(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for Lucky Chow has been provided by (upbeat music) (soft music) - [Danielle] All across the US, new generations of Asian Americans are adapting and transforming the heritages of their immigrant parents and grandparents.

- I strongly believe people are really craving authenticity, Where tradition is becoming the new luxury.

- [Danielle] In this episode, I'm going to visit some next gen entrepreneurs in the food world, and see how they keep one foot in the past and one in the future, honoring their Asian roots while chasing their own American dreams.

(soft music) The only constant about New York is change, and Chinatown is no exception.

Once an enclave for waves of Chinese immigrants, it's now expanding and re-shaping itself to appeal to everyone, offering everything from boba tea to lobster rolls, Canal Street Market is both changing the way locals and tourists experience Chinatown's hectic main drag.

Recently best known for dubious designer handbags, it's creator, Phil Chong, takes me on a one stop culinary tour.

What is Canal Street Market?

- It's a multi vendor food hall and retail market.

We have over 30 different retail vendors, and 11 different food vendors here.

I think we should try out the drip miso, it's what they're really known for!

Can we do a drip miso soup, two of them.

- What did these vendors think when you approached them about opening something up on Canal Street?

- The vendors and the community alike, they were really surprised and taken aback that this concept lived on Canal street.

They think as New Yorkers, people who live or work in New York, most people try to avoid Canal street.

It's really hectic outside, there's a bunch going on, and what we're trying provide here is a little bit of an escape from that.

- [Danielle] Do you see this change going on beyond the market in Chinatown?

- I do see a lot of entrepreneurial energy and spirit on Canal street, especially amongst just my generation.

- [Danielle] The group of friends who started roving dance party Bubble_T, definitely embody the new age entrepreneurship that Phil was talking about.

What's starting as an escape from the mainstream New York social scene turned into a sold out sensation in only a year.

Their safe space for queer Asians, or slaysians, as they've dubbed themselves, has evolved into the magical land of Bubble_T, where Asians rule, but everyone is welcome.

- Bubble Tea is a party that sort of celebrates queer, Asian, POC, with dance and art and drag, and light performances and just a really good time.

- We've always been passive participants at a lot of other parties in New York, and just kind of grass roots like we started from just like wanting to have a party and have our friends, invite our friends, and play the music we want to play, and grew into this community of artists and creatives.

- We kind of realized, wow, there's not really a good space that's for us, like a safe space that speaks to queer Asians, so we thought, well why don't we do something about it.

Threw our first party last year in May, and ever since then it's been growing and growing and growing.

- Growing up in the 90's, it was really hard to find role models who represented our struggle and our story.

It was a way to honor my heritage.

- It's like nothing I have ever seen before, this kind of comradery and this kind of love in everyone.

- I can't believe it's been a year since Bubble_T started.

(crowd cheering) Happy birthday to us!

- Being with the Bubble_T family gave me so much more confidence in myself.

Being at these parties helps me feel okay in that, even if my family doesn't really approve of what I'm doing, my chosen family does.

- Oh my God.

Coming together with the rest of the bubble_T family just helped me to really own I was kind of ashamed of.

- I can just be myself.

- I'm privileged enough to be able to create the space for our generation.

- I'm like really proud of the community we've brought together and the new friends that we've created through the party.

We've did it, and we didn't expect anything out of it but obviously there was a need for it, and I feel empowered by what it's become.

(upbeat music) (soft music) - [Danielle] Let's see if this is ready?

- [Peter] Yeah.

- Rice miso.

- Rice miso.

- [Chef] Bean miso.

(speaking foreign language) - When did your family first have an eye on this building?

- It was in the early 2000's, so historically we have always been in and around Chinatown.

My father is a Chinese immigrant, he's from Hong Kong, my mom is from Taiwan, every weekend the family tradition would be to drive into Chinatown, have dim sum, go walk around, shop for groceries, come back home to New Jersey, and then cook a Chinese meal.

Talk about the community as a whole, and how this could be an amenity to the community.

- A whole new generation is sort of recreating identity?

