New Orleans Soul Of A City Season 1 Episode 1

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Transcript

00:00New Orleans is unlike any other place in the world.

00:20I think dollar for dollar people eat better here than anywhere else.

00:24Hot food.

00:25I always tell my friends who want to come and visit New Orleans,

00:27lose 10 pounds because between the time you leave here and get back home,

00:31you're going to gain about 10 pounds.

00:32Food means everything to New Orleans.

00:35It's extremely delicious.

00:36I can't think of another place anywhere, including Paris,

00:39where food is so central to the culture and the economy.

00:44You really, truly have to be here.

00:46You have to feel it. You have to smell it.

00:48The biggest conversation at lunch is where are we going for dinner?

00:52New Orleans has always been a food culture in which storytelling

00:56is very central to it.

00:58The story that has been told ad nauseum about New Orleans food

01:01has been, to a large degree, incomplete.

01:04It's a story that's been hijacked in many ways over the years,

01:08simplified, whitewashed.

01:10People do not want to talk about the past.

01:14How you decide who sort of gets the credit for it,

01:19it's a story that's been ignored.

01:21.

01:26.

01:29.

01:31.

01:35Bam, bam, bam.

02:05When people think about New Orleans food, they think about gumbo, jambalaya, mufaletas, po'boys, beignets.

02:21And it's a place where people around the world want to come.

02:24And one of the primary sources of pride.

02:27And we have this rich heritage built over the last centuries from many, many cultural sources.

02:39It's like a tapestry.

02:41We have restaurants here that are older than most cities in America.

02:47There's tremendous respect for tradition.

02:50I'm a New Orleans chef. I'm fourth generation New Orleanian.

02:57I recognize pretty quickly, I am just part of a continuum.

03:04Creole cuisine has been passed down from generation to generation in the kitchens of our restaurants, in the homes that we grew up in.

03:12What really put New Orleans food on the map was the televising of Creole food.

03:19Celebrity chef culture in many ways was born here with the chef Paul Prudhomme and Pamir Lagasse who followed him.

03:24Paul was, you know, he was a magician.

03:28If Paul Prudhomme is stirring the pot, you're going to remember what was in it.

03:32He did a lot for New Orleans and Louisiana, and he really put Creole Cajun cuisine on the map.

03:39Right next to the swamp, that's where I was born and raised.

03:42It's a pleasure being here, it really is.

03:43I got to work with chef Paul Prudhomme in my apprentice years when I got hired at Commander's Palace in the late 70s.

03:50The Commander's Palace in New Orleans, one of the finest restaurants in the Crescent City.

03:56He started tweaking the menu at Commander's.

03:59I was standing next to Paul when he blackened the first redfish.

04:03I'm over here busy prepping, going to get ready.

04:05And he drops it in his black iron skillet and the smoke billowing up.

04:09And I'm like, bleep, bleep, bleep.

04:12Placed it in his skillet that was hot enough to ignite the oils of the fish in the butter.

04:16They call it blackened redfish.

04:18And then he turned it over and it was like all blackened on top.

04:21Then he puts it on a plate and says, yeah, Frank, taste this.

04:24Skeptically took a bite.

04:26My God, it's the best fish I've had in my life.

04:29Everybody got caught up in this thing with redfish.

04:31Paul Prudhomme, the famous New Orleans chef whose blackened redfish was so popular,

04:35it all but depleted the supply of redfish in Louisiana.

04:38Paul made it so popular.

04:40And you'd go to Providence, Rhode Island, and they'd have blackened redfish on a menu in a restaurant.

04:44He became almost an ambassador for the food of Louisiana.

04:49And people started to feel that Louisiana food was special.

04:52Good cooking, good eating, good loving.

04:55That's what this turducky is.

04:57I love you guys.

04:59Thanks very much, Paul.

05:00We appreciate it.

05:02After Paul left Commander's Palace, the person hired to replace him.

05:0828-year-old Emeril Lagasse.

05:11This kid from Fall River, Massachusetts.

05:13I was a big fan of Paul, but I wasn't like a master of Creole Cajun cooking.

05:20But what I did is I never disrespected tradition.

05:24I just built on tradition.

05:25On my days off, I went on fishing boats, looked at various farms in Louisiana, and I started working with these farmers and fishermen very closely.

