(classical music) - [Narrator] Culinary creativity doesn't always come from the kitchen.

These days, innovations in how and what we eat and drink can happen in unexpected places, like Silicon Valley think tanks, suburban garages, and next gen fast casual canteens.

In this episode of "Lucky Chow", we take a look into the future.

We'll visit three pioneering women chefs in the Pacific Northwest, the founder of a game changing app that has revolutionized how restaurants hire staff, a hot shot New York chef bringing greater awareness to the diversity of Chinese food, and Robert Wang, the inventor of the instant pot, who was just looking for a way to cook healthier food for his children.

(lively music) (gentle music) In Portland, Oregon, Chef Naoko Tamura celebrates the natural abundance of the Northwest with her tapas style menu, featuring the five cooking methods traditional to Japan.

Steaming, frying, simmering, grilling, and raw with preparations.

We met there with Naoko and two other women helping to drive the city's thriving food culture.

Rachel Yang of Revelry, whose wildly creative vision combines a love of bold, unexpected Asian flavors, with classic rigorous technique, and Nong Poonsukwattana, who burst onto the city's food scene with her simple, but outrageously delicious take on khao man gai, Thailand's version of chicken and rice.

(gentle music) - [Naoko] This is a zucchini mochi, and also they wanted a (speaking in foreign language) Today it's Oregon Dungeness crab with green beans and (speaking in foreign language) of tofu paste.

- [Woman] Do you always cook with seasonal ingredients?

- Yes, only cook unless seasonal.

Oregon is very beautiful local farm, is very, very smart and very nice people.

- Portland really comes to life in the summer.

The weather's perfect, the food is perfect.

- Yes, everything is-- - Portland at it's best.

- [Naoko] Yes, best, this time, this year is really not too hot it's not much rain, it is beautiful.

- [Woman] What's that Naoko?

- This is Albacore tuna.

So, we have seasonal, sometimes salmon, sometimes different fish Halibut.

And also the seasonal local vegetables or fruits.

And also that I'm fermented the chickpea miso so I'm very crafty, I really love the fermenting thing.

- [Woman] What drew you all to Portland?

- They really care about quality of life.

They really care about how, like, how they spend they're day.

Where they go out to eat, where they go out to go camping, where they go out to see nature.

And I think more than anywhere, it's a luxury for sure, but the same time it's a mindset too.

- I opened a food cart, right before it, like blow up, all over nation.

It was a bad economy at the time and then like, so when I first opened there was a place that had 10 food carts.

- In Portland?

- Yes.

- When we first opened our restaurant, a little over 10 years ago people were asking "Hey, where's your jjigae?

"Where's your bibimbap?"

Even though it's a fusion restaurant, if we're calling it Korean fusion, where's my free bowl of rice?

Like, where's kimchi?

There's still a lot of, I think people have gotten to the point where they understand what flavor can be.

We are working with and we are struggling every day, like how to really convey what we do as authentically who we are versus has to be labeled or blended, branded as one or the other.

- Being female in the hospitality business is not easy.

When you have to wear different hats, you know you have to be a chef, you have to be a boss, and then with the customer you have to be nice and try and then.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, but then sometimes like, too nice and then they think you're flirting but I'm not, like I'm making you feel welcome.

- I'm so enamored by all three of you women entrepreneurs, and chefs.

You wear so many different hats.

Do you feel that there is a community that supports you here in Portland?

- Portland really kinda embraces diversity.

I mean like, as you can see all three of us come from all different backgrounds, all different cooking styles, all different types of food, but everyone is really welcoming.

Like, the more different you are the better it is for the city, and everyone really likes that.

So I think that's the part of the thing, and I think here in Portland than any one, like we see so many female chefs, so like it's really empowering to see a lot of different female chefs in the city - Had you stayed in Thailand do you think you would've had the opportunity to own so many restaurants today as a woman?

- I think that now the woman that I have become, I think that I can do it anywhere in the world.

- You were classically trained and then ended up working in some very classical kitchens, like Alan Duclause.

- I mean, I came to the States when I was 15 I was actually sent her, my parents stayed in Korea.

My parents sent me over to America to get a better education.

