- What are we doing today? - Season five. - Oh, sorry. - Worth it. - Welcome back. A lot has changed. I moved to New York. There's Annie. She's
helping produce the show. - Anyway, this is the
episode that I put together for your return to Los Angeles. We're going to be trying three
large-format meats at three drastically different price
points to find out which one is the most worth it at its given price. - Worth it. - Often times on menus you'll see your appetizer section, your entrees. Sometimes there's an extra
special bonus zone where there is a very expensive, intended
to be shared dish and that's kind of what inspired this episode. - Eating big stuff like
this, you need friends. Why not eat that with my
friends in this car today? - Yeah, that was my idea. That's not a novel thing. - No, I came up with that just now. - That was the whole
point of this excursion. (upbeat music) - My name is David Kuo
and I'm chef/owner of Little Fatty and accomplice bar. Today we're going to be
eating Chinese barbecue pork. - What kind of place is Little Fatty? - It definitely appeals to your
old-school Chinese-American palate done with a little twist. We have walnut shrimp. We have orange chicken. We also do super authentic
stuff, like right now we have dan dan mian. We use the Chinese-American
as like a gateway drug. It gets you in the door but
then you start ordering this other stuff and then you
trust us and order more stuff. - We're attached to a
bar. What's with that? It's kind of unique to get
craft cocktails or mixology with Chinese food. I think that's what sets us apart. - What's your favorite drink on that menu? - Right now, I think it's the Pearl Diver. It's like this macadamia nut, rum and brown butter and sugar mix. You can put it on pancakes. - [Andrew] Ooohh. Wow. - [David] Yeah, it's that good. - So this barbecue pork,
what piece of pork is this? - The knee. It's called a pork hock. I love taking an underutilized cut of meat and turn it into something magical. I think that's the beauty of cooking. We use a combination of Shaoxing,
soy sauce, ginger, garlic- - [Andrew] And how long
does that braise for? - About four to five hours. We let it sit overnight
and then we air dry it like Peking duck so it gets really crispy. Put it in the fryer for
about 15 minutes and then we shellac it with barbecue sauce
- ketchup, honey, hoisin, five spice, garlic, ginger
- all the classic flavors. So this is like a family
style Chinese barbecue pork with buns and coleslaw and hot mustard. - [Andrew] About how many people
does this typically serve? - [David] Anywhere from four to seven. - [Andrew] Why does that
bun work with this pork? - [David] I think it's the
perfect vehicle because it allows using your hands without
getting your hands dirty. You're getting everything in
there, the sauce, the coleslaw, the crispy pork and the unctuous soft pork all in a little bun - Do you have a specialist that you're you're buying those buns from? - Yeah, it's actually my
cousin in Monterey Park. - Oh cool. - He owns a bakery. - I'm so hungry. (David laughs) No more questions, please. Let's eat. (music) (ding) - [Andrew] Okay, cheers, Steven. - Mmmm. - Mmmm. We're drinking the Pearl Diver. - Oooh. I have nothing in
my stomach right now and I felt a jolt of that. Okay. - Perfect time to give you
a knife so that you could- - Yeah. - Come on, crack in there. - Whoa. - Whoa. Here, I'll help you out. Hold the meat down. - That's what I'm talking about. - Is it wrong that I just
want to eat this like a corn on the cob? - Whoa. - It's finger food. I have a feeling you're
going to love this. - Mmmm. I'm going to cut you off a piece of this meat right here. - Okay. Here, I'll help myself to a bun. - Here you go. - Come on, Steven. I need
some meat on the bun. Just a little touch of that. Now look at my bun and look at your bun. - Because you're a gluttonous pig. - Yeah, I'm a big fatty. - (laughs) You're not a big fatty. The mustard? Oh no. Got a big glob cause I'm used to just dousing my hot dogs in mustard. - Cheers. (upbeat music) - Mmmm. This is perfect. First of all, anything
wrapped in a bun, I'll eat. - This little package has
everything, fatty meat, it's also crispy, powerful mustard. - Woo. - Do you feel it in your nose? - Oh, yeah. - That's the mustard scale, one to nose. - I think what's so great
about this is the crispy skin. - Totally. - Cause everything is so soft
and then you get to the skin and it's like (crunch). - A lot of the times on a little
sandwich, you're adding the texture from something else,
but here the meat itself has all the textures represented. This is the kind of thing
that I always see on a menu and I'm like, oooh, I want to try that, but I can't order it by myself. - You know what that reminds me of? You want to play basketball, you have to get nine other friends. - You have to kind of like
scrounge up some people to kind of fill out the table. Get some bench players coming to dinner. - Here you go. - Ooohhh. - So Little Fatty? What'd you think? It's fun to share a big
piece of meat, right? - Hot mustard. Yes. - Sometimes you want to feel
like a little fatty, right? - And I definitely feel
like a big fatty right now. - Do you want to feel like something else? - Huh? - I don't know what to call