05:37I learned about the true flavor of Louisiana cooking.

05:41Well, we have some fresh strawberries with Creole cream cheese.

05:44Emeril would go on to author the playbook on what it meant to be a famous chef on TV.

05:50You come way back over here, and you just go, bam!

05:53It felt like everyone knew bam.

05:55Bam!

05:56Bam!

05:57Bam!

05:58takif assume.

05:58Here's another Việtine.

06:03You that podcast?

06:04Um, thank you tostrmens, Eric.

06:08It's probably to be a champ or I think Paul Perdom and I think Emeril Lagasse had a real big hand in just kind of announcing

06:12to the world like hey we're in New Orleans, and like y'all should check out this food.

06:15This is amazing food.

06:17and Creole. It kind of got all lumped together into Louisiana cooking. Paul Prudhomme was a

06:25Cajun man working at a Creole restaurant and it was very confusing for people because they didn't

06:32know the difference between Cajun and Creole. Journalists didn't know the difference. They

06:37called it Cajun Creole food or Creole Cajun food. So to simplify things, Acadian cooking or what's

06:45slang for Cajun, it's Acadians that settled here in the 1700s from outside of Nova Scotia that live

06:52off the land and live off the bayous. Creole is the city version of Louisiana cooking. When people

06:59talk about Creole cuisine on a really basic level, we're talking about traditional New Orleans food.

07:05We're trying to differentiate it from Cajun food, which is a rural expression. Creole is a mixture

07:13of many cultures. It's New World culture. It began with the Portuguese word criollo. However,

07:18when we talk about Creolization or we talk about Creole culture, we have to remember that the

07:22Creolization didn't actually begin in the United States. It began in Africa. You can't overstate

07:29the contributions that enslaved Africans made to the creation of New Orleans cuisine. You know,

07:35that contribution has been understated. In fact, understated is probably too mild a word. It's been

07:42ignored.

07:58One, two, let me count them up. Three. A little s'more today, huh? Get ready.

08:03The greatest thing about New Orleans for me is it's a melting pot. Every culture contributes to the

08:14city and that's what makes it great. I think to me, New Orleans is the only city in America that has its own

08:19identity because of the food, right? One of my first experiences of having a dish that folks might

08:30consider as New Orleans in was beignets. Café du Mont, you know, they've been around for 100 years plus.

08:36When I finally got to the window, it's like, how many beignets you want?

08:41I was like, yeah, sure, three. I took a bite. I said, oh, beignets. He was like, no, no, no, beignets. I was like, beignets. He was like, no, no, no, no. It's beignets because it's Senegal.

08:57It's called beignets without the s.

08:59That's when it really clicked for me. And I think that's when I began to realize about the connection

09:04between Senegal and New Orleans. I did not know nothing of the connection prior to coming.

09:10This is the beautiful red fish. We're topped with the leeks. Facebook leeks are top. Bottom, you'll find

09:15there's a butternut squash. If you think for it. If you've ever tried Senegalese cuisine, it is very

09:21similar to New Orleans cuisine. Senegal is colonized by French. New Orleans used to be a French territory.

09:28So you see a lot of similarities between the two. The first slaves came in 1719 from the Senegambian

09:35region. So the Senegalese influence is huge in New Orleans culture. If you go all the way back to

09:42the beginning, New Orleans was a place where things came together. The native people of the different

09:49tribes that were in this region came together here because all the waters came together. The French,

09:55they send two brothers from French Canada, the Lemoyne brothers, and they establish a French

10:00colonial presence here. They were influenced by the native people. This fish is good. Here's how you

10:07catch the shrimp. Here's some alligator. The white Europeans, they had no skills. They never farmed before.

10:15They didn't know how to do anything. Early on, the French started bringing in enslaved Africans to

10:22Louisiana territory, to New Orleans. There was some duality and complexity during the French and colonial

10:30period. You had white people, you had enslaved people, and then you had people of African descent who

10:39were called free people of color, and they could own property. There wasn't a belief that everyone who was

10:49of African descent was automatically a slave. After the Louisiana Purchase, everything changed.

10:58December 20th, 1803, there's a ceremony, present-day Jackson Square, where the French flag

11:04comes down for the last time and the American flag goes up. When Americans came here, they wanted to

11:12move away from giving any loophole for there to be free people of color because the idea was to profit

11:24and profit and profit. And how do we do that? We do that off of enslaved labor.

