Lucky Chow

(gentle music) - The best food businesses are driven by personal passion, not by profit.

All over New York City, the latest generation of Asian food entrepreneurs are pursuing passion projects.

Whether that means growing the perfect strawberry or recreating a small corner of Taipei on the streets of Brooklyn, it's good business and it makes for a better, more inclusive American foodscape.

It's a win-win.

Their dreams make our lives more delicious.

(upbeat music) (slow melodic music) Wen-Jay Ying, the founder of Local Roots NYC, thinks the food you eat should be grown as near as possible to where you eat it.

For Wen-Jay, eating locally is not only good for the earth and the economy, it just plain tastes better.

I talked to her at our Manhattan Cafe and Brooklyn Market to see how those ideas about agriculture mix with the foods of her Asian upbringing.

- So we're doing bubble tea here.

Our favorite, our top seller drinks are bubble teas.

Mango Creamsicle, our Yuzu lychee Arnold Palmer.

And we're also doing food here.

So it's New York State strawberry juice, all natural from a farm I used to work with.

Yuzu and lychee and some sparkly water.

Our drinks are pretty simple to make, but it kind of has a pop of flavor 'cause they're such high quality ingredients.

My grandfather came to this country and was making red bean buns and my dad would, you know, bicycle around and deliver them throughout Chinatown and he ended up having to...

He couldn't find a way to scale his business 'cause he didn't have funds at the time.

He was an immigrant here.

You know, he didn't have like Instagram as a free marketing tool.

So he ended up leaving that industry.

But I remember hearing that story and I think I just like, in the back of my head, always kind of led me on this subconscious path to continue what he always wanted to do.

(tranquil music) - Hi, Wen-Jay.

- Hi.

Welcome to our home in Brooklyn.

- What a beautiful, bright spot you have here.

I love it.

When did Local Roots open here?

- Two years ago there was a rise of racism towards Asians during the pandemic and I thought that food was the best way to really cross that cultural divide.

Instead of being angry about it, I thought that you can show love through food and show your culture through food.

- I've been checking out so many of your other treats here.

What informs your decision of what to carry?

- It's a combination of, it has to be local.

So whether it's a local farmer or a local cheesemaker, a local jam maker, we really try to prioritize female owned businesses, minority owned businesses, and people that are using cleaner products.

Let me tell you about some of my favorite products.

- Yes.

- This is something that, again, I love the things that no one ever knows about to bring them to light.

Yondu is amazing.

It's a Korean based company, but they have an outpost in the South Street Seaport.

- Oh they do?

- It's like an umami booster that you can add like a dash of this to anything and it will taste amazing.

- I'm gonna go shopping then.

What about this magic umami sprinkle?

- She's amazing.

Female, Asian owned small business.

We put this into our fantuan for like a bacon and an egg fantuan.

And we use this as like instead of cheese.

Also really great to sprinkle on top of anything.

She's Brooklyn based.

She's amazing.

- Okay, I'm gonna want that too.

- You take that one too.

This is our fantuan over here.

- Yes, a fantuan.

This I have to say is something that most people don't see and so you're really introducing like very simple ingredients, like in this case rice and pork, but just combined in a convenient way.

- And this is actually something that my mom was like, "No way they're gonna like that.

- Yeah.

The naysayers.

- Yeah, exactly.

My parents are my naysayers sometimes.

And then my dad messaged me recently and was like, "Wow, I can't believe that that's your top seller.

You've somehow found people as weird as you are."

I'm like, yes.

Here you go, here's your half.

- Thank you.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

This is the perfect snack.

I love this.

And the pickled vegetables are so crispy.

I wasn't expecting that crunch.

- I love this because it's handheld, which every New Yorker loves.

It's a combination of sticky, sweet, savory, crunchy, has all the elements that make food fun.

- Regenerative agriculture is a buzzword, but people don't really understand what it actually mean - Yeah, it is very commonly used now as a marketing tool, but regenerative agriculture is really focusing on the health of the soil.

So it's thinking about if I can create healthier soil by having no pesticides, which is obvious, but then also more diverse crops because different root systems will create a healthier soil.

