(upbeat music) - Right on the corner of Broadway and Ord, in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

I've been coming here since the 70s.

Later in life, I had the opportunity to open a restaurant, which is right in that plaza right there called Far East Plaza.

- You and Chego were the first high profile celebrity chef to come in.

- Every time I gave an interview, I would say things like it's a rundown warehouse district, no one lives there.

I feel like we're doing something good for Chinatown.

I walked in, I was like, this is it, opened up, crazy.

And not really thinking about what the implications would be or what disparities existed.

Almost 10 years later, I realized that I didn't know opening a small 500 square foot rice bowl restaurant in Chinatown would spark a food movement that pushed a lot of people out and gentrified a part of this town.

- Because they start seeing your name in the national food media they saw like, oh, this is a good place to build luxury housing.

And a lot of 'em were listing walking distance to Chego.

- At that time, it was hard maybe for me to see the forest through the trees.

There are people here.

And if in some way I'm hard of the recipe of the displacement of Chinatown residents, I wanna stand up and do something about it.

I'm a street cook, even before I was a street cook, I was a street person.

I'm out there doing things, whether it's approved or not.

My whole existence in this world is to nourish and feed people.

I want this show to be about the power of us as humans to come together again.

Let's not make assumptions.

Let's not make stereotypes.

And from there, we can start to talk about these things and maybe understand each other, whether you beliefs differ from mine, we're breaking bread.

Gentrification is a complicated, contentious issue that's hard to wrap your head around.

Immigrant neighborhoods are often the most effective and in Los Angeles, there are many.

To understand what's happening here today it's important to get a brief history lesson.

(upbeat classic music) - [Announcer] There has been nothing like this ever before in Chinatown.

- The original Chinatown was developed in the 1800s, but later demolished to make room for Union Station, the city's major transportation hub.

In 1938, a new Chinatown was constructed as both a commercial center and a tourist attraction.

And while this new neighborhood served as home to many Asian immigrants and their families, it was marketed to the rest of the world as a destination where visitors could experience the exotic orient.

By the 1970's, immigration from Asia was on the rise.

Upwardly, mobile families left Chinatown for the suburbs.

And those that stayed, saw their resources and community disappear.

As an Asian immigrant myself, I felt connected to this neighborhood and wanted to bring people back.

Since Chego closed its doors in 2019, I've wrestled with the question of, what could I have done differently?

So I've come back to search for answers and meet the people who are finding the balance between welcoming the new, preserving the legacy and not leaving anyone behind.

(upbeat bass music) Sissy Trinh is the Executive Director at Southeast Asian Community Alliance.

She believes that the word revitalization used by many developers is just code for edging out Chinatown seniors, leaving them without access to basics like grocery stores or laundromats.

She's taking me on a walking tour of the main streets in Chinatown to see what's happening now and what can be done to protect this neighborhood.

- So, as you can see, even though we're on a public sidewalk, there's tons of stuff being sold on the street and tons of street vendors, oh, zucchini blossoms.

Those look really good.

We lost four of our grocery stores due to gentrification, you know?

And so these vendors provide an important resource in the community, but it's also a way for them to make money.

As you can see, a lot of 'em are older and they can't work in the traditional employment sectors.

And this is a way for them to have some income, have some dignity.

- [Roy] Thank you.

(upbeat music) - [Sissy] This is what I love about Chinatown.

Those are agua frescas with Asian fruits.

So even though they're like-- - [Roy] Oh, I see, jackfruit fresca.

- [Sissy] Uh-huh.

- [Roy] Oh my gosh, you're right.

- The melding of LA culture.

So just like Kogi kind of brought Mexican street food with Korean food.

- Yeah.

- Here you have Southeast Asian fruits being turned into agua frescas.

And it's like, so LA.

So this is one of the live chicken shops.

- There are two, right, there's one on the other end.

- There's like three in Chinatown.

People come here to these types of places to buy the live poultry, and then you can also buy different kinds of eggs.

And then other types of freshly-- - And these places are slowly disintegrating.

- A lot of the people who are willing to pay $4,000 a month in rent.

- They don't wanna live chicken spot next to them.