11:30The city of New Orleans becomes the largest slave trading city in the nation.

11:37People would come to New Orleans to buy slaves. And it was done in these hotels. And the auction blocks

11:47were in ballrooms. And people were eating these lavish meals and drinking. Imagine what it must have been

11:56like to see these auction blocks and human beings being sold everywhere. But at the same time,

12:04you can go and have this elaborate meal and hear opera and go to coffee houses and hear

12:11transactions of people talking about selling human beings.

12:18New Orleans became a destination.

12:20New Orleans became a destination. People would talk about how the food was so important and so

12:27different that it became its own curiosity. We have a real cuisine in New Orleans. It is not just

12:35a collection of dishes. This is something that everyone eats. And people just fell in love with it.

12:40All the many dishes we have in Louisiana cuisine, the one that singularly defines who we are is gumbo.

12:52What is gumbo? Where does it come from? The word gumbo comes from an African word,

12:57kin gumbo, which means okra.

13:01So in Senegal, we have this dish called soup canje. So as you can see, the pot is almost coming to a boil.

13:08So soup means soup and canje means okra. But soup canje is pretty much the classic New Orleans gumbo.

13:17Classic New Orleans gumbo is okra and seafood. My mom's soup canje is okra and seafood.

13:31The more I cooked, the more I realized. Jamalaya, etouffee, all those classic New Orleans dishes,

13:36I could trace back to dishes in Senegal that have very similar roots into it. And I think that's why

13:41I'm so tied to this city because New Orleans is a place that really remind me of home. I feel like I was

13:48born here. It's extremely delicious. You gotta taste it. You think I'm lying.

13:51Yeah.

14:01Once slavery ended, that's where it gets interesting. That's where the advent of cookbooks came about.

14:14Now that you no longer had enslaved labor, Confederate widows who lost everything,

14:20who didn't have the access to wealth that they once had, they still had to remain part of Creole

14:27society. These women, after the Civil War, gathered the information, the recipes from black women,

14:35to create cookbooks. They needed manuals to make sure that they could direct domestics on how to cook,

14:43stand over them, oh you're not doing this right. That was, you know, this attempt to rewrite history

14:52and say, I give my recipes to my cook. It's not the cook's recipe, it's my recipe.

14:59And so when you think of the, what the sort of problem is here in terms of the white people who

15:04are doing the storytelling and the cookbook writing, the whitewashing, I mean, it was deep and vast.

15:08You just didn't have a system that told the story of African-American contributions to New Orleans

15:16cuisine, much less the contributions of enslaved Africans. During the Jim Crow era, black folks

15:23worked in restaurants. Preparing two or three hundred meals at one meal time is routine for these boys.

15:29But they weren't allowed to eat in them. And they certainly weren't owning the restaurants

15:34that the white people who were doing the storytelling and the cookbook writing were eating in.

15:38But particularly black women in New Orleans owned sandwich shops where you could get a drink,

15:46you could get a beer and you can get a po' boy. However, there weren't any fine dining establishments

15:52during the Jim Crow South for any African-American. Ms. Leah Chase, the late legendary queen of Creole cuisine,

16:01she saw that as a potential and she saw an opportunity and she ran with it.

16:07Leah Chase, this country's grand dame of Creole cooking.

16:10Ms. Chase, thank you for having us here.

16:13She elevated Creole culture and cuisine because she was adamant about serving and her love for

16:20Creole cuisine. For me, nothing tastes better than cholesterol. I like that.

16:25Leah was a very special lady. She ran a great restaurant, still one of my favorites, Dookie Chase.

16:31There's tremendous tradition at Dookie Chase.

16:33Dookie Chase was founded by my grandparents, Emily Tenette and Edgar Chase Sr.

16:41My grandmother opened a po' boy stand in 1939 that was very successful. Now, when my mother came in,

16:49she began trying new dishes and my grandmother took another roll and let my mother rule the kitchen.

