- What are we doing today?
- Season five.
- Oh, sorry.
- Worth it.
- Welcome back.
A lot has changed.
I moved to New York.
There's Annie. She's helping produce the show.
- Anyway, this is the episode that I put together
for your return to Los Angeles.
We're going to be trying three large-format meats at three
drastically different price points to find out which one is
the most worth it at its given price.
- Worth it.
- Often times on menus you'll see your
appetizer section, your entrees.
Sometimes there's an extra special bonus zone where there
is a very expensive, intended to be shared dish and that's
kind of what inspired this episode.
- Eating big stuff like this, you need friends.
Why not eat that with my friends in this car today?
- Yeah, that was my idea.
That's not a novel thing.
- No, I came up with that just now.
- That was the whole point of this excursion.
(upbeat music)
- My name is David Kuo and I'm chef/owner of
Little Fatty and accomplice bar.
Today we're going to be eating Chinese barbecue pork.
- What kind of place is Little Fatty?
- It definitely appeals to your old-school Chinese-American
palate done with a little twist.
We have walnut shrimp.
We have orange chicken.
We also do super authentic stuff, like right now we have
dan dan mian.
We use the Chinese-American as like a gateway drug.
It gets you in the door but then you start ordering this
other stuff and then you trust us and order more stuff.
- We're attached to a bar. What's with that?
It's kind of unique to get craft cocktails or mixology
with Chinese food.
I think that's what sets us apart.
- What's your favorite drink on that menu?
- Right now, I think it's the Pearl Diver.
It's like this macadamia nut, rum and
brown butter and sugar mix.
You can put it on pancakes.
- [Andrew] Ooohh. Wow.
- [David] Yeah, it's that good.
- So this barbecue pork, what piece of pork is this?
- The knee. It's called a pork hock.
I love taking an underutilized cut of meat
and turn it into something magical.
I think that's the beauty of cooking.
We use a combination of Shaoxing, soy sauce, ginger, garlic-
- [Andrew] And how long does that braise for?
- About four to five hours.
We let it sit overnight and then we air dry it like
Peking duck so it gets really crispy.
Put it in the fryer for about 15 minutes and then we
shellac it with barbecue sauce - ketchup, honey, hoisin,
five spice, garlic, ginger - all the classic flavors.
So this is like a family style Chinese barbecue pork
with buns and coleslaw and hot mustard.
- [Andrew] About how many people does this typically serve?
- [David] Anywhere from four to seven.
- [Andrew] Why does that bun work with this pork?
- [David] I think it's the perfect vehicle because it allows
using your hands without getting your hands dirty.
You're getting everything in there, the sauce, the coleslaw,
the crispy pork and the unctuous soft pork
all in a little bun
- Do you have a specialist that you're
you're buying those buns from?
- Yeah, it's actually my cousin in Monterey Park.
- Oh cool.
- He owns a bakery.
- I'm so hungry.
(David laughs)
No more questions, please. Let's eat.
(music)
(ding)
- [Andrew] Okay, cheers, Steven.
- Mmmm.
- Mmmm. We're drinking the Pearl Diver.
- Oooh. I have nothing in my stomach right now and I
felt a jolt of that. Okay.
- Perfect time to give you a knife so that you could-
- Yeah.
- Come on, crack in there.
- Whoa.
- Whoa. Here, I'll help you out.
Hold the meat down.
- That's what I'm talking about.
- Is it wrong that I just want to eat this like a
corn on the cob?
- Whoa.
- It's finger food.
I have a feeling you're going to love this.
- Mmmm. I'm going to cut you off a piece
of this meat right here.
- Okay. Here, I'll help myself to a bun.
- Here you go.
- Come on, Steven. I need some meat on the bun.
Just a little touch of that.
Now look at my bun and look at your bun.
- Because you're a gluttonous pig.
- Yeah, I'm a big fatty.
- (laughs) You're not a big fatty.
The mustard? Oh no.
Got a big glob cause I'm used to
just dousing my hot dogs in mustard.
- Cheers.
(upbeat music)
- Mmmm. This is perfect.
First of all, anything wrapped in a bun, I'll eat.
- This little package has everything, fatty meat, it's also
crispy, powerful mustard.
- Woo.
- Do you feel it in your nose?
- Oh, yeah.
- That's the mustard scale, one to nose.
- I think what's so great about this is the crispy skin.
- Totally.
- Cause everything is so soft and then you get to the skin
and it's like (crunch).
- A lot of the times on a little sandwich, you're adding the
texture from something else, but here the meat itself has
all the textures represented.
This is the kind of thing that I always see on a menu
and I'm like, oooh, I want to try that,
but I can't order it by myself.
- You know what that reminds me of?
You want to play basketball, you have to
get nine other friends.
- You have to kind of like scrounge up some people
to kind of fill out the table.
Get some bench players coming to dinner.
- Here you go.
- Ooohhh.
- So Little Fatty? What'd you think?
It's fun to share a big piece of meat, right?
- Hot mustard. Yes.
