BADASS CHEFS COOKING GREAT FOOD IN BROOKLYN (Taiwanese, Viet, Southeast Asian) | Fung Bros

Uh, Trigg, does anybody ever ask you if you have, like, yellow feet? Well, my fiancée is Korean, so I get accused of that. Yo, David and Andrew from the Fun Bros here, and thank you for clicking on that special Brooklyn Food Crawl, but before we get into that video, we gotta tell you about a brand new media outlet and YouTube channel called Goldthread. It is a publication based out of Hong Kong that is covering modern Chinese culture, what they eat, and what they think. The stories on Goldthread definitely relate to a lot of material that we've made before, so if you are interested in our channel, definitely check out Goldthread. Here is one of their stories called Shaolin Hip-Hop. Alright, if you guys thought that video was cool, definitely check out more at Goldthread. Subscribe to their channel down below in the description right here, but for now, enjoy this Brooklyn New Wave Asian Food Crawl. Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to a special Fun Bros Food, and you guys already know what it is on our channel. We are showing you guys the coolest people doing the coolest things with Asian food out in New York. That's our mission right now, and today we are out in Brooklyn. So whether you want to use the word hipster, modern, new wave, untraditional, whatever you want to call it, these three spots that we're hitting up today have amazing backstories and very highly regarded food, so I'm very, very, very excited. This is the next generation of Asian food in Brooklyn. Let's go. Alright, everybody, I'm sitting down with the two founders of Winsun right now. We got Josh and Trigman. Is this a hipster Taiwanese spot, and partially is it because you're here? It unavoidably has hipster qualities because we're in Brooklyn. It's an easy way to group or categorize what we're doing. Very, very easy, without effort. People can use it in a really derogatory way. This is very honestly a culinary impression that Taiwan has made on us, and we're expressing it through a lens that is a new American background. And well, let's dive into some of these dishes real quick. Salty soy milk. You can see the black vinegar, curdles, the soy milk that we make here in-house. And this is like a classic Taiwanese breakfast food. Yeah, this is, you know, a personal favorite of ours, and one of the best parts of Taiwan is the breakfast culture. Oh, by the way, this has really great flavor, man. Thanks, thanks. That is so good. This is a clams and basil. It's just a very simple dish of clams with Shaoxing rice wine. So we put a scallion pancake underneath just to soak up some of the broth. You know, not really a typical way to serve clams and basil. It's extra thick. Like, it's the thicker kind. I feel like it's not as airy. It soaks up a lot of the juice. I feel like, and I'm really into scallion pancakes, that chewiness is almost like comparable more to like a pizza crust. Trigg, does anybody ever ask you if you have, like, yellow fever? Well, my fiance is Korean, so I get accused of that often. So, fiance Korean, you're serving Taiwanese food. How does she feel about it? She's supportive. She just gets a little upset when I start telling her I want to go to, like, Chinese school and, like, learn, get better at Mandarin. And she's like, hey, you should learn Korean. And then you're like, I don't serve Korean food yet. Ssangyinto, yeah. This is like a fun dish for us, too, that we bonded over super early. It's not necessarily the most iconic Taiwanese dish, but you do see it in a lot of Taiwanese restaurants. But it has, like, Szechuan roots. And it's a super balanced, vegetable-forward pork stir fry. It's funny to see, like, white people try to eat, like, really small garlic chives with really small grains of rice. I'm not going to lie. It's hard for me. Yeah, that would be me, too. But, like, you know, like, it's just... But it's definitely... The key is you just shovel it into your mouth. Yeah, yeah. But, dude, yo, Trig, Josh, thank you so much for your time, man. I appreciate it. You guys can go back to work. I'm going to finish up the food here. Winsun at 159 Grand. You guys need to check it out. All right, everybody, I made it out to Bushwick, Brooklyn. And I'm in front of a spot that is blending two cuisines that a lot of people love out there. I am talking about American barbecue and Vietnamese food. Yes, right now, I'm outside of Lucy's Vietnamese Kitchen, led by Chef Johnny. Let's go check it out. All right, we are in the back of the kitchen of Lucy's Vietnamese Kitchen, man. I'm here with Chef Johnny Nguyen. Yo, thank you so much. Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate you coming through. I'm excited. Man, you got this smoked brisket pho. That's what we do. Let's go make it. It looks delicious. The brisket looks fatty. The broth is a vegetarian broth. Vegetarian broth all the way. Vegan broth. Vegan? You took it a step further. You said vegan. Vegan broth, guys. Since the beef flavor is so strong from the brisket, then you wouldn't need to put in like a beef broth. Wouldn't need to. Dude, look at this beef right here. Oh my God. I basically took two things I was really good at, which is smoking barbecue and basically pho. So I took a 14-hour smoked brisket, put it in some pho, and took two coaches and just smashed it. It works really well. That is delicious, man. So I read that you got a lot of your influence from your grandmother. Inspiration from my grandmother, seeing her work so many jobs just to make sure I was happy. Hey, you could have been anywhere in the world, but you're here raising me. I wanted to open something in her name. She'd be like, yo, this is like the true American dream. This is the brisket bun mee. Pickled carrots, fresh cucumbers, fresh brisket, 14 hours, basil, cilantro, bean sprouts, the pho bun mee. I mean, essentially you've merged a barbecue brisket sandwich into a bun mee. Kind of. Yeah, basically. The mayo. Housemade aioli? Housemade garlic aioli. Crispy on the outside, airy in the middle. This is a good sandwich. So this is not your