- Yeah I think the ultimate goal for us is we just wanna give people one more reason to come to Chinatown and explore.

(soft music) - [Danielle] One of my favorite spot to explore in the Chinatown area has always been Pearl River Mart.

For more than 50 years it's been a staple of the community, it's a place where you can get lost for hours or fill your basket in minutes.

A place where you can get anything from Asian inspired home furnishings and kitchen ware to clothing and art.

Hey Joanne!

- How are you?

- So good to see you.

- Same here.

Long time no see, come on in.

Let me show you around.

- I love this new store but it still feels like the old Pearl River that we're all so used to.

- Oh I'm so glad, thank you so much for saying that.

Mr. Chen, my father in law, started the store in 1971 and he was a political activist with a lot of his friends.

But also had a simple thought, one way to really diminish discrimination and increase understanding between neighbors in the United States was to create a store with cool things and it kind of like a great democratizer.

Back when he opened the store from China, we were embargoed, so you can not buy them anywhere and Mr. Chen had to get creative.

He brought them in from Canada, he would drive 14 hours one way, pick up a load, 14 hours back, and he felt if people could see that we were all the same, we liked tasty foods, we like beautiful materials, we like things for our home, that barriers would come down, and that discrimination would dissipate.

(soft music) - [Danielle] When the inevitable pressures of New York real estate led to the closing of Pearl River's fabled SoHo location, Joanne stepped in to help her in-laws recreate the store a few blocks away.

She now works with them to create items that will appeal to both old and new generations of Asians and non Asians.

Ooh the snack section!

- The snack section.

People get lost here for hours.

- I love all of this, what is this?

This woman looks like she's having a lot of fun.

- Yes, yes, it's sour plum.

- I gotta try this.

- Yes.

- Alright, let's see if we can take it.

- Oh, it's sour, ooh.

- Snacks are definitely the great universalizer, because everybody loves trying new snacks.

The weirder the better, actually.

- That's true, you have things that I know my kids would love.

And things that I grew up with, but my kids would probably think I'm way weird, like these cod fish.

- Ooh I love the cod fish.

- They're like jerky.

But also a lot of traditional things.

(soft music) I can stay in the food section forever, but I want to check out the rest of the store.

- Yeah let's go.

Welcome to our downstairs.

- This is where I come when I need more soup spoons.

- Yes.

I love the kitchen gadget section because we have old school Asian kitchen items like steamers, and then just quirky things.

(bells ringing) - Dinner time!

(laughing) It's a great place to learn about Asian culture, too.

- That is one of the things that is very important to us, people like me who are second generation, we might be losing some of our traditions and holidays and meanings behind these items so we want to be able to help keep the traditions alive.

- Where your parents in law started this with a different type of mission, you're really now giving it a new breath of air with the type of stuff you're carrying.

- In the 50 years that's elapsed since 1971, there's an entire community of Asian Americans who have grown up here, and we have our own personality, there's another generation behind us and there are also trends that are coming from Asia right now, and they're all cool.

This really is an Emporium that has something for everybody.

- It's great to see you carry on the legacy.

- Thank you, and thank you so much for coming, and for all that you do.

- I'm a fan!

(laughing) (soft music) Can we try a silk road falafel wrap?

This looks amazing, this doesn't look like something I would expect to find on Canal street.

As a kid, you were coming into Canal street every weekend, what did the street look like back then?

- So as I was growing up, I remember Canal street for having a lot of car audio stores, a lot of stores that sold souvenirs.

I Love New York T-shirts, I personally would come to Canal street to buy my mixtapes, and I think currently there's a reputation for a lot of counterfeit goods being sold out at Canal street, so if you walk up and down the street, you will be solicited for a lot of different name brand items, that may or may not be real.

- I bet I think the whole idea of Chinese food having to be cheap, and served in a take out box is just a part of our previous imagination.

- We still love it, right?

But again, going back to just Canal Street Market, bringing a different spin on things.

One thing that everyone shares in here is the commitment to quality, they know the time and effort that goes into making each and every product, and sometimes the price reflects that.

