- Hi, I'm Christy McDonald, and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove hits the airways of Detroit public television.

Then, Detroit chef Phil Jones finds a solution to one of the many problems the COVID pandemic has created.

Then, chef Genevieve Vang mixes it up with her delicious food at Bangkok 96th Street Food.

It is all just ahead on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

- [Female Narrator] From Delta faucets, to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Male Narrator] Support for this program provided by, the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV, The Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Female Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Male Narrator] Business Leaders for Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by, The Fred A and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - Hi there and welcome to One Detroit Arts and Culture.

I'm Christy McDonald.

Thanks so much for being with me.

The creative community here in Michigan has had to adjust to so much during the pandemic.

Performances outdoors, masking and vaccine requirements for upcoming concerts.

But arts and culture here in Detroit continues to grow and that is why we created this show, to keep you in touch with performances, music, art, and events that we love to engage with and really fill our soul.

So coming up on the show this week, we head to Marygrove and bring performances straight to you.

It is a look at our new show called Detroit Performs Live.

Plus, Detroit chef Phil Jones talks about banding together with other chefs to feed people in need throughout the COVID pandemic.

And then, chef Genevieve Vang from Bangkok 96th Street Food overcomes a harrowing journey as a refugee during the Vietnam War to become a James Beard Foundation recognized chef.

It is a story that you won't forget, and it's all coming up.

So let's head to Marygrove for a new way that we're bringing innovative artists performances to Detroit Public Television.

It's called Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove, and it is hosted by Satori Shakoor.

She is the founder of The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers.

Stephen Henderson catches up with Satori about how Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove provides a new platform for artists and art organizations to connect with the public.

- First, want to talk about this new role for you as host of Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove.

That is really exciting, tell us about what that means.

- It just seemed like an absolutely perfect fit for me because I get to introduce some very talented, exciting, diverse within their disciplines, artists that maybe Detroit, obviously some of them Detroit has heard of, but all of them Detroit can be proud of.

So I get to not only introduce them and see their performances, but I get to sit down and talk with them and hear their stories and ask questions that hopefully will bring them closer and have Detroit know them even more intimately.

- So, for Detroit Performs, tell us, you know, everything is different and somewhat disrupted because of all of the things that are going on.

What should we expect from Detroit Performs Live?

- Well, we're in the beautiful Marygrove theater on the campus of Marygrove College.

And it's always something magical, magical when you step into the theater.

Whether you're stepping on stage and you're getting the lighting, it's just a transporting kind of experience.

And it's live.

Although there is not really an audience present.

There are people there.

Technicians, other performers, supporting, but the viewing audience will have a full and very powerful experience of their performances.

DPTV does an excellent job of filming and making it feel like you're right there sitting in one of those seats that soon we will be returning to.

(Stephen) - Yes - Detroit can expect some explosive performances and a vast intergenerational group of artists all over the spectrum of the performances.

But a lot of times we see people's work out there, we hear their music, but we don't know the people who actually produced that wonderful work.

And so it's always good to see the human being who's just as regular looking as everybody else.

(both laugh) - That's right.

- See them be just like you, and they're expressing their artistic ability, which all of us had.

(Stephen) - Yeah, yeah.

- I think COVID showed some of us, and pushed some of us in the direction of doing what we've been procrastinating over for such a long period of time.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, for viewers who are not familiar with you or the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers, let's tell them about that exciting work, which I have loved since you started it.

- Thank you.

Well, and you've appeared on our stage in fact, - I have.

- hosted all these beautiful journalists that again, we see on the TV, but to have them right there where people can go up to them and just, you know, there's so much humanity out here in the city of Detroit and in the world.

And we just, until they tell their story, they just look good and smell good, I always say.

(laughs) And so, so the work that I do as a storyteller, as a director, as a producer, I want to put the people in Detroit and all over the globe on our stage, and sort of unzip that beautiful package and hear their journey in life, which when they tell their story, it always, the way I listen and the way I curate, is to deliver a little package of wisdom that can make a powerful difference to the viewer, the listener.

And there are people who never walk into the right, live right here in Detroit, but they are avid about our YouTube channel.

So we make sure that the delivery system of these stories are forever and accessible to people via social media.

- Yeah, when you started this, I mean, you'd been a storyteller for a really long time, and this was sort of an expansion of that idea and that franchise, but did you ever imagine it would grow to the extent that it has?

I mean this is a very wide reaching and broad production that draws in people from all over the place, not only to perform, but also to come see the performances.

Is this what you had in mind when you started?

- Well, I think that if you talk to any artist and especially if you talk to an artist like me, who has been on stages with 80,000 people in the audience, I mean, even when I was in college and I was imagining my career, I would put on a Gino Benelli album with the live so I could hear all of the applause and imagine myself.

