[MUSIC]
My name is Christian Navarro, I am
a Filipino American who grew up in Los Angeles. Some people can identify
with mac n cheese but uh the comfort dish for me is Kare-Kare It's uh ox
tail braised in peanuts and um like toasted rice achote garlic onions. And
um we just kind of cook it once low and slow until it kind of just melts It's
interesting as I cook it or I smell it cooking it kind of like transport me. I
remember my mom as a kid As kids me and my brother were kind of just
dealt a different kind of hand. We lived with my mom, she was amazing.
She was a riot She was partying one night and my dad knew that she was
using. He took my mom straight to the hospital he worked at. And She came
positive for cocaine so he gave my mom an ultimatum you know. Just told
my mom like If you don't cut it out, like you're never gonna see the kids
again. I wanted to go like pre-med and be a doctor like my dad. And that's
not what he wanted me to do, and he just wanted me to be happy. And
that's when I made a career change and I decided to start cooking. Um it
was interesting getting into Chicago. Everyone you meet works in a
restaurant out there. When I started working in the kitchen I've never
worked as hard as I ever worked in my life. And Like it goes day after day
after day so we worked hard and afterwards we'd play harder so we'd drink
you know. It put where I wasn't I didn't have to deal with my life but it
was easier to swallow or handle a lot of things that went on. I was first
introduced to cocaine was actually at the restaurant. You'd get like a bag of
cocaine it's like you start stretching it out trying to making it last but it's
never enough, I needed to get through work. The chef used call me
kamikaze, he used to shake my hand and look into my eyes. It was one of
those moments where like where it wasn't funny to me it was like I felt
ashamed you know when he would do that I think. I just wanted to stop. All
of it. When I'm toasting the rice and toast the peanuts you grind them.
You can throw it into a food processor, you can put it in a blender but I
wanted to do it in the motar and pestal. I think there is more of a
connection when you do something by hand. I wanted to go old school
bringing me back to that place where my youth and when I was innocent I
ended up following this girl back. California that's where it was. It's home
that's where I started off. You know that's where I thought redemption
was. She didn't tell me she had a boyfriend. After that I started to drink
again. It was always a cycle. It always happened. I was in Hollywood at
Bronson bar with my buddy. I was just too drunk to go home so I was like
went to go crash at his place which wasn't too far. And told me hey if you
stay at night I have to get up early in the morning. I was like oh what do you
have going on. He was like I have an AA meeting. He said there's some
really cute girls there so. Alright I might check it out. When I hear people's
stories I find myself in them. At my first AA a lady told her story. There
was a line where she said I was a dreamer and I am a dreamer. And I have
dreams and I want to do things and I knew if I was drinking it weren't going
to happen. It was like as if those words came straight up from inside me.
Because I've always been a dreamer always had big dreams. I knew there
was something more promising even when I was in Chicago. I knew my
dreams wouldn't come true if I continued to go where I was going and I
knew something had to change. For dessert, I am doing the bread pudding
what I love about it is where it comes from. It's like most of the time
you're making it with bread that has been laying around or just existed so
it's like unusable bread but you can reclaim it and make it something new
again. Give it a new life. I got sober May 15, 2012. I think the biggest gift I
got in my sobriety was being present. Everything is like just being stimulated
back into life. The highs are really high but I don't know it seems like the
heartbreaks are really hard but I'm more equipped to deal with it than I
ever have been. I just wanted to cook, I just wanted to I don't know what
else to do. I started to discover how much I loved cooking for others.
There's like that counterpart that's on the other end that just makes
everything come around ties around and everything becomes whole. I
didn't know I had something to offer. I really enjoyed making this meal for
my mom because it's the story of restoration it's a story of my childhood.
I wanted to bring those two together because I wanted to feel like I was
coming home again just being redeemed again Giving back a life that a life
that was free. And the main dialog in the Philippines is Tagalog. And there
is kind of a joke. And they say Um how do you say hello in Tagalog. They
say Kayena which means come eat.