 So what we have here is our savory chocolate meat. I'm not gonna lie, we have spent so much money at so many Asian restaurants. It is fresh chicken time. Oh, oh, oh, say no more. Three unique Fung Bros items that are going to be on the menu here at Five Spice on Mulberry Street. Food from the East continues to dominate the New York food scene. Everything from a Filipino street market to Hanoi style Fuga, to even us revealing our very own Fung Bros dishes at Five Spice. This is Asian food you do not want to miss in New York City. Our next Asian concept is a Queen's staple that has now made it to Manhattan to Canal Street Market. We're talking about Beetong, Hainan chicken. This is famous out there. It's super juicy. It's very hot. Let's go try it, man. Kaomungai. Guys, Beetong is actually a border town in the southern part of Thailand. It's right next to Malaysia. It's super fresh, super juicy. It looks a little bit pink, you know, people who are not used to seeing that type of chicken, but trust me, it's delicious. You got to try it here. What I like about Queen's spots is by design, they are more authentic because starting in Queens, they don't have to cater to the Manhattan market. So to have an authentic Queen's spot come to Manhattan, you know it's going to be good. Check it out, Beetong. So what we have here is our savory chocolate meat. What do you mean by that? What we call Dinuguan in Tagalog. It's pork, blood stew. We pair it with our buto. It's a Filipino rice cake. So the sweetness of this pairs really well with the savory nest of the pork blood. Little tangy, savory, sweet. Dinuguan is a polarizing dish for a lot of people because it's pork's blood. So obviously the whole idea of it, I can understand, doesn't sound the most appealing, but it's pretty good. You guys should try it if you guys have never thought about having Filipino food. To have a good Dinuguan in Manhattan is very, very rare. It almost feels like this is only something you would get in Queens or Jersey City, maybe. It's pretty cool that they're doing it here at Canal Street Market. Follow them on Instagram. We have some authentic Filipino street skewers going on right now at the Sosurap Papa. Very, very authentic. Look at that. All right, we got Esau. We got the chicken and tested. This is one of their signatures. Is that either? Yeah. I'm gonna say this. I like chicken and testing a lot better than even pork and beef and testing. I'm looking at a rice croquette, but it's like a rice baseball. Yes, that's about it. What are you about to do with it? I'll show you right now. This is our sea stick right here. Got out to ramen certified. He actually made this dish really, really popular for us. And then this is our cucumber salad, vinegar base. So this is a fusion. I was trained with an Italian lady. We used to make the arancini together. When she went back to Italy, I was so sad that I was like, I wanted to incorporate her. So this is my way of honoring what she's talking. Thank you so much. Thank you. Enjoy. This is the first time ever having this dish. Big old rice croquette with seasig and a nice little salad right here. So we're here today at the Ube Fest. From Tito Papas. These are Ube Napa Pono Canolis. You can taste the Ube. This is one of the best canolis I had. Italian, Filipino. That's a mix that I did not know worked. But after trying a couple concepts, it works really well. What's going on, everybody? As you know, a little while ago, we had talked about getting our very own unique Fung Bros. items here on the menu at Five Spice on Mulberry Street in New York City. And we were talking to Alex, the owner of Five Spice, and I was like, honestly, I like this spot so much. I always come here when I'm on the street. Like, I would love my own menu item. And guess what? Today is the day that the team is going to show us what they've been working on. We are talking about three brand new items with our suggestions, our recommendations. We're on Mulberry right now. One of the coolest streets in New York City. Hands down. Let's go inside. I'm excited. All right, everybody. This is Ksenia from the Five Spice team. What have you guys been working on? So we've been working on a couple of dishes. Super excited. One of the new dishes is actually my favorite thing on the menu now. Super delicious. Excited to get you back in the kitchen to meet up with Alex. And let's go. All right. All right, everybody. We have our three dishes here that are pretty much done. We're sitting here with Alex, the owner and chef here. But what do we got here right now, David? We have the fried catfish bunny, right? And we've got Brussels sprouts in it. I love this combination because I'm always ordering the Brussels sprouts anyway. And of course, you've got the bun quake, which is a breakfast tomato thing that actually comes, I believe, like you said, you know, from the French influence, from the Spanish influence, all different types of influences that have created this incredible fusion cuisine that is now Vietnam. So we're going to have this for breakfast. Alex, you said we have a decision to make right now, right? Yes, sir. This