 This is fascinating. This is a new dish. So, real oranges. Made with real orange sauce? Real oranges. Yeah, yeah! It's fire! And we might be standing in front of what is the best American-Chinese takeout in the world right now. Whoa. A few months ago, we made a video about how a lot of Chinese restaurants in America are closing down, particularly the ones who focus on American-Chinese cuisine, such as orange chicken, general soap. Between the older generation retiring and the younger generation moving into the professional field and not wanting to take those businesses over, there's a void in the market. So here in New York City, the people of Junzi Kitchen have come up with nice-day Chinese takeout, which is trying to save the American-Chinese cuisine while refreshing it. All right, you guys, we are gonna be heading into talking to the ownership, what their vision is, trying all the dishes, and see how they're bringing orange chicken and general sows into 2020. Let's go. I can tell you that they got a modern design that still pays homage to the old-school American-Chinese takeout. Let's go in the back. We're gonna go talk to the head chef, Lucas. Yo, what's good? What's up, man? What's up? How's it going? What are we looking at, man? This is a cuisine that we're all familiar with, but as particularly Chinese-Americans, we find it hard to voice that. That's the issue, right? Why shouldn't they be ashamed? Okay, here's the thing, right? I start really, really trying to think of Chinese food as something that is worth studying and worth respecting, even if everyone think that Chinese food is not delicious. That's like, totally not true. American-Chinese food is a regional Chinese cuisine as authentic as any Chinese food is supposed to be. Whoa! That's it. Coming from a Chinese chef, that's a hot thing. American-Chinese food is its own province. It should be considered a provincial cuisine. It's a regional cuisine. Regional Chinese cuisine, man. Anthony, I was at the Dominican deli and they had the crispy rice, like a bow-dye bun. So they eat the bottom of the crispy rice, kind of like how Cantonese also eat bow-dye bun, which is out of the clay pot and the rice is crispy on the head. Let's go and hang out. Hang out. All right, you guys. We are here looking at round one at Nice Day Chinese Takeout. These are all very classic, right? Classic. The way they're supposed to be. There are thousands and thousands of Chinese families that have been making this food for hundreds of years. You don't want to disrespect it, you know? Trying to learn this stuff, figure it out. Trying to get people to pay attention. Chinese-American food is awesome. And the prices here are not crazy, not overpriced American-Chinese food. This is doing it justice. I noticed that we don't have place we're eating out of Chinese Takeout boxes, but I am fanning mine out like a plate. I know you see it on the internet. I haven't seen it anywhere else. You haven't seen it in person, all right. You can see the food by yourself. So we've got vegan spring rolls. Is it vegan? Yeah, they're vegan. This is good. What goes into a good spring roll? Onion, celery, carrots, a little bit of glass noodle for texture. That's it. Use proper ingredients and fry it fresh. It's not that you're reinventing American-Chinese food. You're just doing it the right way. Yeah, that's it. I think the glass noodles is the only ingredient here that I probably wouldn't find in a regular spring roll. Real quick, what's the difference between a spring roll and an egg roll? Egg rolls are bigger and usually egg rolls have meat in it. These are appetizers. And shake, shake, shrimp. I guess that's the one that needs a little bit of action. This is what the internet is going crazy for. A lot of the times when you get fries we deliver, it's just not crispy by the time it gets to your door and it's because they dress it in sauce. So what we like to do is we like to serve the shrimp as is fried, sauce on the side, pour the sauce in, shake it up, all the flavor's there. It's crispy by the time it gets to your mouth. Shake, shake, shrimp. This is a new dish. At first I was like, well, you got all of that shrimp, but it's not. That is a good dish. So, only difference? Real oranges. Made with real orange sauce? Real oranges. Yeah, good. It has a really nice tang to it. Wow. Sweet and sour, little bit tang, little bit of sweetness. That's what this dish is all about. We got some vegetable dumplings over here with mushroom and glass noodles. So that doesn't have meat either? That doesn't have meat either. Okay. Steam veggie dumplings. I think they like that. I want to say these look a little bit more authentic than an average. We have really great friends over in New Jersey that make our dumplings for us and they make it with a really, really nice fresh skin. I like that sauce. What's that sauce? Yo, these dumplings are good. Considering they have no meat, it's only, what, glass noodles and beer mushrooms? Yeah, wood ear mushrooms. Wood ear mushrooms. And shiitake, that's it. We got chicken wings, extra large chicken wings. Onto something that really makes this an American Chinese spot, which is the chicken wings. That's an NY style. That's the NY style. That's the NY style. It is, it is. Look at this XL wing. The crust is super