 Loosen it up and then you shoot it. It's like you shuck it, yeah. All right, shuck the benbo. Bambam. Bambam. Houston, Texas is known for a few things. Pro sports, the oil industry, the NASA Space Center, and Vietnamese food. We're gonna do our best to give you a preview of Valera Boulevard by hitting a modern banh mi chains, traditional huay restaurants, and even a place that only specializes in Bumbo huay. This is the Fung Bros in Texas. Okay, so expanding on the Vietnamese scene out in Houston, we are joined now with our friend Jack here. What's up, guys? Outside of this spot called Nam Gau, they specialize in huay dishes. It's kind of like Vietnamese dim sum. Super good. Let's go. This is the only city where I've seen this type of concept in, so I'm really excited. Midi rice pancakes, it's all go with this missile. What about these? It's also go with this missile. Okay, also go with this one, okay. Sure, sure. As you know, we are still trying to offer more of the Vietnamese foods. The noodles is different, too. Making more varieties of the noodles, but we want to offer something different and healthy. All right, so originally we had said Vietnamese dim sum. I don't think they call it that, but these are Vietnamese appetizers that we've never had before. They look like dim sum. I'm pretty excited. Yeah, it's quite unique. I've never had this baby clam salad before. No, I actually never had this baby clam salad before. So you've came here before, but you never had this? No. Baby clam. Oh, thank you. Baby clam. Now, it's like a salad, but it's mixed in with rice. Baby clam salad. It reminded me of one of those compendium plates, but with more seafood. Got the little clam flavor in there. Mm. Wow, really unique. So these are the things that really make it feel like dim sum. You have the pork and shrimp crystal dumplings. This is like the Vietnamese mochi on top of a crispy slice of mochi. And maybe some chiu jiao influence in this. David Chang ate this for ugly delicious. Bite it, bro. Oh yeah, oh yeah. That does look like kind of a dim sum feeling. Wow. It was like pepper chashu with like a shrimp. Mm, kind of like a chashu pork and shrimp. This is almost like a Viet chow lung mal. It looks like mochi on mochi. But I want to tell you about this. I'm going on this mochi bite. Dip it in this dipping fish sauce right here. Half dunk, boom. That's such a crazy mixture of textures. Super crispy, stretchy and chewy. See what's on this. There we go. It's kind of similar to the dumplings. Okay, similar to the. It's like a lot of that hot term texture. Yeah. It's in sauce. The dumpling or the lotus leaf. That's of course my favorite. Now. Have you got another one? Hell yeah. Yeah, it kind of looks like a tamale, but it's different. This is the, you know, so this is chopped up snail inside the sausage. Mm, that's kind of bad. It's really good. Dip it in the sauce a little bit like that. Sauce. Mm, I actually really like it. You taste like just the hint of snail just around ham and pork. Bun bill. This is like that steamed rice cake. Found it interesting the way that you kind of loosen it up and then you shoot it. It's like a oyster. It's like you shuck it, yeah. All right, shuck the bun bill. Bun, bun, bun, bun bill. Mm. That might be the best bun bill I've ever had. All right you guys, let's try the Houston Nam Noon. Hit it with a little sauce. It feels fresh. That's the called the happy crispy rice cake and then this is the classic bun sale. It's like a taco. Yeah, like a Mexican pizza. Open, open face. Maybe a little bit of grains here. Happy crispy rice cake. Wow. Mm. That's really good. Mm. Wow. It was very eggy. I like that one. Definitely eggy. Ooh, okay, similar ingredients. Well in the middle of Vietnam, I thought one from the south of Vietnam. Basically it's crispy. It comes with pork belly on the inside I think. This is like a souped up bun sale. Oh my gosh. Look at these shrimps, how they're marinated. I don't know. I taste more pork in this one. The filling sticker, there's more sprouts. The skin is a bit thinner here. All right, both are really good. But if you come here, you gotta try the Hue one too. The Hue is the Hue here. The Hue is the, I can't even say it. This is banh hoi. It's kind of like vermicelli noodles in like the form of a