00:00When I first got into cooking, I thought I just wanted to be a cook to be a cook.
00:07I didn't know that I had this natural attack for creating things that were unique.
00:13Not to say that I'm the most creative chef in the world, but I like to believe that I create things that people have never tasted before.
00:19I'm lucky to be mentored by a lot of great chefs that I was able to feed off and learn technique from to create those interesting things.
00:25I've always been looking for a great chef to hopefully one day open a restaurant with, and Jonathan and I, we didn't like each other at first, but we started to like each other later.
00:38Yeah, and it went from there.
00:40The denizens here were hungry for our great restaurant that was, you know, small, with that neighborhood feel, but nice enough that it could also be a special occasion spot.
00:51We really did fall for the space. We were on a deadline. We had to come up with the money in order to sign the lease.
00:58Then we just sort of had to figure out what the cooking was, which is Jonathan's cooking.
01:03And we realized it really is about his life and his history of growing up in Southern California.
01:08Okay, so we're going to do a fried pork belly from Heritage Farms.
01:14It's a red wattle breed that we braise out with the ribs in and all, and then clean the ribs out, and we press it, and then we deep fry it.
01:21I live dead center of a Vietnamese community, so eating Vietnamese food, Mexican food, you know, because my mom's Mexican, eating Japanese cuisine, because I went to school next to a Japanese community.
01:30When I was developing the menu, it really came to, like, I wanted to express, like, all those flavors, like, all those techniques that I've learned.
01:37They're very fatty, so it takes about three to four minutes until they're fully cooked through and fried.
01:45Jonathan deserves it. He deserves to have a restaurant, because he has a lot of things to say on every plate.
01:51He's the creative, and I'm here to help deliver the message to the people.
01:56Trout, nine times. Softies, 16, right?
02:05Depending on what day of the week farmers markets, deliveries come, we pick through everything, choose what we want, and from there, you know, it really just goes into full production mode.
02:13It's my lead suits start butchering, breaking down product, getting it in the oven, getting sauce work-making, and that goes until about, like, you know, three o'clock when all the line cooks come in, and then they come in and start prepping stations, getting things set up, and then from there, it's, like,
02:26three hours until we get ready to open at six, and then from six on to closing, it is just a jam, like a symphony of guys just crushing and pushing food out as fast as they possibly can without sacrificing the repertoire and the technique of the food.
02:39This is, you know, a chef's cooking, and he's cooking for the people.
02:44Fried all the way through, nice and crispy.
02:48Warm and fun are the two words that I hear the most often from guests from the moment they walk in the door.
02:53Smells good, it's warm in here, it feels intimate, and it feels like I want to be in here.
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