(lively music)
- Our family immigrated
to the United States
in the late 70s.
And my grandmother
immigrated with us.
I was at her hip
when she was cooking.
Every year we had a
garden that she tended to
and I'd help her pick
vegetables and plant seeds.
Our family table growing up
was a reflection
of East and West.
At any given point you might see
a bucket of KFC alongside
a jar of kimchi.
I was really sort of embarrassed
for the kinds of foods I ate,
and now kimchi has become
sort of trendy thing to do.
And so we were kind
of eating fusion
before fusion became a thing.
And I've grown to
really appreciate
the kind of food I grew up with
and that's really formed
my palate today as a chef.
(gentle music)
My journey to becoming a
chef and a restauranteur
was a winding road.
Prior to becoming a chef,
I was an actor for about
eight years of my life.
I decided at one point
that I was really unhappy.
It just didn't feed my soul.
And so one day, it was
really with the encouragement
of my husband and business
partner who just said,
I really feel like you find joy
at making other people
feel happy through food.
So with his encouragement
we both decided,
why not just go for it?
(lively music)
Pizzeria Lola came to be
because the one thing that I
really love to eat is pizza.
And I really felt
like the kind of pizza
I wanted to eat wasn't
available at the time.
And having never worked
professionally in a restaurant,
I figured if I just
focused on one thing
and really do all
that I can to learn
how to make the
best pizza possible,
that people might actually come.
(lively music)
When we first opened
up Pizzeria Lola,
we didn't have any Korean
influences on the menu.
I wanted to challenge
some of my diners
so the first pizza
that we put on the menu
is called the Lady Zaza.
And we have kimchi
on that pizza.
And I think it's funny
that a lot of our guests
come and tell me that their
introduction to kimchi
for the first time
is on a pizza.
But they fall in love with it
and that they feel more inclined
to go experience Korean
food in a deeper way.
(string music)
It was never my
intention to share
Korean food with the community.
But it really is a
reflection of my history
and the food that tastes
really good to me.
And if I can introduce them
to a new culture
and a new cuisine,
while they're enjoying
it, then it's win win.
I do try and spend
as much time as I can
between all three restaurants.
Now we have a centralized office
where I do spend a
good bulk of my time
but it's not the
same as actually
being in the restaurants
and checking in with my staff,
making sure they
have what they need,
connecting with guests.
And that's one part of the
job that I really do enjoy.
(lively music)
Young Joni is very
much a reflection
of the kind of food
that I love to eat
and a reflection of
my cultural history.
Young Joni is sort of a grown
up sibling of Pizzeria Lola.
It's a little bit
more sophisticated.
We have some elevated flavors,
a more diverse menu.
I described it once to a friend,
it's like a restaurant
giving you a big hug.
So hopefully more people
wanna come and have big hugs.
(laughing)
We're gonna be testing out
a dish that I grew up eating
which was a sauteed kimchi
and pork belly dish.
And I had this idea of what if
we could recreate that somehow.
Did you add any butter to that?
No?
I don't know that it needs it.
I mean we never used
butter growing up.
- So I think this will
be fine without it.
- I don't know how much better
I like this than the last one.
I like both of them
better than the first one.
I prefer a different
pork product,
maybe like sausage.
I think sausage
could be really nice.
I miss being in the kitchen
as much as I used to be
but it's really
exciting to see my chefs
coming up with their own ideas
and it's allowing us
to continue to grow.
- A nice crispy, smoky
skin on this fish.
It grills up really nice
on the red oak fire.
- [Male Voice] Ahh
it looks tender.
- I've always felt
that food is culture.
For me, the most
interesting way to explore
history and culture and
new country is to go eat.
And see the way families
eat and how people gather.
And it's a reflection
of who they are.
The food that excites me the
most is a mix of cultures.
Young Joni is really a
culmination of my lineage,
of how I grew up as a
Korean American in Minnesota
and I do feel like
it's an exciting time
to be eating and cooking here
in our state and in our country.