- Sometimes you want to feel like a little fatty, right?
- And I definitely feel like a big fatty right now.
- Do you want to feel like something else?
- Huh?
- I don't know what to call this fact, you guys, since I
chose where we're going, I decided to do a little research
of myself and see how you like my facts.
- Okay.
- Fact time.
- What?
- So what you're saying is big brain, little teeth?
- I'm saying we became smarter when we learned how to cook.
- I don't know how I feel about this.
Facts are getting weirder.
The restaurants are getting more arbitrary.
- Okay, look, did you eat good food already today?
- Yes.
- That's all you need to know.
It's going to happen two more times.
Worth it.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Jonah Freedman, owner of Freedman's in Silver Lake.
Daytime is new school Jewish deli and then at night
we have a full cocktail bar.
- The decor is really awesome.
- Thank you.
- I'm blown away by the wallpaper.
- Cool. Thanks. Today, our chef, Steph, is going to be
showing you how we make our brisket.
Brisket is very much tied to Jewish food
and family celebrations.
You always eat it on high holidays.
It's usually kind of a homey dish.
Our brisket is not the sort of overly sweet
traditional Jewish brisket.
The presentation is like Jewish meets Texas barbecue, but
the preparation I would say is quite French, actually.
We braise them for three to four hours using
burnt onion, garlic, raw ginger.
That all goes into the oven.
Those are taken out, cryovaced and then held.
We heat up in the cryovac bag so it's this very, very tender
meat that kind of falls apart and the sauce is
then ladled on top.
It's served with our pom Freedman, which are like tater
tots, b and b pickles, rye bread and smoked bone marrow.
We wheel the brisket out on a cart and cut it tableside
using what we call our dad knife.
- Electric saw with two blades that go like that?
- Electric saw, yeah, two blades like that.
- Yeah, my dad has one of those.
- Why that knife?
- When you think about how you would cut a brisket at your
house, you would be using a turkey carver.
To pair that with a very formal presentation of bringing it
to a table has this really nice kind of dichotomy.
And that's what Freedman's is about.
We have a great martini program, but you can always get a
five dollar hot dog at anytime of the day.
(music)
(ding)
- This is really beautiful.
- Welcome to dinner, Steven.
- What is this?
- It's a martini.
- Pickle juice.
- Oooh.
- Oh, yeah, best pickly martini I've ever had.
- It's a kick.
- These are the pom de Freedman.
- I'm using my hands.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- [Steven] Horseradish mayo.
- Ooh, is that like whipped?
The texture of that was also very surprising.
- Cheers. I stole some of your sauce there.
- Adam, try this. It's like a potato 3D Dorito.
Anyhoo, let's make little sandwiches here.
- Bone marrow. Oh my God.
- You wanted bone meat. Here it is, Steven.
- Oh my God.
- This is the literal meat of the bone.
- Shut up. (slurps)
- (disgust)
(laughter)
- I'm going to do a couple pickles on here.
- Cheers, Steven. Big meat adventure.
- Oh my God.
(upbeat music)
- I'm so happy.
A lot of these flavors really make sense to me.
I grew up in an eastern European immigrant household,
like pickles, rye bread, a roast.
Everything is just like the perfect iteration of it.
- Nothing is familiar, yet everything is familiar.
- Many times I've thought, while out to dinner, I wish I
could just make a tiny sandwich of this food.
- Mm-hmmm.
- And here I have that option, you know.
- I'm still thinking about that saw.
- I love it. The electric knife has this little light on it.
It's both a spotlight and this drum roll for your meat.
It's like (drum roll), here's your meat.
- (laughs)
- Cheers.
- Oh my God.
- I got us shareable fruit.
This is just a thing you can find all over Los Angeles.
Lime, salt, chili, it's delicious.
- I want this pineapple right here.
- Cheers. Ahhh. Ahhhh.
That was like lightning up my mouth.
- So Freedman's? Delicious meat, huh?
- I want to cut everything with that saw.
- You want a saw like that?
- Yes.
- I'll get you it for Christmas.
Will you hold this for me?
- Yeah, why?
- Cooking fact.
- Wait, what?
- Hold my fruit. Cooking fact.
- Hold my fruit. Cooking dance.
- So this is a continuation of early humans
cooking for the first time.
- I like it. A two-parter.
Are we going to get a third fact later?
- Nope.
- Whoa.
No way.
Whoa.
- So you coming back to share these big, shareable meats
with me has some prehistoric origin stories.
- Wow. You are quite the archeologist.
- Thank you.
I hope to be kind of like a food Indiana Jones one day.
- A Foodiana Jones?
- (laughs) Did you hear that pun?
- Okay.
- Can you say that again?
- No.
(light music)
- I'm Adam Perry Lang here at APL Restaurant in Hollywood.
- So, restaurant's pretty new.
I noticed the established date on the menu.
- 1969. That's when I was born.
This is really a culmnation of my journey as a chef.
Beef is my thing. I love the procurement of it, aging it.
- [Andrew] You don't like to call it
a dry-age room necessarily.
