 How are you going to capture the essence of Bung Hoi without like any of the pork knuckle, the pig's blood? How do you do it? How do we have our own Buddhist recipes that uh you just have to taste it? Chok Mung Nam Hoi? You still gotta give me my red envelope. I'm not even married yet. No I gave you the blessing. That's a Viet Hustle bro. Mo Hai Ba Yo! What's going on everybody? Welcome to a very special and interesting Vietnamese episode of Fong Bro's Food. Today we're going to two of the most interesting and innovative and cutting-edge Vietnamese restaurants in all of New York City. They're doing things you've never seen before, dishes you've never seen before. And of course we could not do it without an authentic Vietnamese co-host. Today we've got special producer and director Rose Nguyen in the house. Rose, can you explain to people where you're from? I was born and raised in Gankal, lived there for 13 years, moved to United States about 12 years ago. Live in San Jose, live in Philadelphia but now I'm living in New York. Of course we got to start off today on one of the craziest streets in Williamsburg right now. We are in front of Bolero restaurant. I heard they are doing things here that they might not be doing anywhere else on earth. All right you guys we are here with the owner of Bolero Matt. Can you tell us about the spot because we're in like a Vietnamese garden right now. We're listening to Vietnamese French covers. What's going on? Welcome to Bolero. What we're doing here is post-colonial Vietnamese food. Incorporating higher techniques that I picked up training at Michelin Star restaurants. I believe we're the only place that cooks but in a combi oven. So Bolero, where the name came from, Vietnamese first heard it from the Parisians that brought it over. Cuban Bolero was happening back in France in 1930s and then the French brought it over. We were a French colony back then. All right opening up our experience here at Bolero. We got a banger here. Matt, tell us what's going on man. So we have Hobbit Loam which is a fertilized duck egg. So how similar is this to the Filipino belute? Is it pretty much the same thing? Very similar but except we eat ours with salt and pepper and Vietnamese coriander which is a sleeve down here which we put on anything poultry. So most restaurants have a beer and a whiskey shot. We have a beer, saigon beer, moto whiskey, rice whiskey, Vietnamese and it comes with duck egg. What's up everybody? Gotta give a quick shout out to the sponsor of our video Secured. Secured is a brand new website that is helping you increase your chances of getting the most exclusive sneaker streetwear and trading card drops out there. We've all taken L's on the sneakers app. I have two myself but that's because the chances are just really low but Secured is here to increase your chances by many many times and I'm going to tell you why. 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With my code Fungro's you can get 50% off the first month so if there's a pair of sneakers that are dropping soon I think now would be a good time to sign up and give it a shot. Clearly they're very confident that it'll help you get what you want. So check out secured remember use the code Fungro's for 50% off that's only $15 for your first month it's totally worth it give it a shot guys you got the bot on your side. So there's a way to do this you tap the top of the egg carefully and you peel it off like a lid and you reveal a little amniotic sack that you need to break. There's no season in this liquid. We can't put fish sauce on this. No you can but it's very flavorful. Mo hai ba yo. It's not bad it tastes like a very egg yokey like water. So you never know how big this baby is. Mine I'm pretty lucky. Shout out to the to the salt for cooking. Oh yeah I just there we go. A little like cracker. All right down the hatch baby. Let's go. Yeah guys I'm about to salt bae this little embryo. Real creamy look at that. Mmm and they wow. It's good. Guys healthy. It's good. All right so this is one thing we picked up from the French it's just paté making. So we use Asian chicken liver in ours instead of American chicken. We do a little oak for Vietnamese dads out there. The aspects made from cognac and sherry and then this is fish mint from our farm in Pennsylvania. And then this is duck prosciutto and a quiche. This is our bensail or a crispy crepe pizza. We make our own shrimp sauce specifically from huay, house pure prosciutto, baby leeks arugula and then my takis. This is our play on bensail which is a huay delicacy where my parents are from. It's usually made with rice and tapioca glinis style in the shape but we felt that raw scallops are kind of the same texture. So we placed them with scallop crudo and usually it comes with poor crackling but we do birch char crackling. And they'll say flakes. Chakalavong which is a northern Vietnamese dish. Normally in Vietnam they use catfish but I feel like catfish kind of suck up here so we use skate instead. Marry it the same way. So here this kind of looks like steak and potatoes. This is balda fluff, chicken beef. Normally the essence of Vietnam everything needs to be grilled but here at Bolero we sous vide and then we just like flash it on the grill to get that essence of Vietnam. Alright you guys we are here at the most interesting restaurant I've personally ever been to as far as Vietnamese food goes. This is a bun bel with a scallop replacement at the bottom. Scallop bun bel. That's interesting because it still has some of that same texture as the rice flour mixture from the original dish. What the nice little gooey twist. Hey I see what they did there they were like you know how do we elevate bun bel. The thing looks the same as a scallop. Do a scallop. Yo let's go to the pate guys. Cicuto pate. Here at Bolero. Did you guys notice the pate? That's like a liquor flavor on top. Yeah I think that's what the sweetness is from. Sweet bourbon like liquor flavor on top. That is so good. Yo Andrew cut up that bun sale up right now that bun sale it almost looks like a arugula prosciutto pizza. The bun sale. Bun sale yet. I didn't know what it was going to taste like and then I got to the sweet fish sauce flavor and I got to the bun sale pancake and man that is