I think growing up being in Asia especially, we all big in such a big family, cultural festivals, you know, every holiday you're always gathered by like your aunts and uncles and cousins.

It's always big family gatherings and food's been always such a big part of it.

- That's how love was shown, right?

- Yeah, absolutely, so food is such an important part, and I never thought that I would actually cook professionally.

So I thought, I went to cooking school, and we all, my parents included, they're like okay you're a girl.

Going to cooking school cannot be any harm, you will get up become a good wife someday.

People often ask like, how authentic is it?

And I tell everyone it's very authentically my food.

- [Man] Yes.

- I'm cooking with the experience of my living here in America, having American husband, and having two kids who are mixed kids.

And this is the food that I feed my kids, and it's the food that I like to eat.

I think that's kinda what I'm cooking.

- I'm so impressed by all of you, I mean you're bottling your sauce at your restaurant at night.

You're making meals for your Delta Portland to Tokyo route at your restaurant during the day.

You're coming to Portland just to open a third restaurant, I mean, what's next for you?

- I think we are at the place where people are really interested in Korean food but at the same time, we can actually go further.

Like, I really wanna bring, 'cause Korea is really known for it's specialty like soups and or its compared to like barbecues and different things.

Kind of think it is time for us to go deeper into the regional cooking and special dishes.

So there are so many different things that I wanna kind of try.

And then introduce to the Seattle and Portland people.

- Real pleasure meeting all of you.

- Thank you.

- It was a lot of fun.

- (mumbles).

- Thank you.

(lively music) - Necessity is the mother of invention even if you are a father.

In the case of Robert Wang, the inventor of the Instant Pot.

The necessity was something that could help him easily cook healthier food for his children.

We sat down with Robert in the rooftop garden of PS84 in Brooklyn where the nonprofit New York Sun works has built a greenhouse to teach children about agriculture and nutrition.

An appropriate setting to learn about the technology behind this revolutionary kitchen tool.

So Robert what led you to create the Instant Pot?

- My wife and myself have been in high tech industry for very long time and as you know we work long hours.

When we had our children, we kind of feeding them a lots of fast food.

I keep dreaming of an automated cooking machine.

Which would help us to do the cooking after work.

- Today we wanted to show you this school PS84, in Williamsburg.

This school has created this green house to really teach children about science through hydroponic farming.

So we are gonna bring the kids in a little bit and you can show them how you make your eggs.

- Hello, please to meet you.

- Hi.

- Please to meet you.

- So, you guys are all in sixth grade?

- [Students] Yeah!

- Wow, how long have you been going to PS84?

- [Student] Six, seven, eight years.

In order to cook food fast, it actually builds pressure inside.

Pressure gives higher temperature inside.

So food can be cooked faster.

Actually, people call instant pot a magic egg cooker.

- Why?

- Because, if you cook a fresh egg, often time it actually difficult to peel, after cooking.

Now with instant pot because eggs are being heat up fast, the bonding between the egg whites and the membrane on the shell is kind of broken.

And close the lid, the pressure program.

- Could that product be used for any type of food?

- The instant pot is very good for what is called 'dry heating'.

Also we implemented (speaking foreign language) in this model as well.

(speaking in foreign language) means cooking at a low temperature.

Which you kill all the bad bugs, the pathogens.

- While waiting for the eggs to cook, the kids of PS84 gave Robert and me a tour of their incredible light filled rooftop farm where they are growing lettuces, kale, herbs and other produce organically and sustainably.

- [Robert] Get ready.

- [Student] Woah!

- It's okay, it's okay.

- [Students] (mumbles) that's cool.

- And this is the time that I open it.

So, you can see the egg just pop out.

(lively music) Look at these amazing vegetables.

What did we grow here?

- This is curly kale.

- I can't believe you guys grew all of this here in this green house.

So this is gonna be really simple.

The first thing we are gonna do is put some olive oil and garlic.

Do you guys love garlic?

- [Students] Yeah!

- I mean, who doesn't love garlic?

Do you hear that sizzle?

What's nice about this Instant Pot in terms of vegetables, is because it cooks the vegetables very quickly.

All the nutrients stay in.

So we are gonna cook the garlic for a few minutes, until it gets a little bit brown, very good.