16:56Leah Chase married into the Chase family and sort of inherited that restaurant at the height of

17:01segregation at a time when she and people who looked like her weren't allowed to go to these big French

17:08Creole places in the French Quarter. She thought African-Americans ought to have a place like that

17:14that they could go to. That was days of segregation and you couldn't, there was no place that would

17:18accept blacks. You know, it was the thing those days. And what she wanted to say is, in my community,

17:25we're going to certainly have one of those restaurants that welcomes out, but my community is going to have

17:30a white table called Fine Dining Restaurant. They're going to have chandeliers, have beautiful music,

17:36because I want my community to experience that. My mother, Leah Chase, was an extraordinary person.

17:43Hello, girl. Look at you looking glam. How are you?

17:47To many of the staple dishes, my mother said creolize it. And we still keep those dishes on our menu,

17:55because that is part of our legacy that we passed down.

18:00The best gumbo. I don't say that. The best gumbo there is. Yeah, that's for sure.

18:04By many people's measure, it's some of the best gumbo you'll ever have.

18:08So, when you're talking about Dougie Chase, this is one dish that speaks who we are as a city,

18:15a community, and who we are as a nation, is gumbo. Because all of the history and the culture that's

18:20behind this dish. Everybody, when you say gumbo, you think okra. Well, that's because okra from the

18:29African people was gumbo, you know. But we use filet as a thickener, and that came by way of the American

18:36Indian. We use the ground sassafras leaf. And everybody has a different gumbo. But it's

18:45it's a generational. This is how my mama made it. This is how my grandmother made it.

18:50Best gumbo is your grandmother's gumbo. You know, gumbo is all about building flavor.

18:55It has the chili pepper flakes. It has thyme. It has the garlic. Louisiana blue crab. Louisiana

19:01the goat shrimp. My grandmother would always joke she'll cook her root of her complexion.

19:06You gradually add velvety root of coke. All that beautiful protein.

19:10Oh, this is my grandmother's recipe. Some things you don't mess with. The recipe stays the same.

19:17As I'm the fourth generation chef, Zoe's the fifth generation chef.

19:20That makes us extremely proud and happy that we're continuing the legacy.

19:24I have our tasting food here. Oh, that's spot on. Delicious.

19:38There aren't that many restaurants in the United States that have that much history to them that do

19:45the work of correcting historical storytelling wrongs in quite the way that Dookie Chase does.

19:53Dookie Chase is more than a restaurant. And Ms. Leah, brick by brick, built this community

20:02where members of the civil rights movement could come in secret.

20:06In 1941, we were in the Green Book and a haven place for African Americans as they traveled.

20:14We are the only place here in New Orleans that was in the Green Book that is still open today for

20:20business. Our doors were open to the Freedom Bus Riders, to Martin Luther King, to Jesse Jackson,

20:26to Andrew Young, to Reverend Abernathy, to Thurgo Marshall.

20:31The whites that came here came for political reasons. You know, they would come to meet the blacks.

20:38Here at Dookie Chase, my grandmother would always say she helped change the course of America

20:44over a bowl of gumbo. This neighborhood, the Sixth Ward Treme, is the oldest neighborhood of free

20:50people of color and was where they welcomed each other and quite frankly welcomed others who didn't

20:55welcome them. You know, that's the beautiful thing about Dookie Chase Restaurant. This place was a place

21:00that served everyone. All those people who come here today from all over the country, they come back and

21:06tell me, this is where I got engaged. This is where I celebrated our anniversary. This is where I

21:13celebrated your birthday. For those of you who don't know, I mean, my dad and mom dated at Dookie Chase.

21:21I dated at Dookie Chase, but I could save my money. That's why we're still here. That's why we're still here,

21:28because we have people like this who have supported our family for 84 years. Yeah. When I look at this

21:34restaurant, we celebrate back excellence because it has to be about a place of joy. It has to be about

21:41a place of hope. It has to be a place about a community. It has to be an inspiration. When we look

21:47back at that time period and what she did, and then later to feed presidents from all over the world

21:56and to be celebrated at Disney. My mother was the inspiration for Tiana and Princess and the Frog.

22:04And hanging from the ceiling, a big old crystal chandelier. She told her story. My mother was a great

22:11storyteller. And she has four generations of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren,

22:18who are maintaining her legacy. And a city that will always, always say her name, always give her her

22:27flowers. It's profound. That's what they look for when they come to New Orleans.

22:31They look for good Creole. And we try to give it to them.