Because I do believe that the
food that we're eating today
is a direct reflection
of the cultural
diversity of who we are.
(dramatic music)
Koreans have this
innate sense of
(speaking in a
foreign language).
A sense of longing
and suffering.
And I kind of feel
like that it's
almost goes against
my DNA to take risks.
And whether I was telling
stories on stage as an actor
or telling stories
on a plate as a chef,
I feel like it was
what I was meant to do
and I feel like feeding
people feeds my soul.
(banjo music)
- My name is Laura Nakamora,
and today we're gonna be
making pineapple mint kombucha.
Kombucha is a
fizzy fermented tea
that's made out of
sweet black or green tea
that is fermented with a scoby.
A scoby is a symbiotic
culture of bacteria and yeast
that looks like a round
slimy hockey puck.
Once I am satisfied
with the way it tastes,
then I add in whatever
flavorings I'm gonna put in.
I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii.
My great grandparents
emigrated to Hawaii
to work on the Del Monte
pineapple plantation.
When my grandfather
was in eighth grade,
his father started
brewing moonshine.
His father was arrested
because it was the Prohibition
and my grandfather had
to drop out of school
to work in the pineapple
fields to support the family
as the eldest child
of nine children.
That's kind of the story
of how my great grandfather
was a moonshiner,
had this history of
brewing pineapple rum,
and it's kind of fun
now making kombucha
and having that
parallel with him.
I don't have to do
it in secret at all
but it is something
I think about
when I'm making my kombucha.
(horn music)
(piano music)
My relationship with food
is an interesting one
because I grew up in a household
that really centered their
entire focus around food.
Every day, I like to come in
and taste every single flavor.
'Cause you know, what they
say is the first five minutes
of the day sets the tone
for what the day looks like.
So I like to start my
day with ice cream.
Early on, I knew
I loved to cook.
I knew I needed to be
involved with food.
And I didn't really think
that this was something
I can do as a career.
There wasn't a chef
that looked like me,
that talked like me,
that cooked like me,
that I could look up to.
So at that moment I decided
you know what this is
something I definitely
wanted to go into
and explore more.
(gentle music)
I was born in Kuwait
to Palestinian parents
and then I moved to
Minnesota in 1997.
Saffron was our first
fine dining restaurant
that we opened up.
It was ahead of its time,
I was 23 at the
time that we opened
and I had no idea
what I was doing.
Saffron was kind of a
representation of me,
my culinary heritage and
then me sort of cooking
that culinary heritage
in a modern day setting.
And introduce some of
the culture via the food.
Yeah, because I don't think
these habaneros are as spicy
as the first batch that we did.
But also remember
that we got this--
After opening up
Saffron and just cooking
the Middle Eastern
food for a while,
I was eating at
different restaurants
and sort of discovering
world cuisine.
So that got me
super excited about
just international
cuisine and world food.
And the more that
I ate that food,
the more that I wanted
to learn about it.
And the more that I wanted
people to try it out.
The texture is killer.
A little bit more of the
habanero to the brown--
I opened up a food truck
and we served
international street food.
From the food truck,
we ended up opening up
World Street Kitchen
in South Minneapolis
and then from there we
opened up our ice cream shop,
Milk Jam Creamery and we
opened up Grand Catch,
our seafood
restaurant in St Paul.
So because we wanna make the
biscuits a little bit larger
but I still want them
wrapped in the paper.
So my role in the restaurants
continues to change and
evolve as the time goes by.
We've hired a lot of really
talented chefs and cooks.
And so my role is the culinary
visionary for the company
and take those people
and mold them up
and figure out how can
we get those people
to run those companies
and give their own stamp
on these different cuisines.
And that's really what brings me
the most amount of
happiness right now,
is being able to teach people
these different cuisines
and then seeing how
they spin off of it.
Tell them I appreciate
them ordering it this way,
personally thank them.
The other part of what I do
is managing our social media.
