- Hello, welcome to my kitchen.
My name is Andrew.
You might recognize me from the show Worth It,
where I'm usually tasting foods at different price points
with my pals, Steven and Adam.
Today, I'm attempting to recreate
one of my favorite things I ever had on Worth It,
the lychee and grape smoothie from Spoon By H.
This was in our Korean Soups episode.
At Spoon By H, everything is stunning,
from the classic Korean dishes, the desserts to the drinks,
everything has this sculptural flourish to it
that is so enticing.
You're afraid to consume before consuming it,
but then once you try it,
you realize there's so much more
than it even was in just your eyes.
This fits into something that I'm really curious in,
which is the fundamentals of why something tastes good.
Holy (beep).
With this lychee and grape smoothie,
I'm interested in how its visual presentation
enhances your experience in eating it.
So to start off, I'm speaking with Yoon from Spoon By H,
to learn more about how this drink is made.
Hey Yoon, it's nice to see you.
- Oh, hi, Andrew (giggles).
- It's funny that when I first
asked you about this smoothie,
you said it was really simple,
but then I'm looking at the steps.
There's whipped cream,
then you're stacking grapes, there's flowers.
And then even there's the little piece of paper
that says Spoon By H,
which, to me, is like a lot of effort for one drink.
- Every time we eat something, we eat it with our eye first.
- [Andrew] Right.
- I want to make everyone happy,
to give them special experience.
- To me, it's very unique to find a cafe like yours,
where the drinks are given
as much attention as the desserts.
- It's a little different culture.
In Korea, they do everything in one place.
In United States, boba place, they do just boba.
But when you go to Korea and get brunch,
boba milk tea, waffle, all together.
- Doing the grape stacking,
I think that's gonna be the most difficult part for me.
Do you have any advice?
- It's like a game, Jenga.
- Right, Jenga.
- So if it's your first time,
make your smoothie more icy,
'cause when you work your grape part,
if it's too long, smoothie's gonna be melt.
The whipped cream part is gonna be--
- Gonna sink down, right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so you have to do it really quickly.
- Thank you so much for chatting with me.
I'm gonna go and get started on making the smoothie.
- Thank you, thank you, I'm so excited (giggles).
- So we got our ingredients,
and the first thing we're gonna do today
is prepare an infused milk and a simple syrup
that will be in the smoothie, which we'll make tomorrow.
First off, let's look at a lychee.
I know that some people say lychee, some people say leechy.
I don't think that there's a wrong way to say it.
Kind of like a berry-looking thing.
Oh, can you hear that?
(lychee crinkles)
Very like dry paper type of exterior,
but then the inside is this beautiful,
translucent white flesh.
The smell is very melony.
Mm, very unique flavor,
kind of like rose water,
not too dissimilar from a grape, actually.
In fact, you could kind of close your eyes
and think that you were eating a grape
with a flower petal wrapped around it.
For our grapes, we're just using green grapes.
I know what a grape tastes like, but for the side by side.
It's very curious, the lychee almost tastes like
the bottom half of what the grape tastes like.
A grape and a lychee are the same note,
but the grape is a high note and the lychee is a bass note.
To then put those together can kind of represent
the same tonal similarity across a range.
(orchestral music)
Grapes.
So pretty much what we're gonna do
is start by slicing a bunch of grapes,
put them in this jar, cover with milk.
You know what's interesting about grapes,
despite being so juicy,
they also kind of make me thirsty.
I think that's called astringency,
and it's like the same thing that happens with a wine
that makes your mouth pucker.
I guess I'm gonna pour a bunch of milk
on top of these grapes now.
This feels so wrong to me for some reason,
but I guess it's not that,
this is probably how flavors of ice cream are made.
This feels like something I would do as a kid
and then get yelled at by my mom for doing,
but, hey, it's gourmet, mom, deal with it.
So there's actually also a secret ingredient for this step.
And are you also putting the (beep) in there?
- (beep) that's my secret, actually (laughs).
- That's your secret, okay, we don't have to put that in.
Yoon made me promise I wouldn't say,
so you're just gonna have to deal
with not knowing what I'm doing to this milk now.
Okay, so next up, we're gonna be making
a simple syrup with lychee,
and so I'm going to start by pitting a bunch of lychee.
Okay, welcome to the stove area.
For Yoon's syrup, half raw sugar, half agave,
an equal proportion of water, and the lychee.
And now we wait for it to boil.
The hot lychee has taken on
kind of like a roasted chestnut scent to it.