22:34Just hope for all of us know. So Charde is now the new executive suit. So if I'm not here,

22:47if you have questions, anything about regarding food-wise, just go straight to Charde.

22:51Anything else I'm missing? Anybody want to add something? Back home in Senegal. Throughout lunch,

22:56when you sit down, you probably have a big bowl that you'll share somewhere between 8 to 12 people.

23:03You learn to be respectful of the person sitting next to you.

23:09It taught me how important it is to share your food with others.

23:14It taught me how important it is to share your food with others.

23:27We have beautiful food. We have beautiful culture.

23:29So they are the Roe Party of Five at Table 30. There was a time where people didn't know what

23:35West African food was. But two years into Dakar Nola, more people know what West African food is.

23:43So that has been an amazing thing to see.

23:47Welcome to Dakar Nola. Thank y'all so much for joining us this evening.

23:50I'm going to get you guys into my language and I won't try to beat me back.

23:53So if I say Nunga Def, I won't try to respond back saying Ma-i-i. Nunga Def.

23:59Ma-i-i. Nunga Def. Awesome. Sounds good. Sounds good. Sounds good.

24:04I just knew that the folks of Senegal have something to say. And I'm telling that story

24:09through food. I'm just telling that one dish at a time. One dish at a time.

24:17Cheers!

24:17We have this dish at a menu called The Last Meal. And I call it The Last Meal for a reason.

24:27So one of my last trips to Dakar, I visited an island called Goree Island.

24:33Goree Island is off the coast of Senegal. And it was a major part of the slave trade.

24:39Chef was taking the tour at Goree Island. And the guide mentioned that they fed our enslaved ancestors

24:48black-eyed peas and palm oil because of the high fat content to be able to survive the middle passage.

24:56We have to remember that in order to put someone in bondage, in order to make sure that they make

25:04a very long trip. Days, weeks, on a ship. You need to know how you can help them survive

25:13because you need to make money off of them. And when I heard that, I completely broke down

25:20because as a kid growing up in Senegal, I used to eat a dish that's very similar to

25:26that dish that he was describing. When I came back and started the process of opening Dakar, I was like,

25:32I need to share that story. Some people eat the dish and cry. Some people eat the dish

25:38and feel grateful. And that's the beauty of telling a story.

25:44I know, I know, I know.

25:46People tell us about how excited they are that Dakar exists.

25:51To hear a native New Orleanian say that really means the world.

25:55We are just part of this long continuum. And that's the beautiful part of Creole cuisine and culture

26:05is that it continues to evolve as well. In my little lifetime, 70 years old, I've seen a lot of

26:12change. Change in our demographics that have brought in more cultural influences and the world events

26:18that caused those changes.

26:31The restaurant landscape really changed after Katrina.

26:36Hurricane Katrina was devastating. It was devastating to this whole city. It was devastating to the

26:42community as a whole. It'll be 20 years and I still can see the impact of Katrina in our community.

26:50And it was rough on us.

26:59Post-Katrina, January, five months after the storm, we stopped at Dookie Chase. We knocked on Leah's door

27:07and she came out with her big smile. Hi, y'all. Come on in. I'll show you. And Dookie Chase had,

27:13you know, eight feet of water.

27:20And it's all gutted, you know, down to the studs and the walls. Smells bad. And she's got that smile

27:29going. I mean, you can see those little, like a toothpaste commercial.

27:35And she's leading these people through and she starts telling them how she feels bad

27:43because she didn't do enough in the neighborhood. Oh, I had to walk out. I was in tears.

27:54Seeing all the destruction she was facing. And she's telling these visitors that she didn't do enough

28:00for others. I went out and I stood in the middle of the street and just looked down the street, dead

28:08quiet, no traffic, no people, no nothing. And I'm just weeping.

28:17That was our role. It was how can we help this community get back. And that was many restaurants

28:23and many businesses role. We need you back. We need our people back. We need the love of this city

28:28back, the joy of this city back. This major event, this catastrophe, created an upheaval in our

28:36demographics. A couple hundred thousand people left and didn't come back. These vacuums get filled

28:43one way or the other. For us, me as a homeowner, as a restaurant owner,

28:50it was Latinos, Mexicans, that saved me and others.