is a game time decision. We got to decide if we want the regular mayo or the spicy sriracha mayo. Mayo goes perfect with everything. Obviously it's a staple, but then you add a little flair, a little different kind of nuance into it. It brings a totally different taste. What do you recommend, man? How do we test this to make sure we're making the right decision? The best way to test anything is to eat it. Try both. All right, David, since this is going to be your sandwich, this is going to be the David, probably. You make the decision, man. David is deciding which mayo to use in the sandwich right now. Okay, he likes that one. It was good with the regular mayo. Let me know. We got to see. Hold on. Let me just take some of the bun coin. Oh, you're pouring it? Yeah. The bun coin. I'm the bun-meat. Ooh, wee. I got to go with the regular mayo one. I love this sandwich. I already love the Brussels sprouts. I already love the catfish bun-meat. And actually, and recently, we just had bun-meat chow, which actually is a Vietnamese tomato-based breakfast. And that tastes almost exactly like this bun-queat. So I got the bun-queat. I got the catfish. I got the regular mayo. I got the Brussels sprouts. That's a winning combination of me. How do I put my name on this? Can we do it? Can we do it with the consomme? Of course. And all of the honesty, but you just call out all my secrets. That inspiration was bun-meat chow. Bun-meat chow, guys. If you ever had it, it's this sizzling plate. You get bread with it. You get the pate. You get all the tomato. It's great. I love that we're at this point. And I love that five spices are part of this movement to expose people to even things beyond pho. We're talking about bun-meat chow influences in a bun-meat. It only makes sense. All right, everybody. One dish down. This is the second dish. This is the brisket bun-meat. This is taking the brisket that you guys use in a lot of your pho dishes, putting it into a bun-meat. I mean, look how juicy it is. It's made with the pineapple compote. So it's going to have some sweetness thinly sliced. Man, it almost looks like a French dip. So I'm just going to eat it by itself. And then I'm going to try it with the consomme. Yo, Alex, this was fire. Like, it actually did taste kind of like how I thought because it has that sweetness. It also has the sweetness from the carrots and the daikon. And then the beef is super juicy. And there's a little bit of spice. But you know, I always love the idea of French dip. And of course, you know, Vietnam has that French influence. So the French dip makes sense. Alex, honestly, I think this sandwich is ready to go, man. With the little consomme on the side, I think people are going to find it interesting. I think you guys are going to love it because it's just so different than anything else that you can get right now. So I'm excited for this one. Having you guys critique how well it is means the world to me. You guys eat Asian restaurant all over the world, all over the United States, East Coast, West Coast. You guys are the best critique for anything that we can possibly do. Oh, man! Thank you for what you did! Go, man! I'm not going to lie. We have spent so much money at so many Asian restaurants and for you to respect our opinion. I appreciate that, man. Thank you, thank you. All right, our last dish here are the brisket fries. They're looking kind of like a mixture of poutine and carne asada fries. Explain to us what's going on, Alex. Yeah, so basically it was an idea that I always wanted to say fries. It's simple. It's a staple in every kind of sandwich or whatever. How do you make it more interesting? How do you give out our own twist to it? We braised the brisket in the same way as we do in the sandwich. Ten hours in the fall broth. We took that out, kind of marinated its own flavoring. Add a little Mexican salsa into it on top of fries. And then you got an option of adding a little consomme on top to make a poutine or just eat it as it is. All right. Let's go in, guys. The brisket fries. That's good. Whoa! That really works well, guys. If you guys are looking for the next thing after carne asada fries, I think the beef brisket fries is it. This dish tastes like California. All right, everybody. It's official. Those are the three unique feng bros items that are going to be on the menu here at Five Spice on Mulberry Street. So please look out for it. Follow Five Spice on Instagram. Follow us on Instagram. And if you want to join in on this special late night launch party that we will personally be at, then buy a ticket through the Apollo app for October 27th. But all three feng bros dishes will be on the menu starting Friday, October 28th at the Mulberry location. All right, everybody. I'm here at Chihiro Tea. It's a new tea spot that's using a lot of Taiwanese tea and doing a lot of things a little bit differently here. So this one is a Thai green tea. Let's see how special it is. Definitely more robust. I can feel the Thai flavor has a little bit more lime in it. It almost does taste like a Thai dish. Definitely more robust in flavor. What I think is cool about