- It's a little challenging to cook for New Yorkers
because they have pho and they have ramen
and, of course, they have beautiful spaghetti.
So how do you really sell to the New Yorkers
this delicate flavor of chicken broth mixian,
you know, rice noodles?
It's not al dente, it's not chewy.
It's just slippery.
In the beginning, people can't really figure it out.
If you eat it a few times
you get this aromatic, deep flavor but very light,
like a ballet dancing on the tip of your tongue.
I think people have this misunderstanding
about Chinese food.
I was born in Chengdu, so Sichuan.
Hometown for beautiful, delicious, spicy food.
And panda.
And then I moved to Macau, this crazy Portuguese,
African, Cantonese-inspired place.
Chinese food is inspired from a melting pot.
Nothing that you think is good, authentic Sichuanese food
is just from that region for thousands of years.
It's always from different people bringing different things
because everything tastes good when it's cross-cultural.
This restaurant, we make mixian noodle.
It's a rice noodle from Yunnan.
I love it because it's not too stuffy.
It's bouncy texture, it's easy to slurp.
It's just fun to eat.
It doesn't really have a lot of taste.
A hint of sourness.
It's a spaghetti shape but you can eat it stir-fry,
cold, dry, broth.
That's what we make here.
We have this Grandma Chicken Mixian that I was inspired
in this old town called Lijiang.
And there's this tiny shop, the only dish that they do
is chicken broth with rice noodles.
I eat there probably seven times in five days, if not more.
I still love that place so much.
When I first saw the chicken confit
in that little store, it's in a giant wok.
I was really shocked and happy because I always thought
that you cook chicken in its own fat, that it's French.
I never know in far, far away China,
this old lady cook it in the chicken fat.
I love that the Chinese also cook it with chicken fat.
From that, I made our Grandma Chicken Mixian,
which is our most popular bowl of rice noodles.
It's a chicken confit.
Then we cook the chicken legs with the chicken fat.
Then house pickles, fermented chili, roasted chicken broth
that we make for two days of cooking.
Black sesame garlic oil that represents
the blackness of the chicken.
Then beautiful flowers.
So we have this Mala Chicken.
It's spicy chicken salad, spicy pickles,
spicy chicken broth.
Three different kind of spiciness:
acidic spice, aromatic spice, and then fermented spice.
So that is my love for the Sichuan-influenced region.
The Mala Chicken is the same as
what we serve as Ghost Chicken.
It's called Ghost Chicken because it's a direct translation
from guǐ jī, "ghost chicken."
The people worship ancestors, and then after the ceremony
they shred the chicken, make a salad out of it.
So we have that salad, we put it in the noodle with pickles,
cucumbers, and four different kinds of seasoning.
And then we have chilis -- crisp, fermented chili --
and then fried shallots.
So it's a little bit of numb-tinginess,
a little bit of sweetness, acidity, and spiciness.
So all that goodness, and it's served cold.
It's good for summertime, good for someone
who's craving for cold noodle.
So I went to Chengdu for a week
and I've been eating a lot of food.
And all of them are mostly spicy of different kinds.
My cousin that took me to eat all this food,
she's like, "You gotta eat this ice jelly."
"Let's have ice jelly before, let's have ice jelly after."
I love the ice jelly so I'm like,
"We must introduce the ice jelly
and see if people like it here."
It's made from this fruit seed called Nicandra
or the apple-of-Peru.
So it's from Peru long time ago
and then they introduced it to that region of China
Because it's humid, it's hot, they flourish there.
It's a jelly but it dissolves in your mouth magically.
It's so refreshing.
And I add black rock sugar syrup,
a few different kinds of rose-infused syrup,
osmanthus, that smells like honey.
It's a dried flower.
Basil seeds, toasted sesame, and some lime.
And then crunchy peanuts.
We want you to cool yourself down
after this spicy, exciting meal.
We grew up in this household that's obsessed with food,
so I grew up loving mixian.
Every time during summer holidays, winter break,
I go back and I will always eat a bowl of mixian.
My mom knows that's my favorite thing.
So every time my friends looking for me at home,
she will be like, "Oh, she went to eat mixian."
"So just go find her in one of those rice noodle places."
I think, when we first opened in East Village
we are the only shop in Manhattan.
There's a shop in Brooklyn,
then they also have a second store in the West Village.
But after we are open for maybe five to eight month,
there's like about seven to 12 rice-noodle shop popping up.
Most of them are mixian.
Some of them are from other regions of China.
That's a great thing, right?
People start to bring more diversity,
different kinds of cuisines or type of food
to share with people here.
I love it.