 The last two hybrid Shaoanbao were hella good. I thought we had all the Chinese food in the world, man. Just when you think you ate so much Chinese food, you cook it three times. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to a special New York episode of Fung Rose Food. It is never boring to film on New York streets ever. Oh, he's standing on the corner. Oh my God. There's kind of a lot of debate on who has better Chinese food, New York or LA. Yeah, and I think it's a valid argument to say that LA has access to fresher ingredients and it might be a little bit cheaper on average, but... Especially in the six to six. But I will say this, one thing that is not up for debate is I think that the narrative of the development of Chinese food is definitely still centered here in New York City. Without a doubt. That is why we are visiting today three times here on Clinton Street. We're in the Lower East Side. Three times is a brand new casual restaurant concept that is importing a lot of flavors and recipes straight from China. All right, Andrew, it's getting cold. We gotta get in there. Let's check it out. Three times. And to join us on this journey, we have famous New York foodie, Iwa from Nom Life. I'm excited to be here. Growing up, my dad and I made a lot of dumplings, but we never made any shaolongbao, so I'm pumped to make this for the first time. I think shaolongbao is not something that a lot of people make at home. It's difficult. It's difficult dumpling to make at home. All right, so we're gonna get back there with the head chef, Chef Xu. She's from Shanghai and she has over 40 years of shaolongbao experience. I feel like dumplings, it is kind of a big deal to do it at home. So it's really cool to come in at the back of a restaurant and be able to do it. In New York, you can go to some of Shanghai and their shaolongbao is special. Have you seen it? It's also a traditional process. It's also a traditional process. It's also a traditional process. So here at three times, they actually have like a wheat grain dumpling skin shaolongbao. So that's like really different. I've actually never had that before. This one is good. This one is not bad, but it's not good at all. Okay. So the white thing is a piece of bao. You can see how it's a lot of chocolate. You can see how the filling is jiggling because it has the jelly and that's the soup inside that's gonna melt. Steam out into the bun. So this is how it's supposed to look. Mine looked like a manta ray and then this was more like a pizza crust. So that was actually a lot more filling than I thought. There's gonna be a lot of juice and a lot of soup in this one. You were able to get it? I don't know. I don't think I can. Maybe close, dead at least. I thought they would put all our creations on the side, obviously not to get them mixed up with the real thing. We wouldn't give that to a customer. You would eat that yourself. Hold up. Yo, none of them broke open. Well actually that's good, yeah. Chef Shu was right. She was like, you know what? Don't worry about how they look right now because once you steam them, they look okay. You I think this one was yours with the deeper pleats. That one might look the best. This one is really good. She said that was yours. That was a good job. All right guys, we are gonna eat these for sure. We are here and we are starting off the meal by eating the Shao Leng Bao's we just made. And by the way, you guys wanna watch until the end of the video because they are doing a 15 gift card giveaway. So definitely make sure to hit the like button and watch till the end of that video. See I gotta show my little man love. David, that's definitely yours. You had the mini one. I'll call that the Shao Shao Shao Leng Bao. You had the best one. You gotta go for it. Yes man. It had an inverse hold. I don't even know which one I made so I think it's this one. I had the open one. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The open, I had the drop top, you know, convertible. Little dip here. All right. You know the ratio matter and mine was not as conventionally tasty or as good looking but I made it. That's yours. It was made with love. Actually mine was hella good. Cause there was so much juice. It held up. Yeah. And even though it was open top, obviously maybe had a little extra water inside of it. It makes a cool job so don't burn your tongue. That's a good point. Aren't you guys, that does it for our self-made section. Like we said, they do offer classes here on how to make Shao Leng Bao's at three times. They're definitely doing some inventive stuff but I cannot wait the food that is made by experts. Before we try a whole bunch of new flavors of Shao Leng Bao, we got Ada and CeCe and they're gonna explain the history behind the name three times and what it means to Chinese culture. So we got the idea of the restaurant's name three times from the traditional Chinese story, Sanhu Maolu. Basically it's saying that someone has the eager and showing the sincerity to invite someone to join the business. The founder of three times is Jason. When Jason discovered Chef Xu, she was actually only cooking for her family. But Jason never gave up even though Chef Xu first turned down his offer. He kept going back visiting her and finally Chef Xu was very convinced by his passion and his mission. So it's like third time's