(dramatic classical music) (dramatic orchestral music) - [Narrator] In every hero's journey, there is a call to adventure.

It is here where he must meet and overcome whatever obstacles and challenges lie before him.

The hero crosses the threshold into the world of risks and danger.

Yet, with courage and skill, the reward is boundless opportunity.

(dramatic orchestral music continues) (curious electronic music) (head creaks) (pineapple whooshes) (face whirs) (lively rock music) (eyeball yoinks) (head creaks) (curious electronic music) - So that big blue building on the corner was my first apartment.

It was when I was like 19.

So maybe 2002.

I literally moved into my best friend's closet space and slept under my clothes.

- [Camera Person] So was it a long decision-making process to come out here or was it just totally spontaneous?

- No, it was not a long decision.

There was not a long decision-making process to move out here.

While I was laying on my couch one night just watching TV, I'd just been working at the optometrist's office all day, like I wasn't playing music.

My friend called me and said that, "I know you're interested in food, you should come out here.

There's a culinary school."

Like that was it, and I moved here, and I never moved back.

And it took me about two years to visit Oklahoma, about a year and a half to go back.

Yeah, 'cause I was just in it, really happy being here.

(curious electronic music continues) San Francisco's become a place where you can just be weird.

That's all I really wanted.

It was like one of the first times in my life where I felt like I had a new prospect or a new life opportunity.

Yeah, it's just weird walking down here.

I haven't walked up here in like, I don't know, in eight or nine years probably?

(customers chatter faintly) Well, it's this bus stop right here.

So, it was so vivid.

Like it comes, I remember it so clearly.

I got off, I had my stuff, and I'm not quite sure I even dropped it off.

I think I just went over there and walked in.

(enchanting electronic music) (bells tingle) They just sat me down, and this lady kept speaking to me in Korean, and I was just like, "I don't know, like just I'll have whatever, whatever you think."

I guess I should order what I got.

I had the number four, which is, it's amazing.

And then I had the, yeah, the number 64.

So if you come here, you gotta get those two things.

It's the best.

I mean I think they always treated me like I was their nephew or something like that.

Like one lady who was really religious and was always like, "You gotta go to church."

And I was like, "I've gone to enough church."

And then the other one was like, "Make sure you stay in school."

I was like, "Yeah, I'm in school."

So it was like, yeah, it was that kind of vibe.

(enchanting electronic music continues) Oh yeah, this is the one.

Thank you.

This is the first Korean food I ever had.

There's something about this meal that embodied my time in San Francisco where it was like things that were very foreign, but didn't feel foreign at all.

You know, things that I never had or experienced before, but when I experienced 'em, it just felt like I was supposed to, or it just felt very natural and organic and genuine.

That's what San Francisco was, that newness.

(customers chatter) Oh, man.

(laid-back electronic music) Even though I'd broken the seal of what Korean food was, I was still eating on a very basic level.

I mean you taught me a lot about Korean - That's right.

- When we talk about Korean barbecue, right?

Everyone thinks of bulgogi.

- Everyone thinks of kalbi.

But in Korea, samgyeopsal is the most popular.

- What is it?

Explain what it is.

- Samgyeopsal is literally just pork belly without any seasoning.

Everything else comes on the side and you dip it.

- Because as a chef you're trained to season the meat as early as you can.

That's not what it's all about.

- It's not about that.

It's about the freshness of the pork belly.

- No salt, no anything.

- Nothing on, yeah.

- One of the things I've seen them doing is they crosshatch score it.

(laid-back electronic music) I mean the thing about Korean food that I love, and it has influenced me so much and how I cook and eat, is that it's all about like the sum of its parts, right?

So it's not just about making this meat taste super salty, but it's about having all these other embellishments that really complement and bring out the flavor in something.

(meat sizzles) - [Youngmi] Danny and I would eat something that's like this, medium, but if you try to eat this in the Korean restaurant.

- They get mad at you.

- They would probably hit you.

- They wouldn't hit you, but.

- I'm just kidding.

They hit some.

- I've never been hit at a Korean restaurant, which is good.

- They would swoop in like, "No."

