Is This the FUTURE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN FOOD? (Thai and Viet)

damn who made this sandwich you make the sauce it's a good sandwich i'd come over like julie where's mitch he's like oh he's downstairs making rap music vietnamese and thai food are the most widely eaten southeast asian cuisines in america with nearly 15 000 restaurants across the nation ranging from hole-in-the-wall authentic spots to michelin star winners we're hitting up three places that are putting their own spin on viet and thai food what's going on everybody welcome to a very special new york episode of beyond fall where we're going to be covering the vietnamese food boom in the city we're here with special guest richie lee what's up richie there has been probably 20 modern vietnamese spots that have opened up in new york city over the past two years crazy i remember just like two to three years ago we went and there was like one maybe i think two foods that really started to become more popular in the west coast that have infiltrated new york city would be vietnamese and the other one being mexican so i started to see the more elevated versions creep in and behind us is one of our favorites so today we're going to be eating through the menu at saigon social it is a mixture of traditional it's a mixture of modern it is probably something that you have never seen before let's go all right everybody thank you so much for clicking on that video but real quick i gotta give a big shout out to our sponsor stat mask i know a lot of people in the comments on our instagram and on youtube wondering where we get these masks you can get them at the statmas.com they have three layers of medical grade material they have a static charge just like the n95 filter and honestly they look cool you guys know us we moved to new york during the pandemic which meant we had to be careful and cautious so we needed top level face mask protection the stat mask has made us feel confident and comfortable to go around the city doing what we need to do they come in a whole bunch of different colors they come in three different sizes and honestly they are our favorite mask if you guys are interested the statmas.com check them out made right here in brooklyn [Music] all right you guys we are sitting here with halloween and saigon social what does it mean to throw your name into the hat of this whole like larger movement right when i started cooking professionally people were always asking me so how do you explain your food is it modern is it traditional is it fine dining is it casual you have to be one or the other it's like why do i have to do that i'm not trying to conform i'm just trying to offer a piece of my life in my culture guys we are starting off our meal here at saigon social with two dishes that are extremely tasty we've got lobster garlic noodles look at the burntness right there from the wok we would call it wake but just flavor of the wok and then here you have your brisket oxtail french dip sandwich fried crispy basil leaves on top of onions on top of brisket basil aioli and you have your little nice fatty club broth to dip it in lobster garlic noodles what i really love about these noodles is that it's actually a really simple flavor it's just like your scallion oil you have a lot of salt and pepper it's just stir-fried a little bit of chardness on certain noodles yeah definitely really easy to eat exactly i love these noodles they do kind of feel like pasta in the sense they have a lot of flavor themselves i think they're egg noodles so you know i gotta say egg noodles over any other noodles over rice noodles for sure for sure i might do something a little crazy right now i'm uh you know oh the sauce yes i like that rich i like that all right so our next dish here that we gotta eat right away is the brisket oxtail french dip sandwich there's a lot of fusion spots and fusion sandwiches in 2020 but to actually hit the right sweet spot and have it taste good and look good that's a whole nother thing this is so good i'm speechless yo is this a french dip or french trip all right so off camera i was like kind of dissecting it a little more and then i had asked helen what is going on with the mayo because i was like what is it about the sandwich she said she actually puts a little bit of basil in the mayo and beef fat because i was like what is it about this sandwich that tastes so crazy and it's the mail like brings it all together that's crazy all right the next round here saigon social we have the fud dry age rib eye right here and then you got your uh brisket pho right there my mind is blowing at the idea of dried aged ribeye food that we just cooked in the broth yes rich what's your feeling on dry aged beef is that the new vintage because it's like vintage beef no one thing i gotta say is i appreciate this right now because following helen's like culinary journey the past couple years i know she's serious about the meats because some of those photos that she posts on her facebook are crazy so i know this is gonna taste good because she's been studying like the science behind dry aged beef and like different cuts and whatnot a lot of people like eating their with raw meat and it's usually beef round i add mine with dry aged beef and i think it really just enhances the beef flavor to the whole experience dry age dripping no sriracha no just straight for here super tender i'm sweat oh my gosh what there's a smokiness to the beef almost like what are those boards with the cheese and the meat charcuterie charcuterie it kind of gave me that feeling that is often how people describe dry aged beef really a creaminess this is a whole another experience man i never had anything like that in my life brisket [ __ ] honestly this is one of my favorite vietnamese restaurants in the world man this is do everything how you expect but then also different this is nice if you like want to go for something that you're familiar with but they do it like their own way so this is my boom room it's crab and shrimp tomato noodle soup it's served with a side of fermented shrimp paste and it's very pungent and a lot of people refer to it as the stinky sauce but this is where the umami comes from it's fermented shrimp you'll you'll notice and taste the difference it's like a umami bomb bun real wow lots of flavor i went straight in to put in a ton of chilies that got a kick yeah definitely with the chilies and the shrimp paste one of my favorite bun rios i ever had too all right helen uh you gotta explain to us the bum