(lively music)
- There is Chinese people that tell me
that I'm not Chinese enough, and then
there's like Americans that tell me
that I'm not American enough.
I didn't feel like one or the other either.
This whole experience has been
trying to find out my identity.
(lively music)
You know this restaurant wants to
keep celebrating the success of
the Chinese community that had to endure a lot.
And the food was a little bridge
from the Chinese culture and the community
here to the rest of San Francisco,
or the rest of America, really.
This whole like year-and-a-half, or two years,
has been about trying to figure out our direction.
And I think we're getting closer to
trying to find that out.
I remember going to Chinese restaurants
as a kid and eating sizzling rice soup,
and having sweet-and-sour pork,
and they were delicious, you know?
And I think that is a lot of the same
experience that a lot of Americans
have of Chinese cuisine.
This building, my uncle got married in
when it was Four Seas.
We would come to Chinatown for celebrations
and for big occasions.
When I first came back here to look at
the space and consider having Mister Jiu's
be here, a lot of those memories
of how it used to be started to come back,
and I remembered how exciting it was.
I wanted to continue to be a space
that people celebrated in, and people
got to experience a little bit of Chinatown.
We wanted to have the space still feel like
it was its old self, but just kind of
got its groove back, and is ready for
another generation of celebrating.
(upbeat music)
It's really hard for me to even
nail down what our food's gonna be like
now, versus like later, because
I hope it just gets better.
Our flavors are gonna keep developing,
and keep changing, and it's like a moving target.
But I think what I've tried to do as a chef is
try to really dissect the recipe.
Come back to real ingredients.
We make our own oyster sauce,
we make our own hoisin, Chinese mustard,
barbecue char siu sauce.
All those things are the building
blocks of our pantry.
That's kind of like what we are passionate
about, is really trying to dig
a little deeper into the cuisine,
and build our own pantry ourselves.
We want people to feel like this is Chinese food,
but it's just a little different.
The Bay Area ethos of farm-to-table,
and really understanding that every season,
every year, is very different from one to the next.
I mean it's really being a nerd for
like, Mother Nature, you know?
That's the part that's really rewarding for me
is to be able to have a deeper knowledge of...
really great ingredients.
And then also know that, that's what
we're feeding people, too.
When I go to the farmers market,
that's where I get the most inspiration.
Cantonese cuisine and California cuisine
are very succinct in that way.
You really just try to express the beauty
of that ingredient.
When I started to think about
a lot of the Chinese- American restaurants here,
they were not describing a region.
And our mission is to be able to
understand Chinese cooking traditions,
and also, the way we eat in the Bay Area,
and how those two come together.
The development of Chinese-American food was,
in part, because they wanted to
break down that racism a little bit,
by having people appreciate the food,
and think the food is delicious.
And come here and learn a little bit
about the culture and the people,
and feel a little more comfortable.
I think it's a success story.
(upbeat music)
I kept thinking about the role of this
restaurant in Chinatown.
One, I wanted it to be a restaurant
that locals felt represented San Francisco.
And some of the responsibilities I felt
as a chef in San Francisco, or a chef
as a Chinese-American, is to understand
the traditions of what is here.
The curation behind really fresh ingredients
is still something that is very ingrained
in Chinese cooking.
That was imparted on me from my grandparents,
but also from the chefs that I worked for.
I mean, my idea of regional Chinese-American food
would be something that is some traditions of
that region, mixed with the products of that region.
Just taking those flavor components
of what has been historically put together,
and then seeing what is available
and what is special to your region.
There's this other layer of American cuisine
that is developing. That's how I get inspired,
most of the time,
is try to think of how the mentality
of a Chinese chef would approach
those ingredients.
That's why I think it's super exciting
to think about cross-cultural exchanges,
and the future is more about these
cross-cultural exchanges that are
easier to access.
That's the exciting part of where
food's gonna keep growing.
(upbeat music)