this spot is that it's themed after spirited away. They play a lot of J-pop here. They have humidifiers. They have pure air purifiers. They have a lot of USB cords and a lot of places you can charge your phone. So they really just fitted it out with all the latest tech. We're here with the owner, Jerry. Jerry, can you describe Red Feather? Yeah, so we just opened up a couple of weeks ago. This is an Asian fusion spot more focused on Southeast Asian. Our chef, she's a Filipino. She's our head chef. Her name is Pia. She's worked at numerous Michelin star restaurants. Rouge Tomah Public and Soho and Paris Street. She kind of came here and started her own concept. Brought a lot of her Filipino roots. All right, we got round one here at Red Feather. This is one of their premier dishes. This is a garlic milk bread. Milk bread being from Japan, but this is kind of like fused with the garlic bread side of it. Parsley and lots of mozzarella. Look at that stretch. I love garlic bread. I love garlic knots. It's a mixture between Japanese milk bread. You got Filipino panna salt and Italian garlic bread. Guys, there's all this cream in the middle, in between. Like monkey bread, when everything's baked inside of it and you pull it out and there's all these little treasures inside. This is delicious. All right, here we got a bamboo salad with some fried lotus chips on top. I'm always excited to try Asian themed salads because traditionally, especially in East Asia, there's not that many salads. What I really like about this bamboo salad is it actually tastes like the inside filling of a poppia. A poppia is oftentimes a food I think you can find in the Philippines and also Malaysia at the hawker stalls, where it's kind of a roll and it's just sweet and peanutty. Really easy to eat. Great way to get your veggies in. Here I got my mains. This is a brandzino. I'm excited about that. Here we have the crispy pork. This is going to be like a crispy pork kawali, the lechon kawali from the Philippines. And then here you have the spicy gochujang crispy shrimp. And then of course, scallion oil rice, which I love. Let me go for the shrimp first. Cooked to perfection. Very crispy. The rice is delicious. Their carbs here are on. One of my favorite dishes from the Thai and the Filipino cuisine is the crispy pork. Everybody got their own crispy pork. Let's check this out. I'm going to get more Filipino vibes from this dish. I love to see other Asian Americans take on the task of doing Asian fusion, not just the no-boos and Budakans, but Asian fusion can be complicated and can be risky, but man, I think they're on the right path. And this is really good. I mean, check out this brand-zeno. Super crispy. A little burst of like that kind of like Southeast Asian citrus flavor. Lemon grass rice. This is a perfect pairing, man. Of all the mains, I got to go with the crispy brand-zeno, man. This is delicious. Anytime there's a brand-zeno on the menu, I want to see how they did it. Shout out to Red Feather. They are doing Asian fusion right. We got this ube lava cake. Let's go in. I have a hunch that maybe a Filipino chef is really well-fit to do a lot of Asian fusion because they themselves kind of are a little bit of a fusion, you know? Yo, it almost tastes like a ube cheesecake with a little bit of ice cream. This is good. Coming to Red Feather, guys. Next up are new Asian concepts in New York City, Andrew. We've got a Southeast Asian slash East Asian themed market. And it has some really boutique stacks that you cannot find at just like your regular Asian grocery store. Yeah, they all have a lot of different flavors of everything from high chews to different sauces. They have a lot of Southeast Asian sauces. They even have some Asian American brands too. I know for me, something that caught my eye, Andrew, is they have brown sugar choco pies and they also have blue almonds. Everybody knows that flavored almonds are very popular in South Korea right now. They've got some crazy candy shell coated blue almonds. It's called Peng Peng Almonds. Starlight Peng Peng Almonds. And of course, choco pies, everybody loves these, you know, brown sugar milk tea. How can you escape it? All right, this is a heavily curated little market. These are things that you're not going to find at your Chinatown market, for example. You've got Sriracha potato chips. Okay, you've got wind coffee supply. Shout out to Sara, wind out of Brooklyn. And then you've got different types of high chews. High chews now have fruit and they have the sweet and sour version. And then they've got almsum and all these other Asian American brands and chili sauces. They've got papadelics, Andrew. These are quasi-psychedelic mushrooms coated in twisted Thai chilies. Continuing with the trend here at Southeast where you've got something Southeast Asian. You've got something East Asian. I went and picked up the Thai chili papadelics. I'm not saying these are psychedelic mushrooms from Thailand, but I'm sure they're designed to give you that vibe. And of course, you've got the brown sugar choco pie. You know, brown sugar is such a dominant flavor over the past