(singing in Spanish) - I'm working.

(singing in Spanish) - [Roy] The restaurant industry has always been a house of cards.

The pandemic knocked them down, but it was only a matter of time before the industry had to reckon with the system that's been broken for a very long time.

- For decades, the restaurant industry has had to run on exploitation.

- [Roy] Worker exploitation, high food prices, and unsustainable financial models all contributed to the meltdown.

So is blowing up the model and starting over the only way to save it.

(upbeat music) 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 your beliefs differ from mine, we're breaking bread.

To find out if there's a different model for the restaurant industry, I'm headed to Avenue 26 night market on the east side of Los Angeles, to meet with journalist, Patricia Escárcega, who covered the industry struggles through the pandemic.

It's crazy, huh.

- [Patricia] Hey Roy.

- Hey.

- Hey, Roy.

- Oh, how man.

- This sprawling vendor Laden street is a symbol of ingenuity, breaking through barriers, resourcefulness and strength of community.

An incredible time of uncertainty is ushered in some real creativity and innovation.

But will it last?

Avenue 26 started with one street vendor.

Now it's a destination for people trying to make a living without the capital for brick and mortar.

Will this give rise to a new crop of restaurants, and food communities based on the completely different model of operating?

- Hey, Roy.

Good to see you - Good to see you Good to see you - Oh, how man.

- Yeah - I am so excited right now.

- Yeah, we both are.

- I haven't been here, since they were just tacos.

- Oh wow, okay.

- I haven't seen all this.

So, where are we?

- So, we're at the Avenue 26 night market.

Beautiful Lincoln Heights East Los Angeles.

- Yeah.

- I was here just a month ago and it's already changed.

So I think it says a lot about the market.

It's, it's always changing and that's part of the fun of it.

- I'm also a big fan, Roy.

- All right man, thank you.

I wanna do some tacos for sure.

- [Patricia] Yes.

All right.

So luckily there's no shortage of tacos here.

- [Roy] Hi.

- Hi.

- I'll have three tacos.

One al pastor, is there asada?

- Yeah.

- One asada.

- I've also got pizza and cabeza.

- I'll have cabeza, yeah.

This is, this is where I belong.

(speaking in Spanish) So, I just wanted the cup, but it came with everything else, you know, but.

- Wow.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- That's so good.

So tell me about this place.

- So this is a night market that popped up.

Began early spring of 2021.

I didn't come when it was just the Avenue 26 taco stand, but you did.

- I did.

- So what, what, what was it like when, when like, like it first started?

- It was just a taco stand.

- It was just a taco stand?

- Yeah.

- You just rolled up?

- I had no idea, I could, I would've never imagined it'd turn into something like this, but do you think this is just something that's kind of in this in-between zone or will, will this become a new thing that will kind of dictate what restaurants become?

- The entry level here is lower than, you don't have to be a millionaire or you don't have, you don't have to have an investor group to set up shop here.

If you really wanna make amazing tacos, you can set up a little corner in there, make a name for yourself.

- Yeah.

People think that eating outdoors, or standing up while eating on the streets is some form of a lesser thing.

But what they don't understand is eating on the streets is a cultural thing.

- [Patricia] This market is interesting because it's sort of come up for debate, whether, like it's quasi legal, you know, like there's, this city might be getting involved, might be cracking down the street vendors.

But it doesn't matter the layers of bureaucracy that are there people will always find a way.

You know, it's like people will always find a way to cook.

- [Roy] The pandemic exposed so many things.

It exposed not only from the back of the house or the ground up, but also from the top down.

Is there, is there a new forum within the restaurant industry that you would love to see that is equitable, but also can be profitable and inclusive?

- One of the things that I hope we do in this moment is to not rush back to normal because normal, exploitation should not be normal.

It's just shouldn't.

- Yeah.

We're in a moment where everything is changing and it's because the children of the, the first wave of immigrants who were exploited, who didn't speak the language, who were undocumented, but now the children are all grown up and they're kind of sticking their foot in it and saying, you can't treat my mom and dad like that anymore.

You can't treat my uncle and my cousin like that anymore.

And people were kind of stepping up now.

If this could be a little bit of a window into maybe just the future of, of, of like entrepreneurship street food, hawker, restaurants, outdoor restaurants.

- [Patricia] This is a incredible moment in history.

There's so much hope and there's so much energy on the streets and people want to be together.

You know, after the year we had and to be able to do something really creative, really beautiful.

- I think this is the future of restaurants.

I could be here all night.

I could sit here all night, like a, like a three hour meal at a, at a prefixed restaurant.

I could just sit here all night.

- [Patricia] I think there's always going to be the impulse for creativity.

And it's gonna pop up in weird places and it could be on Avenue 26 in Lincoln Heights.

- I mean, cheers to that.

- Cheers to that.

- Cheers to that.

