(latin music) - [Danielle] Across the United States, the vast Asian diaspora is producing chefs who are experts in the art of the culinary mashup.

This week, we set out to explore some of these cultural composites.

From casual eateries, serving Filipino, American barbecue, and Afro-Asian rice bowls.

To a fine dining restaurant that's introducing New Yorkers to Nikkei cuisine, a melding of Peruvian and Japanese influences.

We also delve into the lives of these adventurists and award winning chefs.

On this episode of Lucky Chow.

(upbeat inspiring music) (upbeat inspiring music) - [Danielle] Chef JJ Johnson first gained critically acclaimed for his barrier defying Afro-Asian cooking at the Cecil, a fine dining institution in Harlem.

His award winning cookbook, "Between Harlem and Heaven" explores the unexpected flavor connections between the Asian and African diasporas.

Which formed the foundation of his latest venture.

He suggested we take a stroll through his neighborhood market, which carries many of the ingredients that JJ uses in his global dishes.

- [JJ] So you're in like one of the most infamous African markets right here in the heart of Harlem.

We call this area "Little West Africa."

This market here is, if you want something that you can't find, I get text messages and emails all the time like, "Where do I find Fonio?

Where do I get Millard?

Or where do I get like, that cool yogurt?"

This is where you come, they have all the great West African ingredients.

It's inspired me through my whole career.

- So how much has West Africa influenced your cooking?

- West Africa influences, is my foundation.

I look at food through the West African lens.

There's not many chefs out there that do that.

And when I say I look at food through the West African lens, it's like everywhere I go and travel, I'm looking at food through this West African lens, I'm watching how people were brought there through forced migration, and then how they influenced this part of the country, or the world through food.

- You've had restaurants all over the city.

What made you decide to open Field Trip in Harlem?

- Harlem is a community, and Field Trip is a community based restaurant where people should be able to eat everyday.

So my family lived in Harlem, I've lived in Harlem my second half of my life, so you know, I believe like if I'm gonna open up a flag ship place, it should be where you live, where I live, and the people that support me.

Most people like, they feel like I'm just pulling these ingredients together because I want to.

Or most people pull Asian food together because like, it's really flavorful and it's cool.

Like there's the Jamaican-Chinese, there's the India and the West Indies, there's Chinese and Ghana, there's Vietnamese and South, Senegal.

So these people have been living and breeding and building their culture around each other.

Nobody's just been paying attention or talking about it.

So I'm just doing like a deep dive and I'm really cooking the food of the people.

And just celebrating that.

- [Danielle] Just a few blocks away, we come to Field Trip, where the focus is on rice and all it's cross-cultural glory.

- [William] How would you describe the menu here at Field Trip?

- [JJ] So Field Trip is a globally inspired rice bowl shop.

Each rice is super delicious, very like, gluten free centric, and we're just celebrating all different rice from around the world.

- Is that what you mean by rice is culture?

- Yeah, rice is culture.

We all grew up with the rice as like, one of our first meals, and our table is set with an amazing rice bowl that regardless of where you're from, so if you're Korean, you have like this beautiful, white steamy rice.

If you're Latino, you probably have rice and beans.

I'm literally celebrating that in each one of our bowls here and trying to take the most disrespected ingredient and connect it with people.

- So you think rice is disrespected?

- [JJ] Well, it's disrespected here in the United States.

We like parboiled, enriched, bleached, trashy rice.

- So how do you enjoy cooking, you know, in a fast, casual restaurant when you know, a lot of your career has been in more formal kitchens?

This must be fun for you.

- I've been giving you a super, high quality dish at a really low price and using the best ingredients that we can use.

- [Danielle] You know, your cuisine is truly like, global fusion.

I mean, do you like that term, or do you take offense when people say, "Hey, it's fusion."

- I used to say, I used to hate the term fusion, but sometimes I'm like, "If that makes you get it, then it's all good."

- [Danielle] Uh huh.

(laughter) - What's your background?

- So my dad's African American, my mom is Puerto Rican and West Indian, West Indian from Barbados.

- Okay.

- [JJ] My grandpa was from Barbados, my grandmother's from Puerto Rico.

And when you kinda dissect those nationalities, it goes back to other places.

When I was a kid, I never understood the food of Barbados.

I hated it, 'cause I didn't get it.

Then when I went to India as an adult, and I went back to Barbados, I'm like, "Man, this curry, this Roti, this is amazing."

