brandon: my experience is so different than a mainland chinese, it wouldn't be authentic for me to try to cook food for mainland china because that's not me, and that's not my audience. my audience is san francisco, and these cross-cultural exchanges are the basis for how food evolves. i feel like what we're seeing in this next wave of this generation of american cooks

is this newfound confidence in valuing our traditions and its impact on the food culture in america. when i lived in china, no one thought i was chinese, and it started making me realized, like, i'm not really chinese. i'm chinese american. david: when i was growing up here in the fifties, sixties, we very seldom could go outside of chinatown. in fact, it was

sometime dangerous. you got beaten up, spat on, called ching chong chinaman. "why don't you go back to your country?" it was overt racism, so all your activities were in chinatown. you had your wedding banquets, your birthdays, your anniversary, all these celebrations in chinatown. there's still a place for them, but they're getting less and less, and they're finding it hard to survive. brandon: something that i've harbored through growing up is this sense to, like, stick up for chinese traditions and also, you know, this neighborhood. this is one of the poorest neighborhoods in san francisco, and part of mister jiu's being here is to say that i believe

that chinese food and culture and tradition deserves to be valued but also maybe that it could be a little bit different but still the same. you know, i think that is something that i resonate with, like, how something can feel the same but a little different. you guys all set? have a good night. have a good night, christina. i know there was a lot of skepticism. i also knew that it would take time, wanting to be part of this community. david: what brandon does, some of it, you won't find in china. it's here. his background is italian food. he's trained western, but he's going back to his core, what he ate growing up, and changing it.

brandon: make it with the wings. pick up, pork to 31. probably the most impactful thing in my career that happened, which was my grandma passing away. she kind of took care of us our whole life. you just couldn't hold her down. she was teaching tai chi and then going across town to get some groceries, or she was just like-- she would always sato me, "i'm taking the 11 bus," because she would always take buses evywhere, but the 11 bus means her two feet and she'd just walk everywhere. she would go across town for anything, and part of her circuit was cing through chinatown, going thrgh, you know, piles of vegetables to get what she wanted, so i felt like my responsibility as a cook was to actually learn my o food

traditions, and when my grandma passed away, it impacted me in a way where i felt like i didn't do enough to understand her recipes. when i was cooking italian food, i w cooking food to honor these traditions that were very historically based in these regions. at a certain point, it just stopped resonating with me because i wasn't italian, and i wanted to start doing that with my own experiences and my own culture. melissa: brandon and i both come from european cooking traditions. we're both second-generation. we both grew up in the city. we both have grandparents who are coming from china. he and i kind of vibed in that same way, you know, where we're fully immersed in this american experience but feel

very connected to our grandparents and our parents. so we're working on developing some mooncakes. this is the snow skin version of t mooncake, whicis more like a mochi, so i'm trying to figure out some different fillings for these. brandon: yeah. melissa: this one, i made this ganache. it's a bay leaf and peanut brittle ganache... brandon: yum. melissa: and then also i have a jasmine white chocolate that i'm working on. brandon: i didn't really grow up making them, and i never really liked eating them that much... melissa: yeah. brandon: but i loved the celebration of it and the exchange of them... melissa: yeah. brandon: but it's kind of awesome that you're gonna make one that is actually very delicious, too. melissa: yeah. brandon: that's exciting. ooh. melissa: the mooncakes signify sort of the autumn harvest, and the moon is a ry important

symbol in chinese culture, so it celebres the moon, basically, and the moon is the biggest and the brightest on this day. brandon: ooh. melissa: i mean, this is the really fun stuff... brandon: kind of crunchy bits. melissa: because there are not that many associations that we have with these things. it's not that hard for us to come up with, like, weird stuff and stuff that we ke and-- brandon: it's not like we're trying to offend anyone. we do want to kind of continue this tradition. we're also trying to figure out how to make things delicious. i think when we're able to kind of find something that culturally discovered, it becomes a little more meaningful... melissa: yeah. brandon: i'd say. melissa: ooh, look at that. ha ha ha! yeah. cool.