- Yeah, exactly, right.

And so then the landlords kind of evict 'em even before that, in anticipation for those new folks coming in.

And the thing is, we're not just losing the business, we're losing jobs for local residents.

So a lot of the people who work in these businesses actually live in the neighborhood.

So they're walking to work, they send their kids to the local schools.

So we're losing jobs, and not just jobs in general, but a lot of these jobs are accessible to immigrants who don't speak English.

- Yes.

- Right?

- Well, you just mentioned right now is there might be also a subversive element where if you start to take out the resources silently almost quietly, almost invisibly take out the resources.

Even if they're not forced out, they have nowhere else to go.

So they just have to leave because there's no longer a market, a health service, a dentist, a doctor's office say anything for them to use, right?

So it's almost like if you take away the food or the water, people are gonna have to go.

- But Chinatown, you have people who wanna stay here, but the question is, how when rents are rising and landlords are acting in a predatory manner, like illegally evicting or harassing tenants so that they can renovate the building and then triple the rents?

- I think it about a lot.

What if we never opened Chego here?

I think about it, like in a larger holistic sense of like, was it gonna happen anyways?

- No matter what your intentions are.

You can't control what developers do.

You're part of a larger system.

It probably would have happened without you, but you are the kind of like the spark.

- I was the fire starter.

- You were the fire starter.

And I think one of the things that we wanna reframe the conversation around isn't are you, or aren't you responsible?

It's what are you gonna do to make it better for the low-income residents who live and work here?

- Walking the streets with Sissy, my eyes were open even wider to the push and pull that the effects of gentrification are having here.

To continue understanding the complex state of business in Chinatown, there's no better person than Gay Yuen.

Gay grew up in Chinatown.

She's a retired professor and now chairs the board of the Chinese American Museum.

She invited me to Hop Woo, a stapling Chinatown to understand the history of the area and what can be done to protect it.

This restaurant in this family were one of the first families to welcome me into Chinatown.

- Really, yeah they're such nice people.

- Oh there they are.

Chef Lupe and his wife, Judy opened Hop Woo in 1993 with eight tables.

Lupe was born in China's Guangdong province, where he comes from a family of cooks.

He moved to Mexico in 1978, where he met his wife, Judy.

- Can we eat?

- Yeah, yeah, okay.

- After many years in Mexico, Lupe's Spanish will come in handy for his move to LA.

Over the years, word spread that Hop Woo was the Latino friendly Chinese restaurant, serving the best roast duck and fried rice in town.

(upbeat music) Lobster.

- [Lupe] Yeah.

- Wow.

Thank you.

Oh, my gosh.

Beautiful.

Okay.

Lupe is such a talented, fantastic chef.

- [Gay] Oh, it smells so good.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

Delicious.

- Thank you, dear.

This is really special for you they made, because they're using the lobster, the special Cantonese sausage.

This is the fresh shitaki mushrooms in a brown sauce, and this is white fungus.

- [Roy] And then we have our kind of-- - [Gay] A barbecue platter.

- A barbecue treasures platter, Peking duck, which is not Cantonese, but every Chinese chef almost can figure out how to do it.

- [Gay] Exactly.

- Do you like roast, Cantonese roast better or Peking duck better?

- [Gay] I prefer the roast duck.

- You prefer roast duck.

- [Gay] Yes.

- Me too.

Since there's been multiple changes here, and you've been here since the Fifties, and you've seen multiple changes.

How does this change in 2021 and the next couple of years differ, or is it similar to the past?

- I mentioned in the Fifties when we came, new people were relatively few because immigration was so difficult and there was work.

And so no matter how uneducated or how little you speak English, we were able to go on with fairly comfortable lives.

So it's not whether people are being chased out or not chased out, I think the situation is real.

We have people in Chinatown that are poor, that are immigrants, that are refugees, that are maybe a dollar away from being homeless, from an economic perspective the community needs to have diversity in its offerings, whether it is a banquet hall.

or a hall in the wall where you can go and have a bowl of wonton noodles, to me diversity is good for everything.

I'm not anti-development, but for me there's a human factor to this.