29:05They rebuilt New Orleans, plain and simple. You had a lot more Spanish speakers and people whose

29:13own personal ethnic background and culinary background was different than it had been

29:18in previous generations in New Orleans. The parking lot taco stop is a popular place

29:23and not just for Latinos pulling sheetrock out of flooded houses. Montez says about a third of his

29:28business is local. The food followed the workers, tens of thousands of Latino laborers who came to do the

29:36dirty work of rebuilding flooded neighborhoods. It pointed to a real phenomenon and it did, I think,

29:44awaken people to this idea that this city's food was still open to being transformed by outside

29:50influences. You'd see that, I think, in small ways in restaurants, even long-standing restaurants that

29:55would start to put moles into sort of a duck dish. Especially in that first year, as restaurants

30:02just gradually started popping up, I said, it's easier to find a taco than a po' boy. And it was. And I didn't mean that disparagingly.

30:14And older New Orleanians, like myself, we were worried about our culture, that it may change so much we don't recognize it anymore.

30:26And I think it's up to us, us old timers, to get excited about it. Don't be close-minded. I embrace

30:36the expanding textures and flavors of Creole cuisine and culture. After Katrina, we started to get

30:46influx of many different cuisines being showcased here in New Orleans. Whether it was folks from outside

30:52coming in or it was really folks who were here now saying, I'm going to tell my story. I'm going to put

30:58my story on this plate and I hope you come and taste and support it.

31:10I think what makes New Orleans so special in regards to the food is because there's so many different

31:17influences. There's things that you don't see all over the country. Okay, I'm going to show you guys

31:23how to cook a winter melon. And we're going to saute it with just some shrimp. So I got some gulf

31:28shrimp here. We're just going to season it with salt, pepper, and a little bit of sugar. So many people

31:33have come through New Orleans. And I think Vietnamese people were one of the latest group of people to come

31:41and kind of put our imprints onto the city. It's like a mixture of like sweet and savory, like you said.

31:47When I decided I wanted to be a chef, I really wanted people to become more exposed to the dishes

31:55that I grew up eating. There's so many similarities from Vietnam to Louisiana. In New Orleans, we have our

32:02po'boy. And in Vietnam, we have our bai mi. And we share like the same style of bread. And we have our own

32:10version of beignets. And coffee and beignets is something that we also enjoy in Vietnam. Everything's

32:16a little more relaxed. It is very much the way we are in Vietnam. And like the humidity is real.

32:22They're like, oh, this is like home. We're home. It's tropical. It's hot. Very hot.

32:31My family came here in 1975, after the war, after the fall of Saigon.

32:37The end of the American presence in Vietnam. Refugees scramble aboard the last plane out.

32:45The end of the American engagement in the war in Vietnam sets the stage for the arrival of Vietnamese,

32:52at first refugees and later immigrants, into New Orleans.

32:55The United States has been doing and will continue to do its utmost to assist these people.

33:02If you think about it, Louisiana and Vietnam have some interesting commonalities.

33:06Both are deltas. Both are subtropical, tropical environments. Both have fishing industries.

33:12And both were former French colonies. Most of them moved in New Orleans East,

33:16so they had to work and live alongside African Americans in that area. And then a lot of these

33:22kids end up going to school with native New Orleanians. Then there becomes, once again,

33:28emerging of cultures and traditions. Growing up, I was in a class with mostly black kids and Vietnamese

33:34kids. I never had that like, ew, what's in your lunchbox moment? And everybody was eating shrimp

33:40chips. And we all went to this like same grocery store in our neighborhood. And so instead of feeling

33:47isolated, everybody is connected because of their interest in food. My grandmother used to say,

33:53if you can cook, come sit next to me. Vietnamese immigrants have had some of the most profound

33:59influence on New Orleans food culture. There's a type of boiled crawfish that's firmly now part of

34:05the sort of pantheon here that comes straight from the Vietnamese community. One of our most popular

34:11times in New Orleans is going to Vietnamese New Year and eating the cuisine that they offer.

34:23This is our Lunar New Year celebration. Is that right? This is the Vietnamese way.

