 You think Arnold Palmer is better than Lemonade or Icy? 100%. Is it because you're Hapa and you're mixed? Half Filipino, half Irish, so you're like, dude, it's better than just one full person or the other. What's going on, everybody? Andrew from the Fung Bros here. I'm here with Benson. What's up, guys? And right now, we are in the most historic part of downtown LA, in between Union Station and Chinatown. In today's video, we are going on a secret food tour. Now, we're going to be hitting up four different spots that have historical meaning to LA. You haven't told me what these spots are. No, no, no, no, no. I know the spots, but I actually have not been to any of them. We're going to go meet our tour guide pretty soon at our first spot. I'm just looking forward to learning a lot and eat a lot. And if you guys are interested in learning too, make sure to hit that like button. All right, everybody, let's go to our first spot and meet our tour guide, John. All right, JV, we're here at our first spot and without saying the name, because this is a secret food tour, can you tell us about this spot and why we're here? We're here because this restaurant started in 1944. The gentleman that owns it now, his grandmother started it. The food that we're eating are the same recipes that they've had since they opened. It's just fresh, delicious food. Okay, and you told me that we're eating taquitos today. Taquitos and a cheese and chalada as well. And the taquito was invented at this spot or in California? In California. Okay, I'm excited about this spot. Ryan, you ready? I'm ready. Okay, let's eat. What are we looking at, John? Here we got our beef taquitos. They make this here. They cook the meat for 15 hours. And then they have the specially made tortillas that they wrap it in. And then they have the guacamole salsa. You can tell the meat has been cooked for a while because it kind of just like falls apart in your mouth. I love the difference in texture, because you have the sauce on top, but then you have a really crispy, crunchy exterior. Up next, we got the cheese and chalada with olives on top. That's interesting. How would you describe Alvera Street? The street that we're on, it's kind of like there's no cars, you're not really supposed to drive through, but it has a lot of shops and a lot of restaurants. I kind of felt like I was in Guatemala, like a panahachel, just going through the different streets and having all these different vendors trying to sell you things. You don't feel like you're in LA. Ooh, just straight, cheese and chalada, man. You're going in on the tamale. Hold up. Ryan, what do you love about tamales, man? You got to tell me. So growing up, my dad's favorite food to eat is tamales, and we were going to trade our Joe's and pick up like the frozen kind. Trade our Joe's. I want to try this chicken and chalada. Oh my gosh, this is fire, bro. Way to go. Oh, wow. This is my favorite. That's kind of hot. It's so good. We got to pixelate that, bro. That's all good stuff right there. It was almost like a crispy corn shortcake with refried beans and beef. If this was the first spot and it was as good as it was, I can't wait for the next three spots. All right, guys. All right, John, let's go to the next spot. All right, JV, you have brought us to our next spot. It's actually a well-known spot, but it's funny because I've been to Chinatown 20 or 30 times in my life here, and I've never came here. I'd opened up in 1908. It's been here for over 100 years now, and they've got the great French dip sandwiches here. All different flavors. They're big. The big seller here is the beef dip, which is about 65% of their sandwich sales. And then they've also got a huge menu of different things. I'm really excited for this. French dip is one of my favorite sandwiches, if not my favorite sandwich. I'm not going to lie. I thought it was like an East Coast thing. Yeah, that was an East Coast thing. Yeah, we get the French dip. I don't know why I did an Italian accent, but... Let's get it. Let's get it. So we're in Chinatown downtown, and we started with a Mexican restaurant. Yeah. Now we're at a French dip restaurant. And these are all famous historic spots. Here we have the original double dip beef sandwich. This is the original way to get it, original beef right here, man. The au jus, it's there. It's noticeable, but it's not like, oh, my hands are like wet from the juice. Yeah. I saw so many people get this max salad, so I got to try it. What do you think about the chopped up max salad? I've only had max salad a couple of, like, handful of... Really? I could just... I thought your childhood was like, hey, Ryan, we got some max salad. See these? Wow. That's really refreshing. I would say that max salad almost has like a cooling effect. Yeah. Let's try this pickled egg. I got a tang to it. Wow. It just hits, like, the back of your mouth. Like, I don't know. I don't know what it is about vinegar, but when it hits your mouth, it, like, makes your mouth water. All right, we got two more sandwiches left to try. We have the lamb and the pork. I'm going to try the lamb. This is a single dip, meaning that it's just dipped the lamb into the au jus. That is some good quality lamb. Like I said, if you like lamb, you're going to love this because the lamb flavor was pretty strong and it came through in the sandwich. The sandwich doesn't have a lot of fixings. Bread, au jus and meat. So it's really simple, so it really lets the meat shine through and that's why I enjoyed about that. I mean, the lamb just... Do lambs kick? Lambs kick? Kick me in my mouth. Let's try this. This is the wet sandwich. That means the bread was dipped completely in au jus and the meat was... The