- [Adam] I don't because it's not necessarily
dry all the time.
You want to have the correct ratio of humidity
and vaporation off the meat.
It's all in the details, in cooking, in life.
I went to bladesmithing school just to make sure that last
point of contact for the customer is perfect.
The taste is just so different when you have a crummy
blade and I like to do things with intention,
down to making my own knives.
Today we're going to do one of my signature dishes, which is
the APL Short Rib with Pickle Salad.
One of the key ingredients is actually to
slather it in ballpark mustard.
I love tying in nostalgia into cooking.
I put that mustard on very lightly just so that the beef
can brown underneath but the outside can caramelize and
make the rub stick or creates a crust.
The crust carries flavor and it protects the meat
from drying out in the initial stage.
- [Andrew] Do you define this as a smoked meat?
Is it barbecue or is it something else?
- [Adam] I call it wood-fired cooking.
There's good smoke and there's bad smoke.
If you burn too low, all these different compounds
don't have the opportunity to get burnt
off into the atmosphere.
That's going on the meat.
If there's going to be any smoke, you want it
to be very subtle and over time.
I put vinegar on this because vinegar dries and what's
left is the sour residue that creates salivation.
It gets your mouth excited and ready to eat.
Vinegar is like nature's MSG.
- [Steven] What we're doing for this episode
is kind of a family-style meat.
Was there an intention there as a thing to
bring on for a group?
- Completely. Fire brings people together.
It's celebratory, like the family roast.
I think some of the best things in life are made simply.
(music)
(ding)
- [Steven] Big money, big meats.
We both got the Blue Dream cocktail, but I got the mocktail.
- But we're both living the dream, the big meat dream.
You want to taste mine?
- Oh, yeah yeah.
- Yeah, yours is way juicier.
Can I point something out to you?
The booth smells like meat.
It's leathery.
Can I serve you some meat, please?
Wow, look at how tender this is. I don't need to cut it.
I can just pull it apart.
- Cheers.
- Okay, cheers.
It's like if pot roast and barbecue had a baby.
It has this delightful layer of smokiness.
- When you swallow it, it still is there and present.
Which part of this meat is your favorite?
- Honestly, it's the crust.
I've never had a better crust.
Usually, it's more of a shell than a flavor component, but
here it's actually quite tender and there is a rich flavor
of black pepper, which I really love.
- Oh my God.
- Oh my God. This meat is just surrendering to me.
- I'm going to just grab a piece. Ohhh.
Holy smokes. It has surrendered to my fingers.
- Here comes the pickle meat sandwich.
There's something very beautiful about a plate
that comes with just meat and pickles.
To me, those are like the two core food groups.
- Vegetables and protein?
- Pickle and meat.
- That's the food group is pickle?
- Pickles and meat. Pickles and meat.
I'm a little lad who loves pickles and meat.
- Can I just take this and grab the bone?
- Sure.
- Let's see if this falls apart.
- Oh, wow.
- Ohhhh. You got all the meat.
- Looks like my wish is coming true.
Here you can have-
- Oh my God. That is crazy.
This is not fat, but it's squishy like fat.
- Is this any less satisfying to you than a steak, because
you can come to this restaurant and get a very nice steak.
- I would probably take the short rib.
- I think for me it depends on the day of the week.
This feels like Sunday evening shared meat.
There's also something really great about having
a big table where everybody's eating and
they're all tasting the same thing.
It's not like oh, mine's good, how's yours?
Oh, it's good.
We can look at each other and we know what it tastes like
because it's in all of our mouths, like your brains
connected through this invisible network.
- Whoa.
- The meat matrix.
- This may be the ultimate group bonding experience.
- Yeah.
- Forget escape rooms.
- Group meat.
- First episode back.
- You feel good?
- Yeah.
- You feel very full, very satiated?
- I don't think I'll be eating meat for a day or two,
but after that detox, back to meat.
- Which shareable meat was the most worth it to you
at its given price?
- I would have to say Little Fatty.
- Wow.
- Yeah. They're all very good, but Little Fatty's was
under 30 dollars plus it's a truly Chinese-American
restaurant and I love that.
- Yeah, I think my worth it winner is Freedman's,
the best balance of a meat I'd love to eat on its own
and a meat that's going to be great as a
little sandwich afterward.
I took some of that meat home, turned it into a spaghetti
sauce. It was phenomenal.
Adam, who's your worth it winner?
- [Adam] APL.
- What?
- Wow. Good answer. I'll accept it.
Hey, Annie, who's your worth it winner?
- I saw that one coming, actually.
She was scarfing down the Freedman's after we left.
- We're going to your neck of the woods for next episode.
Want to give us a little sneak peek?
- Rhymes with hurry and it's a very bad basketball player.
LeBron rules.
(Andrew laughs)
- [Andrew] So we're going to need to learn how to share
before we could cook, and by the way we're talking about
possibly a million years ago.
- [Steven] Why are your facts all about
millions of years ago?
- [Andrew] That's when the best stuff happened.