Name: What Exactly is American Food? w/ Chef Ed Lee | Anthony Bourdain's The Mind of a Chef | Full Episode
Uploaded: 2025-04-02T09:31:28.000Z
Duration: 23 min 17 s
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CHEF EDWARD LEE HAS SPENT HIS ENTIRE CAREER EXPLORING, QUESTIONING, AND EXPANDING THE

There's some point about tradition you have to adhere to and then you break away from it.

IN A COUNTRY COMPRISED MOSTLY OF IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS, AMERICAN CULINARY TRADITIONS

IN HOUSTON, CHEF PAUL KEY PREPARES A SAVICHA.

AND ED FINDS OUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN VIETNAMESE MEETS CAJUN COOKING.

All curious chefs are fascinated by the surroundings.

They don't teach you this in cooking school.

I think we're entering a new stage where people are understanding that American food is not hot dogs, hamburgers, and barbecue.

American food is anything that happens in this country by any chef who has ever asked himself the question or asked herself the question, what am I cooking?

How do I make food with these ingredients that are here and my culture and my history?

You've just had this very American dilemma that you don't have in Sicily or in Provence or in Syria or Korea because you don't have these issues.

You just cook whatever your forefathers tell you.

And so that's the beauty of American food is that it is limitless.

Even the word fusion is impossible because everything is fusion in this country, everything.

It is the most complex thing in the world in terms of a cuisine because we are an amalgam of hundreds if not thousands of different influences all just crammed up against each other.

And then see, you know, then shake the box and see what comes out.

The square footage of fresh produce in a market like this, percentage-wise, is so much greater than if you were an American market.

I like how big this fresh meat counter is compared to the typical American market.

I want a nice meaty piece, one that's not too fatty, lots of meat.

I'm going to make a dish that I've actually, this is the first time I've ever made it.

And it's a Chinese Thai, mostly Chinese dish that involves lots of stewed vegetables.

So first thing I'm going to do is steam some pork belly.

I'm going to pack it in this steamer here.

So another really important part of this dish is cabbage.

You're going to carry it around with you?

But of course, I'm going to need some napa.

We're in the realm of the giant heads of cabbage, so.

Let's strap them in like they're our babies.

And what we're looking for is nice big chunks, about two inch lumps, because in the end, everything in this dish gets overcooked by Western standards.

There's nothing al dente about what's going on here.

This is a Bugs Bunny wet dream right here.

I find that a little bit silly, considering the fact that I've spent 20 some odd years of my life thinking about studying and cooking this food.

I still don't claim to be an expert by any means, but I feel like I'm qualified to at least cook the food, right?

What you do with your restaurant, though, it's not just Thai food, but you're also sort of fighting the stigma of American Thai food in America.

Your menu is not doing the greatest hits, and that's also, I think, a huge statement about Thai food.

It's actually broader than what most of us are experiencing in Thai restaurants.

What I care about, as kind of minor as it might seem, is I really care about trying to kind of change people's perception of Thai food, and in a broader sense, change helped be part of the conversation of helping people change their perception of Asian food in general.

I think any time you deal with a country's cuisine, and people use the word tradition all the time, people use the word authentic all the time, and it's one of these catchphrases that we, it's very easy to cling to, but inherently, it's meaningless, because what is a tradition if it's not just a set of rules that are created by people?

All right, and then by chance, we happen to be right next to the yu choy, which is kind of like the basis of this dish that I'm doing.

In Thailand, we call this pak kwang dung, it's a mustard, and it's kind of got a, you know, kind of a soft, watery stem, and it's actually really nice to eat raw.

And so when guys like Andy Ricker deal with it in a very direct way, and say, I'm a white guy that's going to make Thai food, whoa, all of a sudden, all these latent opinions all of a sudden erupt, they come to the forefront, but it pushes the issue.

Especially in northern Thailand, which is close to the Chinese border, they use a lot of Chinese vegetables.

So here's some long beans, and you can see there's two different varieties.

The Chinese cooks tend to use those a lot, but in Southeast Asia, the Thai cooks use these ones.

It's something new that's forming, and it's a controversial topic, because it gets at the heart of all the things we think of as authentic, traditional, but all these things that we have used these terms for so long, connected it emotionally to something that we think exists back in Mexico, or Thailand, or Queens, or L.A., but really are, to me, all different vocabularies that describe American food.

All right, so here we are at the dried fish, so I'm looking for, right now, I'm looking for dried shrimp.

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What Exactly is American Food? w/ Chef Ed Lee | Anthony Bourdain's The Mind of a Chef | Full Episode

authentic

sort

intense

perception