It's also talking about, I understand that when I have healthier soil I can have healthier vegetables and my soil will also retain water better.

It can sequester carbon, so it's also fighting climate change.

The word local is used so often in greenwashing, which is when companies use organic terms as marketing tools to make themselves seem more eco-friendly than they actually are.

I don't know if you can smell it from there, but I mean, you can smell like that citrus tang and like earthiness, which I love from tomatoes.

- Why are local foods better for you?

- That's a wonderful question because I feel like people know local foods better, but they don't really know actually why.

So the second you take that plant out of its life source, which is the soil, it's slowly dying.

So when you're talking about getting tomatoes from South America or China, it's commuting for what, a week or so?

So it's been a week or more that it's been taken out of its life source.

It's feeding it nutrients constantly, right?

Where if you have local tomatoes, I mean, this was harvested this morning, it's driving maybe two hours to get to us, and then it's getting to the consumer.

I mean, it's more nutrients and flavor right there.

And I also really love just the idea of supporting local economies and supporting local farmers.

You know, we talk about, oh, like, we should go to Italy.

They have the best produce.

And you talk about like the flavors of every region.

Our farms are just as good.

Our produce is just as good.

I've been around the world, I've tasted food directly on farms from around the world.

- Mm.

- The farms locally in the northeast are amazing, and the reason for that is that we have the seasons changing, right?

So every time there's a season changing, it's almost building...

It's building resilience in vegetables.

Eating local is eating seasonally.

- Sure.

- And the seasons will tell you what kinds of nutrients you need.

So it does align with TCM, where you might need more root vegetables, more peppery vegetables like radishes in the winter time, which is also when those vegetables are being grown and harvested.

- Right, it just makes so much sense.

- And take this one, a nice little pop of color.

So we use purple sticky rice here.

So, everything Chinese, right?

Put on a bed of rice or noodles.

(gentle music) Okay, so this is our scallion pancake cheese melt.

So it uses our housemate scallion pancakes and we melt in some cheddar cheese in here.

- It's Wen-Jay's grilled cheese.

- It's my version of the grilled cheese.

Good, right?

- I love the cilantro on top.

It's delicious.

- It's really just been magical to be able to evolve our menu to be a representation of my Chinese and Taiwanese background.

Food is such a cultural bridge.

So why not have people understand who I am, who my culture is, through the food we offer.

- Walking into Yun Hai is like taking a trip from hipster Brooklyn to Taipei in one step.

Lisa Chin Smith's tiny pantry shop is a love letter to Taiwan's unique identity.

With its independence under question, it feels more precious than ever Her devotion to Taiwan's artisanal food producers is so notable that President Tsai Ing-wen made the trip out to Williamsburg during a recent visit to New York.

Hi Lisa.

- Hey!

So nice to meet you.

- So nice to meet you.

This is such a special place.

I can already see so many ingredients and brands that I love.

Tell me about this pantry.

- Our store is actually an extension of our entire business, Yun Hai.

And we are at heart a distributor of artisanal products from Taiwan.

So the store encompasses all Taiwanese pantry products.

So 99% of everything in here is made in Taiwan.

- How did this place come about?

- Started off very slowly actually with one product.

So there was a chili crisp that my aunt gave me.

This was in 2016.

Kind of high-end artisanal fancy products from Asia, maybe other than like Japan or Korea, were not really around.

And so I thought, oh, this product is amazing.

I can't believe I can't just walk somewhere and buy it.

So I just started importing that one product and kind of grew from that one artisan making it, his English name is Jay, to adding all of these different, I guess, yeah, like producers or artisans that are really part of the slow food movement in Taiwan.

So they're all actually quite connected and aware of each other.

Just like here, there's a scene.

This is the Su Chili Crisp.

That was the very first product that we sold.

- So what is so good about this chili crisp?

Because there's so many chili crisps that come out on the market since you probably started importing this.

- Yeah.

What's good about this one is that it is all natural and it doesn't have much seasoning in it, meaning that it's not over salted or sweet.

So the idea is that if you made a chili crisp at home, you wouldn't add sugar and salt.

You would just make it and then use it for cooking.

So that's what this is.

Like, make your mapo tofu, put however much you want in.