So I did imagine it being something that would make a difference, but how it would grow with all of the support in all of the people coming to it?

No, no, and when I did imagine it, I imagined first at the gym theater.

And it was like, no little girl, no one knows what storytelling is.

You better go back to that little 45 seat and build it up.

And so I'm excited because I, I sort of feel like a person who holds the space of this platform and the community tells me what to do.

- This really is a great series, and for more on when you can see it and all of the performances, just head to onedetroitpbs.org.

And stay right there, we do have a performance from Marygrove coming up later on in this show.

In addition to the theater, Marygrove Conservancy is also home to Pharmacy Food.

It's an organization that chef Phil Jones founded to make healthy food more affordable and accessible to underserved communities.

Will Glover talked with chef Phil after he was honored as the Detroit Free Press and Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers chef of the year.

And they talk about how chef Phil teamed up with other local chefs to form, Too Many Chefs in the Kitchen for Good, which has been cooking and distributing thousands of meals to Detroiters in need during the pandemic.

- Congratulations, chef of the year, honored by the Free Press and the Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers.

It's a popular top 10 list that they release, and you were the top this year.

How does that make you feel?

- Um, I'm appreciative and I'm honored for any awards or recognition, but I feel sometimes that gets translated differently to our young folks coming up, and it's really not extremely important to me.

My personal mission is the most important thing.

I'm glad people see and understand and appreciate what I'm doing, but my work is my work and I would do it come hell or high water.

- One of the things that you're known for is Pharmacy Food.

So just tell us a little bit about that and you know, how you got started, what Pharmacy Food is all about.

- Our mission is to bring healthy people to the food or vice versa.

And so we're very much in tune with understanding that food is health, food is medicine, and that our way forward is through how we and what we take in, what we consume.

And we believe that our food system has failed folks.

Pharmacy Food originated as a healthy meal service in terms of a subscription or meal packs.

And so we have a full line of prepared meals that you're able to order online, either have delivered or come pick up here at Marygrove Conservancy, take them home, open them when you're ready to eat them, eat them up.

They're fresh, they're hot, they're really well-defined in terms of the health benefits.

We reach back to our ancestors and our forefathers to their knowledge base and understanding, good, healthy foods have always been around us.

We just took and did the wrong things with them.

And also some of the other things that we do is we do education around the community.

You'll find us out at Oakland avenue, Urban Farm, doing classes.

We just did one on fonio crusted fried green tomatoes.

And so some of the things that we try to do, in terms of the education, is to bring back some of the ingredients of our ancestors that were lost or greatly ignored since the diaspora.

And fonio was one of those, which is a west African grain.

- Tell me a little bit about, I believe Too Many Chefs in the Kitchen for Good.

- Oh, yes, yes.

Well, Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen for Good was started up by our mutual publicist, David Rudolph, brought together several of our chefs in the community, such as chef Genevieve of Bangkok 96th, and Stephanie Byrd and some other folks.

But David approached me last March and said, you know, we've got these restaurants that are looking to get rid of their food because the thing's got to shut down.

This is when the mandate came around.

What can you do?

Can you help us out in any form or fashion?

What do you have going on?

And while we're not a restaurant per se, what we did have and do have is, our ability to make connections out in the community.

A friend of mine woke me up one morning and said, do you have a way of getting rid of three semi-trailers full of cooked chicken?

Another friend, Anthony Del Bene from Del Bene Produce, sends me a text at three o'clock in the morning, and this was a room full of food that needed a home.

And we're not talking about trash.

We're talking about good, viable food of Cherry Capital Food, 9,000 pounds of protein, just out of the goodwill.

And so we put the effort in, we put the work in, but this was a community effort.

It was a bunch of chefs and restaurant owners, but it's really beyond us.

You know, we work with Food Rescue US to get some of this stuff out to people.

I work with Make Food Not Waste, and you know, that organization, which I'm a part of, that played a part of it.

- What was the biggest challenge that you faced in making sure both, you know, finding people who were in need and getting these massive amounts of food out?

You guys have fed thousands upon thousands of people.

- The biggest challenge is how do you deal with the emotions of all this?

Because at the same time we're trying to help the community, we are a part of the community.

And so we have amongst our group of folks, they would have their own physical challenges, family challenges, emotional, financial challenges.

And sometimes you've got to think about the healers.

We were going through all of this stuff at the same time.

And, you know, and we're losing family members and friends where we dealt with the same terror and fear that everyone else did.

And so just being able to deal with our emotions because we feed people, it was about hospitality and that's what we do, but it's just under different circumstance.

- But how has this experience and this process so far changed you?

- A couple of things, it has reinforced my belief that we need to fix our food system.

And so, it's made me feel good about my work.

I know that now it has not been in vain.

It has shown me a subculture of good in our city, in our communities, that needs to be celebrated.

