00:01Like, you grew up in this restaurant, but then you went off to Disney for 10 years.
00:05You were also a professor.
00:06Then you came back to the restaurant.
00:08Yes.
00:08Why?
00:09Exhausting.
00:09How do you do that?
00:10Why did you do it?
00:12You know, you can live many lives, I believe, as a creative person.
00:17Maybe nine, maybe more.
00:19And my time had come to an end because my passion for the restaurant was starting to grow enough that I couldn't stand not doing it.
00:29anymore full time.
00:32And I was at my job at Disney.
00:35I would, you know, clock out at 7 p.m.
00:38I'd drive over to Sherman Oaks from Burbank.
00:42And then I'd cook and I'd serve.
00:45And I eventually started the first wine program there.
00:48And that was my life for many, many years.
00:52And I realized I had a lot of ideas.
00:54I had a lot of passion for it.
00:56It was time to pull the plug, you know?
00:59Yeah.
01:00Sounds like you never got sleep.
01:02I know.
01:02It was hard.
01:03Is good food about storytelling, in your view?
01:06That's actually one of the things that I feel we don't think about enough as chefs,
01:12is how to bring in a narrative that means something, a perspective that means something, an attitude, a personality.
01:20Because anyone can make a really good bowl of soup, noodle soup.
01:26But the question is why?
01:27And what is, what are we trying to say that's a little bit different?
01:30You mentioned this wine program that you started.
01:33You're also known for Thai Taco Tuesday, an omikase menu, too, which you don't traditionally think of when it comes to a Thai restaurant.
01:41Yeah.
01:42If we were to take a time machine back to 1982, like a year after your parents opened this restaurant, how different would it be?
01:48Very different.
01:49I mean, look, how many Thai restaurants were there then, and how many are there now?
01:55And how sort of ubiquitous do you see and feel the cuisine now in Los Angeles?
02:02It's a major part of how we view food here in L.A. and in this country.
02:08And so I felt that I wanted to celebrate all the facets of what it could be, what the different pathways that it could go down,
02:19which is anywhere from the street to a tasting menu to something more fine dining.
02:25How do pop-ups play into this?
02:26I feel like it's become such a part of our culture, whether it's retail, whether it's, I don't know, and also in the restaurant business.
02:33For sure, for sure.
02:35I mean, fashion does it so well.
02:37Yeah.
02:37Music does it incredibly so, and everyone's trying to increase eyeballs, and sort of one way of captivating a different audience is through a pop-up or an event.
02:49It was part of the parlance of how Anna Jack was being run during the pandemic, because we wanted to boost the voices of the city as well as our own.
03:02Before we let you go, you brought a 35-millimeter camera.
03:05This is not something I see every day.
03:07What are you doing?
03:07What is this?
03:08I'm going to take a picture of you right now, both of you guys.
03:11The lens cap is on.
03:12The lens cap is on.
03:13Yeah.
03:14Oh, well, that's right.
03:15That's right.
03:16We're smiling.
03:16You did great.
03:17Just very briefly, 10 seconds.
03:19How do you think about pictures, images, in your own world?
03:24I love shooting at the restaurant.
03:26It's a really fun, dynamic place to shoot.
03:29It's almost like shooting sports when you're there in the kitchen.
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