that is extra special. My talking mushroom is delicious here. This is a skate wings instead of catfish. I've never had arugula with fish sauce. Next to each other. All right now we have their version of boluplak. It's suvade beef seared a little bit on the grill. Let's go for a man. Boluplak steak version. That boluplak is not lacking. All right you guys that does it for our solid entrees but coming up next we've actually got the Bolero's take of Vietnamese soup. We're getting in the soup section Matt what are we looking at? We're looking at bumbo huay chai the vegan version of the famous soup that Anthony Bredin said the universe stops when he eats this. We do it with a lot of my takis my mom's classic recipe but we put a tofu torchon in there made out of tofu skin and then our earth plate usually has bean sprouts right but we do golden pea shoots and then blooming cilantro as well. I gotta ask you how are you going to capture the essence of bumbo huay without like any of the pork knuckle the pig's blood. How do you do it? We have our own Buddhist recipes that uh you just have to taste them man. Look at this big piece of my taki mushroom. Ah! Shut up. Vegan bumbo huay. Bumbo huay chai. That's good. I had no idea that vegan bumbo huay could taste like that. Yo that vegan bumbo huay has so much flavor in it I'm drinking all the soup. Okay so for dessert what do we have? This is a Benbao Nueng which is like a honeycomb cake. There's no wheat in it. It's just like single-acting yeast and we costaration through eggs and tapioca flour. All right guys we are finishing up here at Bolero. We have our egg coffee which is a mixture of condensed milk and egg yolk on top of our coffee. Yo I gotta have a sip of this real quick. My goodness that is strong. Guys you've had via coffee before but this is the hot version with egg. All right you guys we are looking at our pan ban rice cake you know Vietnamese mochi right? It's actually funny because banan is pie ball it's like pal so I don't know where the names come from but yo this looks good. Bumbo huay. Well that is so decadent. It melted in my mouth but it was crispy on the outside. I don't even know what I just ate. Guys that was an amazing meal here at Bolero. If you get the chance I say check it out and we got one more spot to go to but before we go we're gonna go outside and perform a traditional Vietnamese ritual. Let's go. All right so before we go on to our next spot ban which is over in the upper west side of Manhattan we got a ritual that we're gonna be performing with you something that we've never done before. So one thing I did a lot of research about Vietnamese rice whisky. It's kind of like moonshine in Vietnam but back in the 1900s turn of the century I read that Vietnamese dudes were just pour some shots out for their dead homies as a sign of respect. Also we have joss paper where any of our guests can light it and burn it and send it up through a dead entrance for good I'm gonna hand it out to all you guys and pour some shots for you yeah? All right. R.I.P. Francis. Guys that is closing up Bolero with some very traditional Vietnamese cultural rituals that was so cool but we got to make a quick trip up to the upper west side because Bun is doing some ceremonial New Year's dishes that you cannot find at any other Vietnamese restaurant. Let's go. All right everybody our next spot is called Bun. It is over in the upper west side we're far up and this is an area that a lot of people wouldn't expect to find very authentic or innovative Vietnamese food but they're doing it here. I've been looking at the menu and a lot of these dishes that I've had in like 15 years so I'm just excited to share like and try a lot of them. New one of the owner is from central Vietnam and the other is Johnny and he's bringing a lot of innovation to this type of cooking and I'm just like can't wait to try these combinations of traditional and innovation. Here are some Viet dishes that you may have not seen before. Okay I'm here with Chef Nu. What are you making right now? So we're making the steamed rice roll. This is a steamed traditional from Hanoi so we soak our batter overnight and make a very thin layer of rice over here but I need to like weigh a little bit so this is you know like the rice roll Chinese style but our cooking technique we use like put the rice powder on top so the Chinese rice roll is like a lot thicker and the filling is different yeah the deep in sauce is very different too so in our cooking technique we use a lot of fish sauce. All right so we got a lot of amazing food here at Bun some of it looks familiar but these dishes we got to start off with because I've never in my entire life even on Google search seen these dishes and why is that I have to start first with this to call essentially this is the type of dish we eat for three days straight every new year and the reason why it's so good to cook because it's very easy to cook in large quantity and on the third and fourth day the coconut water is actually simmering to the bone and so it just gets better as we just like repeat it and just keep eating it over the new year so this looks like a nice Vietnamese like rice bowl mixture here but how come like why is this dish hard to find at Vietnamese restaurants in America? I think for a lot of Vietnamese here we have this perception like for our home cooked meal we're not going to have like you know an audience where we can market it but I would say that this presentation alone is very elevated we don't eat it like this fancy typically we'll just put it in a rice bowl and mix everything together but look at this presentation all right so this is a fancy version of a very homestyle New Year's dish in Vietnam. Takaw! Vietnamese New Year dish mmm typically get marinated in coconut water and that's where the sweetness is from. Bro this is really good man and I can taste like the sticky rice is flavorful there's that layer of pate on top that kind of adds that creamy liverness yeah man all right our next exclusive Vietnamese New Year's dish is banh chung a lot of people can call it banh thai but yeah it's depending on the size and the shape of the the pot but right now it's banh chung this is what we also eat during our holiday too it can be sweet it can be savory