 If it's not authentic, we're not going to serve it. Authentic, like Drake is authentic. Yes, yep. Drake is authentic. You'll catch me when I dance. You'll catch me when I dance. Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to a special episode of Fung Grows Food. So even though Jamaica is a very small island, it's always been very, very influential in entertainment, sports, and culture, period. So to help walk me through authentic Jamaican food, I got Chinese Jamaican friend, Jordan Dakris Wong. Yo, what up? My name is Jordan. I DJ out here in Seattle. Like he said, my family's Jamaican, but half of that side is Chinese. My mom, and you know, we'll go from there. See you on this side. All right, without further ado, let's go get some Jamaican food. Run it. Let go. We got a huge spread here. Here we are with Carlene, owner and partner of Taste of Caribbean. Restaurant business is a tough business, but we're doing it for the love, the love of our culture. So yes, every day we come in and put our love in everything we do here. What we've put out for you here is a really good spread, a good representation of the Jamaican food. If it's not authentic, we're not going to serve it. Authentic, like Drake is authentically. Yes. Yeah. Drake is authentically. You'll catch me with that. You'll catch me with that one. More Tory Lane's. Tory Lane's as well. We'll take Tory. We have some fried plantains here. Plantains, yeah. We have the Kalalu. Is this kind of like collard greens? So it's in the same family, but it's finer. In a special occasion, you have the curry goat, so this is our special occasion food. The national dish, which is the ackee and saltfish over there. We have the ox tail. So that is premium thing. To my eyes, there's actually a Chinese dish that looks like this, except it's egg. But this is not egg. No. The ackee is a fruit. It grows on the tree and it grows abundantly. It's bland. You boil it and you cook it and it picks up the flavor of anything it's cooked with. But the combination with the codfish is the national dish. And then we've already started to dice it, but that used to be the jerk chicken with some rice and peas. So what do you think about Japanese people taking on so much dance on Jamaican culture, at least as far as performance-wise? Dansal Queen Junko. She's the first one who won the Dansal Queen contest in Jamaica. She brought like a whole different scene to Japan. The Dansal Queen. Yeah. I mean, I love it. I mean, I've lived outside of Jamaica since 1990. I went to school in Toronto. Being outside of Jamaica, it's wonderful when the fiber of your culture is built into another city. I've been to Japan when I'm walking in Shinjuku in Roppongi or anywhere. I always have my Jamaican flag. And they recognize the flag. It's awesome. The Japanese, the women especially, embody the Dansal culture and the Dansal Queen. Yes, they bring the vibes. Thank you so much for the food. I'm so excited. I wish I could start eating, but we just get caught up in talking so much. This is the fried dough dumpling. Yep. So these are kind of like, it's like an unsweetened donut. Just throw some cinnamon sugar. That's what I've seen. I've gone to a few Chinese restaurants where they have the same fried dumplings with a little bit of sugar sprinkled over. And I was like, oh, they must be tired. How was your last name, Wang? It comes from my great grandfather. That's where the Chinese comes from. And then basically, it's inherited from there, from marriage. I would probably identify more as Jamaican in the 90s in some aspects. But the culture and the references are all there. Inside of my family, you'll find people who look like me, who look black. Us as my family, they look just like you. So me and Dave, we used to host this show on campus, which was kind of like the deaf poetry slam. This is the first time I met Jordan. So we see on a list, and we're like going through the names, okay, we're like, coming up to the stage, Jordan, Decker, it's Wang. Just a black kid walks up, and we're just like. Right, and I'm like, I'm Jamaican. And people go, wait, wait, what? There's Chinese drink? Yes, we are Chinese in Jamaica. There are Chinese in Jamaica. I think that's the point I'm trying to make here. Drink called Ting, great food drink. You gotta have it. Was a Ting also mean girl, that the way Trek says it? Yeah, yeah, so Ting is also slang for. Yeah, in, it's a Ting fun, that's right. She never said a Ting with me. Exactly, he's not talking about the soda. I wish, I wish he was talking about the soda. First of all, that beef patty's really good. My mom used to have a restaurant, and literally this would be like my thing before school, after school, I would just stop by. First thing I would grab probably the patty because it's sitting right there in the heaters. I like it, it's kind of spicy. You can get them either regular or spicy. So you get a little extra kick of you. If you're really into it. Man, that's