- One of the fun things that we always do together is make each other wraps.

Oh, you told me the story about when you were a kid and your mom would make you a little ssam like.

- Yeah, but we gotta make the sauce first.

- Yah, we gotta make the sauce first.

(enchanting electronic music) - So all I'm doing is miso paste and gochujang, and they mix it.

Ssam means wrap.

So it's meant for that.

Sesame oil dip is the classic dip for pork belly and just like a handful of Maldon salt.

- Sesame leaves are one of the most important things that make Korean food taste like Korean food in Korea.

They're fermented in this chili sauce.

But this is the Chongqing chicken wing spice.

- Over potato chips.

- My favorite snack.

(enchanting electronic music continues) And then we can eat, right, finally, 'cause I'm just starving.

- I'll make you one Danny.

- I'll make you one.

- I'll make you a good one, though.

Kind of the beauty of this dish is that you can use whatever sauce you want.

I'm just gonna make you a secret.

- [Danny] I know what you like.

- What do you think?

- Mm-hmm, it's really good.

- Yeah, you gotta put it in my mouth.

- Here it goes.

I think yours is better than mine.

Because I didn't take the stem off.

- No, you're supposed to do that by yourself.

- You're supposed to kiss the person when you put it in their mouth.

- That's really good.

(cars whoosh faintly) (gentle electronic music) - One taco, please.

- Hola.

- Hola.

(Danny speaking in Spanish) - [Worker] How's it going?

(Danny speaking in Spanish) - [Worker] Thank you.

- In San Francisco, you go to certain places for burritos, you go to certain places for other things.

But for tacos I come here, I get the tripe and I get the grilled chicken, the pollo asado.

I think the thing that gets me is the salsa, the red salsa here is this crazy thing I've never been able to quite decode, but like, I can't.

- Hey.

- Oh, gracias.

I can't get over it.

I always eat this.

(gentle electronic music) It wasn't until recently, maybe like four or five years ago, that I realized that this was the truck, this specific exact truck was the one that Anthony rented and did the first Mission Street Food popup.

It's very historic.

(gentle electronic music continues) - Yeah, that actually is not the right truck.

(stirring electronic music) - [Narrator] This is the story of Mission Chinese as told by everyone except Danny Bowien.

The year is 2010.

The city is San Francisco.

- The whole San Francisco dining scene is very safe at that moment in time.

- [Narrator] Line cook Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz tire of working in other people's restaurants.

They observe a taco truck near their home that was only in use a couple days a week.

- Why don't we just try to rent that on Thursday and we'll just do something fun?

- [Narrator] On the corner of 21st and Mission, they start selling very fancy, very delicious sandwiches.

- It was such a completely ad hoc operation.

We're giving you PB and J like you've never had it.

- First day we had made 80 sandwiches and sold out.

Next week we made 120 and then 160 and then 220.

- [Narrator] In only a matter of weeks, they decide to move the operation indoors.

They scan the Mission for spaces and find one in the most unlikely of places: a Chinese takeout spot called Lung Shan.

- So I worked in the Mission for five or six years before this started and I'd never once set foot in this restaurant.

- It was Mission Chinese inside of Lung Shan restaurant.

(Liang speaks in a foreign language) - [Narrator] It is a popup like no other.

Lung Shan cooks are cooking classic Chinese takeout, while, once a week, rising star chefs from the Bay Area turnout takes on dishes they had only read about in cookbooks.

- It was like the most fun dinner party you can have.

- There's that buzz, there's that anticipation, there's that chatter.

- It's five o'clock and there's like 50 people outside.

- There's a lot of middle finger in Mission street food.

But we don't have to follow the rules of how to make a restaurant.

- [Narrator] Enter Danny Bowien and his take on Sichuan cuisine.

Mission Street Food becomes Mission Chinese Food.

The lines are long and the food is hot.

- Oh, I left there feeling like I was on drugs, 'cause I never had that kind of spice before.

- We've had people think they're having a allergic reaction.

She's like, "No, no, no.

- No, no, no.

- It's just the Sichuan.

It's just the Sichuan.

- And you're gonna be fine.