We'll move that around.

I know kale is very exciting, great.

What is your favorite thing that you grow here?

- Basil.

- Basil?

Do you guys make pesto?

- [Student] Yes!

- [Robert] Do you love pesto?

- [Student] Yes!

- Ooh.

(students laughing) There we are.

Wow, Looks like a kale facial.

- [Student] Wow.

- Wow, look how beautiful this is.

What we are gonna do to finish the dish is just add a little fresh lemon on it.

So, who is ready to try some?

- [Student] Me!

- All right, how did I do?

High five?

- Good.

- It is very satisfying when people write in their reviews that Instant Pot is a life changer, is a game changer.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Next we head to the San Francisco Bay area, a hot bed of American innovation.

We first meet up with legendary restaurant tour George Chen at China Live.

His love letter to Chinese food and culture.

What is the idea?

What is the dream of China Live?

- It is a market hall, a food emporium.

People think Chinese food comes in little white box with the mystery brown sauce.

But great for Chinese americans in this country for a long time, but it's really not real Chinese food.

What is happening in China today and Asia, why not showcase some of the best Chinese cuisine.

- Lets go on a tour.

- Absolutely, lets go check it out.

(soft music) This is our barbecue station, (speaking in foreign language) we sells hundreds of ducks a day literally.

Suckling pig, nobody does that anymore.

We actually finish roasting it in the oven here.

People actually take selfies with my duck.

(laughter) I'd rather have one with you.

We have two hot walk lines, one main walk line and the second one is for like clay pot slow cooking.

- Yeah I love how everything is so open.

- Everything is open - Because you never see open kitchens in Chinese restaurants.

- Well, yeah, no greasy spoon here.

- George, how did you get the inspiration for this space?

- Well, I have been around Chinese cuisine for a long time.

This is my sixteenth restaurant.

- Sixteenth restaurant?

- Yeah, before that my first was, my first one was (speaking foreign language) Best restaurant nominee.

And this was like my dream.

I wanted to showcase every great cuisine starts with ingredients and why not add a beautiful environment to service, and my little twist and interpretation on the food.

- Well, we are proud of you.

We are proud of you, George.

- Thank you.

- That is what I love about you and China Live and what you do.

Its so creative and contemporary.

And you're bringing this tradition of China alive.

- Right.

- But to the Bay area.

It is really with respect to the culture and the history.

You have to have some integrity in what you do.

If you really study like you and I both have.

We are in American, we are able to interpret things.

And what is great cuisine if it's not interpreted?

(dramatic music) - We go upstairs to meet Dave Lu.

One of the founders of the restaurant hiring app "Pared".

And Lisa Fetterman, a food tech entrepreneur.

Like George, Dave and Lisa are part of an emerging group of Asian American business leaders in the Bay area who are helping each other grow by sharing and incubating ideas and strategies for growth, especially in the food space.

- What do you do Dave?

What is Pared?

- So Pared is a market place for restaurant cooks and labor to fill in shifts at restaurants who need help.

So basically we're trying to fill-in the staffing gap for when people are looking for extra work, when they can.

So, restaurants will always be fully staffed.

It's all about helping the people who work in the industry and we're tryna build up these restaurants.

This generation has really done so much to change.

I think just general understanding and perception of who Asians are.

- Well, there're so many people that came before us that paved the way so painfully, like silly chain.

And everyone was like "Yo, Asian food is cool".

And then we came up and be like, "It's really cool, though."

And here we can have ownership over it versus in the past, we were kind of hidden behind because didn't know how to express ourselves as well and language was hard.

There were systems that we were going into that we just couldn't articulate.

What is racism that's putting us down?

We didn't know what that was and how to go around it.

We're still navigating that today but we got a voice now and we are gonna use it.

- Do you feel like the landscape has changed where you have been given a voice?

Or is it a voice he is sort of taken and said I'm gonna give myself a voice?

- Everybody before me has helped me have my voice float on top, and my community helps me have my voice to be heard.

- So Dave you founded Asian American Founders Circle.

What was your impetus to do that?