charm. Yeah, basically. So this is the mixed grain and pork soup dumplings. Zha Liang, Xian Rou, Shao Leng Bao. Pork and crab roll soup dumplings. Xie Fen, Shao Leng Bao. Mixed grain and vegetable soup dumplings. Zha Liang, Su Xian, Shao Leng Bao. Pork soup dumplings, Xian Rou, Shao Leng Bao. Shrimp pork soup dumplings, Xian Xia, Shao Leng Bao. Chua Po soup dumplings, Zong Lu, Shao Leng Bao. This is the thousand buns. Nan Fang, Xian Rou, Da Bao. The soup dumplings and the crab roll are the traditional soup dumplings. The other are all like our creative recipe. Okay, this is the pork Shao Leng Bao. Soup is juicy, it's really thick. It's juicy but not oily or too fatty. Just like the red amount. No, definitely that is probably one of the closest Shao Leng Bao's I've ever had in terms of how they taste in Shanghai. All right, this is the crab Shao Leng Bao. There is, those ones are pure juice. I love that. The food is so authentic and traditional to the Shang Ani traditions here. But then the environment is so modern and so 2020. This is the shrimp and pork Shao Leng Bao. Let's try this. Just to give you guys a sneak peek of the inside of a pork and shrimp Shao Leng Bao. I think this might be my favorite. Now this is interesting. This is the first wheat skin Shao Leng Bao that we're having and this is something that I've never had before and that I don't really think a lot of restaurants are doing. A vegetable Shao Leng Bao. Wow. Oh, this is really good. Oh, there's also vermicelli noodles. There's actually a lot of juice though. There's actually a lot of soup in that and that's not meat soup either. The inside kind of reminds me of like a Cantonese spring roll because they use a lot of vermicelli noodles and like vegetables inside. Here we have the mixed grain pork Shao Leng Bao. What do you like about the wheat skin? And do you like it better than the original? Well, the wheat skin for sure is thicker. It tastes, it does have that weedy like bread flavor. How is it one to five, Dan? Five. That's really good. Y'all on to our last two. I feel like truffle. Truffle, truffle, truffle. I feel fancy with the truffle. They got some bullies on here. You gotta sip this juice with the pinkie up now. That was done really well. And it tasted more like real truffle versus truffle sauce or truffle essence. You know. Right, right, right. I think this is a great place to come here and try different flavors because it's a pretty affordable, very fair price for Shao Leng Bao and they have all these different flavors. For me, my favorite one was vegetable. The vegetable wheat was really good. Because you see so many people mess up on those. But then I think the vegetable one was like, I would never have thought to myself that I would prefer the vegetable one. I think shrimp and pork for me, that was really good. Something familiar about like that wonton feeling but also the Shao Leng Bao texture and flavor from the soup. I would just say the original I thought was just done so well. That was delicious. And whether we wrapped it or not, it was still delicious. So you know the recipes could. But Shao Leng Bao's are not the only Bao-like things they have because we have a Nong Fong Bao, which is just a Southern gigantic bun. Yo, that's juicy. Wow. Let's just go for it. Just take a bite, go for it. You let us know how it is. This is the foodie on the foodie grill right here. Wow, that is super juicy. Whoa. This is the Shanghai Shao Mai. This is the Shanghai Nese version, which is pork and rice, soy sauce and vinegar. And it's wrapped up the same way with the open top. Are you a fan of this style? Or are you the one? I love this style. Yes. This is essentially taste like the dim sum kind of like Long Mai guy, like the sticky rice, the glutinous rice. Except wrapped in the Shao Mai skin. That was good though. It was really good. So we have entered the noodle section. What are we looking at? We're looking at the Taiwanese style beef noodles and the Hangzhou style glass noodles. All right, this is their Taiwanese beef noodle soup here at three times. Broth is so deep. It's got a nice little spicy layer on top. It's aromatic. I wouldn't say that that fully tasted like the Taiwanese style. There were some Western Chinese influence in there, but I like it. Can you tell us about the Hangzhou? How is it different? What is it? So it's like glass noodles. It breaks really easily. You eat it with a spoon. Hangzhou, they have rivers and mountains. They say it's a very beautiful place. Yeah, very poetic place. I guess a lot of ancient Chinese poetry was written in Hangzhou, in Suzhou. That's really good. This is the pork mooncake. Xianrouyuanming. And then Nanjing salted duck. Nanjing Yan Shuiya. And this is the spring roll. Let's go with the pork mooncake. Because the pork is kind of sweet and salty. And then the outside is flaky pastry dough. This is that kind of like stick to your stomach food, where it's buttery, it's flaky, crispy. Anytime you can make something juicy inside of a flaky pastry puff, I'm with you then. Nanjing salted duck. Salted duck. What should we expect here? What should we expect? The Nanjing salted duck is particular because it's got the pale skin, but then it's got the pink meat because they marinate it for a longer period of time with a lot of different spices. So don't be weird about it. So it's gonna