au jus on this, there's a lot more distinct than the other two. It takes them 24 hours to make the au jus and they use vegetables, the bones, and then garlic and salt, pepper, everything else is in there. To this unknown French dip spot. Let me make an Arnold Palmer au cream. Wow, look at bartender Ryan. Yeah. Flare on it. Do you think an Arnold Palmer is better than lemonade or iced tea? 100%. Is it because you're Hapa and you're mixed? Half Filipino, half Irish. So you're like, dude, it's better than just one full person of the other. All right, John. So we made it up to Chinatown and we're at a Cantonese barbecue spot of all the Cantonese barbecue in Chinatown, which there's a number of them. Why are we here? We felt that this was just some of the best stuff that was served. We also get a portion of rice and veggies and so it's a really nice meal to have on top of what we've been already eating on the show. Let's go eat some Cantonese barbecue. All right, Ryan. I have to admit, I am no stranger to some Cantonese barbecue. Yo, Andrew man, don't do it. Don't do it. I gotta do this for my culture. Was very crispy. They finish it on charcoal. So of course it has like that burnt charcoally taste with... Shocking. I know, guys. Shocking. Shocking. I haven't been to this spot though. This is the barbecue pork H&A, the chashu. This is soy milk. This is the crispy pork skin. This is going to be similar to like lechon. Lechon. Sort of. That's, I would say that's the comparison. This is soy sauce chicken right here. And then you have John, the roast duck that you guys are like. You guys are standing by this. Yes. Wash it down with a little bok choy. All right, let's get through this soy milk, the crispy pork. At Chinese spots, they make sure that the skin is ultra crispy. Wow. It almost is like eating chicharrones on pork. On roast pork. All right, guys. Last piece here. Before we go to our last spot on the superfood tour. All right, this is the chashu. This is actually like pretty tender. And I can throw in some more bites of it. Oh man. There's ginger scallion, and mandarin. It's Zhang chong. And then in Cantonese, it's geung chong. Fire, fire, fire. Just the rice and the GS sauce. I'm good. I'm getting it right there, guys. We got one more spot to go to. Oh, this is sweet. Oh my God. Yo. I asked for this. So this is the Hong Kong lemon iced tea. Oh, that is sweet. That is, that is a... That's a sugar rush right there. That is something else. Told you, man. Cantal spots that give you the flavor. Guys, we have one more spot on the secret food tour. I'm excited. Everything that we've had today so far has been amazing. No. Shout out to John and Secret Tours. I'm not going to lie. I was a little skeptical of the Chinese spot. I couldn't agree that that was really good. Okay, we are here at this circuit. All right. All right, we are here at this secret burger spot. This spot is really cool because actually everything on the menu is vegan, minus the beef patty and the regular cheese. Wow. I can see that the burger patty is not like made with a machine. It looks made by hand. It's got the pickles, tomato, lettuce. I love how that tomato is right in the middle. It's not sliding out to one side. You can tell they put a lot of thought into how they layered it, coating all the wet ingredients at the bottom, keeping the dry ingredients at the top so it doesn't just get disintegrated all the way through. It's really good. Yo, that burger was nice. What's really cool is they have a vegan burger, but it's not a beyond. It's not an impossible brand. It's their very own vegan patty. When I saw these fries earlier, I was like, oh, can we just transfer it to In-N-Out? Yes. These look exactly like the In-N-Out animal fries. All right. You know what's special about these, though? This is vegan cheese. Oh, no way. Yeah. Do you think they're going to make oat cheese? Like, I'm big into oat milk right now. Oh, yeah. I saw that earlier. In my fridge? It gives you that cheese vibe. I can't tell, like, right off the bat. I can't tell that it's not. That is vegan. All right, John. Anything else about the spot that you like in particular? Like, why do you guys take people here? Just being outside in this courtyard is just beautiful. And it's just a nice way to finish off the tour. All right, everybody. That wraps up our secret food tour through the historic part of downtown LA. Like I said, right now, we're ending it off in Chinatown. Ryan, you just move back to LA. What kind of takeaways do you have after doing this tour? If it wasn't for the secret food tour, I definitely would not have seen most of the spots I've been to today. But it was really cool to see how diverse of restaurants can be placed in such close vicinity to each other. And it just goes to show how much of a melting pot LA is. For me, it's like, even if it's a tour in the city that you live in, it can still feel new. Because I've passed by some of these spots. I've seen these spots even online before, but I just never came out. Every time you go on a tour, it's like traveling. It's like camping in your backyard. John, thank you so much for the food tour, man. Glad you could come with us. Appreciate it. Art, everybody, thank you again for watching that video. That was the secret food tour around LA. First of all, like that video if you guys have fun or if you guys learned something new and in the comments down below. Let us know if there's any other spots that you think we should check out in LA. Thanks again. This is Ryan, Andrew from the Fung Bros, John Vogel from Secret Food Tours. And until next time, we out. Peace. It's the capital of LA. It's way more beautiful. Hey, man. O'Varrell Street. It's popping. It's a vibe.