crispy. This batter stays crispy longer than most other batters. XL chicken wings. Mmm. It definitely does still remind you of those Chinese American spots. You just want to do the chicken wing that they always love, but do it properly. All right, Lucas, here's an idea for our chicken feet. I don't have to think about that one. All right, part two, round one. Lucas, what do we look at at? We got Kung Khao Chicken, chicken and broccoli, classic. Different styles chicken and the sweet and sour chicken. Wow, pouring the sweet and sour sauce over. You take inspiration from those sort of like original Chinese recipes in order to learn how to make this American Chinese sweet and sour chicken a little bit better. You make it a little bit tastier. Sweet and sour chicken. Good, that's good. And the best part is actually the onions and the peppers on top. They're using chicken thigh and not just breast meat. We know the chicken thigh is better. It's better meat. We always want to see what the customer says. We want to get the customer feedback because if they tell us that, hey, you know what, I grew up in this neighborhood and I actually had Chinese food that was like this, that helps us inform the next iteration of these dishes, right? Okay. Let's get into this. General So's. No spot really makes General So's the same. Whoa. I see why the sauce is proprietary. Yeah. Savory, little garlicky. Very garlicky. Awesome. One week, we had ordered 12 different versions of General So's chicken from just to figure out what the commonality is. What was the commonality? The best ones always had a really nice fry on the chicken that wasn't too thick. Versus being soggy, right? Yeah, exactly. All right, at the tail end of round one, this chicken broccoli looks different. This kong pao looks more like kong pao. This looks different. There's Chinese American kong pao chicken and then there's the Sichuan version of kong pao chicken, right? More brown and that's what people think of like the authentic version. When you're designing a dish, the question is like, how do you bring both of them together, the good parts of both, and then make a dish that everyone's gonna be happy with? This is not kong pao. This is just kong pao. You can't even say it in Chinese. Don't say it with the correct pronunciation. Yeah. It's kong pao. Oh man, this actually looks... So the deep flavor I feel like is a little bit more authentic and then the cuts of chicken are more authentic as in diced chicken thigh, but it still kind of has this sweetness that is more of the American Chinese. It's not about replacing what was before, it's about like evolving it, you know? This is what I had for lunch before I got here. Before you guys found it necessary to have this discussion of the evolution of American Chinese food, who was having it? 1983 Panda Express, 1993 PF Changs. Those are the people that brought Chinese food to all over the world, including all over the US, and they showed people what the standard was, right? I don't know, I love Panda Express. Here's the thing, Chinese American food didn't really need chains for a long time because there are Chinese places everywhere and you can get very similar sesame chicken in Arizona as you do in New York. Gotta preserve that heritage, right? The stories are good, the food is delicious, you just have to honor that tradition. Last but not least, for round one, we got chicken and broth. Chicken thigh is more flavorful, it absorbs marinade in a more delicious way and I think it cooks better. Chicken broth. So good with the chicken thigh. So juicy, right? People who order chicken broccoli, they know what they want, you wanna screw it up for them. So how were you guys able to recreate the umami with high quality dark soy sauce and just like a proper cooking and the proper thickening of the sauce? I did it. What was your favorite chicken dish? It was the general sows. Wow. Hey, 50 iterations in, wow, I mean like, gotta get it right there. Try my team. All right, so for me it was definitely, I would say sweet and sour chicken and then the Kung Pao Ji Ding. I can't wait to get to round two. All right, round two here at Nice Day Chinese Takeout. Mapo tofu, shrimp with lobster sauce, Mongolian beef, shrimp fried rice, chicken chow mein, beef lo mein. Wow, okay. Tell us about this fried rice. It's really simple, it doesn't have soy sauce, nothing extra in here, it's just rice, aromatics and a little bit of egg. Lucas, how is it like cooking fried rice on a flat pan versus a wok? So this is called golden fried rice. The type of fried rice that's really good for cooking on a flat pan. You can still get that wonkai feeling because of how hot the griddle is. You just gotta cook at a very high temperature. Fried rice often isn't just eaten alone, right? It's like the backbone until you're savory entrees. So you kinda want it to be nice and simple but still flavorful. Okay. Good, it's dry. I see what you're saying about just being able to be how stuff put over. Yeah. So this mapo is a hybrid. You got a Sichuan version, you got a Cantonese version. So we had to design a mapo tofu that was in between that got a little bit of that Sichuan spice but has the savory notes of the Cantonese version. Wow. So you're trying to satisfy the two different styles of mapo by giving them the in