- I felt like as a child of Asian immigrants from Taiwan, I didn't, I felt like I was raised to go to an Ivy League school, get a safe job, become an engineer ,a doctor, a lawyer, a banker.

They put there life and sacrifice everything so that we would have like this safe, stable job.

And so I did that.

I worked at Yahoo and Apple, Ebay and big companies and I felt this is what my parents want me to do.

I started my first company and I saw, I met others who were doing the same thing, and I thought hey, there isn't a community or network for people like us who can actually support one and other.

Through this network, and meeting other founders like myself, I have been able to meet folks who have billion dollar exits gone IPO, people like Steve Chen who founded YouTube and others.

Who have really well, building technology companies.

That is what I wanna see from the next generation also.

- In today's day and age, it is actually an advantage to be a female Asian entrepreneur?

- There are so many wonderful women to look up to like Susan Wu, who IPO'd her company at 27.

There are so many girls in the arena with me.

And we all talk to each other.

So you be careful VC's.

(laughter) - They're shaking.

So Dave, did you grow up in a restaurant family?

- No, I did not, dad was an engineer, mom worked in (mumbles).

So I had nothing to do with restaurants.

I did deliver Chinese food in high school.

In Princeton, New Jersey.

- So did I.

- (chuckles) Awesome.

Yes, it was a very humbling experience.

Stole some egg rolls on my drives.

- So did I.

(laughter) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Like the entrepreneurs we met at China Live, Lucas Sin is using his restaurant to educate the public about Chinese food.

Particularly, its breath, diversity, and history.

Incubated at the entrepreneurial institute when he was an undergraduate at Yale.

The Junzi kitchen opened in 2015 and grew out of Lucas's warm memory of his favorite childhood meals.

- So, Junzi means it's a person with integrity, it is a really really old word.

Came from before Confucius.

It is what you want to be when you grow up.

It is where you wanna be for the rest of your life.

For a very long time, Chinese food in the US has been quite singular, it has been one thing.

It's revolved around the couple of key regions of cooking and we just wanted to add to the diversity and the color and the rainbow of Chinese food.

And I know how the Chinese cuisine goes.

And I just want to bring some of the stuff that the US hasn't quite seen yet.

- So when you say you wanna show America what Chinese food is all about.

You mean you wanna show Americans what Chinese food that people in China eat.

- Exactly, yeah.

- Is all about.

- And I wanted to show them that.

- That's the notion behind-- - Yeah, so Chinese American food, if we know a little about Chinese American food, it evolved primarily out of Southern Chinese regions.

So at Junzi, most of our flavors begin in the North.

Our primary grain isn't rice, it is wheat.

Wheat with water become a bing.

A bing is basically a flat bread.

And flour with what that's shaved into a pot of water is noodles.

So, that is where we begin.

We serve noodles, and bings.

Pretty like humble, home-style cooking, but surprising to some Americans that they didn't know that this could exist in China.

- Would you call your food Chinese American?

- We are a Chinese restaurant in the US.

- Okay.

- And the way I like to describe it is home-style Chinese cooking.

Simple vegetable forward.

And should satisfy you everyday of the week.

My father is probably the best chief in the whole wide world.

He taught me how to make clay pot rice when I was very young.

And I spent a lot of my childhood cooking with him or at least watching him cook.

My Grandmother was a cook at a mahjong parlor in Hong Kong.

So, some of it runs in the blood.

And maybe I like to think that I am embodying a sort of dream that my dad has always had, but never pursued.

- So this is the tomato.

- So this is the tomato and egg noodle.

This is kind of our signature, people love this.

This is our best seller, by far.

- [Man] You have to share that.

- This is a furu tofu, I mean furu seaseme noodle.

Furu is a fermented bean curd.

So it is a savory seaseme sauce, kind of almost Japanese style.

This is vegan (speaking foreign language) We call it (speaking foreign language).

It's got three different fermented beans inside, comfy and then super savory.

- Yeah, I wanna hear about this pop up at Yale.

(chuckles) - It was illegal and it was a bunch of kids cooking for other kids and professors, out of my dorm.

So funny thing is, I actually opened up a restaurant at the supper club when I was in high school in Hong Kong.

And I kept doing it when I was in college.

