MODERN VIETNAMESE CUISINE IN NYC w/ WENDY'S LOOKBOOK - Fung Bros Food

What's going on everybody? Welcome to a very, very, very special episode of Fun Bros Food New York. We are out here in the East Village right now and I have a very special guest with me today, fashion and lifestyle blogger Wendy Nguyen. Wendy, good to see you. We are here at McDambo in the East Village. It's providing authentic down-home Vietnamese cooking mixed with like a little bit of that fine dining experience. I'm excited because this is my first time here. Let's go. This is round one here at McDambo. I gotta start off the bun sale. Okay, I had bean sprouts, I had shrimp, I had pork. It's really interesting. Like the combination of sweet and savory is really interesting. Yo, that was really good and you're right, I did taste the coconut. Right? The bone, yeah. This is such an interesting dish to me because I never had it before. Cheers. Cheers. It almost tastes like jerky. It's very refreshing. Yeah, I like this dish a lot. This is a very bro food. Shout out to Jimmy, the chef. He came up with this recipe while he was cooking for the Super Bowl. Cooking for the Super Bowl. I really like this. Can you imagine eating it for the Super Bowl and basketball? Yeah, for sure. It's not traditional, but the flavors are still very Vietnamese. I gotta try this. Do people wrap these? Yeah, you can. Definitely. There's pork in here. There's like a little vermicelli noodles in here and there's shrimp in here. It's really nice. The crunch is perfect. That was just round one. That's why I brought my drumsticks. We're gonna unbutton and we're gonna do another round here. Look at this. This is so amazing. What is that? You can find this. We sliced this off a real plant five minutes ago. I got pineapple, lime, and mint. Still dope looking, but this slice is not as impressive as the alien fruit. Yeah. Yo, that's hella good. Wendy, I think people gotta, they gotta see you eat that. Oh my goodness. Okay. So this is the leaf and slicing this through gives you this. Oh. I knew it. You know, people don't usually eat it, but we ate it. Yeah. We have. He ate it. Okay, we are at round two at Madame Vo. How do you say round two? Phuong Hai. Yo, I think we gotta just talk about this immediately right off the bat. This is short rib pho. Yes, short rib pho. It's their signature here. They call it madame pho. Oh. I'm so glad that you ate it first, because my reaction would have been to take it out. The crazy thing that we've seen so far today. Okay, cheers. Cheers. It's super soft. That's like decadent. For your meatballs, you like to go with sriracha? Yeah, we have. Oh, yo, that is so fashion. You like it? That is so fashion. You like it? Yo, I'm learning. That is crazy. Is that so cool? You use the bone like it was a plate. Definitely sriracha hoisin. I've had garlic noodles before. But not the garlic rice noodles, right? Right, correct. Yeah, because then usually the noodles are more like spaghetti noodles. Right. You know, but not like flat rice noodles. We got the madame platter. This is shrimp paste cut in slivers to almost look like shrimp. Yeah, and then this is a sugar cane. So you can chew on this. This is much more tasty than the aloe vera that he ate. So you scoop that meatball, so you get the water distribution. So we're gonna take the biggest surface area item, which is going to be our lettuce. And then from there, you just put whatever your choice of some of the dishes, they look the same because the colors are there. But it tastes different. But now we have what is zucchini noodles? I've never had them before. You know what? My first time. I feel like I'm so much healthier. I'm not a vegetarian by any means. But I could totally mess with this. If somebody gave me this and was just like, Oh, this is all you eating for lunch. I'm not mad. Okay, we've got round three of Madame Vaux. And this is kind of the hot and savory section. So this is a balut lap. This is one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. It's so tender. And this is gaga roti. Yeah, it's usually fried or grilled. But this one, it's more marinated. This is really good. Really? That's a soft shell crab with a like avocado special house sauce. I'm dipping this soft shell crab. A lot of people think soft shell crabs look crazy because they look like little tarantulas. They do, right? This looks terrifying. Nothing tastes better than meat off the bone. Yeah, it's a sauce that is like very decadent and very just like savory, but still a hint of sweetness from the coconut. And by the way, we have a coconut smoothie. And the thing that's so dope about this, we use real fresh coconuts imported from Thailand from this to this. I have a mango passion fruit smoothie. For me, I think the passion fruit pairs really well with the mango. So it's not like mango, mango. Because sometimes the mango, mango, it'll be like too much mango. Yeah. What is dessert? What is dessert called? This is tear taro. It almost looks like a rice pudding. Yeah, there's rice in it, coconut milk. It tastes like something I've had before, but like definitely presentation-wise, it's different here in Manambo. That wraps up the food portion. For the people who don't know, what is it that you do? Because you have Wendy's Lookbook, which is the blog, and you have IG popping and you have, I'm sure a bunch of other stuff. I just consider myself a content creator. So I have a blog, a YouTube channel, also social IG and everything too. Do you cover fashion or do you kind of like cover fashion, but also a bunch of other stuff, right? I do majority fashion, fashion and lifestyle. The DNA of the brand too is that I actually have a foundation. So I've been a juvenile justice advocate for almost 10 years. I taught inside a detention center for a very long time. For real? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. And then now I've been very, very deeply connected with that community. Fashion is really not about brand alignment. I think it's really about how you interpret what makes you feel good and what you wear to make you feel good. What is your advice for young creatives? In order to create a brand, think of three words that your brand can stand by. Those are the pillars of your brand. So for me, it's creativity, quality, and philanthropy. So everything I do, two of those pillars have to meet. Those three words keeps me anchored and keeps the foundation of the brand and it helps steer the brand. If you're not checking two out of three, you're not going to do it. If you can actually have a clear vision from the get-go, it will steer the brand very far. All right, you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody here at Madame Vogue. Thank you so much to Wendy's Lookbook, Wendy Wynn. Make sure you guys in the comment section below, number one, make sure you let us know what was your favorite dish that we had. Number two, make sure you let us know another spot I should try in New York City and with who. And number three, make sure you let us know what you actually think about fashion. Until next time, we are in the East Village in New York City and we're out. Peace. Bye. Yo, thank you so much, you guys, for watching that New York episode of Fun World Food. Huge shout out to Wendy's Lookbook. Huge shout out to the team here at Madame Vogue. Let me introduce them. I am Patrick. I'm Lee. I'm Yan. I'm Jimmy. Thank you guys so much. Make sure you guys follow Wendy on social media. Follow Madame Vogue on social media. Until next time, you guys, we're in the East Village. We're out. Peace. Peace.