SOUL FOOD vs CAJUN FOOD! (Food Battle) | Fung Bros

I don't back down, not too much, not too much. Two drops, two drops. That's a big, that's a big. And this particular drop of hot sauce to be really, really hot. Okay. Virginia style soul food or Louisiana Cajun? Mac and cheese or jambalaya? Pork chop or boudin? We're here with two friends from college that you might have seen on the channel before. Jordan Dakers Wong is a hip hop DJ born in Georgia and of Jamaican Chinese descent. Jordan Veasley, the animal expert, he grew up in Seattle but has roots from Louisiana. So we're gonna hit two restaurants, we're gonna talk food, get an authentic experience and maybe come to a final conclusion. All right, so here we are today doing a soul food episode of Fung Bros Food. On my left, I got Jordan Veasley. What's good? As a black zookeeper, it provides me the unique opportunity to inspire children of color who come to the zoo. And on my right, I got Jordan Dakers Wong. What's going on? So on this side, we have one restaurant, Nana's Southern Kitchen, which is right behind us. And then on this side, we have the Seattle favorite, Ezell's Famous Chicken. Honestly, bro, I'm looking at the shrimp and the chicken. And you know what was cool? I actually got a chance to talk to Nana and she mentioned how they don't batter too much. Those recipes originated from my great-grandmother. We keep simplicity and we haven't had a problem with it. I'm excited. I'm waiting for Nana's number two. Originally, I believe the recipes are more from Virginia. And these recipes, Ezell's is from Texas, right? I'm Todd Minor. I'm the owner. My great-grandma, Myrtle Henderson, she's from Virginia. She used her food to bring people together, teach life lessons, and she welcomed everybody. These recipes have been in my family for over 100 years. Everybody has their own different version of soul food or southern food, right? In Virginia, it's really good about the chicken, your fried fish, your fried pork chop. What's it like being right across from Ezell's? First of all, I'm super proud of Ezell's. I mean, what they were able to do in the Pacific Northwest before there was a bunch of diversity in this area, like, for that family and that legacy, well done. I can learn a bunch from Ezell's and what they've been able to accomplish. We won't be able to move at the same speed as most casual fast food places, but I'm super proud of the plate that you'll get. And I grew up here in Seattle. My stuff comes from my grandmother, who is from Louisiana, and then moved to Texas. My mom just, you know, kind of transformed into more of a Seattle thing, like Seattle type of food. The Seattle version would be like fried salmon. I'm just kidding. I had to think about that one. Man, I don't even know where to start, guys. We should start with the chicken. All right, immediately, you guys, this is the Nana's wing. Okay, this is well-seasoned. Hold on. Is it good or bad? It's good. That was a good sign. I would say, man, this chicken is cooked perfectly, yeah, but it's not super spicy or anything. All right, so we finished up with Nana's. We all enjoyed it, but we got to try and compare it to Ezell's Famous Chicken. Let's go with the regular first. Let's do regular. So this is Ezell's Famous Chicken. This is the number one Seattle brand of fried chicken. Started and founded in Seattle. Let's go. There was elements that I like better of both. You know what I mean? Ezell's is, like, a lot thicker and juicier. Way more breaded. Feels like it's almost more of a buttermilk covering because it kind of has that smooth crust on top that's kind of locked everything in. Let's try the spicy real quick from Ezell's. I know it's kind of early. What were you all thinking after your first bites? Oh, man. It's definitely closer now. Yeah. Definitely closer now. I agree. I would still go with Nana's. Same. But again, I'm going to beat this with a dead horse. Mom's is better. All right, well, if you're going to keep advertising that, we got to try your mom's sometime. I'll bring some. I'll bring it on the show. Yeah. When it comes to Ezell's, I think it's safe to say you've got to get the spicy chicken. But if you had to compare between Nana's and Ezell's overall, I mean, I feel like the consensus is we're more rolling with Nana's. We have so much more food to go, guys. You know what? Let everybody pick their own protein. Immediately, what's catching your eye? I want that shrimp. Grab some shrimp. Give me that shrimp. Grab some shrimp. I will try a shrimp. Yes. Actually, I'm going to go with the pork chop then. Hey. I'm going to go with the catfish right here. Boom. See? I told you. Oh, man. Flavorful. All the seasons was A1 on it. Catfish. Catfish is pretty good. It has this very neutral taste, but that's just catfish in general. This one's really good. The batter is really good. Very buttermilk batter. Can you get catfish out in Washington? No. So it had to come from somewhere else, probably. Mm-hmm. Okay. Catfish are kind of like bottom feeders. They're like everywhere. Mostly southern states, though. They're really disgusting. They're like garbage disposals. They eat everything. Well, what