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.
Japan has mesmerized American foodies for generations, and a new wave of Japanese culinary culture continues to intoxicate us. 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. On a more traditional note, Danielle gets in the sumo ring with a 600-pound opponent before she helps him make chanko nabe, the sumo wrestler’s staple meal.
Farmers are the new rock stars of the food world, and in this episode, Danielle visits agriculturists large and small, traditional and cutting edge. Ross Koda, a third-generation Japanese-American, who runs a renowned Central Valley rice farm and hopes to keep it in the family. Kristyn Leach, a Korean adoptee, who 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, operating America’s first wasabi farm.
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.
The rise of China has meant the rise of Chinese culinary traditions in America. 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.
A new generation of chefs and entrepreneurs is finally bringing the amazing cooking of the world’s second-largest country to a broad American audience. Danielle interviews a former financier who offers a light, healthy take on Indian classics at his fast-casual start-up Inday; a Silicon Valley engineer who got her start in the food business selling homemade chai by bicycle in the hills of San Francisco; and the founder of Soho Tiffin Junction, another fast-casual concept, this one inspired by the classic Indian boxed lunches of his childhood.
Danielle gets back to her roots in an episode devoted to the distinctive, rustic cuisine of Taiwan. With Cathy Erway, author of “Foods of Taiwan,” she 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, she tries a New York take on the box lunches known as biandang. And in California’s OC, she pays a twilight visit to America’s closest counterpart to a classic Taiwanese night market.
Asian cuisine is increasingly the engine driving the growth of the American food industry. Danielle talks to an eclectic range of Asian-American entrepreneurs, from the likes of Lynda Trang Dai, once known as the Vietnamese Madonna, now the queen of banh mi sandwiches in Orange County’s Little Saigon to Charles Phan, the ground-breaking chef whose Slanted Door was named best restaurant in the country by the James Beard Foundation.
This episode explores the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures to generate new trends. Featured are Mister Softee taken over by the Chinese government; Brooklyn Brewery using Japanese hops from Jeju Island. One of the Fung Brothers visits a New Yorker reinventing the Shanghainese soup dumpling.
The aesthetics of food are explored. From the Korean art of mukbang to viral sensations, both amateur and professional artists use food as their medium of choice.
In our globalized world, food practices are imported and exported between the East and West. The farm-to-table movement is explored in China’s Hangzhou region with Dai Jianjun of Dragon’s Well Manor, as well as Sang Lee Farms in New York’s North Fork.
The Traditional Chinese Medicine Centre in China, Manhattan Chinatown’s Po Wing Market, and Seoul’s Kimchi Museum, are explored in this feature on food as medicine.
The future of Asian chefs, entrepreneurs, and cultural ambassadors in the mainstream is highlighted. The Canal Street Market and Bubble T dance party are featured.
The K-Beauty boom, from cosmetics to skincare, is disrupting the American beauty industry. Charlotte Cho from Sokoglam is featured.
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.
Traditional Malay breakfast; unique Thai-Chinese cuisine of Phuket; reimagined temaki; contemporary Korean barbecue; reimagined South Indian Cuisine.
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.