typical Vietnamese restaurant. A small restaurant, one table that everyone can eat together, have conversations with each other, and just be able to interact, you know? You only have three things on the menu. Growing up eating at restaurants, there's always like 20, 30, 40 different items. I don't want to make a shot the hat. A couple items have been really done well. Fresh ingredients, fresh bread, fresh meat, cooked well done. And when you come, you get the same product, you get the same product over and over the same way a million times. Food doesn't have to be hard. It don't have to be hard. Food don't gotta be complicated. Yo, I'm off on that. Yo, thank you, Johnny. I appreciate that, man. Lucy's Vietnamese Kitchen, check it out. You're gonna see more of these spots popping up in the future. All right, everybody. We have made it to our third and final spot on this new Wave Asian Brooklyn excursion. We're here out in Greenpoint, and we're outside of a spot called Baobao, owned and operated by Chef Bao Bao. That's just her nickname. There's so many different influences in this spot. Everything from her French culinary techniques to some Japanese influence to a bunch of Southeast Asian and Chinese influences. Let's go check it out. All right, I'm here at Baobao with Chef Bao Bao. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. So it's a mix of authentic dishes and then authentic parts of a dish with kind of new ways of doing it. Yes, yes. Okay. So this one is a yam moon sandwich, which is like a Thai-style ceviche. It's like chilled glass noodle with seafood and like a spicy lamb dressing. Kind of looks like a papaya salad slash ceviche. It's not like papaya salad. It's just like ceviche. My bad. I love this shrimp that you got here. It's humongous. You butterflied it. It's juicy. Look at that. You did not skimp on the shrimp. No. That's what my grandma said, that never be cheap on ingredients. In Chinese, this is like fen si or like the rice noodles. So it's like, I've never really had it in like a salad form, which I think is really cool. This dish, we call it kao soi. Everything here is authentic besides the duck leg confit that I use my like, you know, fusions. Your French culinary background. My French culinary background to merge them together. And for those who don't know, what is confit? It's like a slow cook process in the oven. You use like a duck fat to cover the meat, the duck leg itself. It's soaking inside the duck fat just to cover it. Yo, that duck is super soft. Just melting in my mouth. Look at all that seasoning that's stuck on that duck. Are those peppers? Those are coriander seeds. Coriander seeds. Look at that. Black pepper. That one is a pla. In Northern Thais, mean the fish that cooks in banana leaf. What is this? That one is a Thai eggplant. Thai eggplant. Yeah. I like the texture, like the flakiness and also the taste is not too fishy. What are some things that you've experienced that were like, you know, positive and negatives of being a female chef? Not that many restaurants want to hire women to be a line cook. They probably- They don't want drama. They probably think that, yeah, it's drama and also like weakness. In Asia, you will see so many women cooking than men. Stereotypically or traditionally, everybody's like, oh, women in the kitchen. But then, oh, women can't cook in a competition. And you're like, wait, wait, wait. Where does that balance make sense? Where you're going to say women should be in the kitchen and then you say that they can't cook. Just choose one. But when I get a job, I don't show my weakness. I just show them that I can do what you do. And I'm trying to prove that it's not just male can do it. Women can do it too. The last dish is a sizzling mussel pancake. And I like the way that Korean, they serve their pancake. The seafood pancake. Yeah, the seafood pancake. So that's why I was thinking like, maybe I should just using my Thai ingredient and adapt it to, you know, the Southeast Asian fusions. Yeah. This is not just sriracha, it's the sauce that I made. And I just add sriracha on top of it. I like that a lot. You like it? Really crispy. Got some egg in there. Scallions, I love scallions. You don't pitch this as the most authentic Thai spot, but you know what I think is authentically Thai? Is the attitude and the vibe here. Like you guys are very hospitable, very nice. That is a trait of high spots. Land of smile. Thailand. Land of smiles, yes. All right, everybody, that wraps up. Bow, bow. Thank you. Bye. Kop khun kap. All right, everybody, that wraps up our Brooklyn Crawl. Man, I'm out in Greenpoint right now at Bedford in Manhattan. We went through East Williamsburg. We went through Bushwick. Now we're in Greenpoint. With Winsun, you had a Taiwanese-American team up with a Southern guy to create the new Taiwanese-American food. And then Johnny Nguyen is combining barbecue with pho in a way that can probably expand into many, many different shops. And now with Chef Bao Bao and her unique mixture of influences, I mean, she's serving a really different style of food. Let me know in the comments below if you guys like this series. And until next time, I'm out. Peace. Yo, thank you guys so much for watching that video. Huge shout out to Goldthread for sponsoring it. And if you are interested in dope stories about modern China told by our friends in Hong Kong, then definitely check out the Goldthread YouTube channel, social media, website. Until next time, we're the Fun Brothers. We're out. Peace. I met someone that they said they know Thai food and they've been to Thailand for just like a couple hours because of the landing. They need to just- It was a layover. Yeah, layover. And they said, yeah, I've been to Thailand. I said, I've been to Thailand. This is not real Thai. You ate the food from airport and he was like... If you want to get like a real authentic Thai food, you really need to go to like a small town. You say, instead of saying I've been to the Thai airport, I've been to a Thai grandma's house. Never eaten at a Thai grandma's house. Don't you come in here acting like you know Thai food. No.