- Cheers.

- Oh my gosh.

- Oh, what's going on here?

- Speaking of sharing and loving.

- All right.

Oh wow.

The driver is also the singer.

- The driver is the singer.

- Yeah, so cool.

(singing and speaking in Spanish) - Muchos gracias.

- You're Roy.

Thank you for being here in the Latin community my friend.

- Okay.

Thank you.

- We love you.

- Oh, thank you.

I didn't know he knew who I was.

- [Patricia] Muchos gracias.

- [Roy] This is what I want the world to look like.

Markets like this all over the city with vendors driving.

But also wonder if the old model, the restaurant industry, as we know it can become an equitable system.

In the world of restaurants.

There's no bigger name than Wolfgang Puck.

But before we can get down to brass tacks, I've got to put my time in behind the line.

- All right.

That's LA.

Now, since you are new hand here in the restaurant, that's Fargo, you're gonna start peeling the onions.

- Okay.

- Okay.

So we're gonna do an Austrian goulash, you know a Viennese style goulash.

- [Roy] Wolfgang is responsible for so many touch points for restaurants.

So much of what you experienced as a diner today is tied to him.

He defined the modern celebrity chef in the open kitchen concept.

With the restaurant industry at a crossroads, who better to talk to than someone who's kept the lights on for over four decades.

Which in restaurant years is almost unheard of.

- Ah, you're good already.

See, I didn't know you're a cook.

- Okay, I told them this is not my cooking show.

This is my interview show.

- Okay, good.

And off we go.

- I'm cooking at Spago.

- All right now, you need some fresh bread with it and that's it.

- That's it.

- Okay, let's go eat.

- Let's go and we eat.

- What is this show called?

- You don't know?

This show is called Broken Bread.

- Okay Broken Bread, here we are.

Here you get two.

- Chef's time is amazing.

- Okay.

- I wanna try this first, before we talk.

- Okay, go ahead.

Let's try a little bit.

- Um, this is so delicious.

I'm gonna finish this off.

I was just gonna take a bite.

You know, our industry was hit so hard.

- Yeah.

- You know, in the last 18 months.

It was a horrible situation, but in some ways it exposed some of the flaws in our industry.

- Told you.

- You are the, you are a leader in the industry.

And, and can you tell me how hard it was?

- A lot of small restaurants will never open again.

- No.

- Cause they run out of money.

Yeah.

Many of them.

Like I hear from the restaurant association, like 170,000 or so will never gonna open again.

Don't you know you lose the fabric of a neighborhood when small restaurants, bars, and so forth don't open.

- Do you think our industry is broken or, - You know, - is it too fragile?

Cause it is, it, it crumbled like a house of cards right away.

- Yeah.

I really believe that the restaurant business in big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York has to change because the living is so difficult.

A cook today, how are they gonna get an apartment in San Francisco, in LA, in a decent area.

They have to move.

It is really crazy.

So I think the wages have to change maybe in restaurants like ours, that we have to pull the tips that the kitchen gets some money too.

- Yeah.

How can we, how can we be more empathetic to the back of the house?

- You know, we look at the back of the house, and the back of the house starts with the fisherman, with the farmers.

- Keep going on.

- With the people who work there.

So, you know what?

If an upscale restaurants, we have to charge a little more to get the best corn or the best strawberries, it's okay.

As long as the money actually goes to the people who they serve it, who do all the work.

- I'm always amazed at how much you continue to do and, and evolve with the times.

- This is what I love.

I love food.

I love our guests.

I love to be in the dining room.

I love to teach young people how to progress, how to get better.

- Cheers to that.

Thank you Chef.

Back of the house is an impersonal term for the people who are the hardest working and least compensated.

Yet, the entire system rests on their shoulders.

(speaking in Spanish) During the pandemic, a group was formed to do something about it.

When the industry folded in early 2020, Damian Diaz and Othon Nalasco were bartenders, (speaking in Spanish) Like most they lost their jobs.

And when pandemic relief came in, it mostly applied to the front of the house workers who qualify for unemployment.

(speaking in Spanish) Even though undocumented workers pay state and local taxes to a tune of $11 billion a year according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

They do not qualify for most benefits, including unemployment.

Frustrated with the system and the lack of a safety net for thousands of back of the house employees, Damian and Othon started No Us Without You, a nonprofit for undocumented workers in the restaurant industry.

It's estimated that undocumented workers comprise 10% of all restaurant employees in the US and as many as 40% in cities like LA and New York.

When they lost their jobs, there was nothing to fall back on.

(speaking in Spanish) - It's really good to finally see you.

- Oh, thanks for having me, man.

This is amazing.

- Welcome to the distribution.

Welcome on site.

We have all our, all our delivery drivers, our families, everyone confirms.

So everyone has a reservation essentially.

So it's not like we just opened it up to the public.