And so I think for those of us who love Chinatown and want to develop Chinatown in such a way that it can be there for all people, whether they're new immigrants, or the rich developers, there has to be some middle grounds where we can work together.

- Because that's the history of Chinatown.

- That's the history of Chinatown, right?

In understanding what Sissy's doing now, I think she's right on.

If you're gonna make money off our backs, then you put back into the community, - Put back in.

- Put back into the community.

- Are you hopeful?

- I'm very hopeful.

I'm very hopeful.

More restaurants opening up in Chinatown, right?

Then there's more jobs, then it helps the economy, let's not say no development, but let's say, how do we look at development?

And how do we look at businesses that come in?

So that we can help everybody.

- Thank you so much for having me in Chinatown.

- We wanna welcome you back.

We love you.

(upbeat music) - I wonder what some of the legacy businesses here think about all of this.

To find out, I'm heading to the oldest, still thriving business in Chinatown, Phoenix Bakery.

(upbeat music) Phoenix bakery opened in 1938, the same year new Chinatown was established.

For four generation, the Ceppi family has been serving their famous baked goods to families, celebrities, and tourists from around the world.

It was one of the first places my dad took me as a kid and it's a place that's near and dear to my heart.

(upbeat music) - Hi.

- Hi.

Welcome to Phoenix Bakery.

- I'm Roy.

- Hi, I'm Kathy.

- Hey, Kathy.

Great to see you.

- Yeah.

- Oh my God.

This is like the most special thing for me.

I know you grew up here, but I grew up here.

The first things my dad really showed me here in America, especially Los Angeles, were like the Dodger games, Tommy's Burgers, and then Phoenix Bakery.

That was basically our rotation.

- We hear it everyday, we're into four generations now, that are coming here.

- And how long have you been around?

- 83 Years.

- [Roy] 83 Years.

Can I try an almond cookie?

- Yes.

- How did the cake come about?

Is that a recipe that your father developed.

- Uncle Youlen, developed that cake recipe and you know, Asians aren't into things like buttercream or fondant.

- Yeah.

Like a sweet for an Asian is like a fruit sometimes.

- Yeah.

So that's why our cakes are so popular still.

I mean, who doesn't like strawberries and cream?

- Can I take a picture of you holding that?

Oh my God.

Look at that.

This is memory lane for me.

So flaky and buttery, no almond cookie I've ever eaten my whole life compares to yours.

- Ours are the best in the city.

- Look at this thing.

Beautiful.

So how has this made?

- I think he can better answer that for you.

He wants to know how it's made.

- How's it made?

We roll it, and then we fry it with a subtenancy.

So this is our signature product.

- This is a signature.

- It's a strawberry shortcake.

- Would you like to see how all these are made?

- I would love to, it's been a dream of mine.

Thank you.

- Okay, well, you can even help if you want.

- I don't wanna mess it up.

- Okay.

We're gonna save the tray for you.

'Cause you're going to eat the rest of that, all right?

Let's go to over here.

And then before you go in the kitchen, you have to wear a hairnet.

- How does this look?

- This is our signature, the spongecake.

- So this will become this.

- Yeah, so basically we dice in fresh strawberries.

- I love how he's slicing the strawberries into order.

That's amazing.

What's so beautiful about your cakes is I'm just watching us, everything's so intimate with the hand still.

(orchestrated music) Every single scene I ended up with more Phoenix Bakery merch I know that I'm gonna be all decked out.

I mean, I just really want to say thank you for showing us the inner workings of Phoenix Bakery which is a legendary business here in Chinatown.

In this episode, I've been exploring my own relationship with Chinatown, and I'm trying to kind of like deal with it here on camera.

Is there a way for new businesses, and new development, and new entrepreneurs to come in, should they consider the seniors and the people being displaced and rents going up, or?

- Yes, yes.

- [Roy] You want growth, but you should still be sensitive to what was here before.

- Yes, I've tried to reach out to some of the new businesses.

I go and introduce myself and everybody knows Phoenix Bakery, 'cause we've been around for so long.

But there are many, very young people who are opening small boutique shops here, across the street there's a beautiful tea room.

And I think that's amazing.

I think we have to learn how to collaborate with them.