- [William] Right.

- Right, but it also made sense to me now.

It's been great so far.

People come in, it's like their everyday eatery.

It's clean, it's refreshing, the flavors are great.

And it's just great to be back in a community that, where I started my career and giving, not even giving like, being in it.

Right?

Like, being a part of something that people can eat and you meet people everyday.

Like we know our regulars, we talk to them, they're in our face.

And that's the greatest thing.

Field Trip invokes fun, like you're around the world, you're supposed to have fun when you're here.

You know, like we have a captain of fun on our team, they get to pick the playlist.

We really get to, we really do some, you know, fun stuff.

We're a very welcoming place here in Harlem.

Thanks for taking a Field Trip.

(laughter) I'll see you next trip.

(upbeat music) - [Danielle] Our next field trip is to another diverse and community driven neighborhood.

LA's Echo Park.

Our day starts with a swan boat ride, with chef John Erik Concordia, a proud Echo Park native and the pit master at the Park's Finest, a Filipino American neighborhood institution with a global reputation.

- [John] This was the suburbs of downtown.

Now Chinatown is considered part core downtown, but that was the outskirts.

And China town used to be Grand Central Station and built the railroads.

So this is the history of Los Angeles.

As development happens, we can't forget.

We're American, to Filipinos in the Philippines.

- [William] Yeah.

- [John] And we're Filipinos to Americans here in the United States.

- [Danielle] Absolutely.

- [John] But the strange dynamic that we have to have understanding of them, but then also embrace everything that makes us who we are now.

Echo Park was where the Commies and the Coloreds lived.

So it was a lot of older grandmas that used to be Hollywood actresses or writers or directors, or whatever components in Hollywood were blacklisted.

- [Danielle] Oh.

- [John] But they still lived and grew up in this area.

This was Charlie Chaplin Studios right there down the street.

I mean we understand the industry, and we understand that people wanna come here, and we understand like, all we wanna do is be able to be present as this happens and have our voice.

- [Danielle] The Park's Finest is a place where American cuts meet Filipino flavors.

You'll find barbecue classics like brisket, ribs, and sausages interpreted with Pinoy flare.

We got a sneak peak inside the Park's Finest family operation.

- [Ann] Today, we are making my homemade aunt's cornbread Bibingka.

So let's start with roasting banana leaves.

- [Danielle] Hm.

- [Ann] So let's go ahead and turn on the burner.

- [Danielle] What, are you just like releasing these flavors of the banana leaf?

- [Ann] Yes, and the oils.

- [Danielle] Is that good?

- Yeah, that works.

- What makes this cornbread so different?

- Well, it's a blend of American Filipino basically.

Original cornbread, with the corn meal, and then I wanted to put that Filipino twist to it.

- Uh huh.

- [Ann] So I added rice flour and coconut milk.

- [Danielle] Oh, fun.

Woo hoo!

- [Ann] You can go ahead and pour it into our pan.

- It smells amazing.

Thank you chef Ann.

- Thank you.

- I just learned the family recipe.

- Yes.

- [Danielle] Finally, we sat down with the extended Concordia family.

Almost all of whom are involved with the day to day operations of The Park's Finest.

And tasted their fusion of Filipino flavors with American home cooking.

- Well, when you get the Mama Leah's coconut beef, you have to have a serving of rice.

- All right.

- [William] Absolutely.

- Yep.

- That is a must, you gotta get that Filipino staple on when you eat that particular dish.

- In Filipino cuisine, on tables or at the counter, there's always gonna be an accompaniment of chilies, vinegars, Soy's, fish sauce.

- Usually separate?

- [John] Separate, or at least adjacent to each other with some cups that you can make your own sauce on.

- [William] Uh huh.

- [John] So the idea that Filipino food is always customizable with each spoonful allows for something as simple as white rice to carry the strength of the flavors of Filipino cooking.

That's one thing about our style.

They're rich, they're fatty, they're savory, they're intense, but with white rice, even if you just have a little bit of that, it carries you on throughout the day.

Right now, we can honestly say we served a person for their first birthday and they're now 10 years old.

We wanna be able to say, "I've been coming here since I was a child and I'm now retired."

But part of it is making sure that the staff, the space, continue to build a space that's welcoming to our community, that they can count on.

If you have family from San Diego!

(shouting) If you have folks from, you know, the Valley, you have folks from Little Tokyo, from Chinatown, from Thai Town, from San Francisco.