david: well, san francisco's chinatown is the oldest chinese settlement in the americas. this was downtown san francisco in the 1850s, and the chinese were on sacramento street, two blocks away, and eventually took over the whole area, so it wasery crowd, substandard for the most part. if you're an immigrant with a family, you don't speak the language, this is the cheapest rent in the city. 1906 when we had the earthquake and fire, they wanted to get rid of the chinese. this was very valuable real estate. brandon: there was a lot of racism at that time. a lot of the people in san francisco outside of this neighborhood were trying to move chinatown out.

with some of the resources and the leaders here along with supporters of this neighborhood, ended up coming together and starting to build chinatown like what you see now. david: they said they want to get rid of the chinese, but the chinese hire white lawyers, white architects, white contractors, and as we approached the city fathers and say, "we can turn chinatown into real tourist attraction to bring in business. will u let us stay?" the fastest rebuild in the city was in chinatown because they knew if they didn't build right away, they wouldn't be here, so the facade is for tourism, and they were designed by non-chinese. brandon: when i think about chinatown, in essence, it's a success story of immigrants being able to have a community

that is supporting each other and being a bridge to that introduction or that development into american kind of culture and society. that's at chinatown really was built for. tane: most of th are carbosteel. we do have some traditional cast iron ones here, but the popular ones--you're right--are the carbon steel woks, but, brandon, we also have choices here, so you also have hand-hammered ones... brandon: ooh. tane: from china. brandon: yes. tane: they're also carbon steel, and they're the 14-gauge. they're heavyweight... brandon: wow. tane: so they'll last literally a lifetime. you've got a lot of choices here, your woks for all walks of life, ok? brandon: ha ha ha! when i was cooking at quince as a line cook, you know,

you kind of have your own utensils as a cook. when you start to use someone else's sometimes and you're like, "oh, where'd you get that?" and a lot of people-- everyone kept saying, like "oh, i got that at wok shop." tane: when i first came to chinatown, san francisco, i didn't even think of a wok shop. i opened a gift store because we were arting to trade with china. when president nixon went to china and they talked about his ten-course dinner that was just a scrumptious dinner and how they could serve it hot to all the dignitaries, everybody was very inquisitive, and they said that all this was cooked in woks, so there was a big interest in woks. dunlop: stir fry relies on what the chinese call [speaks foreign language], which is literally fire and waiting, fire and timing, and what they mean that is a kind of intuitive control of heat. you've often got food

rapidly going-- ingredients going into the wok in succession, and you just have to have almost, like, a sixth sense of when something is ready. brandon: western or french-style cooking, everything's flat. the pans are flat, so when you sautee, it's different, too. like, you're moving kind of more linear, like, back and forth, and this one, you actually are kind of using a circular motion, use your wrist to kind of, like, kind of pop it up and down. what's happening, you're kind of dipping down, letting your ingredients kiss the flame. this dish specifically, beef broccoli oyster, that's already tried and true, something that i think is delicious already. when we added the tuna heart, that minerality of the tuna heart contributes to the umami of the entire dish. i don't add msg to my rice, so i try to find natural derivatives that get, you know, that umami.

there's a context that's already been laid out for centuries in chinese cuisine, and understanding, still following what i consider now paying homage to those traditions, just this bowl of rice, how it retains heat, i'm sure was part of the reason why it was designed that way. there was a lot of function to it. i don't want it to be so far off that, like, "oh, man, this is like a deconstructed fried rice?" like, that is, like, my nightmare. you know, like, when people say, you know, deconstructed anything, i'm like, "bye." ha ha ha! scott: i know. the quinoa looks so good. kellee: we're at the uc santa cruz farm, and it started in the