Get a beer.

- It was numbing my brain and like numbing my gums, and I was like, listen, we all like to party, but like what's going on?

- [Narrator] As initial hype turns to praise, an institution is born and a chef finds his calling.

- Danny has a lot of heart and a lot of electricity and power and heat.

All those things create, I dunno, this perfect storm of deliciousness.

There is an energy to this food.

It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's also serious as hell.

- I don't think that anybody foresaw that it would become the kind of incredible thing that it ended up becoming.

(bells tinkle) (Liang speaking in a foreign language) (Sue speaking in a foreign language) - I think the key to being a really good chef is having friends that are really good chefs that you can learn from.

- But also that you feel comfortable talking about ideas with.

- Yeah, I mean the funny thing is is like, I tell people this a lot, but it's the reason I cook Chinese food is 'cause, Brandon, you had all these books.

I remember you gave me me Fuchsia Dunlop's books.

Books that are just in Chinese.

- Kylie Kwong's books and.

- Yeah, it's like someone giving you a record collection and being like, "Okay, if you wanna be cool here, just listen to this music."

And then all of a sudden you have this collection and someone has already like gone through and curated all those.

- And played.

Curated, yeah.

- Exactly, so that's why, for all intents and purposes, the reason I make Chinese food is Brandon Jew.

- That's just.

(laughs) - What's the funny thing is we end up cooking chicken together quite a bit.

- All the time.

(laid-back funk music) Me and Danny, we went to Paris together and we're really excited about this dish and wanted to have it.

- Did we?

We didn't have it.

- We didn't have it because we couldn't afford it.

- Yeah.

Oh my god.

This was how many years ago?

It wasn't even that long, like eight, nine years ago, 10 years ago maybe.

- Yeah.

- The idea of this dish is quite simple.

This is a dried pig's bladder.

- Yep, just soaked overnight to reconstitute it.

It's a big whoopy cushion, I know.

- Yeah, it looks insane.

- This is the first sous vide, poaching something with something around it to protect it.

- The real question is, would people freak out more about getting their food cooked in a plastic bag or a pig bladder?

- That's true.

To save a little bit of time, we're gonna get these thighbones out of here and then we will just stick a bunch of ginger in there.

- I'll hold the bag.

- Okay, cool.

- [Danny] Traditionally, they lard the breasts with butter and truffles.

- Totally, this version's gonna be chicken fat to substitute for the butter.

Ginger to substitute for the truffle.

- [Danny] You want the same amount of broth?

- Yeah.

This is like tetherball kind of like.

Let's flavor this water, 'cause this thing isn't like, I wouldn't say it's the most pleasant smell, but- - [Danny] I mean, it smells like a pig bladder.

- I got some white pepper.

That's some lapsang smoked black tea.

- [Danny] Yeah, kinda- - And then just some black cardamon.

- [Danny] It smells good now, man.

- [Brandon] This is gonna take about an hour.

- This is only like the second time I've made it and the first time I've done it correctly, so.

- Were you there that night when we did a Mission Street Food when we did it?

- I was there that night, 'cause I came in, I remember I got outta service and I came by and I was like, "What the hell is going on in here?"

- [Danny] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(peculiar classical music) That was the night, that at that point, no one was putting it on YouTube how to do this.

So we were literally just looking at pictures and being like, "I think this is how they do it."

(printer hums) Were you present when we were trying to figure this dish out?

- [Brandon] No, I came in and I opened the rice cooker, because I was like, "This is where the rice is gonna be."

And it was just a bunch of pig bladders bobbing.

- Yeah, bobbing around.

- You noticed.

- [Danny] But in the lead up to that, the best part of the story is we didn't know that you were supposed to get dried pigs bladders and we got fresh pig bladders.

And Anthony is like, "Oh the pig bladders are here.

I'm gonna mess around with 'em."

And I was like, "Okay, cool."

We were like working with like a coin purse.

I look over and their cheeks are just like, so inflated with air and you're just blowing at the prep sink.

- [Brandon] Finally we had the idea of using the faucet like a water balloon.

It was actually working.

They were inflating.