like a meat pie right there, you know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Not to be confused with a Trinidadian roti. Okay. Lots of people like to do that though. Talking about hip hop and how that whole thing got started. As you know, Jamaica's famous for the sound systems. The groups of DJs that would travel around the islands. Big ol' speakers on the back of trucks throw them parties, right? We know that from hip hop because you guys, guys like DJ Cool Herk, African Bambada who are Jamaican, they ended up bringing that style, that culture of rapping with an MC and a DJ. And that eventually turns to the hip hop. Well, you would attribute the roots of hip hop to a lot of Jamaican people. I would say it's the direct influence. Well this oxtail is crazy. Sometimes I have oxtail even at the Asian spots. Yeah, yeah. You don't fall off like this. Like this is stupid. You cook it to perfection. If it's not falling off the bone. Wow. It's not good oxtail. Bro. Ha ha ha. Sucky lamb. I'm feeling that like, that tendon is like melting in my mouth. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. All right, so where is Jamaica on the map? And then also what is the difference between Jamaica and a lot of the other Caribbean islands that it's right next to? So Jamaica is a part of the Caribbean, the Antilles. So we're the greater Antilles, the bigger side of the islands, right? I mean we're just below Cuba if I'm correct. All right, so like we're in that little middle area. What differentiates from us, from other countries? We're pretty alike. Small little differences set us apart. And Jamaica, we love all kinds of music. Clearly we're famous for, you know, reggae. Yo, that goat is dope. That's my favorite dish. That's my favorite go-to dish is the goat. You gotta have the goat. And the funny thing is about goats, they all have these like little bones here. It's different, you know? This is the national dish of Jamaica right here. Yo, that's really smooth. Do you know the history between why it's the national dish? I think it's the most prevalent fruit grown in Jamaica right now. But normally you just eat it together. Some people literally take scoops of it, just put it together and bite it, you know? And what is Patois? How is, what is Patois the link? The best way to say it's like broken English for us. It's a dialect, you know? It is what Drake tries to portray. Tries, more truth for your head top. Watch how you speak on my name. Is he speaking Patois? He's right, he's right. You know, I wouldn't say it's actually, some of it, sometimes it's actually not bad. Sometimes it's... I mean, he's really good at like imitating cultures. You know, I'm not gonna lie, bro. He shouted out to dim sum in Asian girls once. And he pretty much bought my loyalty for like a whole another decade for shouting out to dim sum. Yeah. Okay. I'm getting the kalalu. Kalalu, got it. Kalalu. Kalalu, kalalu. Does it, does it, is kalalu come from collard greens? It's very similar, they're in the same family. My man, even the name, like kalalu, kalalu. You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not sure. I would say. I've had a Chinese dish that looks like this. Alex, behind the camera. Does this not look like some Taiwanese preserved veggies? That's why it reminds me of Asian food because it's just like light, savory. It's not super spicy, not super strong. With the kalalu, normally you can eat this with ackee itself. You know, people combine the three ackee selfish and kalalu, it's like your breakfast right there. I can't shake that, it looks like eggs, man. I gotta go look up a picture of what this fruit looks like. No, really light, those two, light flavor, I could eat those forever. So your mother, blood-wise, is half Chinese, but she did own a Caribbean restaurant. So growing up, what kind of like Chinese or Asian influences did you have in the household growing up? My mom loves to cook with mushroom soy sauce for everything. Also, my mom is stereotypically like Chinese stuff, you know? She has like a lot of the ornaments and a lot of stuff hanging up on her household. Actually, if you come to my house, we actually have a random, a Buddha, a little Buddha statue right at the front of our house and you know, rub the belly for good luck. Plantons. Plantons, yeah. They have the more toasted grilled ones, but the fried ones, that's where it's at. All right, man, this is, we're going for the jerk chicken. So Jordan, would you say that jerk chicken is probably the most well-known Jamaican dish? I feel like that is specifically Jamaican. The jerk sauce is definitely well-known. What is jerk sauce? Going back to what we were talking about earlier about the Chinese coming to Jamaica, right? So they came because slavery was abolished, but before slavery was abolished, you know, slaves would escape the plants and they would go up to the mountains because you know, they couldn't find them out there. So those people