Like, perhaps in the future we'll carry some of their products here.

If we could ever open up the room to having tables and chairs, again, maybe it's all carry some of our products so that when people have a cup of tea, they can have a pastry also.

- Well, that's a good intersection is for these new businesses to collaborate and cross carry some of the legacy business, this product.

- I really believe in communication.

You have to communicate with people.

You have to reach out.

- Do you see Chinatown being here in 30, 40 years?

- Oh, I think it will maintain.

This is Los Angeles.

If you have something worth going to people will drive too.

- [Roy] Absolutely.

- If we had our Roy Choi restaurant here and people knew about it, then they would drive here to go to your restaurant.

- If Phoenix Bakery is the old statesmen, then Pearl River Deli is the new kid on the block.

Pearl River Deli is the work of chef Johnny Lee.

Johnny immigrated from China to the US and grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, where most of LA's Chinatown residents moved as rents rose.

His restaurant, which specializes in Cantonese classics is reclaiming space in tradition while also breathing new life into the area.

Hey, chef.

- Hey, Johnny.

How yo doing.

- Hey chef, how you doing, man?

- Thanks for having me here.

- And of course.

I love the kitchen mate.

When you ask like what chefs like, and like what is our aesthetic, or like what makes us happy?

This is it, just working class industrial like containers, they're really beautiful.

What is Pearl River Deli is it an area or?

- Yeah.

So it's a reference to the Pearl River Delta.

- Pearl River Delta.

- Region of China, where my family is from, it's where I was born.

- Is that Canton, or is that Southern?

- Yeah, Southern in Canton region, is like the triangular region, the Delta that encompasses the Hong Kong inside it, as well, along with Kwangtung in a lot of other major cities, one of our most iconic dishes here is our Macau pork chop bun.

It's inspired by the-- - The smile's gonna get bigger.

Each one you name I saw of like smells right here right now when you, okay so pork chop bun.

- Yeah, so inspired by pork chop bun you see in Macau.

And then we also do our own take on char siu here.

Cantonese barbecue pork.

Yeah, those are things like, I felt like we really had to get right.

- Yeah.

- And then by happy coincidence, we ended up doing the Hainanese chicken here, as well.

- That's right here.

- Yeah.

I'm kind of working on that here.

- Hainanese chicken, I know is very popular in Singapore, right?

But it's also popularity in the Pearl River area.

- Well, this form of chicken is, originally it was just a poached chicken.

And then Hainanese immigrants kind of like took it over to Singapore who are also within that Pearl River Delta region.

- I see.

- And then they kind of may use the stock that portion to cook the rice.

So it kind of evolved from the dish of the chicken origin to using the stock, they cook it into cook the rice.

- And how are you doing your char siu, do you have an oven or you just use a regular oven?

- No.

So we actually use like this a little toaster oven.

- No way.

- [Johnny] It works pretty well.

- [Roy] Volume wise, you able to keep up.

- We definitely just try to make it work with this space.

- I'm gonna go over to see Jack, I'm gonna get a coffee and give you a moment to cook the food.

And why don't you bring it over and meet me over there?

- [Johnny] Yeah.

Sounds great.

- Okay.

Thank you.

- All right.

Yeah.

(upbeat music) - Hey, Jack.

- Hello.

- Previously a biochemist, Jack helped develop cancer fighting pharmaceuticals for patients around the world.

Feel like I'm in the cowboy days here.

He opened Endorphin in 2015 after enrolling in a pastry program and becoming obsessed with the science of food.

Now he combines precise amounts of water and grinds for one of a kind experience.

- It's good to see you.

- Great to see you.

I've missed you.

I missed everyone here since we left, you haven't aged a bit.

- It's the coffee.

- It might be the coffee.

- It's the coffee.

(both laughs) - Hey, chef.

- Hey, hello, and welcome.

- Hey, Jack.

- [Roy] Let's see.

- [Johnny] Oh yeah.

- Can we do a pour over?

- [Jack] Yeah, yeah, let's share pour-over.

- Yeah.

And then we'll eat some food together.

- Yeah.

- [Johnny] Sounds great.

- So tell me about the food a little bit.