Doesn't make it sweeter, doesn't make it saltier.

To me, like I really feel that, you know, everything that still exists under the sun is like contemporary and current.

And so these old technologies or the old ways of fermenting things, to me, I'm like, let's not think of them as like old fashioned or like historical preservation.

Let's think of them as contemporary.

- Absolutely.

- And figure out how to like make this part of the dialogue.

- But I think that that is what Taiwan is, you know?

- It is, yeah.

- There's a lot of nostalgia about Taiwan and I see your totes here and even your plastic stools.

- This antique Tatung 80s fan.

- And the the Tatung rice cooker, which is so emblematic of Taiwan.

So I'm so glad that you are here.

I mean, who are your customers?

Are they primarily Taiwanese?

- We definitely have a really strong, like Taiwanese first generation and immigrant base.

But when we started, I didn't.

It was kind of like, oh, this is this, you know, English language facing kind of fancy foods thing like, and is it actually Taiwanese or not?

So a lot of the first customers were, I mean, it started by word of mouth.

So a lot of them were like friends of friends of friends.

- This is almost, you know, like soft culture pedaling of Taiwan.

- For me, you know, I have this idea about how to walk the line between kind of like art and commerce.

And so, you know, I have a background in design and design products, and I've always been interested in like, oh, how can you sell something but still... Subversive is a strong word, but feel a little bit subversive.

And in that, I mean like change people's perception.

- So do you think, for you, is food political?

- Yeah, yeah.

And we always talk about it being political.

I think that, you know, we've engaged directly in that with our products.

I think there's also a really specific Taiwanese creative voice and design voice that doesn't make it out of Taiwan that much.

But it's like amazing.

And so we do try to represent that here.

- I do think there's amazing that graphic design in Taiwan.

- Yeah, graphic design and product design.

- Yes.

- And like temporary art.

- You must love that.

- Yeah, I mean we're always trying to like fold elements of that into the store too, 'cause it's part of being, you know, like a young Taiwanese person.

- Where do you want people to take away from this store?

- From this store, I want people to take away kind of the sense of place of Taiwan.

So this is obviously not Taiwan, it's a mixture of like a Taiwan influence, an upstate New York influence, like a Texas influence, where I'm from.

But you know, we really modeled the idea after this type of general store called like ga ma diam in Taiwan, which is like, you know, they're very messy, crazy, but full of amazing stuff and like so wonderful to browse.

So we were trying to channel that feeling here.

- Yeah, you need a couple of cats and like a kettle of stewed tea eggs.

- Yeah, I know, I know.

- Well you're doing a really great job of bringing Taiwan culture into the broader world.

- Thank you.

Yeah, that's the hope.

Yeah.

Now it's like Gayau, we gotta do more.

- Gayau.

(upbeat music) Chai is everywhere in the United States, but the brothers Ayan and Ani Sanyal have their own unique approach, preserving India's traditional chai lifestyle while mixing in a strong infusion of New York Street culture.

Why did you guys bring Kolkata Chai to New York?

- Growing up as first generation kids, we spent a lot of time back home in Calcutta, 'cause our parents are obviously from there.

They were nostalgic about, you know, everything.

And my brother and I ran in business together before this.

We ran a marketing agency where we worked with a lot of food and beverage brands and apparel brands and did a bunch of cool projects across, you know, culture and content.

(upbeat music) Okay, so this is actually my grandmother's real radio.

This is like something she used.

And transistor radios are really popular.

This is meant to kind of look like a Kolkata style, like bodega, like a mini store when you walk in, it's kind of... You got your deities, you got some incense, you got the clay chai cups that they serve chai in.

And then you have something, like, this is my favorite thing in the world, my cricket bat.

So this is actually the bat that I grew up playing cricket with.

This is a real license plate from Kolkata.

So WB stands for West Bengal, which is the region that Kolkata is in.

And the funny thing about Kolkata is you can buy these on the side of the road like you could buy a bag of chips.

It's just like a little, little dedication to all the things that were part of our childhood, part of our life.

- So I went to India and I was just, again, really getting into the coffee scene and just being like, this experience of going out for chai and samosas, like, it's such a unique experience.