Okay, the syrup is cooled down,
and now we're just going to strain it.
We're also going to take the lychee that we boiled
and freeze it.
Syrup will go in the fridge,
and tomorrow we can make a smoothie.
So I remember from the soup video,
one of the most impressive features,
this tiny little Spoon By H paper logo.
So I'm gonna make my own little logo.
I'm not gonna call it Spoon By H,
because I don't think my version
is going to live up to theirs,
so I'm gonna give it Spoon By A.
Maybe I should do it a couple times.
Big top part of the S, that's important.
Penmanship is a highly underrated skill.
I think I can just use tip of my sharpest knife.
I think that'll work.
Next step is to portion some more fruit
before we get to the blending stage.
Does this look like my eyeballs?
Bleh.
When you cook by yourself, weird things happen,
just a fact of life.
These containers are a leftover from Spoon By H takeout.
The takeout amazing, highly recommend.
We did a video about it.
I now also need to slice grapes
for the decoration of the smoothies.
Start with just one grape at a time I guess.
This is probably the most crazy aspect.
I'm starting to think about the number of individual cuts.
For your average sized grape,
it's like one, two, three.
I need maybe 10 to 20 grapes just for the top,
so now you're looking at 30 individual cuts for one drink.
Okay, so it's time to start actually making a smoothie.
Handful of grapes.
Our infused milk, smells like milk.
Mm, a sweet melon nature to it.
We have our lychee syrup from yesterday.
Mm, it does have like a warm sweet flavor
the way that maple syrup does, for example.
Sure.
We also have the frozen leftover lychee from that syrup
and then just a few fresh lychee.
So this isn't in Yoon's recipe,
but something that I have to do in my kitchen.
'Cause I don't have the most powerful blender,
I've learned to pre-break my ice,
but it's okay because I have this suspiciously thick spoon.
This is not what Yoon does at the restaurant.
You gotta break a couple eggs to make an omelet.
Time to blend.
Sounds like I'm changing tires in a pit ring right now.
I just need to taste this to make sure
I got the proportions right.
Oh yeah.
Let's talk about my glass options.
This is the closest thing I could find.
This is a lot smaller, I know,
but it's still kind of that thicker tulip shape.
Working quickly now because this is icy.
Most of the volume.
A whipped cream cone for the grapes to sit on.
If you can tell, I'm kind of fricking nervous right now,
because this thing is melting.
I can't imagine doing this
in the restaurant setting to order.
Now I'm gonna start overlapping.
Ooh, but now I need smaller grapes, what?
You can't just use any slice that you, gah.
So right off the bat, I understand
that it looks way less impressive on a smaller scale,
which is crazy because the actual smoothie
is larger and has more grapes.
Oh, it's melting so much.
Okay, one other decorative element, which is flowers.
I'm just going to use individual petals.
When we had it in the soup episode,
Yoon's smoothie features these white flowers.
It's a seasonal thing,
so it's not always gonna be those flowers.
My cream is really melting.
I hate everything about this.
Yoon was like, "This recipe's too easy.
"I don't know why you wanna do this recipe."
Come on, this is easy?
I'm going to take one choice grape,
make an incision just in the top,
insert my Spoon by A.
- Okay, there's my melty smoothie.
There's my melty smoothie.
Okay, I'm gonna make this smoothie again.
Here's what I'm gonna do this time to try to optimize
for the circumstances I'm making it in.
Slice my grapes thinner.
Since I'm dealing with a smaller wine glass,
I want all of the features to be a little bit smaller.
Preselect my flower petals, arrange them by size and color
so that there is as little downtime
in the assembly phase as possible.
Smoothie, whipped cream,
grapes, much tighter pattern.
I don't know if working faster
really did smoothie a whole lot of favors.
Now for my capstone grape.
I think if I shoot it from some angles,
I can trick you into thinking it looks kind of good.
I am melting, and the smoothie is melting.
It's still delicious, yeah.
It's kind of like a similar enjoyment to having a milkshake,
but without all the heaviness of a milkshake.
I think we all know how I did.
It didn't really come out as visually stunning
as it does at Spoon By H.
I think there's something very unique
about putting a ton of effort
into one first impression moment with food.
I feel like I've just gotten a door crack view
into the amount of stuff that they do at Spoon By H,
and it is, it's mind-blowing.
And if you want an actually well-made smoothie,
as well as some delicious desserts and amazing savory food,
please visit them,
it's truly one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles.
Yeah, I mean, a milkshake will just put you to bed.
Not this, though.
(upbeat music)