what it looks like right here is definitely savory but this is after we fry it Vietnamese Americans from Houston or San Jose or places that it's very difficult to find banh chung they would have their relatives send them frozen packages and then you can just put it in your fridge refry it anytime of the year and then just have it for the rest of the year six to eight months I like that it's very crispy on the outside but in the inside and this is the savory type of banh chung yo I just feel like we're celebrating the Lunar New Year right now you still gotta give me my red envelope bro I think you older than me I'm not even married yet so I gave you the blessing that's a viet hustle bro guys so this is banh nap essentially is a crispy rice cake so what you're supposed to do is you break it in half like this okay put it together and you fold it over like almost now it looks like a big bun sale and then you gotta add the sauce right in the middle oh so this sauce is mom name essentially is fermented fish sauce banh nap all right rose so we wrapped up eating some kind of ceremonial vietnamese dishes that we would only eat only a few times a year even in vietnam right that's true but right now we're just going down to just like the day to day you know every day vietnamese healthy eat what I love about these dishes here is that for a lot of people they've probably seen it before but this is like the next level version of it you know and even these dishes in new york city are still somewhat rare to find but I've had it before so this is banh kun which is the rice roll with pork and mushroom mixture which I love this is one of my favorite dishes and then here you have the boom is a boom is a vegetables and then is essentially what you see in here the pork wrapping with some beetle leaves with fish sauce and then we have spring roll and definitely a lot of vegetable right here this is banh kun and boom you know that brings a smile to my face because I think this is the best banh kun I've ever had in my life bro okay we are still going here at banh and we have some really exclusive dishes that maybe I've only heard of okay so this is boomhan is a vermicelli with clam this is a type of dish that there's a lot of connotations in vietnam uh back 10 20 years ago it's more of like a working class dish but now it's been elevated to you know street food and it's been normalized to eat you know typically every day in vietnam boomhan clam vermicelli I like this a lot man strong lemongrass so a lot of these dishes are being reinvented in new york because you know moving it here there's not a lot of that same connotations that you would see in vietnam and so like you know breaking down that barrier now we just have the flavor and the presentation to judge the dish all right here you have your crispy taro omelette they eat this in southern vietnam it's oftentimes like a late night food and the presentation comparing to street food in vietnam definitely is a lot more different obviously for street food it's more like a grap and gold but with this presentation you can definitely do this dish share between three or four people you know you have to have a little feast banh bo kinh crispy taro omelette mmm yo that was so good there's so many textures going on in my mouth almost there's like a sweet papaya salad you know element on top and then there's the crispy taro and then there's the egginess and sweetness and oh man there's just so many flavors and layers to this dish all right so we're nearing the end of our meal here at banh this is a fried chicken banh mi and this is kind of their new invention here but the baguette is actually from balthazar which is a very famous french raspberry over in soho no you could tell from the you know the way the baguette look definitely not the traditional bread that you would see for example saigon or anywhere in vietnam so i like that you know elevated touch well also because of new york people have a very high standard for bread and baguettes here because there are so much french influence we're pretty close to france physically and then also you know just the french culture out here is is very prevalent so this is the banh mi of central version we have the spring roll right here also the lapsung which is the sausage you can see right here all fried up but these flavors i've never had before this sausage alone you could taste the sweetness of the sausage but also the spiciness from the jalapenos love it wow that is bursting with flavor that is turmeric fried spicy chicken guys okay wrapping it up here at banh we have of course the classic staples we have the pho deck bit and boom away so what banh is doing really great here is they able to bring a lot of these ceremonial dishes to the everyday vietnamese or non-vietnamese they could try personally for me i think just trying all these dishes you know take me back to a lot of good memories that i had ceremonial food or dishes should be eaten a little bit more often because if you look at it the same way you know american eat turkey just specifically for Thanksgiving why not eat turkey you know one to week or one to month last thing i got to do is try the pho broth here dude i like how bold banh is because they able to serve blood jelly in the boom away dude they're serving blood cubes in the upper west side banh very bold all right we just left banh what is your favorite dish that you had at banh it has to be at the sticky port rice that is fried called banh keung it's a ceremonial dish that i don't get to eat too often so it's very special for me to just like be able to try it today yo man some of those ceremonial dishes need to get more popular i definitely recommend you guys check out banh because it's just serving some dishes that it's not weird via dishes it's not weird flavorings it's not weird tastings it's not super adventurous necessarily but it's just these kind of like dishes that you just wouldn't really imagine being popular at a restaurant and banh is serving them they found a market they're still making money they're doing good so shout out to them man it's always good to see Vietnamese dude would be like what the hell man that is so good this is the Buddhist i i feel like it's only right that you take the key fine did it