this fact, you guys, since I chose where we're going, I
decided to do a little research of myself and see how you like my facts. - Okay. - Fact time. - What? - So what you're saying is
big brain, little teeth? - I'm saying we became smarter
when we learned how to cook. - I don't know how I feel about this. Facts are getting weirder. The restaurants are
getting more arbitrary. - Okay, look, did you eat
good food already today? - Yes. - That's all you need to know. It's going to happen two more times. Worth it. (upbeat music) - I'm Jonah Freedman, owner
of Freedman's in Silver Lake. Daytime is new school Jewish
deli and then at night we have a full cocktail bar. - The decor is really awesome. - Thank you. - I'm blown away by the wallpaper. - Cool. Thanks. Today, our
chef, Steph, is going to be showing you how we make our brisket. Brisket is very much tied to Jewish food and family celebrations. You always eat it on high holidays. It's usually kind of a homey dish. Our brisket is not the
sort of overly sweet traditional Jewish brisket. The presentation is like Jewish
meets Texas barbecue, but the preparation I would say
is quite French, actually. We braise them for three
to four hours using burnt onion, garlic, raw ginger. That all goes into the oven. Those are taken out,
cryovaced and then held. We heat up in the cryovac bag
so it's this very, very tender meat that kind of falls
apart and the sauce is then ladled on top. It's served with our pom
Freedman, which are like tater tots, b and b pickles, rye
bread and smoked bone marrow. We wheel the brisket out on
a cart and cut it tableside using what we call our dad knife. - Electric saw with two
blades that go like that? - Electric saw, yeah,
two blades like that. - Yeah, my dad has one of those. - Why that knife? - When you think about how you
would cut a brisket at your house, you would be using a turkey carver. To pair that with a very formal
presentation of bringing it to a table has this really
nice kind of dichotomy. And that's what Freedman's is about. We have a great martini program,
but you can always get a five dollar hot dog at anytime of the day. (music) (ding) - This is really beautiful. - Welcome to dinner, Steven. - What is this? - It's a martini. - Pickle juice. - Pickle juice. - Oooh. - Oh, yeah, best pickly
martini I've ever had. - It's a kick. - These are the pom de Freedman. - I'm using my hands. - [Andrew] Okay. - [Steven] Horseradish mayo. - Ooh, is that like whipped? The texture of that was
also very surprising. - Cheers. I stole some
of your sauce there. - Adam, try this. It's
like a potato 3D Dorito. Anyhoo, let's make little sandwiches here. - Bone marrow. Oh my God. - You wanted bone meat.
Here it is, Steven. - Oh my God. - This is the literal meat of the bone. - Shut up. (slurps) - (disgust) (laughter) - I'm going to do a
couple pickles on here. - Cheers, Steven. Big meat adventure. - Oh my God. (upbeat music) - I'm so happy. A lot of these flavors
really make sense to me. I grew up in an eastern
European immigrant household, like pickles, rye bread, a roast. Everything is just like the
perfect iteration of it. - Nothing is familiar, yet
everything is familiar. - Many times I've thought,
while out to dinner, I wish I could just make a tiny
sandwich of this food. - Mm-hmmm. - And here I have that option, you know. - I'm still thinking about that saw. - I love it. The electric knife
has this little light on it. It's both a spotlight and
this drum roll for your meat. It's like (drum roll), here's your meat. - (laughs) - Cheers. - Oh my God. - I got us shareable fruit. This is just a thing you can
find all over Los Angeles. Lime, salt, chili, it's delicious. - I want this pineapple right here. - Cheers. Ahhh. Ahhhh. That was like lightning up my mouth. - So Freedman's? Delicious meat, huh? - I want to cut everything with that saw. - You want a saw like that? - Yes. - I'll get you it for Christmas. Will you hold this for me? - Yeah, why? - Cooking fact. - Wait, what? - Hold my fruit. Cooking fact. - Hold my fruit. Cooking dance. - So this is a continuation
of early humans cooking for the first time. - I like it. A two-parter. Are we going to get a third fact later? - Nope. - Whoa. No way. Whoa. - So you coming back to share
these big, shareable meats with me has some
prehistoric origin stories. - Wow. You are quite the archeologist. - Thank you. I hope to be kind of like a
food Indiana Jones one day. - A Foodiana Jones? - (laughs) Did you hear that pun? - Okay. - Can you say that again? - No. (light music) - I'm Adam Perry Lang here at
APL Restaurant in Hollywood. - So, restaurant's pretty new. I noticed the established
date on the menu. - 1969. That's when I was born. This is really a culmnation
of my journey as a chef. Beef is my thing. I love the
procurement of it, aging it. - [Andrew] You don't like to call it a dry-age room necessarily. - [Adam] I don't because
it's not necessarily dry all the time. You want to have the
correct ratio of humidity and vaporation off the meat. It's all in the details,
in cooking, in life. I went to bladesmithing school
just to make sure that last point of contact for
the customer is perfect. The taste is just so different