(upbeat music) - [Danielle] One of the challenges of being an Asian American, is that the homemade specialties you grew up eating can be harder to come by.

Tony Wu and his partner Cat Yeh are helping to fill the gap, hand making small batch Asian soups that get delivered right to your front door.

- Nomz crafts wholesome Asian soups for busy individuals.

We craft these traditional Asian soups using clean, often organic ingredients.

We freeze the broths for convenience, and then we deliver it to our user's door.

- Is this a personal recipe of yours?

- Growing up, because my parents are busy and working they make a large cauldron of soup.

After we finished, we always freeze a portion for later, we don't live close to our parents anymore, why not have a branded product that can offer that same service.

You know the Asian American experience for me personally is very different from my parents.

I was born and raised in Ohio.

My Spanish is better than my Chinese, and I go to the supermarket I'm lost, I really can't find a lot of Asian products that fit our needs, so we like to fill that need, and that's how we came up with Nomz.

(soft music) - And what are the different soups you serve?

- Sure, right now what we have in front of us is the ingredients to our organic chicken and shiitake mushroom soup.

- I would love to see how you make your soup?

- This is a garnish bag, we use it to accentuate our soups, and these garnish bags just in the soup, allowing it to fortify the soup.

This is Cat, she's my partner.

- Hey how are you?

- This soup that we're boiling right now contains a mix of chicken bones.

The spice bag that you put in and mushrooms.

This recipe is derived from my parents, my experiences, friends, and also, Tony's experience that we put this recipe together.

- Any great culinary tips for making the broth?

- Clear your schedule.

- Yeah clear your schedule, use the best ingredients, it just takes a lot of time and love.

- I would love to try them.

- Absolutely.

Let's go get you some soup.

- [Danielle] Can you walk me through the Nomz experience?

- Yes definitely so, this is the finished product that reaches our customers, this is a condensed soup.

Plop the block in a pot, add water to the water line and then just basically heat.

- [Danielle] There you go, wow.

- When we finish the soups, we cut everything ourselves.

The scallion, the ginger, the mushrooms, and we garnish every soup with fresh cut, hand cut scallion.

- Well it's amazing you actually make every batch of soup yourself by hand, so we talk about wholesome and transparency, you know exactly what you're getting.

That just smells so good, I can smell the scallions, the shiitake, and then just that really chicken-ey smell, right?

Wow, this is so good, it's perfect.

I don't need any spices to it.

I will be drinking this all winter long.

I feel wholesome and better already, thank you guys.

(upbeat music) You know food has always been a reason people come down to Chinatown, right?

And I feel like the same is still happening now.

What do you really see as the future of Chinatown?

- The younger generation reclaiming our identity, are really putting their stamp on Asian American identity, and it's telling stories through food or art or architecture, there's a million different outlets.

I think I'm seeing those seeds being planted every day in Chinatown right now.

- Alice Jun learned about makeoelli, when helping the brew the milky Korean rice wine was a fun way to hang out with her dad.

Now she's making it herself and hoping to introduce American's to makeoelli through her artisanal small batch brew.

So what is makeoelli?

- So makeoelli is a traditional Korean rice alcohol, that's both rice and grain based.

It's unfiltered, so it has this rice in it that gives it its milky coloring.

It's typically very light and sweet and bubbly.

It's a combination of rice, nuruk, and water.

(soft music) Most common type of rice that's used here is glutenous or sweet white rice.

First step in making makeoelli is washing the sweet rice.

You're going to wash the rice a couple of times, until the water runs clear.

- And then steaming it, right?

- Yes, put the rice in.

So that's gonna take about 30-40 minutes.

- So did you grow up with your family making makeoelli?

- Yeah so the way I got into makeoelli was actually my father.

As a kid I would help him make makeoelli just as a form of play obviously, because I wasn't old enough to drink it, but that has really cemented in me my love for making booze.

(laughing) - [Danielle] What was really your inspiration?

- I want people in the States to be able to try makeoelli that is totally different from the stuff that's available from imports.

