorial from Sun Noodles, who custom makes noodles for most of America’s ramen chefs, including Ivan Orkin, the renegade New Yorker-turned-Japanese ramen chef who we visit later in the episode. Next, we visit seafood purveyor-turned-ramen chef Yuji Haraguchi as he creates a “New York” version of his broth-less ramen dish mazemen (with interpretations of classic NY deli food such as “bacon and eggs” or “bagels with lox”) using sustainable and typically discarded seafood from the nearby Whole Foods Market. Tummies full, we check out as the new Ivan Ramen restaurant to discusses ramen culture in NY vs Tokyo. The episode then travels to Berkeley, CA, as we tour the local greenmarket with 3 former Chez Panisse chefs who traveled to Japan to learn about its ramen culture and have returned to the US to create The Ramen Shop which serves a locally sourced, seasonal, and sustainable Meyer Lemon Shoyu Ramen that takes from Japan’s infamous ramen culture but creates something wholly local and personal.
The two largest Korean populations in the US are in New York and Los Angeles, and we visit both to check out what distinguishes each. Whereas NY’s Koreatown butts against the Empire State Building, and is essential one-block long, LA’s Koreatown merges with the city’s Latino community and is practically a city on to itself. Both are 24-hour hubs of food and drinking culture. At dinner with Lisa Ling and her husband Paul Song, the chef /owner of Parks BBQ breaks down the basics of Korean cooking. Back in NY, we tour Manhattan’s K-town with author of Koreatown USA, Matt Rodbard, and stop in at Pocha 32, for some watermelon soju and budaejjigae. Later in the episode, at Saveur Magazine’s test kitchen (which happens to be located in K-town), Top Chef Winner Kristen Kish, a Seoul-born Korean adoptee, is receiving her first-ever Korean cooking lesson with us. Her teacher is Maangchi, the Korean housewife who is now a Youtube sensation and one of the web’s most beloved cooking instructors, and together we learn how to make kimchi.
Andy Ricker, a Portland, OR-carpenter-turned chef, who has brought “authentic” Thai food to America, holds a welcome dinner for participating LUCKYRICE Festival chefs at Saipin Chutima's Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas. The duo work together to create their collective version of a Northern Laab, a typical Issan dish that is spicy, tasty drinking food in Chiang Mai. Jet Tila, who is at the table, rhapsodizes about the days when his family opened America’s first Thai grocery store in Hollywood, CA, and brought ingredients like lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves to the American palate. We check out this legendary market, and pay a tribute at a local LA Thai temple, as Jet Tila travels to NYC to participate in LUCKYRICE’s annual James Beard House dinner, which this year focuses on Thai New Year (Songkram) prepared by Chef Jet along with a bevy of other Thai chefs including Pichet Ong and Hong Thaimee.
Filipinos comprise the second largest Asian American population nationwide (and the largest in California), but whose cuisine is relatively unknown. We explore this phenomenon with PJ Quesada, whose grew up working in his grandparents’ Filipino food factory and is now founder of the Filipino Food Movement, as we feast at his buddy Tim Luym’s global-Filipino restaurant, Attic. In Los Angeles, we visit Kristine de la Cruz, who is introducing Filipino flavors like ube with her unusual bakery, Crème Caramel. Back in NY, we meet Nicole Ponseca, an advertising executive who left her Madison Ave life, and her husband Chef Miguel Trinadad, to give voice to Filipino culture through food; their restaurants, Maharlika and Jeepney, are now on every foodies’ “must-try” lists and we sit down to “Kamayan” with Chef Susur Lee. Food is a powerful way for Asian cultures to give voice to tradition, and we see a new generation that is embracing this loud and clear.
We visit the world headquarters for Google in the South Bay city of Mountain View and Apple in Cupertino. Olivia Wu designed the original Asian restaurant concepts, including the home-style “Jia”, one of the most popular restaurants on the Apple campus. Baadal is Google’s first “sit-down” restaurant, which happens to be Indian, as we participate in the assembly line process that churns out 2,000 servings of the Indian fried rice dish, “Biryani” on “Biryani Fridays”. Some of their purveyors include two retired Japanese semiconductor executives who have constructed an indoor, vertical farm called Ecopia, and seek to redefine farming culture in the midst of global warming, and Hodo Soy Beanery, making artisanal tofu products.
