- [Ken] I like to say
we're like the Cheesecake Factory of Central Square.
I mean, we can have Grandma eating one thing.
We could have some punk rock kid eating another thing.
We wanted a restaurant where we could cook
whatever the (bleep) we wanted to
any time we wanted to.
It's, I think, every chef's dream
to not be stuck in a genre of saying,
"Oh, this is an Italian restaurant.
"We need to cook Italian food.
"This is a Spanish restaurant.
"We need to cook Spanish food."
We wanted the no-rules genre to have a restaurant.
People are always like,
"What is Little Donkey?"
And we want that.
We want people talking about our restaurants
and we want it to come up in conversation
and we want it to be kind of thought-provoking.
We wanted a restaurant that was
the workhorse of a neighborhood.
- The development of the menu
has been great that way because
literally one of us might be traveling somewhere
or reading an article or talking to a friend
who's from another country
and then we can come in and be like,
"Hey, we're about doing this with this.
And instead of doing it this way, we can do it that way."
And researching it to know everything we can find out,
everything we can taste about a dish
and then making it our own.
And it's just so rewarding.
The Miso Banana Bread Toad in a Hole
is definitely one of those dishes that came from K.O.
That was one of those moments where I'm like,
"As much as I've known you, for as long as I've known you,
I still have no idea what's going on in your brain
because that just sounds odd."
- [Ken] Both of us love cooking breakfast.
Jamie loves eating breakfast.
I think it's his favorite meal of the day.
We wanted to create something that was
not the traditional type of breakfast.
So we were thinking,
"Maybe if could do something like banana bread,
but how can we make banana bread more savory?"
And so I was like, "Maybe if we try to put miso in it."
That kind of got that thought process going.
And then we're like, "Why don't we try a toad in the hole?"
Because there's nothing better than griddled banana bread
where it gets really caramelized and crispy on the outside,
and then that way the egg can kind of cook
right in the middle.
And then with the habanero sausage giving it something spicy
which it's one of my favorite sausages
he's ever come up with.
- It just came out so great and it's so interesting
and I think it's one of the epitome dishes of Little Donkey
because it sounds interesting,
it's thought-provoking, it's a little bit familiar.
And then all the flavors together
work in such a creative and interesting way.
It's sweet, it's spicy, it's rich, it's savory.
It hits so many different notes.
I don't think we've ever had a complaint about it.
(bell dings)
- [Jamie] Fried chicken is something that
I think most chefs really crave.
I mean I've heard some chefs that we're friends with
say that they order fried chicken on a menu
as a side every time they see it.
We love that really crispy Korean-style fried chicken
and we'd always talked about working on it a different way.
And then a friend of ours did a fried chicken sandwich.
It was like so Highbrow/Lowbrow.
We took his recipe, made it our own,
and just really nailed it and decided to put it
with things that we thought were craveable.
Avocado ranch because--
- [Ken] Why not? - Why not?
- Everybody loves ranch, everybody loves avocado.
- [Ken] And then we both love
that green papaya salad that you get in Southeast Asia.
It's almost like a slaw.
And put it on a Martin's potato roll
with some pickled jalapenos
to just give it one more texture and a little bit more spice
and that's it.
I have one a week.
- [Ken] Yeah, for me it takes
a lot of self-discipline to not.
- Avocado's healthy-ish.
- (laughs)
- Mixed with ranch. - On a Martin's potato roll.
- Maybe it's not healthy (laughs).
Back in the day when K.O. and I first met,
one of the things everybody did
was go to Chinatown late night.
I always fell in love back then
with dry-fried chow fun.
And there are some great noodle factories here
that make awesome chow fun noodles,
which are like a wide rice noodle.
We felt like Calabrian chiles have a lot of
the same spice and acidity as Chinese chiles do.
So we use Calabrian chiles.
We're like, "What's something that
you don't necessarily see a lot of times in a chow fun?"
So we thought, "Oh man.
A fried softshell crab on top of the chow fun
will add such a great juxtaposition of texture
and flavor of those soft, luscious noodles.”
"And then the crispy fried seafood."
So we went that route.
Little bit of black vinegar to hold it all together
and that dish came out pretty well.
- [Ken] That's a real chef-y version
of a Chinatown classic.
I don't know if chefs are envious
of having a restaurant kind of like this,
but I think it's a lot of pressure
to have a lot of different thoughts in your head
about cuisines.
Not all chefs have the kind of scatter-brains
probably that we have.
- A lot of chefs will come up and say
they have a specific way that they put their menus together.
And they're like, "Alright well this time of year
"this is my thought for this, this, and this."
And sometimes I'd like to think
that we were that organized.
But really what happens is
one of us gets excited about something.
We get fixated on it.
We come in, we start working on it.
And then somehow it evolves into whatever it turns into.
For us, it's just about making sure
that we represent enough different cultures.
So sometimes we'll sit down and say,
"There's too many of the same flavor profiles,
let's change this."
Sometimes we want to take classics,
but we want to make the classics
a little bit more thought-provoking.
So we add other ingredients to it that work,
that taste delicious, that other people
might not have thought to put together.
And you end up with razor clam and kielbasa casino.
Which-
- So good. - So good (laughs).