I strongly believe people are really craving authenticity, where tradition is becoming the new luxury.

So I think the rice is ready, let's just put this away.

- Smells great.

- Watch out.

Spread it out a bit.

- Okay.

- We're just cooling it down, don't press too hard.

And we'll just let that sit.

So the next, the rice is cool, and as you can see, - al dente?

- It's a little al dente.

Break up the nuruk into fine pieces, and sprinkle it over the rice.

You're gonna start putting the rice into the jar.

(soft music) Just add in, this is about a liter of water.

Stick your hand in there and kind of like massage the rice into the water.

The nuruk will become active, the cultures will start breaking down the rice.

You will see lots of bubbles and activity within this jar, and you can actually just take this home with you and watch the progress.

- Oh really, thank you.

- Yeah, of course.

- [Danielle] Fermentation can take anywhere from three weeks to three months.

Alice was nice enough to prepare a batch for me in advance so I could try some freshly squeezed makeoelli.

- This is called a hannatti, it's a traditional Korean clay pot, fermentation of makeoelli and kimchi and other fermented products are typically done in this kind of pot, specifically because the clay is porous, and it can breath.

Bacteria in the molds broke the rice down, they yeast can grown into alcohol, CO2 and acid.

In Korean we call it son-wat, it means "hand taste".

- [Danielle] Oh, okay.

- son-wat is really a way to describe the flavor of someone's care.

Your hands have unique microbes that are unique to you, so it can actually contribute to flavor.

- Alright well I can't wait to taste this.

- Me, too.

Danielle this is Shin.

- Alice asked me to prepare a couple of dishes to pair with makeoelli.

- And now we get to try some makeoelli.

So this is what we filtered earlier together, this is the Tan Yan Ju.

(speaking foreign language) So it's a little tart, heavier, less carbonated.

- [Danielle] This is delicious.

- This is more true to the character.

- So this is the Chung Ju.

This is actually much older, I think 64 days.

So again you'll experience like the tart qualities.

It's much more clearer an light, and floral.

- So different.

- Yes, way different.

- I want to try the green bottle stuff, and see how you guys have transformed my whole view of makeoelli.

(soft music) - Yeah, this just really has no, depth to it.

It lacks character.

Well you guys are the perfect pairing.

- Thank you.

(laughing) (upbeat music) - I almost did a double take because I was in Tokyo last week and I saw a loose lobster.

- The Japanese are really receptive to American concepts.

- That's crazy, because people think about going to Japan to have the best seafood and yet they're eating loose lobster from Maine.

- So Davey's Ice Cream is an ice cream parlor, they started out in the east village.

It's owned by a Korean American.

- Oh really?

- He has a design creative background, and one day decided he was tired of it, and wanted to start making ice cream.

- What a fun job.

Can I have a Thai iced tea, and a cookies and cream?

I think that sounds like a good mash up, what do you think?

- [Peter] Yeah yeah yeah, a little fusion there.

- Thank you.

This is really good, I never thought that Thai ice tea and cookies and cream could be so delicious together but it's kind of like the perfect cultural mash up.

I'm so excited to see what the future brings for Canal Street Market because this feels like it's unfolding and changing every day.

- Thank you, and thank you for being apart of this amazing community.

(upbeat music) (soft music) - [Danielle] Of course you don't have to be Asian American to bring an Asian tradition to America.

Brandon Hill fell in love with soju after he moved to Korea in 2011, which was the year of the rabbit.

When he returned to the United States, he couldn't find a traditional soju, made with authentic ingredients, so he decided to make one himself, and he gave it an auspicious name, the Korean word for rabbit.

- [Danielle] Well Brandon thank you for having us here.

What is soju, actually?

- Soju is a Korean distilled spirit, and it was originally make from rice and a wild yeast called nuruk and water, and that's it.

I feel like soju is kind of going through an identity crisis.

