- I'm Janae Price, and welcome to Ride With Me,
the show where we talk to people we love
- Here are my suggestions.
(Janae laughs) - about the places they love.
I feel like Sweeney Todd.
Today, we're catching up with comedian and podcaster,
Youngmi Mayer, to hear some of her recommendations
for New York City's Chinatown.
- The broth is so good. I like dream about it.
- And I'll be heading there myself.
The birds! To check them out.
They're so cute. What are their names?
- This is Tongko, and then this one is Wimbledon.
- So come along and Ride With Me.
Thank you so much again for talking to us today.
- Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.
- Tell us where you're gonna be taking us today.
- I'm gonna take you to my favorite neighborhood
in New York City, Chinatown in Lower Manhattan.
- Tell me what Chinatown means to you.
- So, I moved to Chinatown in the summer of 2020.
Big part of the reason that I moved to this neighborhood
was because I was living in another part of Manhattan
and I felt unsafe.
I was verbally harassed, I think, two times at that point
and I remember taking my son to school once
and like one of the people were like,
"Oh, are you sure everyone in your family is healthy?"
Like the week before lockdown.
And I was like, "Why are you asking me that?"
Like, I know I'm Asian, but I didn't like secretly go
to China like last week.
That contrast is like what really hit me.
I was like, oh my God, like I was living
with a lot of tension that I wasn't even aware of
until I came to Chinatown.
- Thank you so much for sharing.
Can you take us to our first location?
- Sure.
So Dreamers cafe is the cutest little cafe.
It's in a very quiet part of Chinatown.
- [Janae] Hello, can I pet you? Thank you very much.
- And it's owned by this really lovely,
cool, hip couple, Danny and Sandy.
- You can ask for his paw. - Paw? Oh.
- High five, high five, high five.
- Oh, that's so cute. - Aw. (laughs)
- What I really like about Dreamers
is that it is on a quieter street in Chinatown
so I like to go to Dreamers
just to have like a quiet little drink.
Sandy makes like these little handcrafted drinks
and they're always really tasty.
During the winter, I don't like pumpkin spice lattes
'cause I think that they taste horrible.
What part of that tastes like a pumpkin? I don't know.
But during the winter,
Sandy was making her own pumpkin spice mix
with real pumpkins and that was so delicious.
I was drinking that every day
so that's why I suggested Dreamers.
- I think we're ready to move to our next location.
- Uh, yeah.
So Spicy Village is another classic Chinatown eatery
that everyone talks about.
It's very small, so it does tend to get very busy,
and they're known for their hand-pulled noodles.
I think their most famous dish
and my personal favorite is called the Big Tray of Chicken.
And it's a spicy like mala soup with chicken, obviously.
And it comes out in a big tray.
The broth is so good and so spicy.
For my son, I like to get him the hand-pulled noodles
with scrambled egg and tomato, which is very good.
- [Janae] That sounds really good. Thank you.
Bye. - Bye.
- Should we move on to the next place?
- So, the Chinatown Supermarket of Manhattan
is like my favorite store.
The basement starts off with like a live seafood section.
Once you go through that,
there's like a huge produce section.
And then upstairs is all like the pantry items.
The reason I started going there so often
is 'cause when I first moved to Chinatown,
I would go to H Mart and like all these Korean markets
to get Korean pantry items,
but then I realized that most of those things
can actually be found in the Chinatown Supermarket.
- [Janae] Ooh. These look so good.
And then we'll get lychee 'cause who doesn't love lychee?
What is your go-to snack?
- They have those, I don't know if you've seen them online,
but the Lay's potato chips that they only have in Asia.
They have all of those there.
They have like grilled shrimp, barbecue flavored Lay's.
I just get all of them, and I just eat them.
Yeah, that's definitely my go-to home movie night snack
for sure.
- [Janae] Thank you so much.
- [Cashier] Thank you.
- [Janae] Safety first, kids.
- [Youngmi] So, one of my favorite restaurants
in the neighborhood is Bacaro.
It's on Division Street between Kiki's and Forgtmenot.
It's just like such a beautiful restaurant.
- [Janae] Oh, the chandelier. Oh, so nice.
- And I know that they're famous
for their very romantic-looking downstairs area.
I really like just having a really nice glass of wine
and having like a meat and cheese plate.
- [Janae] Are there dishes just as romantic as the interior?
- All the food at Bacaro is so good.
I like dream about it, dream about it,
dream about it, dream about it.
There's a duck ragu dish that is so good, oh my gosh.
They have a really good steak.
They serve the steak with like this smashed
like a whole mini potatoes with rosemary,
and I learned how to make it at home,
and now I'm like, oh. (laughs)
- [Janae] The ragu. Ooh.
- It's funny 'cause all the people
that work in those restaurants,
we've just been like sort of friends for years.
But during the pandemic, I feel like we really formed
these like lifelong strong friendships.
- Bye, guys.
So Youngmi, tell us what you've got going on?
- So, right now, I host a podcast called "Feeling Asian".
Comes out every Wednesday, you can find it everywhere.
We also started doing a very excellent live show
that I'm very, very excited about,
and I really hope if you live in the New York City area,
you check it out.
We developed a very fun variety show game show concept
where the audience members joins in with celebrities
that we have on the show.
We just had one last week at The Bell House,
and I think we're gonna continue having them,
but please check it out.
- I also wanna note, your cats are adorable.
They seem to be having a fun time
grooming each other right now.
- They're so cute.