pancake. Almost like a vermicelli rice roll. It's like one of those, you know, grower grass. Like it's turf. This is like a vermicelli turf. These noodles are amazing. The texture is so really soft. Yeah, really soft. I don't know, it might be the best to be a restaurant I've ever been to. Right off Bel Air, obviously in Houston. The flavors and the care that they took. To put it simply, I think damn god lived up to the hype. We're finally ending it off with some coffee. Hey, two tones. I'm gonna mix it up first while it's still hot. I think the Vietnamese food here in Houston is the best. Houston is just way easier. Like the rent is cheaper, the cost of labor is cheaper. You're saying when the cost of labor is cheaper and the rent is cheaper, it allows you to deliver better value, right? Better value is you can bring traditional concepts from Kuei to Houston. Businessman, restaurateur, hustle up with Jack Nieng. All right guys, if you haven't hit the like button on this video already, hit that like button. Check out Jack's info down below. But on to the next part. All right, you guys, we are looking here at Roostar Grill, which is almost like a mainstream version of a bun mien. But I still think it's authentic enough to appeal to the local Vietnamese people or Asians to what grew up eating bun mien. Yo, this is the special one. With the egg. Oh my gosh. You know what I love about this special combination is like they kind of actually cook the meat a little bit. Mm. That's good. Nice chunk of jalapeno in there. Setting my whole mouth on fire, but I love it. I love the bread here. It's crispy. It's got plenty of mayonnaise. Yo, you guys, this is the beef curry. I didn't expect this. It tastes Thai. Mm. Well, they do have a papaya salad here. I think it's cool that a lot of Vietnamese people, they even went through Thailand before coming to America. So there is definitely some Thai influence in a lot of Vietnamese American spots. Mm. Wow. Pungent enough, but not too strong. Have you ever seen chicken wings presented like this, though? On a bed of vermicelli noodles. Hey, so far so good. All right, Aaron, we gotta get the chop rib eye. I'm gonna make sure I get a nice little chunk of jalapeno in there. Because the bun mien is not the bun mien without the jalapeno. Wow. Wow. Wow. Between the chop rib eye and the special, crazy. I think the mayonnaise is really sweet. The meat's delicious. The bun mien is the perfect kind of Trojan horse for people to try Asian food. It's Asian enough, but it's really in a sandwich form. And everybody loves sandwiches. I would say the chop rib eye and the special with the egg in them were among some of the best bun mien I've ever had in my entire life. I think that there is something very special about this mixture between Vietnamese and Texas. Andrew, I'm gonna go ahead and give Roostar grill. And I'm not saying this. I'm gonna give it a five out of five on y'all. I think it speaks volumes to how deep the Vietnamese are out in Houston. That was a dope fusion between Vietnamese, Thai, and Texas. Onto the next. Aren't you guys, you know that we could not leave Houston with all the great Vietnamese food that is here without having some pho. We had to get our Houston native friend, Bob, right here to come with us. What's up, guys? Pho 54. If it doesn't have a number behind it, you know it ain't good. What's so good about Pho 54 real quick? Man, you want pho? This is a spot to go. There's like a couple spots that all the Houstonians know. This is one of them. All right. All this is super cheap. It's cheap. It's super cheap. It's cheap. It's cheap, right? All right, guys, here's what we have here. Here you have the classic pho dactyate, the pho special that we gotta try. This is like a dry pho ga. And then this is actually the dipping sauce for it. And then you have bone marrow and just a bowl of it. And then you take the french bread. Oh, that's so fluffy, too. I'm just gonna do this right now, man. I can't wait. Oh. Oh. Oh. Bone marrow baguette. It's so good. Wow. That is incredible. That is so decadent, man. Mmm. Okay. The beef pieces in here feel super tender. Child. Dude, this is solid. Beef was really amazing because obviously still sourced locally from Texas, I'm sure. I believe this was called pho ga ko. Going to just take