Hey, what's up guys?

Come on, come on.

No, it's everyone's is vetted.

If you don't qualify for anything, you automatically qualify for us.

No Us Without You is derived as much as what it sounds like.

There is no us without these individuals.

Without undocumented workers in this country, this whole economy collapses, having zero representation of our back of the house community.

When as ironic as that sounds, that is hospitality to watch out and look after one another, especially in an establishment where we all depend on one another.

- Walk me through the first, No Us Without You giveaway.

- We had it over at our shop in Boyle Heights.

And from there it quickly got brought to our attention that, that's a lot attention.

- There was a lot of low tech at that point?

It was just stand boxes.

- Yeah, but the thing is though, because everyone's undocumented, it's like, you gotta keep that in mind.

The fact that you're bringing all these folks to one spot.

If you keep that system, someone's got, all you need is one person, right?

The call, you know who?

- Yeah.

- So at that point we pivoted to keep all these distribution sites on a rotation.

- Yeah.

- So we'll be here this week, we'll be at another one next week and so forth.

- [Roy] You're like a rave?

- 100%.

Dude its like maybe at this place on this time, on this day, you know, they, they feel like they can trust us essentially.

- [Othon] I mean, I think we're seeing a direct correlation with the environment that many restaurants were fostering, right?

They were treating people as dispensable.

And when I say people, I'm talking about undocumented back of the house staff.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you, oh my gosh.

- [Roy] It all started off with a small group of friends.

Now, it's a well-oiled machine, much like the kitchens and bars that volunteers are used to working in, including renowned chef Suzanne Goin, who runs three prominent restaurants in LA.

So chef, how did you, how did you get involved?

- I think, I think I actually saw it on Instagram.

I saw something they were doing very early on and I think I reached out actually to see what I could do to help.

And in the end, they ended up really helping us, so.

- [Roy] And what do you mean by them helping you?

- Well, just help us take care of, you know, - Some of the families - Some of the families that we've, you know, such a core part of our community.

- Especially when you were shut down for the last year.

- When we were shut down.

We had no money.

We were trying to survive.

And it was a way to actually do something for our families.

- [Roy] On one level we're dealing with, you know, American system, which utilizes undocumented labor.

But then we're not the villains either because we're the only place that many people can even get a job to begin with.

So it's really more about what's wrong with the system.

If you can have this thing kind of exist in this, like in the shadow.

- You know five years from now, I want us to continue our food security program by taking care of the communities.

It's not just Boyle Heights.

We service all of Los Angeles county and there's people that need food.

I don't see people like magically not being hungry anymore and having all this money to just buy everything they want.

- [Roy] What the pandemic did, is it shifted us to move from just a capitalist state of mind, to like you can make a living and also take care of people.

It doesn't have to be just taking from, but taking care.

Well, there are a lot of broken systems within the restaurant industry.

There are chefs who are taking initiative to create new, more equitable business models.

Owner and chef Uyen Le opened her Vietnamese comfort food restaurant Bé Ù with a very clear vision.

- How's it going?

- [Roy] To make change within a historically exploitative industry by paying workers well, prioritizing their health and safety, and fostering a respectful and equitable culture.

Before she'll let me into her kitchen, we're meeting at Hawaii supermarket in the San Gabriel valley to pick up ingredients for the day.

So this is where you shop for the restaurant?

- Yeah, this is where I get some of the specialty items that I can get.

- [Roy] Um.

All right.

So let's, let's just shop.

I wanna buy all your groceries for the week.

So just take me on your route.

So.

- Okay.

Lets do it.

- [Roy] So, where are you from?

- I was born in Saigon.

- Oh, you were?

- In Vietnam.

And, and when I was seven, my family moved to West Covina, then La Puente.

In West Covina so, - Covina then La Puente?

- I used to work with my uncle at the Vineland swamp meat, which was one of my first interactions, really with street food.

You know, like whenever I go back to Saigon or I go back to Da Nang, which is like, where my dad's family is from.

And my cousins like, take me around on the scooters.

Like they'll show me all these like new dishes and stuff that's happening, what the cool kids are eating.

And it's certainly not, you know, something that ends up on tour books maybe or whatever yet, but it will.

Let's go to the protein section.

- All right, let's go.

- Just to kind of check it out.

- What are you getting, belly?

- I'm getting belly and I'm getting the pieces.

We call it banh hoi.

- Banh hoi?

So hoi means thread.

So you wanna look for the meat, with the three pieces of thread of fat running through.

- Like in those?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

(speaking in Spanish) - Can I get the card, can I get the card?

Thank you.

- What you got to get now?

- Okay.

Now I got to get Coco Rico.

- Okay.

- So this is one of the few things I use that's processed in the restaurant.

- Okay what do you use it for?

- I use it for the braised pork and eggs rice dish.

