Five Tasty Stories About New York City

[Music] nestled in between the skin care love beauty spa and Advani's pest control school here in Elmhurst Queens is Indo Java a to IO mini-mart for all things Indonesian but every Tuesday it turns into the city's smallest restaurant with truly authentic Indonesian food you're in luck you got the best table in the house it's also the only table [Music] my name is cetera JIT I'm the owner of the India Java we open in the Java 10 years ago every Tuesday I cook right here for all the customer we call Warren's Lassa so it's me choose the food stall this little Superette turned one table pop-up restaurant isn't complete without one of the smallest kitchens in the world our kitchen is very tiny is a Love Kitchen because just in a 4-2 person 2 people might be a stretch it's half the size of a broom closet but it doesn't stop daily from whipping up classic Indonesian fairly good egg and rendang I am before there is none Indonesian starved is difficult to find the ingredient from Indonesia and we mistook community if we have a store the Indonesian people will come here and then we still can top Indonesian language that's our our dream and then now this happened I am NOT a professional chef I don't have any education chef backgrounds so I just learned from my mom in the last run the chef always hide in the kitchen I like to talk with the customer when I serve the food so we can share in the story they always say it likes me I have to come again [Music] [Music] if you want a pastrami sandwich go to Casa de me if you wanna chat please come - hi deep in this my friends is the story of the real New Yorker sandwich and the people who keep the legacy alive I've been teaching here for 20 years any tourists in the world is noise ah hot doggies but only New Yorkers know in the chat pieces on 110th and 1st Avenue inside the bodega best known as Hajis we meet Salah my name is salah el Habashi and I'm the manager of Hajis Dylan grocery for 15 minutes we actually invent the chap cheese they get to see everything on it [Music] the ingredients is one burger for example or two burgers you chop it up good and you put it with some system that's a secret decision and whatever you like like lettuce tomatoes onion that's Saturday it's an Arabic food what we don't add cheese over there but when we come here we do cheese oniy on a roll is 375 on a hero that's cost like five dollars Hajis is located in a part of New York that's made up of various kinds of people with a variety of incomes so keeping chopped cheese at a price point everyone can afford has been a top priority in fact the chopped cheese has only gone up a dollar in the last decade we are here for all time helping the community and serving the community chive cheese is like everything to the community because it's affordable and delicious so everybody liked it you sell about 200 is Jeff Jesus in the gospel the chopped cheese is spread beyond Harlem and into bodegas far and wide attracting oil New Yorkers everywhere it appears but in the end it all comes back to and Salah they have cheese every day but for me sometimes I don't need to lose cheese I make it like a cheap hamburger it's the same thing but no cheese I'm trying to lose weight that's all [Music] truffles are just such an elusive mysterious ingredient these are the Spanish one of black truffles the firm tarragon they just have this alluring earthiness quality that I've never tasted before they kept me totally obsessed with them for almost ten years now my name is Ian percaya and I procure hard-to-find ingredients from around the world mainly fresh truffles I'm a dealer of sorts ideal truffles out of my car it definitely has this underground element when I was younger people who used to own me - truffle boy I started when I was 15 and I'm now 24 I'm constantly on the hunt for identifying the most desirable regions that produce the very best truffles not really nice where are these guys from Spain they've never been successfully cultivated on a commercial scale they grow underground and they're obviously extremely rare and hard to find that's why they're worth their weight in gold as soon as the truffle is found the clock is constantly ticking because there's only a seven-day shelf life there 98% water every single day that a truffle is unused its evaporating I still get excited every time I get a new trouble shipment in there are sent from Europe to JFK where they're cleared by FDA USDA homeland security and customs I sort them I go through every single truffle looking for imperfections and then I basically hop in the car the box full of truffles and South to 90% of the fine-dining restaurants in New York everyone from David Chang to Sean Brock to Eleven Madison Park Laverne and den a variety of michelin-starred restaurants [Music] during travel season we import around $200,000 with the truffles a week a small amount of truffles could be anywhere from five to fifteen thousand we're dealing with quite a lot of valuable products I'm doing something that I love it doesn't even feel like work anymore my warehouse smells like truffles my car smell electron holes my apartment like I can't escape travel just like they're smothering me which is a great problem to have I guess [Music] on the surface the Ganesha temple in Queens seems like just a place of worship for Hindus but if you take the side entrance down the hall with all the lights follow the signs down the stairs follow more signs down more stairs you'll find the temple canteen a restaurant serving food to rival anything you would find in India [Music] this is dr. uma Mysore car namaste I'm the president of the Hindu temple Society of North America in Flushing New York the temple came into existence in 1977 and is one of the first of its kind in North America the temple has become a cultural hub for Hindus throughout the u.s. this is a place like home people who come to the temple spend their whole day here they have their worshipping services in the morning and then very often we have cultural programs but also they come here to eat they come to the temple to eat yes they do come here to eat some of them come just only to eat not even to come inside the temple so in addition to a place of worship a community center and a wedding venue the Ganesha temple serves cuisine authentic to South India and is open to the public and the food is pretty fantastic just as the New York Times for New York magazine or Anthony Bourdain it's not easy to find Indian food everywhere around the corners so people come to find authentic Indian food okay so if you don't know anything about South Indian food here are some of the must-haves there's vara i always called it as a salty doughnuts italy it is nothing but puffed rice sambar it is made of lentils very healthy and most notably dosas there are at least about eight or nine kinds of dosas it consists of dow and there is filling inside we have about an authentic Indian cooks in our Hinduism we strongly believe without the offering of food to the deities our prayer is incomplete and that's how it really started but I think when you go to a canteen or a restaurant you want to enjoy your food we want to make sure that whether it is a Hindu or a non Hindle should be able to enjoy the food who cares really whether it is an Indian restaurant or a non Indian restaurant you just want to go and eat the food so the next time you're hungry in Queens try the temple there are countless Chinatown's all over the world in New York boasts one of the most famous full of cheap produce fish markets and of course a plethora of Chinese food but if you hop on the one train take it to the Upper West Side you'll find a Chinese restaurant like no other where half the menu is something else - Letta chicharonnes ropa vieja pass Tony across III holy this is la caridad 78 New York's last Cuban Chinese restaurant comida chena a career-low y3 o dia how did this unlikely culinary duo come to be it's a great question enter Sam Lee so my wife remember father came over here or he started I like his own restaurant with Eli Cuban spices and also the Chinese put mixed together hundreds of thousands of Chinese came to Cuba in the 19th and early 20th century establishing a strong presence on the island but when Castro came to power most Chinese immigrants like Sam's father left many of them coming to the US and thus Cuban Chinese food was born I would say luckily that restaurant is not restaurant is a kitchen for Upper West siders we have oxtail robbery ha which is like a shredded beef at the same time we search IDs food either cooked for my user mainly from China and they learn the train when they got here and it become very good so are there any Cuban born workers left I still have a one kilburn worker working for me again I see enemy Kamino Miyagi my name is Antonio Wong I work in a career I'm a star in 1986 I'm born in Havana Cuba in 1961 and every analyst key1 work invisible while Cuban Chinese culture is fading la caridad is a snapshot of a strange moment in time where two vastly different cultures merged together the Cuban Chinese people getting older and they don't have any younger people to take over I myself felt like I all my father who started this restaurant so I want to try to make sure that I carry on the tradition for him

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 1,373,579

Rating: 4.9154015 out of 5

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, new york, new york city, food, flavors, human condtion, Food & drink, tasty, new releases, great big reels

Id: H2_vnsmv3HU

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019