couple of years from Taiwan. Not necessarily Asian, but implementation is Asian. All right, guys. I want to try my Sriracha trip. Pretty self-explanatory, but I've never had it on a thick ruffles. Let's check it out, guys. Oh, oh, oh, you got that in? I got a papadelic. Listen, guys, not every single boutique hipster Asian snack is going to be a hit. There's going to be some misses and there are going to be some ones where it's just like hyper-dependent on your own taste buds. But it's important that we try, even if we're swinging, we miss, because that's what it means to support the culture. All right. Next up on New Asian Concepts, we have a new dish here at Saigon Social. It is the full guy Hanoi style with the big, thick rice noodles. This is very, very hard to find in New York. In fact, in lower Manhattan, this might be the only spot to find this dish. So let's try it. You have the chicken here. You're going to dip it in the nukchom. I love the broth there. It's delicious. And again, this is a very, very rare dish to find in New York City. I hope it gets more popular, though. I would love to see more chicken full out there. Our next dish here at Saigon Social is the Comtam plate. Is it the broken rice plate? You've probably seen this before because it has the steamed egg quiche here and the pork shoulder. Obviously, you can find this dish everywhere. This is the elevated version. This is $25. So, of course, you know, the traditional stuff is always good, but you just want sometimes a more expensive version, you know, with more bigger pieces of meat. Next dish we got that you cannot find at any other restaurant is the soft-shell crab bun meat. As you can see, the meat is on the inside. It has a little bit of the spicy sauce here. Let's check it out. That was the best soft-shell bun meat I've ever had. What I love about soft-shell crab is that it's really not really about the meat. It's really about the shell. That's crazy, huh? So, if you're visiting New York, definitely check out Saigon Social because they are doing some things with Vietnamese food that you don't find everywhere else. Our next Asian concept is whistle and fizz. Andrew, they're trying to bring what over from Japan? Nitrogen, citrus, coffee from Japan. So, it is owned by Asians, and they're just doing a lot of event-to-stuff here. I have the mango-nitro fizz with boba, of course. And then, David, what do you have? I have a coffee lemon fizz on the bottom. In Japan, all over Asia, they do really wacky stuff with coffee. They'll infuse it with nitrogen, grapefruit, all types of stuff. I'll pop up some photos, but this is just like step 101 to Asian coffee. Will this be big in America? Can citrus coffee be big in America? You let me know in the comments down below. Guys, man, this is good. I like it, but they said it's very difficult for people to understand from the Western market what this is. This is pretty good. It's fizzy. It's mango-y. I have no complaints about the boba. I think they have very high-quality stuff here. So, you know, if you're around NYU, definitely check it out. This is it, though. This is it. Andrew, this takes me back. Beijing or Shanghai? Shuangjing Starbucks. Right next to Doe Shanghai on 88 Tong Ruan Lu, and it tastes just like this. This is pretty good, guys. Definitely get this. This is a drink that is really only popular in Asia. It's not that big in America yet, but it might get bigger. And our next brand-new Asian concert in New York City actually brings something from Midtown more than K-town 32nd, 33rd to the LES. Presenting chicken here in the LES, and they got boneless white meat Korean fried chicken. Now, this is different than obviously your bonchons, where they'll have the bone and everything. It'll be twice fried. I think it's still cooked in the Korean style, but they have a lot of different types of flavors here. I feel like we're getting to a point now in the Korean fried chicken game in America where you got different styles. Yeah, and I think that maybe Koreans just doing fried chicken is such a ubiquitous idea. They don't have to make it the KFC style. Yo, look, they have a tornado. But see, that's not what you think, because you have a dirty mind. It's actually a potato tornado. The rice bubble. I don't even know what that is. I'm getting it. We are going to find out chicken-new Asian concert in New York City. Okay, here we have the garlic-holic chicken. What do we have in here? Based on sweet soy sauce inside, and then some green pepper and red pepper. It's extremely spicy. Oh, it's very spicy. Okay, and is this dark meat or white meat? Dark meat. Oh, I'm excited. Yeah, we use fresh chicken thigh. Yes, chicken thigh. Oh, say no more. I thought it was white meat at first. Say no more. Thank you. Bursting with flavor. Hey, you have the little rice balls. These are the rice bubbles. Yo, honestly, chicken is good. I'm going to go ahead and give that chicken like a five out of five. Chicken is good, man. It does actually taste like some Chinese dishes I've had before with the soy sauce and the garlic and the spices. For me, I love it. Here we got the sausage and rice