between. But mapo tofu. I love mapo tofu. I love how it's misunderstood. Not too spicy, a little bit of pitch. Our mapo is mostly savory. It's not too spicy. It doesn't have that layer of oil over the top. It's also vegan. So it doesn't have any like minced beef or anything in there. Yo, this is good. This is a very much a Chinese takeout play right now. Moving up. This is a crown jewel right here. Shrimp with lobster sauce. So you see this egg white, sort of egg drop inside of there. You got the peas, nice, bright peas, like jade. And then you got this like beautiful poached shrimp. You just gotta try it. Yo, the way you talk about American Chinese food, the way you talk about it, Lucas. I am sick of the disrespect of Chinese American food. Shrimp with a lobster sauce. Actually, I might even like it over the white rice. It really lets the shrimp shine. Super nice. Super big. Yeah, shrimp with a lobster sauce. That's where it's at. And when I was growing up, I rejected American Chinese food. But yeah, like, I'd like kind of come back to it over these years. They don't serve it at every American Chinese restaurant, but everyone in the kitchen, the whole team here at Nice Day, we love this dish. I'm excited to get this chow mein first. Lo mein is the big one. All right, beef lo mein. That's good. That's good. That's good, dog. That's good, dog. It reminds me of the best plate I ever made at Mongolian Grill, but that's amazing. Yes, yes. I love the beef that you guys are using here. It's flank steak. You can still see the graininess. Noodles have to be cooked properly. You want nice aromatics, so that means that you got garlic, ginger, scallion, the sauce. But you also got like peppers, in this case, Chinese chives, and bean sprouts and onions. It's just a good medley and everything has to work together. You can still see that the noodles, nice and bouncy. All right, guys, let's try this chow mein. I like the chow mein because it's lighter than the lo mein. Chicken chow mein. You kept this pretty true. There is some really authentic chow mein, like the breakfast chow mein that you get at the Hong Kong spots. For sure. How is this different? So the sauce is very similar. So you got dark soy sauce, you got a little bit of oyster sauce in there. The only difference here in an American Chinese context is that we add chicken, we add vegetables in there so that it becomes a little bit more of an entree. So you can eat it on its own. American Chinese food is authentic. It's just not traditional. All right, Mongolian beef. No Mongolian beef, man. This looks like top quality beef. Plain steak, not over cornstarched. Mongolian beef. Yeah, this is good. There's no sugar in here. All the sweetness comes from the onions. If you cook onions properly, Chinese chives and all those things, you know you can hit the flavor notes without adding refined sugar when you don't need to add refined sugar. This is one of our most popular dishes here. Add nice Chinese. Wow, we have the orange chicken, the classic, and the beef and broccoli. It's a baseline dish. Every Chinese American restaurant needs one. Orange chicken. That's what goes in here, real oranges. There's actually a little bit of bitterness, but a lot of sweetness and a lot of citrus. The sweetness in this is from oranges and we also throw a little bit of pineapple juice in there. And last but not least, the classic beef and broccoli. I mean, if you guys are on a low carb diet, you just get the broccoli and chicken or broccoli and beef. And that's it. Beef and broccoli. They have a whole Timberlin colorway based off beef and broccoli. I noticed the broccoli is not slimy. So we're using American broccoli instead of Chinese broccoli because it's Chinese American food. That's our main reference point. For me, out of round two, my favorite was the Mapo Tofu and the Lo Min. I did not expect you to say that. You didn't expect me to say that? I said that. I actually, I was gonna say the orange chicken. Very addictive here. I feel like Lucas, you've thought a lot about Chinese food. What do you gotta say to ABCs out there who are kind of like 50-50 on this food, you know? You are one of the few young people taking it super seriously. I'm just the new kid doing this. Maybe nice day can be a gateway into people rethinking Chinese American food, right? Thinking that this food is worth eating here, but it's also worth exploring in your own neighborhood. What's one dish you would like to serve in the future? Hopefully. Can I throw one out there for you? What are you thinking? Almond chicken. Whoa. Almond chicken was designed, I believe, for a Southern market. I really like that dish. Thank you so much for watching this very special episode of Fumbrose Food. Huge shout out to Lucas in. Yo. Thank you. Thank you for dropping all that knowledge. In the comments down below, let us know what your favorite Chinese American dish is of all time. Shout out to nice day. Shout out to Lucas. And until next time, we out. Peace. You guys gotta meet my buddy Andrew later. Andrew was born in a Chinese American restaurant. The first time I met his dad, he was like talking to me about the need to preserve his general style sauce. Gotta keep serving Chinese food to the Americans. You gotta keep doing it. Right, right, right. There's so much to learn.