And that started out after
I shot my first cookbook.
Pumpkin with toasted
pecans and honeycomb,
super monochromatic.
I just became enamored
with food photography.
I sat and I styled all of the
photographs for our cookbook
and it really brought
me a lot of joy.
It made me happy to just
kind of set up this food
and shoot it and seeing
these talented photographers,
their vision of what
this dish look like.
Awesome, yep.
That's the one.
(guitar music)
I've been collecting cookbooks
for about a little
over 15 years now.
My favorite cookbooks
in this collection is
the manuscript that
my parents wrote.
This is sort of their work.
So while we were
living in Kuwait,
my parents started
writing a cookbook
and photographing their recipes.
And once they started
going into it,
it became more of, let's
preserve this culture
and heritage of the
Palestinian people.
And then around 1990,
we moved to Jordan.
This manuscript got
packed up in a box
and got lost in the shuffle.
It wasn't until about 2004
that my brother found
this manuscript in a box.
It'd traveled three continents.
I knew that I had a duty
to kind of revive this book
in any way, shape or form.
I wrote a cookbook, The
New Mediterranean Table.
And in The New Mediterranean
Table, I tried to sort of
break down that barrier
that this is foreign food.
I cooked dishes that used
mid-Western ingredients
and Middle Eastern techniques
and sort of just said,
here just make this happen.
You can do this, this is easy.
Changing small little
elements in a spice bowl
and lend it to a
different continent
so this is one of those
kind of basic spice blends
that you would find
in the Middle East.
Obviously anyone that
goes into the food world
doesn't do it for
the money. (laughing)
People go into the food world
because it brings you joy.
It makes you happy.
And that's really the large
portion of why I cook.
And I love to share these
creations with people.
I love cooking for
family and friends
because it really brings me joy.
I just cook whatever
comes to mind
and it's not adhering
to a menu per se.
It's not adhering to a recipe.
It's just kind of
cooking from the heart.
The one signature flavor
profile that I have is flavor.
That's it.
I love big bold flavors
and then layer it
with different nuances
so it doesn't seem
boring while you eat it.
Sometimes I wanna showcase
a certain ingredient
that may be in season and
then sometimes just kind of
dishes come up in my head,
different flavor combinations
that just sound
really good in my head
and you just go into the kitchen
and you put them together
and hopefully they work.
And if they don't, you sort
of retool little things
to make it exactly what
you wanted it to be.
- Hello.
(dog barking)
Ed, his younger brother.
Much much younger brother.
- Yeah,
I did heard about you.
- I'm Shahira.
- You know when I first
moved to this country,
my brother and I
sat with each other
and my brother said to me,
you can do anything
in this country.
You can be the greatest person
or you can be the worst person.
But just remember one thing.
You are an ambassador
for Palestinians
all across the world
here in this city.
And I was 13 years old,
I took that to heart,
and I kind of looked at that
as being kind of a
jumping point in my food,
in the way that our restaurants
are full of hospitality
and the love that we
have for the people,
and so that is the
love that goes into it.
The Middle Eastern hospitality,
the Palestinian roots
that come into it.
We just say Bismillah (Arabic)
which means In the name of God.
Bismillah, Bismillah
Awesome, let's get in this.
(guitar music)
(dramatic music)
I grew up in Meeker County,
Collinwood Township,
Steelesville District,
on a little farm,
a few miles straight south
of Dassel, Minnesota.
We grew a lot of
things on our farm
and one of the cash
crops was sorghum.
Sorghum syrup was
used in baking breads,
cakes, cookies, syrup
on your pancakes.
It was a sweetener.
My mother used a recipe
for making these rolled out
cookies that I use today.
I've substituted
Crisco for lard.
We grew about six
acres of sorghum.
It looks like a corn plant
when it comes up
out of the ground.
Two teaspoons of ginger.
First of all we strip the
plant of all its leaves
because that juice
was very bitter.
