(light percussion music)
- This year, Panda Express celebrates 35 years
of its famous orange chicken
and the continuous innovation of American Chinese cuisine.
I met up with Chef Jimmy Wang
at one of their Manhattan restaurants
to experience an exclusive,
elevated tasting menu.
That's a session they put on three times a year
to explore innovation with real customers.
- We are often the first gateway to a taste
of Chinese cuisine.
We really had to think about
how we're gonna bridge the culture
and thinking about maybe from one ingredient,
one recipe at a time.
For example, when the cuisine started, there's a lot
of ingredients that wasn't able to come to this country.
We had to adapt, we had to think about the taste,
the pallets of the locals,
and then we had to find a way to
substitute those ingredients,
find a way to make it even more accessible, and,
but of course had to be a memorable experience as well.
- Can you give me an example or a few examples
of the kinds of ingredients that you can't find in China
and the way you substituted them in, you know,
Panda Express recipes historically?
- Beef and broccoli, for example,
the broccoli itself, right.
In China,
broccoli wasn't a well-known vegetable to use in a recipe.
It's a, a vegetable called gailon.
It's what we call Chinese broccoli.
But coming over to the states,
as the recipe continue to evolve,
hey what's that crunchy, bitter, delicious vegetable
and that really works well with beef?
Broccoli.
- Tell me about the development
of your famous orange chicken.
- The story is that 1987, our head chef at the time,
Andy Kao, had a chance to travel with our founder,
Andrew Cherng, to Hawaii.
And you know, our founder kind of challenged him
with a fun assignment.
Hey chef, could you create a dish that is gonna be known
in the region or
really loved by the region?
And citrus just caught his attention because our founder
is from Yongzhou, China,
and in his province,
they do a lot of flavoring around sweet, tangy,
maybe a touch of spice.
Of course, the most important piece is the fried chicken.
- [Yasmin] Panda Express likes to keep recipe ideas fresh
by experimenting with new flavors and dishes all year round.
The fast food chain is always experimenting
at their innovation kitchen in California
and they even hold the 30 day chef camp where
chefs explore flavors, ingredients and origins
to create new dishes and in-store events
where customers can experience an elevated menu
with an American twist,
like the one I had.
- We're actually stuffing that with Katz Deli's pastrami,
that's our wagyu beef dumpling.
And then of course we got our first round of the fry
on our orange chicken,
but we're gonna have to refry it again
because we want that extra crisp.
We decide to go back
to the original recipe of bone in orange chicken.
We want people to kind of get their hand dirty again.
- I feel like a scientist.
- Yes.
All right?
- That's really good.
- That's good, right?
- So what other innovations are we gonna see coming up
from Panda Express?
- One of the things that we're really excited about
is actually technology.
We're thinking about how are we gonna advance
and really help our operation.
We are working with robotics now.
There's over 200 some locations within this country
that we have a robot wok
actually cooking our fried rice and Chow Mein.
- Oh, wow, so it's no longer a chef there
kind of tossing it.
- The chef's still needed
because we do want to make sure that there's still
the human element.
The chefs are there to add in the ingredient
a specific moment, specific time
to ensure the product is consistent.
It tastes delicious, but it's the labor, right?
It's the force, it's the
I have one after another,
multiple badges a day.
But now the robot's gonna do that.
- The future is now.
(gentle techno music)