-I know we're doing this for AAPI.
I just-- I cannot get down
with any kind of red bean dessert,
any Asian desert, unless it's a piece of fruit.
I am a notorious disliker, hater of red bean.
I can't-- I cannot do it.
-Dave, it's breakfast time.
-What a surprise to talk to you.
It's been only four hours,
-(laughing)
-But we're supposed to be making breakfast
and I'm making breakfast.
-Yeah, so this whole show we're making
is about the future of food.
And we did this breakfast episode, and I think it's like
there's the least robots in this episode
because, according to you,
the future of breakfast is already here.
-Well, I don't know.
I just feel like America has the worst breakfast in the world,
only maybe behind England.
-(laughing)
You're not all up the full English breakfast?
-To me, breakfast is about the power of marketing
and no other country that I know of
eats sugary cereal with crossword puzzles
and games and marshmallows.
When I travel the world,
breakfast is not what I think as breakfast food.
If I'm in Cambodia, noodle soup is what you eat.
I can get breakfast ramen in Japan.
I can get soba.
I don't know, when I grew up
eating breakfast in my household
with my Korean mom, we wanted American breakfast.
But, you know, the food that I ate the most
growing up as a kid?
Fried rice for breakfast
because it was the leftover rice from the night before.
-Yeah. -And honestly, like, I don't know why
I said, "I don't want that. Give me sugary cereal."
Because the only reason I wanted sugary cereal
is because it wasn't technically cool.
-I agree with you. When I was a kid, I was like,
I want to look like those kids in the commercials.
They look so happy.
But actually, in front of me, I had Chinese breakfast
and I was like, I don't want that.
Man, I wish I had that every day now.
-Now I want to eat dried squid ojingeo in the morning with,
you know, fried rice.
It's what I actually try to make my son every day.
But you know what he likes to eat? Sugary cereal.
-(laughing)
-For me, it's make everything super, super simple.
What I will never, ever under value
is the ease of a lot of the stuff that we grew up eating.
Open a box of cereal, put some milk in.
That I'm completely onboard with.
I love convenience.
I just don't love taste of it all the time.
But today, I want to show you stuff that I normally make.
And it's-- the thing about breakfast is
you can make anything and say, this is breakfast.
-So what are we making? -We're going to make some chawanmushi.
But I'm going to-- I'm going to start this right now.
Are you cooking along with me?
-I'm cooking along with you, man.
You're showing me how this goes.
-You better keep up because--
you better just ask, "Hey, Dave, what are you doing?"
Because I'm just going to be moving fast.
The other thing is,
I do cook rice in the microwave a lot.
I love the microwave. It's very clear.
And it's something I use all the time
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
-I think that the microwave thing is really interesting
because it's the same idea as this breakfast stuff.
Where like a lot of these ideas of the future of food
are already staring us in the face.
It's just reconsidering them in new ways, right?
-Yeah.
I joke that the microwave is the machine
from the future here in present day.
And people don't even understand
that it's like a time machine in their kitchen
and they just look at it.
Thinkin' they're gonna grow a third eye.
-(laughing)
-The recipe is seven eggs to a quart of liquid
and I don't measure anything at home.
And you know what I realized?
I don't think any Asian households--
brown people don't measure shit.
Do you agree with that blanket statement?
-I mean, we seem-- we do seem a lot less
concerned with measurements.
-Correct.
-How many eggs did you do, three?
-I did three, you should really--
I mean, really, this would work with just two, but.
-Wait, so what did you season with?
-I seasoned with a little agave.
The chawanmushi is salty enough so I'm not gonna add any soy,
but if you want to, go ahead.
But what I have that you don't have are some pine mushrooms.
So I will shave one on here.
-Aw, man! Let's see what I got.
-And what I'm going to do is if my son--
I had a bag of pine nuts.
My son took them somewhere
and they're probably stuck in the crevice of the couch.
I'm doing a telepathic mind meld with my wife
who's in the other room right now.
I'm like, "Please find the bag." One of these?
So let's just chat while that cooks.
-Do you think that like-- in America, eggs means breakfast.
Danny Trejo says it in the show.
"Anything is breakfast if you put two eggs on it."
Do you think that's universal?
-In Asia, no. Because eggs are in everything.
-Eggs are breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Do you think that like non-Asian people in America
eat as many eggs as we do for dinner?
-I'm the furthest from a cultural food anthropologist,
sociologist, historian.
I think it's much more of a--
just a meal thing. It's not a breakfast type of thing.
-Why would somebody say it's not breakfast?
-I don't know. Because it's different.
That's it. It's different.
Here's another thing--
breakfast for me has to taste like sesame oil.
-Has to taste like sesame oil. Interesting.
-Sesame oil on rice.
Whoo!
-CHRIS: I feel more hopeful, dude.
I feel like people can catch on to this.
-DAVID: No, you're wrong.
-(both laughing)
-And that's, that's the thing about it I think,
the importance of having a conversation like this
is to say that acceptance of difference in culture, in food,
whether it's AAPI, Hispanic, African-American,
anything that's not like traditionally like white American,
it's not going to happen overnight.
I can't force somebody that's never had this and say,
"You gotta like this."
They're never going to accept that.
I think it has to take conversation.
It has to say, "Hey, try this.
But if you don't like this, that's okay.
You're not a-- you're not a Philistine."
You've never had this before.
It's okay not to like something,
but it's learning to appreciate the difference.
It's learning to have that conversation.
And that's what has to happen.