Are you really gonna have to commute far to go to somebody else's house?

This is your house.

- I think that you guys have created a really amazing legacy here and it's delicious and you should be really proud of what you've done.

- Thank you.

- [William] Park's Finest.

How do you say cheers in Tagalog?

(speaking foreign language) - [Ann] I'm just kidding.

- Is that it?

- [Ann] No.

(laughter) - [John] Cheers!

- [William] Cheers!

- Filipino, you just gotta sing it.

- [Danielle] When people ask you where you grew up, you say Echo Park, or do you say LA?

- [John] I'm very specific.

(laughter) I say I grew up in downtown Los Angeles, Echo Park, historic Filipino town.

(laughter) - [William] To be clear.

- [John] To be clear!

- [William] Yeah.

- [John] Rampart District.

(upbeat music) - [Danielle] Back in New York's West Village, we were excited to explore another cultural blend.

This one the result of Japanese immigration to Peru in the late 1800s.

The two cultures came together to create a unique hybrid called Nikkei cuisine, which blends native Peruvian ingredients, such as lime, chilies, cassava, and corn, with the Japanese love and mastery of fresh fish.

At their elegant restaurant, Llama San, Erik and his fellow chef, Sergio Nakayoshi, are introducing New Yorkers to the wildly popular world of Nikkei.

- [William] So what is Nikkei cuisine?

- [Erik] It's the fusion of the Japanese and the Peruvian culture.

It's how when the Japanese migrated here and they adapted to the ingredients that they found in Peru, adapted to the flavor profiles, mixed with the way they cooked back home, their techniques, their ingredients, they created this cuisine called Nikkei cuisine.

- Yeah.

- The Japanese migrated to Peru, they kind of adapted to culture, customs and lifestyle.

Had their children, then the children that grew up in Peru were the ones that kind of started the Nikkei cuisine.

Right?

- How did you come to Nikkei cuisine?

Did you grow up with it?

- [Erik] I didn't grow up with it, my grandmother's Nikkei, always something that really interested me.

I think it's two beautiful cuisines that I really enjoy, the Japanese and the Peruvian.

Growing up eating Peruvian food, and I feel like it's also something that I think New Yorkers would really like, really enjoy.

You know, the flavorful, Peruvian, Latin, like Hispanic food.

And then they really enjoy Japanese restaurants, so I thought those two kind of together would be a home run.

- Now Sergio, you're Nikkei.

- [Sergio] I'm Nikkei, yeah.

My father is Japanese, my mother is Peruvian.

So my grandparents were the first migration.

They came to Peru, like early 1900s, like 1920s, 1930s.

- [William] Right.

- [Danielle] So in Peru, is Nikkei a very common cuisine?

- It is a common cuisine.

There's tons of Nikkei restaurants.

Actually one of the best, well I mean, on the San Pellegrino list of the 50 best restaurants, two Peruvian restaurants are the top 10 and, or three, and one of them is Nikkei.

- [William] Wow.

- [Erik] What we're making right now is called leche de tigre.

Leche de tigre is the base that we use for all our Ceviches.

So actually we just put everything in a blender.

Cilantro stems last.

So all the vegetables, the fish.

- [William] What kind of fish is that?

- This is fluke.

- Yeah.

- A little salt, we'll save these for last.

- [William] Okay.

- [Erik] Lime juice.

And fish stock, perfect.

- [William] Oh, you can smell it from here.

(blender whirring) - And then we're gonna add our cilantro stems.

People that are familiar with the cuisine right, they have an idea or understanding of what Nikkei is.

We kind of took that idea of what Nikkei is and kind of made it our own.

- Oh yes!

- Yep.

What makes this Nikkei cuisine?

- [Sergio] Our tofu, we have a shrimp tofu, so in the middle we punch it out and we put a shrimp mousse in there.

And then we kind of recreate when we steam it, we recreate the texture of the tofu so when you bite it, it's like a tofu that's shrimp basically.

- Would you guys say that this food is more Peruvian or more Japanese?

- Like let's say the Tonkatsu, right?

When people hear Tonkatsu, they see that, that's very, like very Japanese, right?

- [Danielle] Right.

- [Erik] Then we serve it with the udon and pesto which is very Peruvian, but the Italian influence on the cuisine.

It's a very, what we consider, creo-yoyo dish.

- What does that mean, creo-yoyo?