bubble, aka sausage with the bokeh fried. Ooh, lathered in sauce. Reminds me a little smoky length. I used to eat over the campfire back in the day. Listen, guys. I think it was only a matter of time before the LES, which is obviously a heavily Chinese neighborhood, got more Korean restaurants because, you know, I think a lot of Chinese consumers really like Korean, South Korean soul street food products. I'm just glad to see that spots are opening up with good quality. Hopefully people will find out about this spot and will like to come here because I can tell you this between the chicken and the fresh fruit smoothies, the spot is pretty good. Check out chicken. All right, you guys, we're at Steam. This is a Shanghainese restaurant in Grimwich Village, owned by a guy from Hong Kong. This is called Xiangtang Jian Feng Guo. This is a brand new dish. This is essentially a mix between a empanada, a fried jiaozi pot sticker, and literally a roast beef dip. But, you know, this is the Xiangtang, so let's get into this. Honestly, it's almost like the mixture between a one-ton and an egg roll inside of a fried empanada from, like, Colombia or maybe Venezuela. So, man, with the dip, I'm telling you, this is something that I can see non-Asians liking in particular. It's good, though. All right, you guys, we are looking at a beef xiaomai, xiaomais, xiaomais in Cantonese, typically, our pork, pork and shrimp. This one's beef, you know, for those who do not dig on swine. It looks almost like a aoyoyun, which is just a beef ball with some cilantro inside of a wrap. You know, it goes to show you at a brand new restaurant like Steam, they still can be inventive, and I honestly think this is a little bit less inventive because it's actually a mixture between xiaomai and just a beef ball, but this right here with the dip, this is something new that I think non-Asians are actually really, really going to like. This is like a mixture between a guo te and an empanada. It could be a guo tinada. All right, you guys, our next Asian concept, Andrew, is actually not Asian-owned. It's a broth spot that was really trendy a while ago, but they sort of expanded into more like solid foods, and they actually got a couple Asian flavors on the menu. Here we have the Thai curry with added chicken, and then you have the classic chicken or rice, but added kimchi. Now, kimchi is an option here. I mean, that's really interesting, especially for, you know, an American spot to do kimchi because kimchi is very pungent and can be a little polarizing. This is really interesting, Andrew, because they gave me an immunity ginger miso soup on the side, and I'm not going to lie that kimchi add-on for $3. They gave me, like, three pieces. Yeah, that was expensive. That's some high-quality kimchi, though. That is the most expensive kimchi add-on I've ever paid for ever. Bring bone kimchi. All right, go check it out. And actually, these salads, they remind me of the salads you get with Japanese teriyaki. All right, I'm interested to try this Thai chicken curry. It has, like, guac and everything on it. This is interesting because they call this chicken or rice. It was influenced, I believe, by the Mediterranean Middle Eastern style but they mix it with Asian. Aren't you guys, the mainstream broth spots doing Asian flavors? It does taste like one of those, like, commercialized, office Asian spots, but the broth tastes Asian, the salad tastes Asian. The chicken and rice actually tastes like a 50-50 mix between the Middle Eastern style and a Korean bowl. What they do really well here, it's just making everything kind of taste like you can mix it together, and I think that's what's always interesting about bowl spots. So I'm going to say, guys, Thai curry bowl, there's nothing wrong with it. I like it. I got to try yours, but overall, I give this, like, a solid score. And yeah, the Thai curry, I mean, it definitely tastes like Thai curry. It's somewhat authentic. So I'm not going to lie, Andrew, both of these bowls were about $20 each. There's not a lot of food, but I'll tell you this. It was pretty interesting being in there. I saw a bunch of people that I've never, ever run into before. So, you know, you never know who you're going to meet at the bone broth spots. The quality's there, though. I mean, I think the way that they incorporated the curry and the level that the curry and the kimchi are fairly authentic, even though maybe it doesn't mix perfectly well, I got to give them some credit. But man, 20 bucks is a lot. You guys are looking at a $10 Ube matcha macadamia nut latte here from Cha Cha Matcha. $10. You know, this spot is owned by the children or I believe the heirs to the Hard Rock Cafe Fortune. Some people call this, you know, white people matcha gentrified matcha. I just think that, you know, they saw something that they liked and they had the money to do it. But I thought they did a good job. All in all, I would say that this does taste a little bit commercialized, but clearly it is a great way to introduce the market. Hopefully they'll get into more of the authentic Uji ceremonial matcha stuff, but I don't know.