You wouldn't want that
to get into your sorghum.
Then we cut down the plant,
the press would
press out the sap,
and that sap it would
fall down into a pan.
Then you can pick up
your watered dough.
Now if it's difficult
for you to stand,
you pull up a stool
and it works just fine.
We had to boil the sap
from the sorghum cane
to make the syrup.
And it was a matter
of progression.
The sap came in on one
end and this long pan,
I think the pan must
have been 10 feet long
and the fire underneath
would start cooking
but all the green
stuff, all the sludge,
had to be taken off first.
And that was thrown
into a barrel.
Throw it off, throw
it off, you know.
And it's finally, it worked
its way up until it was
at the very end where it
was the final cooking.
And my dad always
did the finishing.
Sprinkling this on
because it tastes good.
We sold a lot of
sorghum door to door,
by word of mouth, just
people calling land sorghum.
I don't know of any competition
that people had had sorghum
to sell like we did.
You know a whole handful of
these and have a glass of milk.
(guitar picking)
Restaurant chooses to
serve delicious food,
that is bottom line.
So beyond the deliciousness,
there is how do I touch
the guest's heart?
(string music)
(chopping thuds)
That is my goal all the time,
I'm achieving that point.
I want to touch your
heart with my food.
(string music)
(chopping thuds)
Kado No Mise is my
first restaurant
where I want to introduce
more authentic traditional way
of sushi and Japanese
cooking food.
I started as a
kaiseki apprentice.
The first one year, two
years, just washing dishes,
and prep and peel vegetable
and scaling the fish.
These are very important for
that training knife skill.
I start cooking in Tokyo
and then move to New York,
eight years, then move back
to Kyoto, Japan, two years,
then move to Minneapolis.
So when I move to here,
I was feeling restaurant scene
is 15 years behind New York.
I want to catch up to New York
and then take over New York.
Then I want to catch up the
Japanese restaurant in Japan.
This is different kind of knife.
This knife, use this part for
carving or peeling the skin.
This part, use for chopping.
And this one, the sashimi knife.
Also this one sashimi knife.
Also this one sashimi knife.
But the purpose is different.
And this one the
fish to filet knife.
This knife was this
much big when I bought.
It already 20 years.
In Japanese say, (speaking
in foreign language)
it mean mirror of my heart.
This is my mirror of my heart.
Knife is my soul,
these are everything.
I like the simple
way like try to
draw out the flavor
from the ingredient.
I don't wanna make something
like when you eat the dish
that you don't know
what you eating.
Octopus is octopus.
(cello music)
Kaiseki Furukawa is
Japanese restaurant
focused to kaiseki meal.
Kaiseki begin more
than 600 years ago.
Started from part
of tea ceremony
to avoid caffeine
burn your stomach,
you need to eat something.
I want to introduce that
culture to the mid-West.
So kaiseki is 10 course.
There's a variety of ingredients
from mountain, from the ocean.
There is lots of
different flavor.
Some is vinegar flavor,
and some are salty
and some are a little bitter.
- [Female Voice] It's so good.
- Usually kaisekis
reflect the season,
I have to give
you the impression
what is in season now.
Of course the
ingredients have season.
Food have a season.
The vegetable have a season.
But kaiseki meal,
the plates and lacquerware
have season also.
80% of my ingredients
is coming from Japan.
For instance, we are using
the fresh wasabi from Japan.
Most of the guests
understand my food.
They appreciate,
thank you for open
this restaurant in Minnesota.
- Oh my goodness, it is so good.
- So I like to
watch customer face,
I can see immediately,
the faces change.
And some customer start laughing
because they're so delicious.
And also some
guests start to cry.
That is very important for me.
That's why I'm doing chef.
- [Female Voice] Arigato.
- Arigato, thank you very much.
Thank you for coming tonight.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Oh wow.
- [Presenter] This program
is made possible by
the State's Arts and
Cultural Heritage Fund
and the citizens of Minnesota.
(light music)