- [Erik] Creo-yoyo is like the mix of like, it's like all the mixes, right?

The indigenous, the Spanish, the African, the Chinese, the Italian.

It's more of like the popular, like city food.

The food that you kind of find everywhere.

What it's called, it's called Tallarines Verde, from (speaking foreign language) which is spaghetti and pesto with like crispy, fried meat.

For us, I think it's pretty exciting because it's like, you know, it's like how we took something so traditional and the Italian influence on Peruvian cuisine, and it's very proven and made it into something that can be relatable and kind of lean towards more of like Japanese style food.

- [Danielle] How did you learn?

- [Erik] A lot of eating, a lot of trial and error, a lot of reading.

We thought it's a very unique and special cuisine.

We thought it was very popular outside of the United States.

You know, it's a cuisine that's not really known here in New York, so I thought it'd be something interesting for people to kind of like, see and learn about.

- Yeah.

- [Erik] So we thought it kinda had everything going for it.

People are starting to be more aware of it, but I don't think you find it as much is because you don't have the chefs to do it.

- [Danielle] Well, you're starting a trend, you know?

Now, when people talk about what's hot in culinary for the next year, they're like, "Well, Nikkei cuisine's right up there."

- Well that's the goal right?

That's the goal.

Not only Nikkei, but Peruvian cuisine.

- People don't realize like, with Chinese migration in the 1800s, like they went all over the Caribbean.

Like my father went from Hong Kong to Havana and there a big thriving Chinatown there.

It's incredible, I think more and more people are making the connection between Asian and Latin America.

And that marriage is like almost two centuries old.

Which is incredible.

- [Erik] The way to learn about culture is through food, right?

So, you know it's just kind of like adding another kind of wealth of knowledge, you know?

Kind of going down this path and learning more about you know, like where my grandmother came from.

- [Danielle] It's so much fun isn't it?

- [Erik] It is.

- [Danielle] To learn, to eat your way.

- [William] Through your ancestry.

(laughter) - [Erik] Yeah, totally.

- [Danielle] Erik and Sergio have clearly struck a chord with New York's fussiest diners at Llama San.

Which was awarded three stars by the New York Times.

We aren't surprised after tasting their creative spin on Nikkei cuisine.

In a serene redwood forest above Oakland, I took an early morning stroll with James Syhabout, a Laos refugee who's now a James Beard award winning and Michelin starred chef.

James may be a typical Northern Californian who likes to get in a hike while he communes with nature, but his path to the Bay Area started in Laos, which his family fled during the Vietnam War.

He grew up in a restaurant as the family struggled to reassemble their lives in America.

And those experiences inform everything the veteran chef and restaurant tour does today.

- [James] So our family was granted asylum, after the Vietnam War.

My father being a Lao and all his family, you know, granted asylum as an apology letter.

It was like, "Hey, sorry we bombed your country, here's a free ticket to the United States and here are the different cities you can go and start a new life."

Social services helped put us amongst a community of other Lao families that had the same situation.

They had been in different parts of Laos and, you know, school was offered to learn English and what not.

but my mom did a little bit of that, didn't like it too much.

My dad became, went to work, he became, like him and a friend, became like the neighborhood mechanic.

- [Danielle] Oh.

- [James] Fixing everyone else's cars and then my dad was a real mechanic in a mechanic shop.

Fast forwarding, you know, chasing the American dream of being self employed and my mother and my father opened their own restaurant.

- [Danielle] Oh, so you come from a restaurateur family?

- [James] I have come from a restaurateur family.

- [Danielle] Okay.

- [James] So I'm a restaurant kid, so I spent all my summers here.

So we opened the first restaurant in 85.

Everyday after school I was there and, you know, we couldn't afford a caretaker so you know, weekends, that's where I would, you know, spend my weekends at the restaurant.

Did my homework in the dining room, sometimes in the kitchen, that kind of like sparked my love for food, just being around it all the time.

Started watching TV, and thinking like Gourmet Magazine, and I'm like, "Wow, there's more to cooking than what I see."

You start to see the glamour of like chefs, you know, like tokes and three to four immaculate kitchens, and copper pots and pans.

I was like, "I wanna cook in that arena."

I feel like that's the pro, that's like the NBA kind of thing.

So I, you know, got more interested in French cookery and pursued that and after high school I went to culinary school for that.

And started working my way into like high end restaurants.