34:32So like the crawfish, we have boiled it the classic Louisiana way for like decades. But now we're adding

34:41herbs and it's just something new and exciting. And it's fun to see how it's evolved. This is like the

34:49classic Louisiana style of a boil. So we put in some potatoes, garlic, and corn. And then we'll toss

34:56it in garlic butter, which is like the Vietnamese style. Vietnamese people have been really respectful

35:02of Louisiana cuisine because of the way we like to eat here. It took almost 50 years for us to finally

35:09like put our own twang on it. As much as my family like assimilated to America, we are very much still

35:21very Vietnamese. I'm just going to go straight for crawfish. It's been very interesting since being here

35:39now for 50 years, how the cultures melt together.

35:54Do you think that New Orleans is home? To me it is. To me? Yes. It's home. It's home. We still have the

36:00Vietnamese culture in us. Yeah. Until, you know, we get to know more about Louisiana and New Orleans.

36:07And then we grow from there and we begin to love Louisiana. I mean, that's all. We don't even want

36:12to move anywhere. You know, it's the climate, it's the weather, it's the people. And the culture. Do you

36:20ever like think that you would ever move back home? Like to Vietnam? No. No? Why? I get used to Vietnam too hot for me.

36:32How about you?

36:39Creole cuisine is the food of New Orleans. It is based on the food that people eat at home. And as what we eat

36:49changes because of different influences, different times, then the food that is Creole cuisine changes

36:55with it. We don't throw away the old way. But we say, this is a great addition. Let's have this too.

37:02Now, as like a first generation Vietnamese American, it's important for me to preserve what my family came

37:10with. Happy New Year. They came with the clothes off their backs. They came with their culture.

37:16This is my special gumbo spoon here. And this is about the time when your neighbor knocks on the door

37:31and said, you making gumbo? We opened in 1986. We had this glowing review saying something like,

37:40Chef Frank is reinventing Creole cuisine. And I'm like, whoa. That's a big mantle to wear.

37:5539 years later, now I'm considered the traditionalist, maintaining tradition. Guess what? I'm still doing the

38:04same thing I was 39 years ago. I keep one foot in tradition and one foot in the future, keeping

38:20it fresh, keeping it fun. And who knows what the future holds? I don't. But while I'm here,

38:28I will maintain this flame right here on Dante Street.

38:34Tradition is key in our food culture here in this city. There's reasons why we need to pass that

38:39information down to each generation because that tells us who we are. That tells us why we do what we do.

38:47Coming in as the newest chef of the family, sometimes it is pressure because I want to make sure I'm doing

38:53it right. And I am keeping the traditions alive and making my great-grandmother proud. I'm excited

39:01to create new dishes, come up with new things. I want to start making vegan options. I definitely

39:08want to try maybe a vegan jamalaya, maybe vegan collard greens. But I also love to keep it the same,

39:16you know, keep the gumbo the same. And I'm cooking the same recipes that my grandmother was in this same

39:22kitchen in the same kettle cooking. My mother was 96 and she was claiming to live 100 and didn't make

39:29it, but almost made it. But she felt like she had to live that loan, not for her, but because she had

39:35to give back to her community. It's very special for me to be in the kitchen and knowing that my grandmother

39:44was in this kitchen doing the same thing. And you just feel so close, especially in the kitchen that,

39:52you know, they are watching over us. And even that they aren't here, they taught us so much.

40:04People come to New Orleans to a large extent to commune with history. You can time travel here.

40:11You can see that the United States is not as new as it seems. But the fact is that as much as New

40:19Orleans promises to deliver an opportunity to commune with the past by visiting its restaurants,

40:26there's also been sort of a paradox that underlies that promise. Because the very thing that has made

40:33New Orleans food exciting to people has always been change. People are getting really creative,

40:43especially the younger generations. And it's just really exciting to see. But I hope that as far as

40:50we go with like being creative, that there will be moments where, especially these like younger

40:56Vietnamese chefs will want to bring it back to home. Ready, everybody? From the top.

41:15The essence of the food that the city is known for is Kriyo, that will never really leave because

41:21is what tells the story of this beautiful city. And that's the beauty in it. We all are telling the

41:27same story, whether we choose to listen to it or not. My greatest hope for New Orleans is always

41:34to remember who we are. Always to stay true to what started us. Always stay true to our people,

41:40our culture. Always celebrate that. Always know that tradition matters. Always know that

41:47the story you're putting on a plate better be your story. And when we do that, New Orleans will always outlive us.

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