Chinese food in America has evolved over the generations. We visit the borders of Manhattan’s Chinatown, through the lens of two third-generation young Chinese American restaurateurs who have changed how Americans define Chinese cuisine. Wilson Tang, of Nom Wah Tea Parlor, has inherited his family’s dim sum parlor (America’s oldest) to preserve its legacy while opening up a fine-dining Chinese restaurant with Chef Jonathan Wu on Chinatown’s expanding Lower East Side Jewish immigrant neighborhood. We also get a Peking Duck tutorial from Ed Schoenfeld, a self-proclaimed Chinese food expert who grew up Jewish in Brooklyn, yet has opened one of the most critically acclaimed Chinese restaurants today in New York alongside chef Joe Ng. The episode closes at Hakkasan, a mega-brand for Chinese food which was birthed in London by Alan Yau and now spawns nightclubs in Las Vegas as well as restaurants from Beverly Hills to Dubai to Shanghai.
Exploring American manifestations of otaku, the Japanese trope that combines cutting-edge pop culture with fetishistic obsession, Danielle visits New York’s first cat cafe; a Brooklyn izakaya run by a Frenchman in thrall to Japanese anime and manga; and a California suburban mom who’s a star on the international bento-box circuit. Danielle gets in the sumo ring with a 600-pound opponent.
Three Asian-American entrepreneurs talk about the secrets of their success: Tim Wildin, the young Chipotle executive whose Thai aunties’ recipes contribute to the menu at Shophouse; Lynda Trang Dai, once known as the Vietnamese Madonna and now the queen of banh mi sandwiches in Orange County’s Little Saigon; and Charles Phan, the ground-breaking chef whose restaurant was named best in the country.
Danielle checks out an industrial kitchen where traditional “confinement meals” are made for new mothers across the country; an underground Manhattan cocktail den whose main ingredient is the fiery liquor baijiu, the world’s most heavily consumed spirit; and a wedding in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown where old world and new meet at the banquet table and on the dance floor.
Ross Koda, a third-generation Japanese-American, runs a renowned Central Valley rice farm and hopes to keep it in the family. Kristyn Leach, a Korean adoptee, hand grows artisanal, heirloom Asian produce for one of San Francisco’s most popular restaurants. And on the gorgeous Half Moon Bay coast, a pair of electricians who saw a gap in the market operate America’s first wasabi farm.
Danielle interviews a former financier who offers a light, healthy take on Indian classics at his fast-casual start-up Inday; the adventurous restaurateurs behind Babu Ji, where meticulous preparations and a Bollywood vibe have led to breakout success; and a Silicon Valley engineer who got her start in the food business selling homemade chai by bicycle in the hills of San Francisco.
The relationship between faith and food is evident at three Asian houses of worship: an imposing Buddhist temple where Danielle is served an artful vegetarian feast; a Sikh temple where she helps cook Indian flatbread for a communal meal where all are welcome; and a Queens mosque’s annual food fair, where she samples Indonesian dishes and learns about life as a Muslim in America.
Cathy Erway, author of “Foods of Taiwan,” hits a Chinatown market and then makes the island’s most famous dish, beef noodle soup. At Taiwan Bear House, started by homesick young expats, Danielle tries a New York take on the box lunches known as biandang. And in California’s Orange County, she pays a twilight visit to America’s closest counterpart to a classic Taiwanese night market.
Today, what we watch can be just as appetizing as what we eat. From the Korean art of mukbang to viral sensations, artists both amateur and professional are using food as their medium of choice. We take a closer look at how being a foodie today is so much more than discovering the hottest new restaurant.
The culmination of Asian intertextuality: Mister Softee taken over by the Chinese government; Brooklyn Brewery is using Japanese hops; a New Yorker is reinventing the Shanghainese soup dumpling - in this episode we see how trends are born out of traditions.
It isn’t just recipes that get imported and exported between the East and West, but food practices. The farm to table movement is not at all uniquely American. We travel around China and the U.S. to see how widespread this movement to keep things local really is.
As bone broth and kombucha line the shelves of your local grocery store, we take a closer look at “food as medicine”. These currently popular American health aides are steeped in rich and ancient Asian history. From Traditional Chinese Medicine to fermented vegetables, food is so much more than just sustenance.
The next generation of Asian Americans are redefining what it means to be Asian in the U.S. by keeping one foot in the past, and the other in the future. We talk to renegade chefs and entrepreneurs to see what’s in store for the future of Asians in the mainstream.
Asian beauty secrets have long held fascination with Western audiences. Today, the K Beauty boom is all over mainstream America. We talk to the (mostly) women leading the charge in the cosmetics and skincare scene and disrupting the American beauty industry.
This episode on heritage showcases a fourth-generation Japanese-American farm, America's oldest tofu shop, a mother-son relationship built on food and heritage, and a Hollywood cafe that is also an Asians-in-Hollywood history exhibit.
This episode showcases functional food, people looking to heal the body, spirit or community.
This episode on innovation features women chefs in the Pacific Northwest, the founder of Pared, Robert Wang, the inventor of the Instant Pot, and Lucas Sin, founder of Junzi Kitchen.