- [Danielle] Commis, with it's two Michelin stars, is the epitome of fine dining with a Northern California sensibility.

And it embodies the culinary acumen of the professionally trained chef, at the top of his game.

The beauty and artistry of the food at Commis reflects James's education at the California Culinary Academy and the time he spent at Manresa, and at the famed Spanish restaurant, El Bulli.

Through your food, do you want people to know about your refugee experience or do you want to create broader awareness of what happened to Laos during the Vietnam War?

- Yeah, through the food for sure.

I think like Hawker Fare is more a better vehicle for that delivery.

(upbeat music) Food, I think it's also like to me, a language that everyone can like, speak.

Right?

Everyone knows salty and sour, sweet.

So to tell a story through food, I think that food needs to be 100% you know, subjective or I mean, it can be more subjective.

It's not as absolute.

So Hawker Fare food is more ways to tell a story hence that's the cookbook.

(inspiring music) The book was an apology letter to myself.

(laughter) I was like, "Hey I screwed up."

You know?

- What do you mean by that?

- You just, you know, I just sold my heritage, you know, I knew that it was just a way to confront myself.

It was like, "Hey, I tell the world."

Kind of get it off my chest.

And to kind of reconcile the past.

Once it hit social media, I was reached out by a lot of people around my age.

- Hm.

- Older and younger, I was like, "Oh my god, like I feel your struggle."

- [Danielle] Just across the Bay bridge in San Francisco's Mission District, Hawker Fare is James's equally renowned, but more casual homage to Lao and Isaan street food.

Whereas James is more composed while cooking at Commis, at Hawker Fare he's shooting from the hip.

Much of the food is quickly wok fried, like the rice noodles dish we will soon devour.

A true hybrid chef, James flows between the two cooking spectrums.

- [James] When you see this food, you'll think, "Oh it looks like Thai food."

- [William] There's similarities.

- Yeah, we always like say that the phrase of, "Same, same but different."

- [William] Right.

- [James] Off the bat, like flavor wise, it's not sweet.

We champion the flavors of like things that are more ambitious.

Like dill, you know, it's a very, very strong flavor.

- [Danielle] Is that grown just natively?

- [James] It's kind of wild, it kind of grows everywhere.

- [Danielle] Really?

Okay.

- [James] And natively as well.

And you know, a lot of things that tend to be a little bit spicier, and less sweet.

You know, we eat to survive and the climate there is really dry and hot, so we need to eat things that are spicier than normal to sweat and that was kind of our cooling mechanism.

- When you say Isaan food, you're specifically talking about a region in Thailand?

- Yeah, the northeast.

- [William] Northeast.

- Where I'm from, where I was born into.

(speaking foreign language) which is Isaan.

- [Danielle] So you know what I'm curious about is how you learned to cook the food of the region that you left when you were two?

You know it's so different from Commis and the culinary school and the classic training that you received.

- [James] This one I really have like, refer and trust my, go back to nostalgia and really touch my senses and realize my fine dining skills and analyze flavors and techniques.

But you tend to overthink it, you know?

Like a lot of this food is like simple, home cooked dishes.

- That green flavor and like this dill situation here, would you say that that's kind of iconically Lao?

- [James] Yeah, it's very vivacious and we champion the flavor of bitterness.

- [William] Yeah.

- [James] You know, bitterness is like a very complex flavor for us.

And like, to me like, very, very rustic, you know?

it's great to have like little crab shells.

You know, here it's like, I just wanna do home cooking but I wanna share it.

For Commis it's more like, I want to perform, do well, make art.

- [Danielle] Do you want your children, now that we're talking about the next generation, to follow in your footsteps?

- I think for me what's paramount for my kids following in my footsteps is just kind of know who you are and accept it and be proud of it.

'Cause it's a part of us, it's how we eat, we eat with our hands, don't be embarrassed by it.

I think like, people appreciate that now.

It's a better way to feed yourself actually.

It tastes more delicious when you use your hands.

So it's just to kind of get them to understand like, you know, being different is also a comfort zone.

- [Danielle] Across chef's tables, from Harlem to Echo Park, we saw that the connective tissue in all of these experiences was immigration and the fruits of the enormous Asian diaspora.

We were excited to see how the breath of Asian cuisine found new homes in new lands and became modern day classics.

These striking stories of hybrids are the unique offspring of two distinct cultures coming together to create something original.

(inspiring music) (upbeat techno music)