- [Danny] Okay, but then I'd have a little hole in it but it would just shoot outside.

- [Brandon] 75% success rate.

- [Danny] But it worked and it was amazing.

I mean people ate it and they're like, "That was good," but nobody understood.

(camera snaps) I'm so proud of those because instead of sitting around and complaining about a problem, we just were proactive, and we were like, "Let's just do what makes us happy."

And that was kind of what Mission Street Food was.

It was like we wanted to eat this food so we would just try to make it.

(peculiar classical music ends) (gentle electronic music) Yo, you can do the honors.

- [Brandon] No, you do the honors.

- [Danny] Oh man, it smells so good.

- Look at all that juice.

- Look at that.

- [Brandon] To me, it smells like sausage.

- Yeah, oh yeah, it smells like Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage.

- Yeah, because of this casing.

(laid-back jazz music) Strain the juice so that we can glaze the chicken Fermented black bean.

- [Danny] Oh wow.

- And black garlic.

(laid-back jazz music continues) Ramps, they're just lightly pickled.

White scallions, green garlic schmaltz.

- [Danny] Oh man, really smell the garlic.

- Do you want to dust over some of this stuff?

Scallions and Meyer lemons and then it gets dehydrated.

Mm.

- Oh my god, it's so good.

So soft.

- It's super soft.

It's silky.

- Yum.

- [Brandon] Velvety - You think about now where we're at like in our careers.

It's weird, and, it's not weird, it's just like.

- We're grown up.

- I got into this because I wanted to cook.

I have a passion for food.

I didn't come into the food industry thinking I'm gonna be a business person, own my own restaurant.

- Absolutely.

- Why I'm here now, because you were like, look at this.

Look at what, look at how cool Chinese food is.

- Yeah, but you also, I mean you took those ideas and you made it into your story.

(enchanting electronic music) - The first time I came here, I'd been out partying.

It was really cold and I felt really sick.

I could not go to culinary school that day.

So I cut up this alley, and I heard the sound of a restaurant, like a busy restaurant.

I didn't really know what to order.

I pointed at the table next to me.

I just said, "I'll just have that," which is the chicken soup with giblets and liver and all of the off parts.

(disorienting electronic music) I started eating it and I was hooked.

(enchanting electronic music) That restorative broth, all that protein.

Like you're waking up, you have this hot steam from the soup in your face, and then you're eating these slippery rice noodles with spice, salt.

My mind isn't wandering when I'm eating this meal, or when it does, it's always about food.

(customers chatter) (Danny sips) And I can't tell you how many times I've sat here and thought of menu items.

(dramatic electronic music) (water bubbles) (wok slams) I'm calling this tingling lamb noodle soup version 7.0.

(laid-back hip hop music) There was no reason I should have taken the lamb soup off the menu at Mission Chinese Food.

I just got kind of bored with it, and I was like, "We just have to do better stuff, bigger stuff."

But I really didn't consider my customers, and I didn't really get around to making something better 'cause I got caught up with New York.

This dish, I think, hopefully will make its way onto the menu in San Francisco.

Started by just charring off some onion and some ginger.

With the onions, you really wanna get 'em to this point where they're blackened, kind of.

I don't even peel this off.

That's just gonna add sweetness to the broth.

Adding in this ginger.

(laid-back hip hop music continues) We're always trying to build flavor and depth.

So I like to take a piece of kombu.

All this white stuff here is glutamic acid.

So it's basically natural MSG.

And I think that adds a lot of depth to the soup, so I'm not gonna wipe that off.

The base flavor should be very clean and light, especially with something like lamb is so strong.

So this is the bottom flap of the lamb breast.

One thing I found that helps a lot is mustard.

And usually you use yellow mustard, like French's mustard, to get your rub to stick to the meat.

I like Dijon mustard a lot, and this is the largest container of Dijon mustard I've ever seen in my life.

You think it's gonna be a very strong flavor, but it's not.

After the charring, and then the braising, it gets very light, so.

The rub is really simple, I like salt and pepper for lamb.

There's a little bit of Sichuan peppercorn and cumin in here.

If you want, you can put sugar in here.