seventies, actually, during the time when there was a lot of things going on in this country, particularly the vietnam war, and students really wanted a place to have a little bit of sanctuary and space. scott: like, they remain harvesting where they have the big conveyor belt tractor, you know. brandon: i didn't want to just serve conventional products in a chinese way. if it's not organic or biodynamic and it's not in the season, then we shouldn't be rving it on our menu. i'm interested in trying to figure out how we can use a partnership with a farmer to now bring back some more chinese ingreents grown a certain way, you know, organically. scott: i think in areas like santa cruz where there's folks like me that are more third-, fourth-generation chinese americans and it's predominately white city, it's harder to access some of these chinese heritage vegetables, things like gai lan or yu choy sum or gai choy, things like

that. i think a lot of it has to do with assimilation, but i think now i would like to see kind of my generation of chinese americans have the kind of pride in chinese food and chinese cooking that we want to go to a grocery store and buy gai lan like our grandmas do and learn how to cook it. kellee: i see older generations of farmers that are deciding, "oh, who am i going to turn this fm to you? i can't farm anymore in this way," and then i see a really excited, enthusiastic, new generation of asian american farmers trying to make those dots connect. >> ok. set them over here. scott: ah. brandon: hey. scott: how's it going? brandon: good. scott: good to see you. brandon: what you got? scott: yeah. i brought a dozen heads of chinese cabbage. brandon: this looks great. these are great. scott: have you seen that, like,

chinese kimchi method where you, like, fill the crock and then the cabbage is actually sitting above it, but there's stones on it and, like, over time... brandon: totally. scott: it seals itself? brandon: yeah. scott: is that kind of what you're going for? brandon: exactly. yeah. these have, like-- these have a-- this is like a-- just like a seal. you can pour water in here, and you basically stuff this with-- scott: for me, i'm particularly interested in selling to restaurants, and i think there's a lot of potential for a kind of new market of restaurants that is just emerging with restaurants like brandon's where chinese cuisine is now gaining the respect that it deserves, so, you know, not seeing chinese food as just greasy takeaway food, but as something that you would pect to see local, organic produce grown by chinese american farmers at. dunlop: it's quite funny because, you know, some of the things that people now think of as being really modern californian, like all this,

you know, farm-to-table, seasonality, provenance, terroir, you know, all these values have very, very deep roots in chinese culture, and i think also in the finest chinese cooking, there is this idea that the job of the cook is to showcase the [speaks foreign language], the essential taste of really good ingredients. brandon: another eggplant. oops. make it two seafood, please. i think that has helped me to understand that my job here now as a chef in san francisco is to be a master of the ingredients here.

how much duck tongues do you have usually? jim: well, we don't normally keep it. brandon: they have to get harvested, huh, like, pulled out? jim: every time you get a duck. brandon: yeah. yeah. we take ours out because we get it heads on. jim: yeah, but do you want a bunch of them? brandon: yeah. jim: ok. cool. awesome. brandon: yeah. we've been wanting to do something with them. it's, like, a chinese delicacy. jim: this particular strain of peking is from france, and it's made to produce a larger breast. i raise them to about 9, 9 1/2 weeks, but the typical peking duck, say, roasted in san francisco would be, like, 6, 6 1/2 weeks. brandon: i mean, i can tell the difference. jim: yeah. yeah. hopefully, everyone can, especially you. brandon: yeah, for sure. jennifer: just like with fruit, like, you have a peach, and a peach can be ripe and edible, but if you let it sit on the tree for a little while longer and it develops those flavors and that sweetness, it's kind of

like that similar conversion, you know, where it's just, like, you're taking the time to let it develop the flavor that it needs. m: vine-ripened duck. jennifer: yeah. ha ha ha! brandon: ha ha ha! i started to think of my love and my frustration of my experience eating roast duck in chinese restaurants is, like, i felt like the meat was always sacrificed for the quality of the skin, and i think being trained through other kitchens and especially when you see the quality of liberty farm duck when it's cooked properly how much more enjoyable duck could be. dunlop: in china, really, the main meat is pork, but duck tends to be for special occasions traditionally and particularly in the south of china, but also there are some very important celebration dishes, like peking duck, in the