So I came back and I started making chai all the time and then Ani was kind of like, "Do something with it."

He was kinda egged me on.

He's like, "What you gonna do about it?"

And so I said okay and I went and got a small little health license to set up a farmer stand booth in Jersey.

And so we did that for summer, didn't even have a car.

I was taking a U-Haul every Sunday.

Both my parents are actually very good cooks.

So my mom definitely knows all the Bengali recipes and can, you know, make you a delicious... We call it shrimp curry or chingri mach.

And my dad is more kind of the inventive experimental guy.

So he would make us like, you know, stir fry and all these other kind of things.

So we would always eat out as a family and our parents were...

I think they don't know what a foodie means, but they were definitely foodies.

A lot of people have tried like chai as a concept by itself and they haven't been able to do it.

And that's because...

Partially, because I think, you know, tastes have changed and we kind of hit it at the perfect spot.

But I think mostly because we made a lot of noise.

- You know, we had 1200 people here on opening night.

The entire block was shut down.

- Where was my invite?

- It got lost in the mail.

- So what came first, the products or the cafe?

- Funny enough, the cafe came first, and this tea and spice mix packet was our way of surviving Covid.

This is our ticket, you know, to making sure we become a household name for chai in America.

Bringing tradition and history and then pushing it forward in a educated way is really important.

You know, like get rich or chai trying is our slogan.

You know, we're like very progressive in that way.

I think we got that from our parents, we got that from hip hop culture.

We got that from a lot of different, you know, touch points in America.

But it was really important not to just regurgitate what we've seen but actually put our own spin on it.

The most accomplished thing that Ayan and I have done is turn an American nightmare into an American dream.

(upbeat music) - It was tough.

I was young.

Ani's... We're very different mindset people.

I'm a little bit more laid back and creative and Ani doesn't ever stop or sleep and is annoying in that sense.

And also annoying in in other senses.

So it took a while for us to figure out what are we good at?

How do we, you know, divvy this up into our strengths and how do we cover for our weaknesses?

And also just how do we communicate as business partners So here is our vegan samosa.

And so this is basically... We actually don't make these in house, but we fry them fresh.

But they're potatoes, peas, and some spices in there.

And then you have a mint chutney, a little spicy, and a tamarind chutney, which is nice and sweet.

So you kind of mix it together.

Some days I'm feel a little bit more, you know, spicy.

Some days I feel a little bit more sweet.

- Is it tradition or is it commonplace to have little snacks when you drink chai?

- Yeah, so there's a whole kind of genre of food in Kolkata specifically called Telebhaja, which basically means fried in oil.

And so it's like, you know, you have everything from chicken fritters, Kathi rolls, it's like a whole kind of genre.

I don't know.

People in Kolkata are eating all the time.

- What's next for you guys, the two brothers?

- Oh, man.

I think we're gonna keep doing what we do best, is just, you know, pushing the culture forward, creating more avenues for people to experience authentic chai and street food.

I think we're already looking for our next location and then we are, you know, doing some really interesting collaborations with other restaurants and other kind of institutions that I'm really excited about.

- I think this is the reason that our parents are super excited about this new phase of their life.

You know, they've gotten so much excitement from this and from how their friends talk about it, how their community talks about it.

- We had our fair share of fights and disagreements and you know, we both really care a lot about what we're building, and I think we're kind of committed to making it work.

- Who referees your fights?

Do you go to your parents?

- We go to our parents sometimes.

- We used to, now we go to a therapist.

(all laughing) (gentle music) - Is this a strawberry farm or a semiconductor factory?

Oishii, which means delicious, has channeled the Japanese talents for innovation and meticulousness into growing the most perfectly delicious strawberries at its vertical farm in New Jersey.

I met up with the company's CEO Hiroki Koga at Manhattan's Lady M cake shop, where a recent Oishii collaboration sold out almost immediately.

- I think out of all of the different types of fruits and vegetables, I thought the biggest gap I saw was in strawberries.

And then that was the moment when I first started thinking, oh, maybe if there's a way to bring Japanese quality produce to the US, you know, I think people would be... Would really appreciate that.

And I wanted to spread our Japanese culture to the rest of the world.