I was in English class one day and the new haven health department called and said so we are reading about you serving 250 people out of hot plates in your room.

That's not legal, we need to talk.

(chuckles) And so, it was fun because we have Yale students who spend all their time in their heads and suddenly you're like Friday, Saturdays, Sundays, we're gonna cook for people.

We're gonna have to learn to hold a knife, we're gonna know exactly how to wash dishes and serve people and so we just built this little business out.

- So, what was the menu in this dorm room pop up?

- What was cool was-- - How ambitious were you?

- Every semester we changed.

It was a total different concept.

There was one where we would do a five course menu every weekend.

It was totally different.

- [Woman] And where would people eat?

- There were eating in the basement of the dorms.

And so on ping pong tables, on pool tables, they were eating.

- So it was a sit down service.

- Yeah, full service.

- Five course meal?

- Five courses!

- Like a fun one what we did the five stages of a relationship.

You go through first love is this and then you have a breakup cake and you makeup whatever.

- [Woman] That's really fun.

- Yeah, so it was like, I mean we're taking ourselves too seriously.

But that's important because you're cooking for the people who live there.

- So there was never any question that you were going to go into the restaurant business.

- Perhaps, what's surprising is going into fast casual.

It took me awhile to really understand that fast causal is how most Americans eat in cities.

And you would have to cook food that way for them to be able to understand it.

I was a huge fan of Japanese fine dining for the longest time.

Did all of my training in Kyoto.

And I said, "You know what, this is the best we can do it."

You have somebodies attention for four hours.

And you've got all these courses, and all this stuff.

But it took me awhile to understand that Chinese food is perfect for fast casual because you have your ability to choose.

You can come one day and you can get rice noodle with seaseme and the second day you are getting tomato with knife.

It's a different meal.

- Is there any desire for you to cook in a little more of a formal fashion?

- I love cooking where people are paying attention to the food for 100% of the time.

- [Man] Verses like reading the newspaper.

- And here we have 1 minute to communicate with our guests, tell them why this matters.

The funny thing is I do tasting menus, in this space.

So imagine where we are sitting right now.

You can have a table of 16 people, and you're doing five, six, seven courses on a specific theme.

The most recent one was.

You know when Nixon went to China in 1972?

- Yes!

- We found the menu and we re-created the whole menu.

We did in at our location, in the fast casual restaurant.

- With fancy food and proper plates and full service, and wine, and that sort of thing, to say something about cultural diplomacy, or gastrodiplomacy rather.

To say something about U.S. - China relations - So, I'm curious, what was on that menu?

What did the Chinese think Nixon would like?

- Okay, so here's the thing.

Half of it was what the Chinese thought Nixon would like.

Half of it was what the Chinese knew Nixon would hate.

So to see if he could hang, right.

So they served, so Henry Kissinger says, "If they serve Peking duck there would be detente."

So they serve him Peking duck.

They also serve him what they call, texturally challenging foods.

So we're talking jellyfish, fish maw, bamboo fungus, steamed eggs.

And so, if you look at the menu, exactly half of it it's stuff that they knew the Americans would like and half of it is stuff that they knew would challenge them.

- What a great story.

- By re-creating it, our hypothesis was that the stuff that use to be exciting is now boring and totally acceptable.

The stuff that we use to take for granted, like Peking duck is the stuff we need challenge and ask ourselves, What is this and where does it come from?

I mean it reminds me of when you were cooking in your dorm.

It's reckless, its silly, its creative, and it only happens once.

- It was yesterday.

If it sucks then you don't have to do it again and if its really good, then you don't get to have it again.

That is a really fun way to cook.

For me, it is about finding the right platform and the right time and space to tell specific stories.

That is why I like doing these tasting menus that are so specific.

Nobody thought it would possibly be an interesting topic to build a menu around.

Just go all in on it for three hours.

I am so lucky that I could choose to be a chef, that I saw cooking as my outlet and my way to tell my story.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Grounded in tradition and heritage, but driven by innovation and creativity, everyone we met has pushed the boundaries of Asian cuisine with their cooking and ideas.

While also challenging conventions, both in the kitchen and out.

If past is prologue, the future of Asian food, could not be brighter.

(soft music) (dramatic music)