This episode on fusion features Park's Filipino-American barbecue, JJ Johnson's Afro-Asian rice bowls, Llama San's Peruvian-Japanese Nikkei cuisine, and James Syhabout.
This episode features the editors of Banana, a magazine on contemporary AZN culture, an urban rice paddy in New York, the Chinese cooking blog Omnivore's Cookbook, and a foray into the culture of Asian cocktails.
This episode features the importance of comfort food. Topics include Chinese cooking at home with the help of cooking blogs such as The Woks of Life, and young chefs who reimagine Taiwanese and Indonesian classics.
Chinese wellness; the power of whole flower teas; the benefits of a yogic diet; a 100-acre nature preserve combines food, spirituality and health.
Touring the oldest restaurants in Manhattan's Chinatown; Mei Lum evolves her family's heritage business; chefs Helen Nguyen and Winston Chiu feed local residents in need.
Exploring nostalgia with father-son team Hidehito and Kenshiro Uki of Sun Noodles; Cantonese American chef Calvin Eng and his mom, Bonnie; preserving 14th-century Korean noble cuisine; Halekulani Hotel.
Childhood friends who opened a bar as an homage to their Indian upbringing; a microbrewery that incorporates Hawaiian flavours; a rum company preserves sugar cane farming and traditional rum agricole.
Today’s trendsetting Asian restauranteurs/entrepreneurs are delighting diners with traditional Malay breakfast (Kopitiam), the unique Thai-Chinese cuisine of Phuket (Wan Wan), reimagined temaki (Nami Nori), luxe Michelin-starred contemporary Korean BBQ (Cote), and reimagined South Indian cuisine (Unapologetic Foods). Learn why Asian food has never been more exciting or inventive.
Harvesting fruit at Kahuku Farms; chef Mark Noguchi prepares an epic potluck dinner; chef Alan Wong creates a tuna poke; a fish auction that regulates, markets and preserves Honolulu's fishing industry.
Three brothers make Texas barbecue in Houston; a chef gives traditional Gulf crawfish boil a spicy, wok-fried Vietnamese twist; a pho master turns traditional broth into America's new comfort soup.
A family grows American ginseng in Wausau, Wis.; a backyard oyster farm in Greenport, Long Island, supplies famous restaurants like Le Bernardin.
Asian food entrepreneurs throughout New York pursue projects driven by their personal passions, from growing the perfect strawberry to recreating a small corner of Taipei on the streets of Brooklyn.
A 12-year-old cooks for his family; a chef prepares an array of the Korean staples known as banchan; a meal delivery service provides a classic Asian pregnancy and postpartum diet.
Benchawan Jabthong Painter and David Skinner prepare meals reflecting their Thai and Choctaw heritages; Justin Yu combines French rigour with Cantonese instincts; Anita Lo forages for wild mushrooms for a feast featuring umami.
Across Taiwan, there’s a growing movement to produce familiar pantry staples – soy sauce, hot sauce, tofu, rice – in a hand-crafted way that respects the island’s legacy. Two brothers take over the family soy sauce factory; a tofu maker uses traditional methods, as well as water from a bubbling mud volcano; and a collective of young urbanites seek out a life farming rice.
Taiwan’s earthly obsession with food has a spiritual dimension as an offering to the spirits who watch over the vulnerable island nation. Indigenous men of the Rukai tribe hunt for wild boar in the mountains, while in the rocky tidal zone the matriarchal Amis forage the sea’s bounty. At Buddhist temples, dizzyingly diverse vegetarian menus speak to how food can cultivate compassion and connection.
A lot of cities claim to never sleep, but Taipei makes good on that promise. Danielle visits a 24-hour prawn pool where she catches dinner and tours a popular night market, tracking down oyster omelets and shaved ice. At the port of Keelung she walks down a dark alleyway to a bar straight out of “In the Mood for Love,” where the local catch is served fresh from the nearby seafood market.
Taiwan is steeped in tea, as beverage, ritual and way of life. Danielle meets a tea grower who processes the most tender leaves by wok-frying them, and shares sips with an expert in the ceremony of brewing and drinking tea. A San Diego surfer displays the delicate tea pots he makes to honor his adopted culture, while the baristas at Odd One Out dispense gourmet bubble tea.
All around the island are artists whose medium is Taiwan’s traditional ingredients and foods. Danielle visits an indigenous-rights activist’s lunch box canteen and the cooking studio where a young couple perfect the sticky-rice confection kueh. A Michelin-starred chef deconstructs an iconic Taiwanese dish, lu rou fan, while a mad scientist of fermentation breaks down stinky tofu.