when you have a crummy blade and I like to do
things with intention, down to making my own knives. Today we're going to do one of
my signature dishes, which is the APL Short Rib with Pickle Salad. One of the key ingredients is actually to slather it in ballpark mustard. I love tying in nostalgia into cooking. I put that mustard on very
lightly just so that the beef can brown underneath but the
outside can caramelize and make the rub stick or creates a crust. The crust carries flavor
and it protects the meat from drying out in the initial stage. - [Andrew] Do you define
this as a smoked meat? Is it barbecue or is it something else? - [Adam] I call it wood-fired cooking. There's good smoke and there's bad smoke. If you burn too low, all
these different compounds don't have the opportunity to get burnt off into the atmosphere. That's going on the meat. If there's going to be
any smoke, you want it to be very subtle and over time. I put vinegar on this because
vinegar dries and what's left is the sour residue
that creates salivation. It gets your mouth
excited and ready to eat. Vinegar is like nature's MSG. - [Steven] What we're
doing for this episode is kind of a family-style meat. Was there an intention there as a thing to bring on for a group? - Completely. Fire brings people together. It's celebratory, like the family roast. I think some of the best
things in life are made simply. (music) (ding) - [Steven] Big money, big meats. We both got the Blue Dream
cocktail, but I got the mocktail. - But we're both living the
dream, the big meat dream. You want to taste mine? - Oh, yeah yeah. - Yeah, yours is way juicier. Can I point something out to you? The booth smells like meat. It's leathery. Can I serve you some meat, please? Wow, look at how tender this
is. I don't need to cut it. I can just pull it apart. - Cheers. - Okay, cheers. It's like if pot roast
and barbecue had a baby. It has this delightful layer of smokiness. - When you swallow it, it
still is there and present. Which part of this meat is your favorite? - Honestly, it's the crust. I've never had a better crust. Usually, it's more of a shell
than a flavor component, but here it's actually quite tender
and there is a rich flavor of black pepper, which I really love. - Oh my God. - Oh my God. This meat is
just surrendering to me. - I'm going to just grab a piece. Ohhh. Holy smokes. It has
surrendered to my fingers. - Here comes the pickle meat sandwich. There's something very
beautiful about a plate that comes with just meat and pickles. To me, those are like
the two core food groups. - Vegetables and protein? - Pickle and meat. - That's the food group is pickle? - Pickles and meat. Pickles and meat. I'm a little lad who
loves pickles and meat. - Can I just take this and grab the bone? - Sure. - Let's see if this falls apart. - Oh, wow. - Ohhhh. You got all the meat. - Looks like my wish is coming true. Here you can have- - Oh my God. That is crazy. This is not fat, but
it's squishy like fat. - Is this any less satisfying
to you than a steak, because you can come to this restaurant
and get a very nice steak. - I would probably take the short rib. - I think for me it depends
on the day of the week. This feels like Sunday
evening shared meat. There's also something
really great about having a big table where everybody's eating and they're all tasting the same thing. It's not like oh, mine's
good, how's yours? Oh, it's good. We can look at each other and
we know what it tastes like because it's in all of our
mouths, like your brains connected through this invisible network. - Whoa. - The meat matrix. - This may be the ultimate
group bonding experience. - Yeah. - Forget escape rooms. - Group meat. - First episode back. - You feel good? - Yeah. - You feel very full, very satiated? - I don't think I'll be
eating meat for a day or two, but after that detox, back to meat. - Which shareable meat was
the most worth it to you at its given price? - I would have to say Little Fatty. - Wow. - Yeah. They're all very
good, but Little Fatty's was under 30 dollars plus it's
a truly Chinese-American restaurant and I love that. - Yeah, I think my worth
it winner is Freedman's, the best balance of a meat
I'd love to eat on its own and a meat that's going to be great as a little sandwich afterward. I took some of that meat home,
turned it into a spaghetti sauce. It was phenomenal. Adam, who's your worth it winner? - [Adam] APL. - What? - Wow. Good answer. I'll accept it. Hey, Annie, who's your worth it winner? - I saw that one coming, actually. She was scarfing down the
Freedman's after we left. - We're going to your neck of
the woods for next episode. Want to give us a little sneak peek? - Rhymes with hurry and it's
a very bad basketball player. LeBron rules. (Andrew laughs) - [Andrew] So we're going to
need to learn how to share before we could cook, and by
the way we're talking about possibly a million years ago. - [Steven] Why are your facts all about millions of years ago? - [Andrew] That's when
the best stuff happened.
I personally don't like the new girl, not anything against her it just messes with the current format, she feels like a producer, like a boss directing them, more than a friend like the 3 of them.