And that's because that is about as true to my mom's version of it.

And every Vietnamese family has, - And what is Coco Rico?

- A braised pork.

It's a coconut soda.

- Coconut soda, yeah.

- Yeah, so we'll get a couple of these, but you know, these, you can't really find them on, like, I, I can find it at some Thai places, you know, but otherwise.

- In American dishes they use Arizona.

- When I was thinking about opening up a restaurant, I wanted street food, but I also wanted comfort food, like home food, family food, I have these memories of sitting on a sidewalk somewhere in Vietnam and it'd be human.

You can kind of smell the concrete and you're on a little chair.

Everybody sits down and they share this food and it's humid, but they're still slurping the soup, and they're sweating.

And it just has these really, these memories of community to me.

And I think that's something that I really wanna bring to the food.

But my goal is to have it be affordable to a neighborhood that it's, rent-controlled.

Affordable to not just folks who might have just moved in recently, but folks who've lived here for a long time.

(speaking in a Spanish) - Hey, chef.

- [Uyen] Hi, Roy.

How are you?

- Good to see you again.

- Good to see you again.

- Thanks for having me here.

- Well, thank you.

Yeah.

And then you can see the rest of it.

This is where the magic happens.

- Yeah, I see you.

- So.

- Let's go over the food first, before we get deep on some other stuff.

- So here, I've got the batten made sandwich.

This is the chicken batten made, lemon grass chicken.

And we have different proteins here, but the chicken is actually my personal favorite.

- Okay.

- And then here, we've got the rice noodle dish, and this one has lemon grass pork.

And you know, we bought those herbs earlier.

So it's got perilla peppermint and spearmint.

And then here we have the caramelized pork and eggs called thit kho.

And here's this is what I mean, you know.

- I can see it.

This is like, - The threading.

- It truly, it truly makes a difference.

And this is the dish you learned from your mom, right?

- Yeah.

This is the one with the Coco Rico.

- Coco Rico.

- Yeah.

When we braise it, you gotta put the eggs on the bottom, and then you put the pork on top.

- A little bit of mustard to go with it.

- Thank you.

Yeah.

And that way the eggs don't float up when you're cooking.

- Oh my gosh.

This is one of the most delicious things I've eaten all year.

This is so good.

- My mum is gonna be so happy that you said this Roy.

- Oh my God, I don't even know how to describe it.

I ain't gonna do that.

I ain't going to even do that.

My, my words won't even give it justice.

Oh my Gosh.

Can you tell me about this restaurant and what you're trying to do with this restaurant?

- I wanted to create sort of an ecosystem that I had enough control over to be able to meet some big lifelong goals of mine, you know, decent working conditions for folks, decent pay, affordability for people who, you know, make a wide range of incomes, especially people on minimum wage or fixed incomes.

Then also just fresh labor full food, where you know that when you put it in your body, you know what goes in it and it feels good.

- What you're going against is most restaurants.

They're not paying livable wages maybe, sometimes.

And their prices are high to get profit, but you're doing the opposite and you're not exploiting and you're making it affordable.

- A need for a takeout restaurant, that tips end up being like $5 to $8 additional per hour, per a person who works here.

And so it's $18 an hour.

And then you get $5 to $8 hours dollars in addition to that.

A lot of times that workers are not appreciated for the work they put in and thus not people who should be honored for their work.

But I think that work and dignity at work is one of the biggest priorities.

And sometimes the minimum wage, which is a floor, becomes a ceiling and it's unfair.

And I admit, I don't have the answers.

My labor costs are way too high, you know, to be sustainable right now.

And so what do I do, you know, do I raise prices?

Do I make some compromises on how labor intensive the food is?

Do I try to increase efficiencies?

I think it's worth it to try to do something.

- [Roy] You know, you're a living, breathing example of what has come out of the pandemic.

You know, you, you're, this restaurant represents the time, the thought process, and create something that's different than it was before.

- Yeah.

Disruptions are opportunities for innovation.

Disruptions are opportunities for forced change in a way.

And we should just be raising wages for everybody that we can lift these folks up.

And then, then, you know, then they can afford to like go and eat at places and do other things.

And all of that stuff really does recycle and improve our community.

- That's on God.

All right.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- I ain't got nothing else to say.

She said it all.

- [Uyen] We need some more caramel pork warmed up.

- Uyen's excitement and vision for what a restaurant could be gives me hope.

Are we witnessing a period of time when we're transitioning to a new equitable model, 2020 shed light on a lot of broken systems, especially the lack of safety nets for those in the industry who are undocumented, but we still have a long way to go.

Since filming this episode, the Avenue 26 night market was closed down by the city due to neighborhood complaints about the lack of infrastructure.

Where are all those cooks and entrepreneurs now?

How will they get ahead in a system that's always keeping them behind?

And what can we as consumers and community members do to change the landscape?

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