this, dip it, like sukemen noodles. This is the pho ga ko, AKA the dry chicken pho. Wow. For me, give me the pho ga ko, the chicken, the high non chicken pieces. That was delicious. I need another bowl. Try this chicken pho. Mmm. Would you say that that was packing more flavor than you thought? Oh, hell yeah. There's this sauce on it. I think it's like a sweet soy sauce, fish sauce that they put on the noodles already. That's where that dark color is coming from. Yeah. I think this is the wowing dish here. The bone marrow baguette dip was $4.95. What? Immediately, I'm not really liking the look of the egg rolls. Okay, let us wrap the egg rolls. It was so good, but I gotta give it to California. All right, you guys, last but not least, we have a non-Venomese dish. We have the ghost pepper wings from Hot Ones. They said super, super, super spicy on the menu. We are in H-town with the H-town native, Babu, these are your streets, Bel Air, right? They are, man. It's jalapeno pepper, this hot manero, and then there's ghost pepper. I noticed the food in Houston's not necessarily that spicy. All right, whatever, man. Try it. Hey, hey, are you a Texan or what? This is Alaska. Let's go, let's go. Cheers, guys, cheers. I can feel a grip in that. I'm not gonna pretend, not to pretend. Easy. Watch this. You're gonna regret that. Okay, I'm feeling it now. This was an amazing segment here at FUT54 in Bel Air, Little Saigon, Bob. What's the last thing you want to tell the people about H-town? I mean, what's not to love about Houston? Next stop on our Vietnamese crawl through Houston, guys, we have Vinh Hoa or Vinh Hoa, I'm not sure how to say it. So we are at a Chinese Vietnamese seafood spot. If you guys know about the history of Chinese and Vietnam, had a lot of interaction for hundreds of years. This is essentially one of those big spots. Yo, I'm excited because in 626, there is quite a bit of Chinese Vietnamese food, but looking at these pictures, this looks a little different than the spots at 626, so I'm excited. Have you ever had this before? I've never had this. I've never seen anything like this in New York City. Let's get it. All right, you guys, two of our dishes have arrived here at Vinh Hoa. We've got the razor clams, but with a basil jalapeno sauce. Yo, you guys ready to try this? Let's do it. Super expensive at Hong Kong. This one is a little bit extra spicy. So the owner of Vinh Hoa is actually a Chiu Jiao guy from Vietnam. So he's a Chiu Jiao Yut Lam Hoa Kieu, which is basically like a Chinese person who was born and raised in Vietnam. All right, you guys, let's get it on this lobster. So right off the bat, David, it smells like this is cooked with some fish sauce. That's a little bit of that pungentness. You guys, how special lobster here at Vinh Hoa? Have you had any flavor like that before? Now it's kind of like how you imagine like a nuke mom wing to taste, except for lobster. A little bit of fish sauce, some sweetness, some lime. So far, so good. Yo, we had an order of coconut snails, bro. Coconut sea snails. It smells amazing. It's very fragrant. Gonna put the darker through the big hole. They've never had anything like this. It's like a little booger right now. Yo, I would put that sauce on top of rice and just eat that. Wow, wow. Yo, they put a little masago on the top. Have you ever seen this before? Never seen this before. I've never seen it presented like this. Never. Pop the hood. See what's underneath. Oh, they took it out for you. Wow. Oh, the crab guts, the head cut. Oh, that looks amazing. I'm just gonna eat it back into the crab head. Look at that. Look at those textures. The colors. I just got my own little crab bowl here. Mm. You got the egg, you got the crab guts, you got the crab meat, you got the crab sauce that they cooked the crab in. The seafood flavor is strong. I can see why all the Asians love this place. The Vietnamese influences would probably be in the leaf, but I will be honest, this dish is not the most Vietnamese out of the mob. You got the snails, which is a little bit more Vietnamese. You have this crab, which is more Chinese, and then the razor clams is pretty half-half. The lobster is pretty half-half. Man, the spot is really a true mixture. I gotta say that that is a very subtle flavor, but if you appreciate sort of