 Oh, this is actually the crawfish. No, no, no, no, I'm kidding. No. Chinese people have always been part of the makeup of New York City. In earlier generations, there was just a lot of people just coming over, trying to survive. And now what you start to see is just this new influx of the new China. And they want things that are catered to them. That just leads to just a gigantic explosion of restaurants that serve the new China. In Manhattan, they seem to be recreating China. I think authentic regional Chinese food is something that you probably didn't think you would find in this amount in Manhattan. Yo, thank you everybody for clicking on that video. But first, before we get into it, I got to tell you about this brand new YouTube channel called Gold Thread. That's all about explaining Chinese culture in a cool way. Gold Thread is a publication based out of Hong Kong that is covering Chinese youth culture, internet culture, slang, language, and travel, and food, and all this other cool stuff. It's interesting information that is catering towards people like us, me, and you. Here is a quick clip from a Gold Thread video talking about how they make Sichuan hot pot sauce in a factory in China. I bet you never thought about it. I have 100 kilos hot pot sauce every 10 days. Here in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, peppercorns and chili peppers are the prized ingredients. So naturally, the soup base can get quite spicy. We collect chili peppers from different regions of China. And then we get peppercorn and fermented bean paste. And then we mix them all together with beef lard. Hope you guys enjoyed that clip. If you guys are interested in Gold Thread, definitely check out the links down below or click this thing right here. We'll put it up there. Gold Thread, new channel. Check it out. But for now, enjoy this fun-grows video. Really good to see you, man. Excited for this, man. This is the top hot pot in New York. Tang hot pot is often the Chengdu hot pot restaurant in New York. Tang was one of the most prominent dynasty in China. This is a crawfish. What is a crawfish and what is a pepper? I can't tell right now. This is actually a crawfish. No, no, no, I'm kidding. A lot of people are going to associate crawfish with New Orleans or the Asian-American style. But Chinese people eat a lot of crawfish. We've got the gloves on. You know, that flavor is delicious. Very complex flavors. Yo, this is good. It is, man. Oh, my goodness. The secret is that we use almost like the same recipe we use for the bra to cook this. We use a little bit of beef talo, beef oil, Sichuan pepper, spices. This phrase heard it in the New York Times where they said it's the recreation of modern China in Manhattan. First wave, people come here for survival. I feel like the second wave is kind of similar. You know, people still try to strive for like a better living, try to do some business. I think the third wave right now we have is because of the choices we make. It's out of passion right now. So the whole purpose changed. This is dark fee in Wasabi. 2018 China in 2018 New York City. Right, right. So this is just the skin of it. That's actually delicious. It still kind of has that crunch. It was almost like a Wasabi pesto. Now this is the hot pot. We try to keep it like really authentic. This is one that we call the adventure. This is for people who want to explore some beef type. If you overcook, it becomes really rubbish. It's hard to chew. So people in China, they do like, you know, one, two, three. Right. Xi Sha Ba Shang. Six. Seven. Ba. You only have the chewy taste. I know what you mean. Beef tongue, I say put it in like 20, 30 seconds. All right, this is the beef tongue. It's almost like a Korean barbecue. Very subtle. Been to hot pot many, many times in my life and walking it through with you, I can tell that this spot is a little bit different. The way you're trying to educate and teach people is on a whole nother level. So lamb intestine, lamb testicles, and lamb tripe. Yo, you s***, all the parts of the lamb, I'm ready. There it goes. That was the money shot. Testicles. Testicles. Woo! I'm going in. Let's do it. Is it weird to say that that was tasty? I'm not going to say the whole phrase, but whatever I just ate was tasty. The only hot pot in New York that you can get this stuff. Yeah, this is frog. The sauce fresh, too. Frog, it does kind of taste like chicken. Like we're talking about the quality of frog here, okay? This is a new conversation to be having in Manhattan. Japanese Wagyu, the A5 grade. And it's Kobe beef, you're supposed to dip it for like less than 10 seconds. And it's good to eat. That's like the most premium meal we have, the wagyu. The wagyu is good, right? Crazy tender. It was amazing. Believe me, not to blow up your spot. I heard that Alexander Wang always comes here. Well, yeah, yeah. I got a shout out to Eddie, Eddie Hon. You know, he really showed a great support for us. Oh, that's true. Right here we have the Sichuan fried rice. Why did you give fried rice at the end of the meal? Because we want to have like some kind of starch to end the meal. Food here is A1 though. I think Chinese food, like that's why it's so important to us because it reminds us of, you know, being home. And like, like eating with you guys right now feels like, you know, we're eating in China. This was by far one of the best hot pot meals I've ever had in my entire life here at the Tang Hot Pot. Lee, you know, thank you so much for having us. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. Thank you guys for coming. Oh my goodness. Vala Project is a Chinese restaurant and we specialize in dry pot. Can you explain to us, we just came from hot pot. What is a dry pot? You select your ingredients and the chef is going to prepare everything for you. Everything is wok fried in the kitchen. The essence of our dry pot is the sauce combining over 24 different spices and medicines as well. Let's talk about like what we might find in this restaurant. Yeah, what are we looking at? As you fill these balls, when you bite into it like the juice comes out for kidney. One of my favorite. Spinach salad with sesame paste. Aki sticks. Crazy. Oh my goodness. Oven Sofa Mantel, very typical traditional condensed milk that you dip into. Here we have the legendary thousand year egg. We're trying to bring our childhood memory and like try to present the dishes the same way that we use that. What do you think it is about Sichuan food right now that whether you're from there or not but if you're from China, it's like the big thing that everybody loves. The Sichuanese restaurant scene that's booming right now. I think once you have it, you just have to go back. I like how you made it visually appealing to a lot of people. The setting is nice. You have nice plans. Aesthetically, you even have these clear chopsticks that are kind of interesting. We have a lot of people trying to buy these. Oh yeah. Yeah, now we're selling them. I think when we open my project, we want the food to be original. We want the atmosphere to be like a Western restaurant where you have nice decor, nice service, nice staff because people eat with their eyes. Every single ingredient is different and between these two pots. Over here, one of our top-top sellers, Roeville's fish ball. This is a meatball. Eater just came out with an article and they called East Village Chinatown more. I know, I was about... I think it's good. I was really happy to see all the Chinese restaurants opening up in the neighborhood. But I feel like the most ideal situation is when there's no Chinatown and everybody spreads out. Yeah, I'll tell you, this pot was the hot one, right? Yeah. This is super spicy. Can you talk about the inclusion of this pineapple? That was interesting. It's kind of like a random off-the-moment idea, just like the pokey. My partner, Meng, she heard somebody talking about that in a dry pot and we're like, okay, why not? So we tried it and a lot of people liked it. Sweet and spicy. They balance each other really well. The pocky stick, because we put them on there because it's funny. We're just trying to experience as much as we can. More so than fitting in. Amelie, thank you so much for having us here at Mala Project. This was dope. Thank you, thanks for coming. Now we're at Dado. And this is the fanciest Chinese restaurant in New York City. This is the only one that is directly ported from China. This is like bringing that value of peeking duck in New York. Royal cuisine from back in the day. This is Chelso, manager of Da Dong. You guys have 10 in Beijing, six more in China, and now one in Manhattan. Yeah. Have you ever heard of this term in New York Times, this term, the recreation of modern China in Manhattan? Yes. It's because I think Chinese cuisine often is associated with a little bit more less expensive kind of food. It's us taking Chinese food and kind of Chef Dong is brilliant at what he does. One of the things that he's really amazing with is all the ingredients are top notch. Still keeping it really traditional, but with a modern twist. Enjoy. Thank you. All right, so there was four ways. We will work our way down this layout. It's beautiful. You got sugar, you got the hoisin sauce. You have cucumber, melon, and scallions. That skin really stands out. That's like melting in my mouth. You can tell that that duck has had so much care put into it. The other one was just dipping the skin in the sugar. Yeah. It was like a chip. That's noon. Way number two, very luxurious. Crazy. Never had plush. Sesame buns. Number three, peaking duck gourmet sliders. That's excellent. It's like the biscuit almost broke down in your mouth. David introducing the fourth way to eat the da dong da. I feel like this is the episode of two chains, most expensive is... Caviar. Oh, sh**. I do believe in, or this may be the first time that caviar has ever been featured on the fumble of the ship. Caviar, by the way, is fish eggs. Oh, I've never tasted that before. That was crazy. It totally lived up to my expectations. Yo, it was so subtle, but it did make a huge difference. I'm going to put caviar and duck in a pancake, combining everything. Shout out to the Cleveland Caviar's. If you can have it, have it. Caviar has this like saltiness that I've never had before. It's like a fish oil saltiness. The transportation of Chinese culture into the States. This is that food right now. This is what they're serving in China right now. I was looking at the sea bass. Oh, man. When he said Chilean sea bass. Slap in the base. I could definitely tell that was cooked on a bed of garlic. That's super good. It's flaky. Look at it. It's falling apart. It's fresh and steaming. Short ribs. That was really good. Wow. That flavor, man. It's served on a crag of stalagmite. This is the avocado noodles. I remember the first time on Iron Chef, somebody made noodles out of carrots. I was blown away. Incredible carrots mixed into it. Man, looks as though the carrot laced dough on its way to becoming noodles here. And now they're making noodles out of avocado. What's next? They have some of the avocado smoothness and the heat of the... That's spicy. This was so dope. I mean, we went to three different spots. We went to the Tang Hot Pot. We went to Mala Project. We ended here at Da Dong. What are your major takeaways from this amazing crawl that we went on? You know, there was kind of based off this phrase that I heard in the New York Times that said the recreation of modern China in Manhattan. We grow up in Seattle's Chinatown a lot going there. And you mostly know Cantonese food, maybe some Taiwanese food. And then now in 2018, man, there's probably like 20 different styles of Chinese food. I think it's just dope to see that not only on a sort of like economic spectrum is it filling out, but it's also filling out on a with spectrum in terms of province and depth and street food, the fancy banquet, royal imperial food. There's a new wave and a lot of it is people from China bringing stuff over that's cool right now in China at the exact same moment. There's no delay or lag. You guys, in the comments section below, please let us know what you think about that title, the recreation of modern China in Manhattan. But it doesn't matter in America. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching that video. Definitely give us a thumbs up. Make sure you subscribe. If you guys enjoy watching the videos on the Fung Bros. channel, definitely check out Gold Thread because they have even more material about the Chinese culture and even more relatable in that particular lane. They are doing a lot of cool stuff. Gold Thread, check them out down below. Until next time, we out. Peace. We have a lot of American-born Chinese coming here. And I think they act like the medium between Chinese-Chinese and Americans.