a pitch for catfish. So eat more catfish. Oh, man. Everything was good. Nana's mac and cheese is very cheesy. Very cheesy. It has bits, like larger bits of cheese. Is that cheese baked to the top, though? This is Ezell's mac and cheese. Obviously, comparing the mac and cheese, let's put them side to side. All right, guys. I'm going to try both mac and cheeses next to each other real quick. I don't know which one you're going to like. Milky. Less sharp on the Ezell side. This one's stuck together. So I guess it tastes homemade. See, like I'm telling you, homemade mac and cheese is all, like, if you pick it up and it doesn't stick together, and it's soupy and, like, spools out, they didn't make it right. Yeah. Put it back in the oven. But here's the greens here. For greens, I feel like a lot of people who cook greens also throw ham hocks. My mom always throws ham hocks in them. Yeah, pieces of ham hocks in it. So I feel like I always, when I eat greens, I always prefer that one piece of ham hock in it. That's how you know you get the real taste. If you guys had to pick a green out of the collard greens, the green beans, and you said the cabbage greens. Cabbage greens. Yeah. I would pick collard greens. Collard greens. Green beans are good, but, you know, I prefer collard greens. What do you mean, what? I just ordered them. We ate everything. I know what it is. Like, we ate all of it. No, they're good. But I like, I prefer collard greens over. No, and then mix the cabbage with it. Oh, okay. Okay. Mix the cabbage and the collard greens together. All right, guys. Mixing it. The advice from that gentleman right there. What you think? I think it's a good balance because the cabbage has less flavor than the collard greens. If you want slight collard green flavor, then it works. We got to get into the desserts real quick. So, everybody just pick a dessert. What are you looking at? We have cornbread. We have the crunchy strawberry. I want strawberry. I love chocolate. So, JD, you went with strawberry. I want strawberry. Look at this thing. This is a chocolate crumble. A chocolate crumble. And then the strawberry kind of work. Here you go. Look at that. So, what is some other soul food desserts that, like, we may have not seen or not served everywhere? Because I know there's peach cobbler. There's pineapple upside-down cake. Pineapple upside-down cake. Okay. I've seen that. Yeah. No, y'all are still talking. Bro. Just interrupt our whole conversation. Sorry. Table. Best thing on the table for sure. Wow. Bro. Right? We all do it. Right. No? Yes. I'll stick it into my stomach for real. I'll wait. Okay. Yeah. Wow. I don't know if the strawberry crunch can follow, but. Yeah. It's not. But we'll see. Maybe. Now it's hard. No, not really. Let me see. This is good. It is good. But it's not like that. I would say the reason that that chocolate one is so good is it's almost like the top of a cupcake, but just the part you want. Yeah. That has all the textures that I want. It's sticky. It's crunchy. It's sweet. It's soft. This peach cobbler is from Ezel. The peach cobbler has a lot of peaches in it. Yo, the candy yams are good. Whoa. The candy yams. They're good. Sweet. For me personally, I do have a sweet tooth. So. The candy yams. If you don't like sweet candy yams, don't buy my candy yams. They're candy yams for a reason. You know, the rain started coming down, so we had to speed it up. We tried like everything really quick. So what did you guys like? What stood out? I think the catfish was good, but I think that pork chop had something special to it. Okay. To be different, I'm going to go with the shrimp. I thought the shrimp did just as much. They were good, right? They were pretty good. They were good. It was hard for me to choose. I was like, ooh. It was tough. I love the greens. I'm a collard green fan. So I'm always eating that. Do you guys think that categorically, the home style spots have the advantage? I think that's a pretty good statement to make. You can add more to it because I feel like it's a different audience, whereas commercial, I feel like it goes to more of a wider range of people. So like they have to make sure everything is kind of like, eh, desserts. If all of our answers are not the same, I might just leave. I like the peach cobbler a lot. For me. Oh, I'm going to actually sleeper pick. I'm actually going to go with the strawberry version because you know what? I like a little bit lighter desserts. Look, man. It's okay because this right here is just untouchable. There's cream. There's crunch. There's soft. Why don't you just take this home? We went to the boba shop earlier. Let me just show you that this is Jordan's boba too. This is what Jordan's order from a boba and the dessert from Nana's. I love my chocolate. I might do that cookie and cream smoothie though. I don't know. All right. So we finished up here with the Southern soul food before we transition onto the Cajun spot, which is in downtown Kent, we got to try some of this true tea boba and, and this kind of goes to show you like the diversity in Kent that I think is increasing as the years go on. There's, um, it's Vietnamese owned and