me burger because this is one of my favorite items here it's kind of like a burger meets a traditional vietnamese sandwich when you look at it it obviously looks like a regular burger but when you bite into it you taste all of the different components to a traditional bunny it's an eight ounce dry aged patty it's a combination of short rib dry aged ribeye and then i lather it with some mayo and some pate and then it gets the patty and then i made a oxtail maggie gravy so basically yeah that's the key i'm telling you that's the that's the are you laying the secret out but i'm just it is what it is people know between the pate and the maggie gravy my god i feel like you just turned everything up in a regular bunny right everything is to another level with the boom of vietnamese restaurants in new york which we can agree that there seems to be an uptick obviously than a few years ago is it kind of this collective that's coming up i think so i think most importantly we're all very different individuals in the way that we think the way that we do business the way that we cook our flavor profiles and i think it's amazing if you walk around any you know regular new york street block you'll see that there's many pizzerias i think it would be amazing that one of these days we can do the same where you walk down the street like wow you can go this place for this place for rice noodles and what were some things about vietnamese food that you wanted to keep and maintain and then some aspects that you wanted to break i'd say it's a combination of traditional and modern you know to say that oh i want to do something very traditional or i want to do something very modern it's never it's an either or for me i think it's and because who i am as a person is just a combination of the traditional values and then also like you know the more modern values because i was born and raised in the states but i'm very much a vietnamese person in the way my soul is you're not like picking and choosing you're just combining there's certain things that i do not mess around with all of my broths and my soups are exactly how i grew up eating my mom would beat me if i changed too many things right but i wanted people to taste that you know when they take that first sip of the soup it you know brings them back all right you guys we just finished up our meal at saigon social like i said they got some crazy stuff on the menu i think immediately to me the thing today that stands out the most the dry aged rib eye [ __ ] yeah i have to go with the uh the burger at the end i like it you know i had to do the machado dance that's how crazy that burger was that was insane i would say the bun real i thought you know i haven't had a good bun reel in a while and not all spots do it well and you can just taste the care it was a very rich broth and yeah man i enjoyed it [Music] all right richard our next location is thai diner here on kenmare and it's like the perfect example of blending an american platform in style with authentic southeast asian flavors exactly and aesthetically i just checked it out it looks like a traditional american diner with a lot of thai influences from the decor materials even down to the plants and let me tell you this they are doing thai food very differently one of the chefs is american and then one of the chefs is born in thailand so it is truly that perfect mix right there i mean look at it you have the thai plaque and the american flag it doesn't get more literal than that i said we go check it out man thai diner let's go yo richie the food is arriving we got a lot of dishes we got a couple drinks let's just talk about the the drinks real quick the beverages all right so here i have a milo okay which is a popular drink mix to have in asia you got the hot pandan buttered rum it's age rum pandan and coconut butter served with hot whipped cream just a hint of rum to give you that alcoholic feel this is nice you know how people like just want the flavor you know like those chocolates with the uh rum on side drink form of the chocolates with the rum inside right here i got the disco fries with the masamum curry and then you got coconut crema on top as well crinkle cup fries here i have one of their most inventive dishes it's a breakfast sandwich made with a roti and then you have this isaan sausage which is like the lao sausage yeah the oy thai sandwich the sauce stood out to me almost the most egg cheese and the meat thing that that is really like a diner element you know what i mean yeah all right so moving on to the fries i'm having fries here clearly that is the american element any sort of sauce dish on any carb is always gonna work out crispy with your sauciness that is good whoa that got a kick to it too yeah all right our next dish is here i have a shredded chicken sandwich with banana blossom and then i got a toast right here with thai tea butter which is crazy dragon fruits right here and then the condensed milk with salt and sugar the thai tea butter sneaks on you that is insanely good this is a musket here trust me this is a five out of five let's go in [Music] it really does taste like the chicken sandwiches that you had growing up but just with a slight thai kick the main chef of thai diner is half irish and half thai so of course there is some really cool implementations of irish food and this is the stuffed cabbage right here yeah turkey is perfectly cooked whatever sauce this is this would be the perfect perfect dish with some white fluffy rice this is actually the most surprising dish to me because i did not think it was going to be that good but let me tell you this the people here they put in a lot of thought into exactly how to kind of fuse things and which pieces they want to take from different cultures and obviously the flavor here is a little bit more thai but the form is so irish all right so right here we got a whiskey lemongrass obviously whiskey bean from ireland this is definitely really irish inspired but we're drinking out of a lemongrass straw wow this is really refreshing let me grasp with whiskey we got these uh thai beignets brushed with a little bit of coconut powder here you have this guava dip you have the pandan and then you have these ginger snap cookies but it's using kind of like the thai ginger that is good these dishes that we had you always hear like negative stereotypes about fusion foods but these two restaurants that we showed in today's video kill them identity food is one of those interesting things where it's like sometimes their identity is so