be a very, very particular taste. You get it. Last but not least, we have the Shanghai Tengen, aka the Shanghai Spring Roll. I like this one a lot better. There's something special about it. It's really juicy inside. Yeah. So that's it. Well, that's our way. I thought it was taro, because I was like, this is so soft. Yeah. That and the vegetable shaobang bao were the sleeper dishes so far. Okay, we are ending off with the two big seafood entrees that you can only get at this location on Clinton Street. Here you have the HK fried lobster and you've got the green peppercorn fish filet. This is fancy. If you're eating this for dinner, are you really having a banquet? I would say like, to be at such a casual sit down restaurant, but to be eating this kind of seafood is really impressive. Right, yes. Because usually, like you said, you'd be at a big round table with the lazy Susan in the middle and then you'd have like 10 other like relatives around. Exactly. And that's kind of what you pictured. Let's try this lobster first. I like it. This is easy to eat, you know? It's not really messy and it's crispy. The whole presentation is crazy too, because they kind of put the deconstructed lobster, then put it back together. This Tang Jiao Yu, it looks like this other dish called Sui Zhu Yu, but it's not. This is Tang Jiao Yu and it's different because the peppercorn is different. Oh, wow. Those green peppercorns are very robust. Obviously the food here are three times just so good. I wasn't expecting that, obviously the core of the cuisine here that they serve is Shanghai Knees and they've kind of like layered the best of other provinces on top of that, so. I think people should definitely come here and check it out. Going with the peppercorn fish. What are you going with? This is hard. I think probably the lobster though, because fried garlic anything up there. Overall, you guys, man, that brings us to the end of our feast here at Three Times Restaurant. I'm blown away to be serving this type of food on Clinton Street, which is not Chinatown. You know, this is closer to East Village, Lower East Side. I think it's just amazing. I think it's hard to find this quality of dishes in one restaurant. And I think even the fact that they're offering like dumpling making classes, that's kind of spreading the culture, you know, because you get to make dumplings at an actual dumpling restaurant, not just in somebody's kitchen. From super legit bosses. Yeah, shout out to Chef Xu. Okay, dessert is here. Iwa, can you explain to us what we're about to eat? So we have glutinous rice balls with an egg drop type of soup with some additional rice and then it's got some fermented wine in it. And I didn't know the name actually before they told me the Jiunyang Yuan. You guys, this is from Hangzhou and I think the thing is, I mean, what, Hangzhou food in Manhattan? Oh, my goodness. I don't think I ever had this. Wow. It's a strong wine flavor. Yeah. It's very sweet, but it kind of gives you that little alcoholic kick in the hand. I gotta say that they're doing some really special stuff here and Jason the owner was inspired by a visit to Deng Tai Fung and he wanted to bring that energy to the East Coast because they don't have any of them here. And I think they definitely successfully did it. I'm really looking forward to seeing where three times goes. I wanted to talk to you about being a pro foodie Instagram. Could you sum up your guys's kind of like mission and brand? We really wanted to share our culture and our Asian recipes that we grew up eating from our families. So being able to share those recipes and recreate it on your own kind of brings back that nostalgic feeling. So this is actually one of my favorite. It's just an ox tail soup, a Cantonese style and it's a very hearty soup. The Taiwanese popcorn chicken. But that's your, you cooked it. So I cooked this. And you put the Taiwanese newspaper underneath too? Oh hell yeah. See that's a lot of thinking. Can you give anybody like tips because I think so many people out there like taking photos of food. Yeah, having a point of view and like a story and just a reason why you're sharing what you're sharing helps bring a larger perspective of just like what is the point of following you. Actually, I think that that was just, that's a great way to end off on the advice section because I see so many kids nowadays they're so good at the visual elements but it really is perspective. At the end of the day is still the lens that is being filtered through. Okay guys, big shout out to three times. Big shout out to Chef Xu. This was dope. Yo Yuba, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Shout out to Nom Life. Like we said at the beginning of this video three times is doing a crazy 15 gift card giveaway. All you have to do is leave your Instagram handle down below and also leave a comment to which dishes you wanna order when you come to three times or if you win the gift card. Obviously, this applies to the New York locations which are gonna be on Clinton Street and the LES and Union Square. All right everybody, thanks for watching that video. We're in New York City right now and until next time, we out. Peace. The one pagoda in the middle and then everybody is in the kung fu movie and hops on the water to fight at the pagoda. Is that what you did in Hongjo? Yeah.