it's a boba shop in the same plaza as we're eating Nana's Southern kitchen. The owner talked to us about knowing him and how he's like cool with the guy, the owner of the bubble tea place. So this one is the premium chocolate Oreo cream milk tea with a boba. All right. Here I have this rose matcha latte, uh, half red, half green, just mix it up a little bit. Are those flower bits in there? Yeah. It's a little bit of floral flavor. So this is the handmade purple yam milk tea. I don't know if you guys have had that, uh, purple yam trees at certain bakeries. I've seen them. I've never actually. Yeah. They're really delicious. So that's my reason for picking this one. And I'm just curious if it tastes just like the trees. I got a, uh, dragon fruit cheese foam one with, uh, cherry bobas at the bottom. That one looks crazy. Yeah. This one looks crazy. Here we have, um, the lychee dragon fruit jasmine tea. This is our best seller. And then the creme brulee milk tea, because they actually torch the top. That's good. Yo, we have lychee that grows wild in Jamaica, which is crazy. Normally when I drink bubble tea, I didn't even see that when we first, uh, went in there because that's normally when I get stuff, I'll look for lychee stuff. These bobas are like very visually striking. Yes. Real quick. What do you guys know about like Cajun or Creole food from Louisiana? I just feel like most places up here aren't going to be like that. I mean, unless they really have folks that like really came from down there, like they're in there cooking, cooking human feet and stuff. So your grandmother's from Louisiana. Yeah. Originally. Did she cook Cajun food growing up? I feel like the longer you've been up here, I feel like sometimes it goes away. My grandmother didn't really cook like that. These people are straight from Louisiana that opened up this spot. All right. Now we're going to head down to Altha's Louisiana store and deli. All right. We have just arrived to Altha's Louisiana Cajun store and deli. What we're going to be doing is we're going to go inside, do a little shopping, try some Cajun food. Let's do it. I'm in. Y'all okay? Hey. How you doing? I'm Neil, man. Yeah. I'm from New Orleans. I've been out here since 2016 when we opened this place up here. It's called Altha's Louisiana Cajun store. We opened it up in the name of my mother and we bring everything from Louisiana up here. I'm messing that up, bitch. There's no market as of today. We're the only one in the state of Washington that sells everything from Louisiana. We get a lot of the basketball players, Jamar Crawford comes here. Earl Thomas used to come in, him and his family and stuff. Nate Robertson, his family, a lot of those guys comes up here and stuff. We would love to come in and try a bunch of stuff. We got stuffed chicken, stuffed with rice and crawfish. We got alligator, breaded okra. We got catfish, frog legs, stuffed pork chops, stuffed with rice and crawfish, rice and shrimp up inside of it. Boonang is a sausage stuffed with rice and crawfish up inside of it. Gumbo, already pre-made up and stuff from the South. We fly this here from Bowbridge, Louisiana. We got rabbit. Man, we even got deer sausage. Yo, they got a whole alligator over here. Sell the whole alligator. Oh, shoot. Yeah, we sell the whole alligator. We sell alligator nuggets. We sell alligator tails. We different from everybody here and stuff. You know, Nana's got their own flavor and stuff, and we got our own flavor. Our flavor's more 100% Southern, and they're more kind of a Southern East Coast kind of a thing. Right, right, right. We can get some gator? Your gator's fine with me, man. We're out of the gator, though. Oh, we're out of the gator. Oh, man. Ever since we were kids, our mom taught all us how to cook and everything. It's 10 boys and 4 girls. And I retired on my day job. I was there for 30 years. I retired there two years ago. And then we're getting ready to expand this place, and we're going to bring all the stuff from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and the Caribbean. He's from the Caribbean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My grandma is originally from Louisiana, but she moved to Texas. When she came here, she didn't really cook, so I didn't grow up with deep stuff. By her not being able to get the stuff in, you kind of lost it. So we're going to bring you back, boy. Any chips or snacks or desserts that we should get to go along with this food? We got pecan pies. Get them out of Bowbridge, Louisiana. And then our boudin is our really number one boudin, and our alligator nuggets here is our number one sellers. Okay, we have set up a table right outside of Altha's Louisiana and Cajun store and deli. At the moment, we were not able to order the étouffée and the jambalaya and the gumbo, but we have some pretty New Orleans dishes. Guys, we're going to fight the train in the background. We have a whole set of po'boys here, fried oyster po'boys. Who's down with the oyster? I'll try the oyster. Smoked sausage po'boy. Okay, we got the shrimp po'boy. The shrimp. I got the catfish because I love the catfish from Nana's Louisiana po'boys. Pretty