hard to explain that it's almost easier to explain through their dishes right dishes and the food tells the story that maybe they can't maybe they're not writers but they know how to cook it i have a new appreciation for traditional foods [Music] redefined [Music] all right everybody so we just went to a modern vietnamese spot we went to a modern thai spot and for our third and final place ginger and lemongrass is actually a fusion between thai and vietnamese flavors i wish richie could be here but he had to catch a flight you know what's really interesting about this spot is that it's actually owned by people from the czech republic but they have a very deep appreciation for viet and thai food and somehow they were able to fuse it to the point where it's even asian approved now david we're in the lower east side but their first location for ginger lemongrass is actually in queens and the first people to tell us about it are actually our asian friends from queens so it might not be 100 authentic or asian owned but they've got to be doing something right because of the glowing reviews let's check it out aren't you guys we are looking at a fusion between the thai cuisine and the vietnamese cuisine this is gonna be really interesting it's very much fusion but it doesn't look cringy it doesn't look weird at all they definitely uh worked with a vietnamese and a thai chef to kind of come up with this fusion menu also they're obviously their own ideas let's go this is the salmon roll it's like a salmon fresh roll there's green tea noodles daikon and salmon in there hey it tastes fresh all right david moving on to our steam bows right here this one definitely has the toppings of a bun me but there's obviously the chinese influence with using the steam bow really interesting i noticed a lot of fusion spots using the steam bow of course everybody is doing fusion chicken wings whether it's with milk mom or whether it's with the thai chilis or you have lotus this looks like it's some sort of combination all three things everything here is really fresh man and nothing really throws me off there's not some weird sriracha aioli or anything like that that's really is one of those markers of a true true like fusion spot so that's what i appreciate this kind of tastes like sort of your typical thai chili wing except just turned up with the spice all right you guys we are looking at the coconut spicy lemongrass fu and a true fusion between thai and vietnamese flavors this is one of my favorite noodle soups in the city wow that's a big statement coming from a guy who runs a channel that eats a lot of asian food man i eat a lot of noodle soups too i mean that's true oh my goodness the poached egg the bone marrow the grilled shrimp the bok choy the shiitake mushrooms david would you say this is like a fusion between tomkat and pho yeah i would say there's a fusion between tomka but but possibly the way a japanese person would do it look i'll tell you this there is not many noodle soups in the city that are like this guys and there's a lot of good noodle soups out there coconut lemongrass pho that's good that's good you know listen guys shout out to the czech republic we're just gonna pretend like we don't have a big juicy bone marrow right here that i'm not just gonna scoop into the noodle soup come on come on come on you know what i was saying about this it tastes like a real dish that's been around for 100 years that's how well fused it is i know what you mean it doesn't feel like just two things you just threw together but david the other home run dish is the pork belly button me right here it does look like a average bun me except with just more things but it has the spicy oil on the inside it has the house-made chili oil with the pork belly just look at how fatty this piece is right here guys it's not traditional to put something like pork belly in a bun meat some spots do do it but i just think they do a good job over here let's go that's good you know what they call me the mixologist i'm gonna take this uh coconut lemongrass soup i'm gonna pour it on my bun me oh no don't do it to him don't do it too [Music] yo this is good when i dip it in the coconut lemongrass soup it's good all right you guys that does it huge shout out to richie for being in the video let me tell you this southeast asian food it's on a rocket ship oh man i love seeing it more in the city because for so long it was kind of hard to get good southeast asian food in manhattan on the topic david of like kind of non-asians or not fully blooded asians i guess doing asian food and being known for it what are the issues that they need to address i think that it just can't be juxtaposed as an upgrade to the authentic it's totally okay to love fusion foods as much or even more but probably the person who creates the fusion food shouldn't try to crap on the original that they learned from that don't do that and we've seen people do that recently to say oh we're cleaning it up just don't say that kind of thing let's just have respect for the original you can throw your own twist on it by all means make it more progressive make it more modern but always respect where it came from we have a friend who always says you know it's appropriate versus appreciate always appreciate and i think here at ginger lemongrass and a lot of the other well-known spots out here i think they do a good job of appreciation my question is to everybody out there where do you think this is going is this a trend that's going to continue i mean as we know more authentic and traditional food is also getting more popular but maybe the fusion food will too hey it is interesting and delicious to speculate about the future of asian food in the west all right you guys let us know what you think in the comments section below make sure you hit that like button and until next time we're out peace yo let me be real there's a lot of people out there doing a lot of things and you won't eat the lobster head guts i think that's crazy it's all about eating booty maybe we'll cut that out

Channel: FUNG BROS.

Views: 137,379

Keywords: fung brothers, fung bros, Andrew Fung, David Fung, andrewjfung, davidbfung, asian american, sneakerheads, asian identity, streetwear, asian rapper, mikey chen, strictly dumpling, chinese food, asian food, asian comedian, mark wiens, jimmy zhang, richie le, hypetalk, vietnamese food, pho, best thai food, thai street food, vietnamese street food, new york food, eater new york

Id: FM7mc44sCSc

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021