I see so much good out there, and I get to see it all the time, because there's so much good happening in food these days.

But I got to meet so many more people that understand and get the fact that we need change, understand that we need good food.

They understand that our health outcomes can be different, and understand that we can do this together.

And so I've been uplifted.

I've been elevated emotionally to a point where I'm just pleased to see and know that we can actually do this.

- And as you can see from chef Phil, chefs connect with the community they feed and they often use food to share their culture.

So meet chef Genevieve Vang from Bangkok 96 in Dearborn and Bangkok 96th Street Food.

She was a young refugee during the Vietnam war when her family fled to Thailand, and her life experiences shape her work as an entrepreneur and executive chef today.

(upbeat music) - I'm still searching what I lost, but maybe the fact that you lost something, it make you stronger, and you never stop.

I was born in Laos, but my original is Hmong.

Hmong people is they, came from China, border Mongolia and China.

The Vietnam war, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge went to the country, then we have the leave the country.

So I became refugee in Thailand, and I fly to Paris.

Food is my passion.

Well food you have to remember, food bring everybody together.

Right now we are at Bangkok 96th Street Food in Detroit, and it's located inside the Detroit shipping company.

But I like to introduce Hmong food to the Metro Detroit area, which is my people here.

Mostly the food I serve here is from my roots.

So you're going to see how I take beef and make addable, that's the beef jerky.

We take the beef shoulder and then break down the muscle to make it very tender, like filet mignon, And all chicken breasts, chicken breasts is chicken breasts, all chef cook chicken.

But my chicken breast is somehow is different.

When my customer take a bite for the first, time they come back.

The sausage is very popular back home.

Homemade pork sausage is the fresh meat all natural meat of pork shoulder.

Ground beef and ginger, lemon grass, you know, galangal, all the spice, and you just stuff it in the sausage and you let dry.

You let it dry in all one, couple of hours.

And you put in a freezer, when you need it you just deep fry or you put on a grill.

The pad Thai roll is interesting.

When I came to this place, open Bangkok 96th Street Food, I have to decide to make a one dish and that's dedicate the pad Thai roll to this place because it's about food, because the table is so long.

So I have to take a Pad Thai wrap in the flour and you toast, cut like sushi, and sprinkle sauce, and all the spice, the peanut and garnish and the lime.

For this place because it's about food.

And the most item in in the kitchen is the pad Thai roll.

It's become so popular.

And so far, I hope it's not just a trend.

I hope is gonna keep going.

The dessert, I like to cook a lot of fruit.

So today I do a poach pear with wine, lime and make a syrup.

And finish touch with, you know, like gracious sugar, one by one fresh.

But I start from a base, a very clean that's easy for me to cook for a vegan customer.

And now when the meat come, I just add meat, too.

Everybody responds very nice, so I believe I do something good here because I take care of all the allergan people too.

And I have a little bit everything for everybody.

My dream is serving the food upscale, but very original authentic.

Take that dish to the next level.

When you customer eat the food, they eat with the eyes.

And you can take a dish very simple, make beautiful, elegant, clean, and simple.

So presentation is very important to me.

Now the food carving is to draw people.

I am in a retail business.

Every time I went to the food show and I always bring a couple of pieces of the carving down, and you should draw the crowd to your table, and it is enough to sell your product.

So it's beautiful, the color is so natural, it's very, it's very attractive.

Food is art and carving is art.

If you bring two together it's very powerful, you got two things instead of just one thing.

I'm still have fun.

I still create a new dish, it's never end.

There's so many things I have to do, is just not enough time to do it.

I'm gonna keep going until I can't move.

I was recognized to be a Jim's Beard chef.

The Jim's Beard Foundation is a nonprofit organization who recognize the all the chef did a great job for many years and a long-term career.

So I was so happy and so honored to have that title this year.

My goal is to think about the next generation.

You have to share what you know to the young people.

To be an entrepreneur and live in the United States.

I'm still working hard, but I'm so proud to be here because I'm lucky.

I was a refugee, nothing and I live in the United States, have a small restaurant, and people love your food.

And I be able to keep going to school or training and another journey to learn something new and another cuisine.

So I think I'm lucky to have the life I have here.

- And for more on our arts and culture stories, just head to our website at onnedetroitpbs.org for more.

All right, that is going to do it for me, but we're going to leave you with a performance from Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove.

This is our Mondo Vegas salsa band.

I'll see you next time, take care.

(salsa music) - [Female Narrator] You can find more at onedetroitpbs.org, or subscribe to our social media channels, and sign up for our One Detroit newsletter.

- [Female Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr paint, Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Male Narrator] Support for this program provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV, The Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- [Female Narrator] The DTE foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEfoundation.com to learn more.

- [Male Narrator] Business Leaders for Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and to help the economy.

Also brought to you by, The Fred A and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) (piano music)