like seafood, umami, subtlety, that is amazing. Yo, you guys, look at these clams. Sea clams, $9 a pound. Holy, look at this. Whoa. Very, very light, just a little bit salty, but really letting the clam shine with a little bit of scallion on there. You gotta drink that. Very subtle, very clean flavor. That was a very Chinese flavor. All right, you guys, we are on our final leg of our Vietnamese tour here in Houston, Texas, the Bel Air District. Right. Jackie were like, all right, we gotta go to Duck Phuong, but then we got here and it's a takeaway spot. That was the wrong spot. Because we're looking for Bumble Hue, the BBH. Obviously there's a lot of names. We're not good at telling the difference, so we went to a different duck. We went to the Duck Phong. We're looking for Duck Trong. So we gotta run across the street. We gotta go across the street, all right. All right, this is Bumble Hue, Duck Trong. Think we're here? Let's go. Okay, the Bumble Hue has just arrived. We're here at Duck Trong. I looked into it. They have multiple locations, but they only serve Bumble Hue at these spots. This is the thing they specialize in. One dish in this particular location serves boba or on the side outside, it's boba. Look at these lines. We gotta taste the soup. Oh my gosh. We got the large bowls. This is huge. Let's just take a look at this. If you look at this mountain, dude, this is definitely on a level of authenticity that I've never been exposed to. I didn't put any lime in it because I want to taste it pure. Wow. Wow. Mm. This is crucial. I saw that in the comments. A lot of people recommend putting extra shrimp paste in it. Jack, what do you like about Bumble Hue even more than like, you know, your standard cook? There's just so many ingredients in the Bumble Hue. Like I don't even know what half the things in here are. They take so much time to make this Bumble Hue. Oh, you had to go with more shrimp paste. Oh, you liked it that much. Yeah. From a business standpoint, what is the benefits from cooking just one thing and specializing in it? If you specialize in one thing, your restaurant is more likely to succeed. Just become known for that dish. You're more likely to succeed. People are more likely to come to you for that. The cost of goods are lower. You're ordering the same product. You're teaching the same staff how to make this. And yet people want this, right? It's like Starbucks coffee. People know what they want. It's that time of the meal. I'm going to squeeze my lime in. Uh-huh. It's almost hard to describe the flavor of Bumble Hue because it's so complex. Do you like the pigs? Oh, I do like the pig foot, but I don't like to eat the whole thing. I just like a bite or two. Pig feet. Pig knuckle. So many different textures in this Bumble Hue. For me and Fuzz, sometimes I don't like to add anything into it. But for the Bumble Hue, I'll always add the cabbage and the add-ons. Bumble Hue or Fuzz? I think Fuzz generally and consistently hits a spot more, but a good Bumble Hue is hard to match, man. This is like, there's so much flavor in this. Oh my gosh, just look at this. Basically for me, I would say that the best Bumble Hue probably beats the best Fuzz. I agree. This Bumble Hue is on the match. Oh my goodness. All right you guys, that was the end of our Vietnamese crawl through Houston, Texas. I know there was a ton of spots we didn't get a hit up. There will be a ton of spots that we will get to next time, but I thought this was a great starter trip. All right guys, make sure you like that video. Subscribe to the channel and leave a comment down below what other spots in Texas we should hit up for next trip. All right guys, until next time, we out. Peace. Yo, what's going on everybody? Just wanna let you know we do have a brand new podcast called the A3N podcast. We're talking about all types of stuff. We're gonna have all types of guests on the show. Obviously if it's me and David, we're gonna get really deep and personal and real. Also we have a highlights channel. If you guys don't wanna listen to the whole entire podcast, there's gonna be like the highlight clips there that you guys can just check out. Check out the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Himalaya, A3N podcast. Leave us a review and a like and listen to it. Peace.