good spice on there. What would you have liked or not liked about it? I'm a very picky dude, bro. I'm shocked. I'm not the biggest fan of messy things, because I'm actually diagnosed with OCD. I like my hands clean at all times, which is why I always have a napkin in my hand. But I fight it. Yeah, I do. I'm fine. I'm good. I'm fine. This is really good, but the oyster, I've never had it that way. Having this deep fried oyster is actually really good. It's really soft. I've actually never had smoked sausage in a sandwich before, but then this is really good. All right, let's open this up. Is that a thing? Who can take spicy and who can't take spicy? Oh, absolutely. I'm more vocal about my lack of ability to eat spicy foods. Right. You are not scared to reveal it. You might get roasted. Like, I might get roasted. Is it hot? For me, my mouth is not on fire or anything, but when it hit my mouth, I was like, oh yeah. So we just had the Po'boys, guys. We are going on now to their premier item, which is the Boudin. He pronounces it Boudin. I thought he said. I swear that's what he said. Boudin is a sausage that's stuffed with rice and crawfish up inside of it. Guys, let's try the Boudin rice sausage. So this one, as you can tell, is really soft because it kind of fell apart. Boudin sausage. All right. That is good. Hold up. Yeah. Oh, it has a kick, though. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. This almost tastes like, in some ways, almost like a jambalaya in a sausage. Absolutely. Yeah. That's like one of the best things we had today, for sure. I'm not going to lie. That's up there with the pork chop. Boudin, I got to give that, for me, like a five out of five. I would recommend anybody get the Boudin sausage. What is that? Oh, that's tamales. Oh. Tamales. So they just have that on the menu. They also have egg rolls, too. And we have hushpuppies here. Hushpuppies. So it has a little seasoning inside. Right. It's like cornbread. Here's my take on hushpuppies. Hey, man. Hey. Come on. Come over. We got our little table set up. Come and join us. You guys, go ahead. The way you call that is Boudin. Boudin. OK. Personally, what's your favorite po' boy? Y'all enjoy it, man. All right. All right, guys, let's try the fried okra. This one is better than these else. 100%. Yeah. Hands down. Way better. They're not, like, overly gooey on the inside. Is it the batter, too? Yes. The batter's a little bit more of that crumbly batter. It's better. I'm going to say this at the beginning. It looks red. That means it's going to be spicy. Your red alert. The red alert. It's going off right now. We'll see. What can we do to get you to try some of that? A little bit of tapioca. Whoops. I don't back down. Not too much. Two drops. Hot ones right here. That's a big, that's a big... And this particular drop of hot sauce to be really, really hot. Slap Your Mom is a nice addition because it's really tangy. It's not that spicy. I'm proud of myself. No, I'm good. That's it. One trip to hell. We're going to put it in slow motion. Some music. Some triumphant music. I'm supposed to be in love, by the way. Wait, what? I stand corrected. It was a medium level heat. Chicken and waffles. Never gets old. Chicken and waffles is so great. There's not many things that are better. Bro, no, that was good. I'm going to have to get some more syrup. You know what I like about how they do it here at Alta's is that the waffle is soft and fluffy. You have the crispy chicken and then the soft waffle. We have a squirrel friend right behind us. We should not feed the wildlife. Question. They're animals. Question. You're in the city. Do not throw bird crumbs at the pigeons. No. Okay. I was doing that last week. Give them to Mike Tyson at that point. Give them to Mike Tyson? Mike Tyson has pigeons. He has pigeons. Mike Tyson has pigeons? He has pigeons. When did he have pigeons? Oh, my God. He was a conservationist, though. All right, guys. This is a tamale here at Alta's. This isn't tamale. It's like a taquito. Taquito tamale. All right, guys. Finishing off here. We have one of their pecan pies. Everything in the store comes from Louisiana, even this pecan pie. And it's crummy. Yeah. This looks good. It's gooey. It's chewy. It's crispy. Dude, this was really good. This is my favorite dessert we had today. Wow. I'm going to just say it. The crust, dude, it's got almost like a baklava type honey glaze to it. That is good. It's one of my favorite desserts for sure. All right, everybody. That is wrapping up our Southern soul food versus Cajun food. It's not really a battle. Obviously, there's different styles. What was your guys' favorite things, man? As far as the pork chop goes, I'm going to go back and get that. For sure. My favorite protein was probably... Ooh. I think that pork chop, man. My favorite side was probably mac and cheese from Nana's, not from Ezel's. I'm a shrimp guy, so I kind of leaned for the shrimp just because that's my thing. The biggest thing I enjoyed was the oyster po'boy. For me, I was going to say I really liked the boudin sausage. Oh, Katy Yam's. Katy Yam's from Nana's. I got to roll with the catfish at Nana's because I just love