north, so that's a very special dish using roasting techniques which, you know, originated in the palace-- imperial palace kitchens. jim: when i started liberty duck, i wanted to have the connection to the chef, something that was really important to me, so i wanted the birds to be raised in such a way that i was totally happy with chefs coming out and seeing because i really believe that you need to kw where your product's coming from. jennifer: for us, it's really important that people know where their meat's coming from, know kind of the farmer, know that the animal, this living being, is treated with care, and i think that connection and then our connection with you as a chef and knowing that you care, as well, i think it all just continues to translate to the plate. brandon: flavor is always the end goal, but there's also all these efficiencies that we're trying to look for in just how we butcher them and hang them and, you know, all the little things in between.

jennifer: and you're honoring the whole bird, which i think is so important. brandon: absolutely. i mean, we serve the livers, the gizzards, the-- you know we make au jus with all the bones, like, nothing that-- when that duck, you know, goes to the plate, they're getting what i think is, like, a representation of the entire bird. jim: the full experience. brandon: yeah. yeah.

danny: growing up in san francisco, spent a lot of time in chinatown. the smells and sounds of chinatown were, you know, very fragrant, can smell a lot of cooking through all these buildings that house many, many people in one room. you can smell the ginger, the scallions. it was a very fragrant smell in chinatown, and for me to come back to chinatown at this prime age of mine and start a project that hasn't really been done before, there hasn't been any new, modern, chinese restaurants to open in chinatown in 30 years, so this project was something that was really, you know, like-- it felt really dear to me. brandon: if we look at some of these traditional, constructed, balanced cocktails and then translate them through chinese ingredients, i think that's kind of been our angle.

danny: i come here maybe once a month. this goes a pretty long way. it's osmanthus that i purchase here at ming lee's on jackson street. osmanthus is a flower that's native to asia. they use this for teas. we use this at the restaurants in a cocktail--the longevity. i knew right off the bat that the base spirit should be mezcal because of that smokiness from the mezcal, and then the spiciness from the scallion would play a huge part into combining those flavors to make them work. the osmanthus would give it its fragrant, like, sweetness. the aloe, which is a local product, has this amazing spearmint, you know, flavor profile to it. that played really well into it, as well.

brandon: i felt lucky that i kind of came across dan and melissa. when they heard of what i was wanting to do, they resonated with it enough to be like, "yeah. i want to, you know, be along for this ride." we're just here to talk about a small change. we have figs going on quail tonight. figs are having a pretty tough season, very hard to find, very low yield, so... a lot of people are scared to have chinatown change. i think i was, too. "gentrification" is that word that everyone's like, "oh, god!" and if people ask me, like, "how

do you feel about people saying that you're gentrifying this neighborhood?" i was like, "i'm chinese. i have a chinese restaurant in chinatown, so what's gentrifying about that?" david: so you find the next generation, they don't want to come here to chinatown for old-fashioned banquet. nowadays with planes, cars, we're eating well every day. it's not as important. the next generation, they look at this very differently, and they're americans. i think brandon is starting to change that. brandon: with my last name being spelled j-e-w my whole life, our last name got spelled that way from my grandpa coming to america and the immigration officer spelling it phonetically, and that happened with lots of immigrants. if i were to spell my last name in, like, chinese pinyin,

it would actually be spelled z-h-o-u. i think my experiences of trying to find my own identity, now spelling mister jiu's as j-i-u is kind of a way of us saying, "this is us,and this is like, you know, we're not this nor that. maybe we're something in the middle. q

(upbeat music) [roy] from harlem to tremeé in new orleans, louisiana. om atlanta to jackson ward in richmondvirginia. from bronzeville in chicago to clarksdale, mississippi. from droit to kland, california, the u.s. is full of black neighborhoods that gave birth to much of the best america has to offer. in los angeles, there's another neighborhood fighting to keep its place in history. leimert park is known by many as the harlem of the west coast - a.k.a africatown. dippearingthrough pandic, but itf gentrication a intest from e ouide.