It might help get a little bit more caramelization.

So that's pretty much ready to go.

What we'll usually do in the restaurant is we'll let this sit on a rack in the lock-in for a day.

There's a lot of fat in lamb, so you're gonna get flareups.

I'm not too worried about that either.

(meat sizzles) You don't have to hammer this, you just want to kind of establish some sort of a seal on it like that.

This is probably close.

I don't really want to take it too far.

It takes about three hours to simmer.

(tense electronic music) (text thuds) All right, so it's cooked forever, right into a dredge of cornstarch and salt and pepper.

You know that's a sign of doneness, it's like jiggly.

You can put your finger and just push it through the fat and it tears pretty easily.

You can just shred it up and put it back into the soup.

But I really want to create something special that you really can't get at another Vietnamese or Chinese restaurant.

Since it's already hot, you're not looking for it to get hot on the inside.

Just looking for the outside to form that nice crunchy crust.

And then you wanna fry this.

(funky electronic music) And then yeah, we can start seasoning the soup.

You should have a pretty deep color.

That just comes from the roasted meat cooking in there, the burnt vegetables cooking in there.

I add a little bit of mushroom powder for umami, some salt, 'cause it definitely needs salt.

When you're seasoning a soup stock, you really want it to be salty, because by the time you add the noodles, which will have a little water on them, by the time you add your herbs and your whatever you're adding to it, it kind of loses it.

And then I'll just add like a tiny bit of sugar, which is just turbinado sugar.

It's very important to not use a ton of fish sauce.

Less is more and then you can always add more, but don't add too much.

The first thing you should taste is lamb.

And then it should go like sweet, umami, salty.

It shouldn't be lamb and salty.

So the lamb's all finished, it should be really crispy.

It should feel like a chicken fried steak.

Top with some more of that seasoning that I seasoned the lamb with initially.

If you're eating a bowl of soup or a big piece of meat, after the third or fourth bite, if there's not something new that you're working towards, it kind of gets boring to me.

I love anchovies.

I like to hide these so people don't even know that they're there.

These are just iced onions.

And then this is rau ram, it's a really aromatic Vietnamese herb.

Rice patty herb, and then some sawtooth herb.

Some more of this powder.

Thai chilies on top just for some excitement throughout the eating experience.

I love these bread and butter pickles.

And then last but not least, I'm gonna cook the noodles and then plate this whole thing.

So instead of using rice noodles, we're using these things.

These are made out of green bean starch.

It's basically a cellophane noodle.

It's the same texture as a red fresh rice noodle, but it's not as fragile.

And then this is temomi ramen.

As a shout-out to Turtle Tower in San Francisco, I'm also gonna stir fry them really quickly with the ginger from the soup.

So we're not just throwing the ginger out.

(gentle electronic music) There's no tingly part yet, but there will be.

And we're adding green Sichuan peppercorns.

Toast those, add some oil to them.

And that's it.

Tingling lamb pho version 7.0.

This dish is all about learning.

I mean, if you have a reason to change something, change it.

In the beginning it was just me being immature, you know?

And I think realizing that and then coming to a place where you realize you gotta make people happy.

(ethereal electronic music) (staff chatter faintly) Something that's so special about food is you can re-feel a feeling that maybe you haven't felt in a long time.

(staff chatter) That kind of just surprised me just now.

I mean, I got a little emotional because that day that I landed here was a huge day at first for me, that I didn't even, until we're talking about it right now, I didn't even think of it like that.

It's like all like, moving away from home, first apartment, first time eating Korean food.

I mean, I've just been through so much since then, you know what I mean?

Like in good ways and bad ways, it's like it's just weird that that.

I just feel like that reminds me of being young and excited.

Like you can't relive those moments all the time.

That will always mean something to me, because it reminds me of being able to make a choice.

That's the craziest thing about going out on your own is it's you're risking, you have to trust, you have to live and die by like what you choose.

(ethereal electronic music ends) (customers chatter faintly) (cord clunks) (box whooshes) (stirring electronic music) (stirring electronic music continues) (stirring electronic music continues) (intense electronic music)