So I started, like, that got into my mind.

And I just happened to have a background in vertical farming consulting back in Japan.

- What do you mean you just happened to have a background?

- So I started my career in consulting right after college in Tokyo.

- Oh, okay.

- And then I came across a few vertical farming companies and helped them try to figure out, you know, their business models, you know, more than 10 years ago.

Even though vertical farming technology seems like a new technology, right, it actually has been around for more than 20 years in Japan.

You know, things like strawberries, tomatoes, or melons.

These crops require pollination 'cause they're flowering crops, and in order to pollinate them you need bees.

But bees were known not to operate well in a completely enclosed vertical farm environment.

And that's why people could only grow leafy greens.

Because I had spent enough time in Japan in this industry, I had some hints on, you know, how to potentially solve, overcome that problem.

And collaborate with the bees to have them pollinate the flowers in a vertical farm sense.

- Oh really?

- We've found a way to recreate a very natural environment, even inside a building.

And so our bees think they're in the nature.

And so that's kind of our secret sauce and the reason why we are the only ones that, you know, have gone beyond leafy greens.

- Beautiful packaging.

- Thank you.

So this is a very special packaging.

As you can see, there's like a, basically a cushion under every berry.

And we have this special packaging because our berries are very delicate, very, very soft.

We have two different varieties here, right in front of you.

I'll actually start with the Omakase, because this is the first variety that we launched with.

So this Omakase berry is...

It has a very sweet character.

It has almost no acidity to it.

So it's just pure sweetness.

I would almost call this the dessert.

- Okay.

Is there a particular way I should enjoy my Omakase berry?

- Actually, so usually strawberries have more sugar concentration towards the tip.

So if you want consistency, I recommend you bite it from the side.

- Oh, really?

- So you have both the sweet side and the less, you know, sweet.

- Oh, interesting.

- At the same time.

- That's a connoisseur's tip.

All right, let's try it.

The fruit just melts in your mouth.

- Yes, so this is actually a little bit softer than your probably traditional strawberries.

And the other characteristic is it has a very strong aroma.

- Like this is all you need is actually a bite.

So your mission really was just to produce the best strawberry possible.

And how does this rival the strawberries that you grew up eating in Japan?

- So I'm actually very confident to say that these are, if not better, as good as the best strawberries in Japan.

When people hear strawberries in Japan, right, strawberries is...

It almost represents a moment of celebration.

And because they're beautiful, because they're so sweet and they're not...

They're usually not the cheapest fruit out there, Japanese people use strawberries for celebrating things.

So Christmas, birthdays, if something special happens, you know, you'll share a strawberry, a bowl of strawberry with your family.

So as a kid, you know, growing up, if I came home and there was a bowl of strawberry on the dining table, I would guess, you know, something had happened that day.

Thank you.

- It's beautiful.

(gentle music) - I envision that in the next, you know, 20 to 30 years, most crops that currently... That can be grown in a greenhouse or a glass house will be grown in a vertical farm, because... Not only because it's gonna be more sustainable, but it's actually gonna be cheaper and it's gonna be tastier and better.

(gentle music continues) Smells really nice.

- Yeah.

- I think our berries are there and then also upstairs.

- Oh, okay.

Well, let's take a look over here.

That's so huge to have it here.

No, it really is.

There they are.

So what is the shelf life for your berries versus like, conventional?

- So if they don't get bruised or damaged, our strawberries actually last for a month.

- A month.

- And the reason is... You know, the reason why most produce get bad is because they have bad like germs and bacteria on them.

- And it's the packaging, right?

It's like how people store them in the fridge.

- Exactly, right.

So because where our strawberries are grown in a very sterile environment, it has almost nothing on them to rot.

- Mm.

- So they last...

It actually lasts really, really long.

When we first started the company, Brendan and I, we were thinking through different types of names and we ultimately landed in Oishii for two reasons.

One, we wanted to, you know, let everyone know that this is a Japanese product, Japanese heritage, and even Japanese culture.

At the same time, you know, we wanted to promise to our customers that every single product that they buy from Oishii is oishii, is delicious.

(gentle uplifting music) (gentle uplifting music continue