The only soju that is available in the U.S., are the green bottle soju's, where it's made from everything from tapioca to sorgum and sweet potato, we here at Tokki do a traditional style that I learned while I was distilling in Korea, and when I moved back here I couldn't find the traditional soju's anymore so I just decided to make it for myself.

- [Danielle] Why do you think it took so long to bring this here?

- Korea is now having like a big food movement here.

Korean barbecue and Korean restaurants are kind of up and coming now, and closely behind that is soju and makeoelli.

- What are the secrets behind the quality of your soju?

- This is called nuruk, we cultivate it off of wheat cakes like this.

- Should I not be touching it like this?

- No you can totally touch it, you can totally touch it.

You can even eat it if you want.

- [Danielle] Oh okay.

- [Brandon] This is the fermentation starter.

- So what is this mallet for?

- Yeah so this is what you're going to do.

The end goal is to kind of get it to a consistency like this, so kind of like ground it into a fine powder, and then add it to the fermentation.

- Wow.

- Yep.

This is another reason why a lot of people don't do it because it's pretty labor intensive.

- So this is what they mean by artisanal hand batched spirits.

- So once we have all the yeast ready to go, we'll start cooking the rice and then we'll introduce the enzymes into it and stir them in.

- Can I check it out?

- Yeah, please let's go.

- [Danielle] Alright.

- So once we have that dry yeast we need to cook the rice and so that's what we're doing in this big pot right here, it's called the Mash-Ton.

So right now it's filled with cooked rice.

We use the only organic grower of Korean strands in the U.S. which is in California.

Alright ready?

- Yes.

- Alright.

- This is the biggest pot of porridge I've ever seen.

- Yeah, right now we have about 700 pounds of rice in here, so after we cook it, we're gonna cool it and then we're gonna mix in that nuruk that you saw.

And then we're gonna send it into the fermentor and then start the fermentation process.

It looks good, you're hired.

You wanna see the next step?

- Yes.

- Okay, let's go to the still.

(soft music) After the fermentation, we have the distillation.

This is what makes it into the soju.

So right now it's coming off the still and this is what we're going to keep, so we can check for clarity, can smell, and then the taste, be careful, it's pretty high proof, but you can even taste the sweetness of the rice at that percentage.

(soft music) - Incredible, I've never had anything like that.

My sinuses are totally clear and right now my belly is on fire.

- Yeah, you did, that's 160 proof.

- Oh my gosh.

- So you did amazing.

- It's like eating a peppercorn, you just completely not ready for the fire that comes afterward.

- Do you want me to get some water for you?

- No no, I'm okay, I can handle it.

Brandon started Tokki on his own, and eventually took on a partner, filmmaker Doug Park.

Doug showed me how the freshly distilled soju is bottled.

- And then you just press that green button there.

(machine whirring) - [Danielle] So why did you and Brandon decide to create Tokki in Brooklyn?

- I was working as a photographer and I wanted to segway into more documentary work, tell other people's story and then I came across Brandon and I was like no way, there's a white guy making soju in Brooklyn?

And when I first came here and met him, he just handed me a shot of hoki, and I was just blown away.

It was jut so complex, it was not like one dimensional, so I was really excited by the prospect of having an elevated soju.

And then you're gonna press on there.

Awesome.

- Cool.

- There you go, yeah.

- Thank you.

- How do you think that people could of treat drinking culture differently in Asia versus in the US?

- In the US, it's very bar centric, and I think Asian culture is more about sitting down, having a meal, and drinking with people, having more of a conversation, which I was kind of drawn to.

- Is there a traditional way that you toast somebody?

- Yeah there's the cheers, it's when you raise your glass.

(speaking foreign language) - [Danielle] It's wonderful to see these entrepreneurs, chefs, and party throwers bringing Asian traditions into modern America.

Now more than ever, we all need to understand other cultures from around the globe, and I'm a big believer that it all starts with food and drink, with new generations taking the traditions they grew up and weaving them into the America they know today.

It should be possible for all of us to eat, drink, and party together.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for Lucky Chow has been provided by.

(upbeat music) To learn more about Lucky Chow, visit luckyrice.com.

(soft music)