- Yeah, so first we have our Hainanese chicken here.

This is our poached chicken and chicken stock, and we use that same stock to cook the rice.

- [Roy] Oh wow.

And you dip it in these sauces.

- [Johnny] Yeah, any way you want, some people like to pour it over and some people like the dip one at a time.

Some people like to mix all three or two.

- [Roy] And then you use the fat to cook the rice.

- [Johnny] Yeah, so we rendered down the chicken fat and we use that to cook it with the stock as well.

- [Roy] And this is char siu.

- [Johnny] Yeah, this is our Chinese barbecue pork.

- [Roy] With the color?

- [Johnny] Yeah, we use the color cut of the pork.

Some people call it the neck.

Some restaurants like a pass where you like use red food coloring, but we avoid that by using more traditional route of using the red fermented tofu.

Even though we're trying to modernize things, we're also trying to like stay more true and traditional to like the old recipes.

- I got lost in the food for a second, but I forgot that Jack is cooking over here too.

I feel like you could give like a little mouse bath, like a shower with that thing.

"Alvin and the Chipmunks."

Jack doesn't find it cute at all.

- Poor chipmunks.

- With the attention that the new businesses bring like yourselves, and myself back when I was here.

Do you feel that an Endorphin or Pearl River Deli exploited the town and made it more difficult for people to live in?

- When we first opened Endorphin in 2015, we did look throughout the city.

We definitely saw an opportunity here, wanted a space that we could feel safe in and didn't in my gut, it just felt like home.

- Businesses like ourselves that have come in bring in media, bring in attention, is that something we can avoid?

Is that something that maybe can be shifted as we move forward?

Is there anything consciously that we can do about it or is it not a big deal, it just comes with the territory?

- [Jack] I think it depends on who's controlling that narrative, right?

And gentrification is very polarizing subjects in general.

- [Johnny] If I come in here and let's say I build a business, and I bring two new customers at Chinatown, and maybe one of those customers will end up supporting one of the legacy businesses.

Then in my view, that's like a rising tide lifts, all those kind of situation.

- In the Buddhist sense, it's like, well, do no harm, do as much good as possible.

It's like everything else that we search for in our lives, like in terms of balance, right?

A really busy line out the door business will bring in balance to that neighborhood, right?

- So if we can bring some attention to the Chinatown, then we just have to make sure we use that attention to do something good with it.

I think just assuming that attention is gonna lead to like speculators coming in and raising the prices that can happen, but you can use that attention to spotlight issues and hopefully get people involved in like equitable development of the neighborhood.

- When a business opens, the focus is on the basics by keeping the lights on, or ensuring we pick customers.

But what if we were challenged to think about the symbiotic relationship between the business and the neighborhood?

The last stop on this journey lands me right back where I started, searching for answers and inspiration for what we as business owners can do next.

- There's like 12,000 people who live in Chinatown.

And Chinatown's a tiny neighborhood.

- But this new form of gentrification seems like it could wipe it all out if we're not careful.

- A ton of people still live here who can't afford to leave.

So what's gonna happen to them if they get evicted?

- That's the biggest thing I've been learning from you today, is not only the visual front hand of being pushed out, but the subversive hand of you may still say, I'm gonna live here, but then pretty soon, your hand will be forced to-- - That's my biggest fear isn't that this community gets disappeared, it's that this community ends up on the streets.

A lot of our homeless crisis in LA is being driven by gentrification.

- What can be done?

- Developing a platform.

Figuring out how to work with the people that are already there, right?

I think second, hire locally and make an effort to kind of create job opportunities and good paying job opportunities.

And then third, fund a community benefits program with the idea of being a program that could help pay for eviction defense, tools and financial strategies to help keep people here.

(upbeat music) - LA's Chinatown and other neighborhoods, just like it, need caretakers and advocates who love and cherish the diversity they bring to their communities.

Today, I learned that the solutions to protect them aren't that far away.

Growth is possible when done with care, communication and inclusion.

So the next time you explore a neighborhood, take the time to look at the streets, learn from the people and support the businesses that are woven throughout the fabric of a community.

They're there for a reason and they need your love.