fried fish. When the guy told us to mix the cabbage with the collard greens, I thought that was cool. My chocolate little thing at Nana's. It is probably not my favorite today. Favorite might have been that strawberry one. Whoa. I told you. What? I told you. It's a good middle ground. If all brands are not the same, I might just leave. You know what's weird? I'm going to go with the pecan. The pecan pie was good. I'm going to go with the pecan pie too. I'm just going to roll with the chocolate crumble on this one because that was the best single bite. And I'm not talking about you in Philly. I took one bite of the pecan pie. It was great too. You know what it is? You guys didn't meet Nana. I met her earlier before you guys came. I have... Y'all like this now. Connection. I guess for the people who are watching at home, what's one dish that they got to try that we didn't have today? Gumbo. I'm not going to lie. Some of the best gumbo I had was at a barbershop in a crockpot. You know, people were coming through getting cups. It was good, man. Back in Tacoma. What bar? All right. We had to come back on another day to get the etouffee. This is an incredibly Cajun Creole dish. Here at Altha's, they are keeping it super authentic Louisiana. You know why, Andrew? They don't serve every dish on every day. Traditionally, it's like you want to switch up the menu every day just so you don't run out of each thing and just so you can switch it up on people so you're not eating the same thing over and over again. And that's what Neil was telling us out there. I think a lot of people are almost more familiar with gumbo and jambalaya than with etouffee. Man, David. Let's try it. I'm excited to try it. So this is only crawfish. There's no other meat in here. There's no sausage. Crawfish etouffee. That's good. Oh, my goodness. So good. A little spicy. Very smooth, though. The taste of crawfish, I would say it's a little bit more of almost a denser flavor than shrimp, but it's smaller. All right. That's it for the etouffee section. But back to finishing the video with Jordan Veasley and Jordan Dakers. So hold on. I got to show a shameless plug. Jungle Jordan, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, everything. TikTok now. I make TikTok videos about fun animal content. You guys can learn about some cool animal facts. Super simple, man. I play music around the city, you know, and everything. Why you down? I'm DJing. It's not even cool what I'm saying. All right. Yeah. I'm part of a group, Fancily DJs. You can follow us on Instagram at FancilyDJs, all one word. You can follow me at DJsJordan, see all my trick videos, routines, funny stuff I put up. What is wrong with playing the hottest tracks six times in a night? Because there's a million songs. Why would you want to play the same song over and over again? Crowds are different than DJs. It was like Jay-Z and Kanye West's throw when they had their pair of songs, right? They want to play over and over. Well, everybody knows these are the songs that everybody wants to hear, right? And DJs, they kind of meticulate their night into a certain area. So, like, if people are, you know, walking in at like 1 o'clock and it's like, yo, did you play the Drake? I'm like, yeah, I played it like 30 minutes ago. Where were you at? Can you play it again? Or like, yo, it's 10 o'clock, the door's just open. Can you play the Drake? I'm like, I just started playing records. Is the panda overrated because it doesn't have, it can't survive without human intervention? Or that doesn't matter? No, they can survive. They were losing their territories. They were losing their environments. And realized that these pandas, to breed, they need quiet. And they need seclusion. They need to be alone. So, they're shy about mating. Extremely. So, pandas really are Asian. What are some underrated animals that you like, that you would like to share with the world and be like, yo, check out these animals, they're cool? Wolverines. Okay. They are so fun and chill. They get a bad reputation for being, like, you know, vicious. They're so sweet and so smart. And otters. I love otters. There's a lot of people that love otters, but I think those animals need a little bit more love. Like snakes, for instance. People are just terrified of snakes. But they're just trying to live, man. Like, they're out here vibing. Like, they're fine. Like, they're just chilling. Like, they don't want you to bother them. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching that video. That wraps it up for our Southern Seoul food versus Cajun food. Let us know in the comments down below what are some dishes that we did not have that we should have tried. And then also let us know another cuisine that we should do a similar video with. If you like this video, like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. Follow the Jordans. Follow the Jordans right here. And until next time, we out. Peace. Jaguar versus a tiger. What species of tiger? The best fighter. Bengal tigers and Siberian tigers are the two larger tigers. They would win. They're just pound for pound stronger than jaguars, even though jaguars are really muscular.