then became the maroons, right? A certain section of them, you know, Jamaicans hiding out in there, they had their own culture, it's like that. And they're famous for coming up with the jerk seasoning, which then became prevalent all across the island. What is it like being part Chinese? When you're not, you don't, you're not raised by a Chinese family, but you got the last name Wong, and how has your last name impacted your life? People probably give me an extra look with the Asian last name, because I guess they have a certain implication of what that means. Like, oh, definitely hire this, hire this guy on an engineering job. He's actually like, oh, IT perfect, you know? I'm like, all right, cool. Apply for it, and then, you know, you walk in, and then you can see like a little bit of a B-Wolterman, like, wait a second, so you're an A-Wong. They're like, I see the Jordan, but I'm not getting the rest of this. I feel like I do have a little bit more of a connection. Once I break it with people, people will definitely kind of warm up to me a little bit more. It's really allowed me to explore that side, because you know, I always have questions, so I'll go back to the family and ask, oh, what did we do? How did we get here? Celebrities that are part Chinese and Jamaican. Okay. Sean Paul. Yeah. Aisha Curry. Aisha Curry? Aisha Curry, her mother. You sure? Yeah, positive. Her mother is Chinese Jamaican. So that makes Steph's kids an eighth Chinese. Yeah. Aisha Curry is a fourth Chinese. Yeah, I didn't know that. Supermodels. Gotcha. I'll just name them. Put them in the same category. Naomi Campbell. Yep. Tyson Beckford. Yep, exactly. Patrick Chudden. Oh, from the, he's a football player. Yeah. Played it. It's a safety for the Patriots. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. You look at him, he could tell it. He's half. He's half. And Chinese descent. We'll throw in Trinidad in here. Okay. And the Caribbean. Chris Wong from Two Live Crew. Oh, okay. He's half Chinese and half Trinidadian. And then Foxy Brown. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's part Chinese and Trinidadian. Crazy. Kyle Anderson, who plays for the Spurs? Younger guy. Kyle Anderson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's part Chinese Jamaican. Chinese Jamaican. I believe he's like me. I think he's a fourth too. In Jamaica, basically from Palm Sunday, all the way up to Easter Monday, they don't eat nothing but bun and cheese here. It's like a spice bun. And there's the cheese. All right. Jamaica cheese. It's this big old tin. You gotta roll it and just work to get it out. But it's well worth it. It's really tasty. The bread, surprisingly, is actually a lot more moist than it looks. And I mean, it's a good snack. I can see it. Shout out to the bread and cheese man. No, that's kind of the picture that I have growing up. It's like, Jamaican man, yeah. Bop them up. Now it's almost a little bit more like urban. It's more urban now, represented in like being Jamaican got a little more gangster, at least in the media. A little bit. We've been gangsters since Belly. For sure. Gangsters, Belly, Top Shots, you know, all the movies. The 90s was really Jamaica's real gangster. Maxi, Princeton, Shaba. The gangster side of it really stems out of, you know, the whole Gully Gaza debate that was going on between, you know, Vibes and Movado, you know, one side was Gully, one side was Gaza. At the time, it was just, it was our version of Tupac and Biggie. All right, all right, man. We had like a Jamaican feast right here. I wanted to ask you why you think Jamaica is such an influential place for being such a small island. I think the theory goes right back into our saying, which is out of many one people, right? So as we've been talking about today, there's just been this gigantic influx of different cultures into the islands, right? You mix that with a beautiful country, you know, fresh water, beautiful beaches, a relaxed, paradise atmosphere. And you're only gonna bring out the best in people. People will be competitive in good ways. They're gonna figure out what they like, what they don't like, and they're gonna get together and keep collabing. All right, everybody. Thank you for watching that video. Shout out to Jordan. Shout out to taste the Caribbean in Seattle in the comments below. Let me know if you've ever had Caribbean food. And also, let me know if you guys are of a mixed culture because I think this is a conversation that we're gonna have on our channel a lot more. Until next time, everybody, we out. Peace. Big up yourselves. Yes. Thanks everybody for watching this video. If you like it, please comment down below. Also, my information will be in the links below if you wanna check out any of my music. Follow me on Instagram, or follow my team is great on Instagram. Fans of League DJs, we're out here working in Seattle. So check that out. Please don't drag me in the comments. But I appreciate it anyway.