Chef Eddie Huang brings his Fresh Off The Boat series to Florida. In Miami, he jumps on board the Bangbus for a drive with porn star Jada Stevens. Eddie takes Jada to Morro Castle for his favorite Cuban fritas. Afterwards, Eddie witnesses her making a few unsuspecting guys’ days. The two discuss the similarities of food and porn. After work, Eddie and Jada wine and dine over Argentinian in South Beach and get real on the misconceptions of her career.
Known for chowing down on hotdogs, famed eating champ Takeru Kobayashi took on a different food at Super Bowl Party over the weekend. He devours a a whole 12 inch pizza in 1 minute. Although it looks like he might not be able to do it. He pulls through in the end. We still don’t know how this guy can put so much food away.
Chef Eddie Huang is the thirty-year-old proprietor of Baohaus—the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the night—and one of the food world’s brightest and most controversial young stars. But before he created the perfect home for himself in a small patch of downtown New York, Eddie wandered the American wilderness looking for a place to call his own.
Eddie grew up in theme-park America, on a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac in suburban Orlando, raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) hustlers and hysterics from Taiwan. While his father improbably launched a series of successful seafood and steak restaurants, Eddie burned his way through American culture, defying every “model minority” stereotype along the way. He obsessed over football, fought the All-American boys who called him a chink, partied like a gremlin, sold drugs with his crew, and idolized Tupac. His anchor through it all was food—from making Southern ribs with the Haitian cooks in his dad’s restaurant to preparing traditional meals in his mother’s kitchen to haunting the midnight markets of Taipei when he was shipped off to the homeland. After misadventures as an unlikely lawyer, street fashion renegade, and stand-up comic, Eddie finally threw everything he loved—past and present, family and food—into his own restaurant, bringing together a legacy stretching back to China and the shards of global culture he’d melded into his own identity.
Funny, raw, and moving, and told in an irrepressibly alive and original voice, Fresh Off the Boat recasts the immigrant’s story for the twenty-first century—it’s a story of food, family, and the forging of a new notion of what it means to be American. You can get the book here.
Chef Lee Anne Wong has a lifelong passion for exploring, learning and savoring Asian food. Sometimes a simple craving for a bowl of noodles is all the motivation she needs to hit the town and search for delicious eats. In this one hour special “Food Crawl with Lee Anne Wong”, she goes on a food crawl for the best dumplings and noodles New York has to offer. Her eating tour takes her to the historic Chinatowns in Manhattan and Queens, as well as the up and coming food neighborhoods in Williamsburg and Park Slope. Lee Anne visits legendary Vanessa’s Dumplings where the choices for dumplings are high and the prices are low. It’s a fun lesson filled with a lot of laughs while learning how to make hand-torn noodles at Biang! in Flushing, Queens. At Williamsburg’s Smorgasburg, Lee Anne indulges at two innovative food stalls for the best cold Chinese sesame noodles and mazeman which is cold Japanese ramen noodles. This delicious food crawl features families who have made culinary marks, as well as the next generation of inspired cooks who continue to celebrate Asian cuisine.
Food Crawl with Lee Anne Wong
Here’s the list of locations that Lee Anne Wong hits on the special:
BIANG!
41-10 Main Street Flushing NY 11358
The flagship restaurant for the Xi’an Famous Foods empire. The food is authentic Xi’an cuisine featuring the infamous handpulled noodles in lamb broth!
VANESSA’S DUMPLING HOUSE
310 Bedford Ave Brooklyn NY 11211
New Yorkers seek out these authentic handmade, Beijing-style dumplings. They are simply amongst the best in the city!
YUJI RAMEN
East River Waterfront between North 6th & North 7th Streets Brooklyn NY 11211
Yuji introduces ramen lovers to the brothless mazemen-style while using regional and seasonal ingredients in innovative ways.
SHORTY TANG & SONS
East River Waterfront between North 6th & North 7th Streets Brooklyn NY 11211
Casey and Gilley Tang bring back their grandfathers’ beloved Cold Sesame Noodles.
HURRICANE CLUB
360 Park Avenue South New York NY 10010
When you enter this Polynesian-Supper Club, you enter a new world. The drinks are served in whole fruit, the food is nuevo pan-Asian and everyone is having a great time!
TALDE
369 7th Avenue Brooklyn NY 11215
Chef Dale Talde has created a local restaurant with an Asian-American menu that marries authentic dishes with a nostalgic twist.
Aarti Sequeira explores the most popular dishes from around the world as well as the history and cultural significance behind every bite in Cooking Channel’s original series Taste in Translation on Fridays at 9:00pm ET/6:00pm ET. Each country has its own unique and delicious way to celebrate a holiday, commemorate a special moment, or even satisfy a ravenous craving. From the number one comfort food in America to the most popular first date dinner in Thailand, Aarti not only tastes her way from dish to dish but also discovers how they became iconic from both local cooks and culinary experts.
Over the course of the series, Aarti uncovers the most popular, and sometimes, unlikely dishes that play a role in different cultures. In one episode Aarti dives into the number one global comfort foods starting with a unique, comforting Scandinavian family classic-hint: it’s not meatballs! She then gets acquainted with a Senegalese chef cooking up a scrumptious, hot stew at Cazamance in Austin as well as a comforting breakfast dish from the popular restaurant Mission Chinese in New York City. On another journey, Aarti explores birthday traditions around the world. From a symbolic spicy soup in China, to a brightly colored, bite-size sweet in Brazil, each tradition is more unique than the next. Aarti tops off her list at Vanilla Bakeshop in Los Angeles where she reveals America’s number one birthday dish.
Taste in Translation with Aarti Sequeira
More about Aarti Sequeira
In August 2010, Aarti Sequeira won season six of Food Network Star, landing the ultimate dream culinary job: her very own Food Network show, Aarti Party. She draws from her Indian heritage to put approachable and delicious twists on all-American classics. In January 2012, Aarti made her Cooking Channel debut as food correspondent on Drop 5 lbs with Good Housekeeping. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism with an adjunct major in International Relations then worked at CNN in both Chicago and New York. She married her college sweetheart in 2003, moved to Los Angeles, and produced ‘Sand and Sorrow,’ a documentary about the genocide in Darfur. She decided to explore her culinary calling by attending The New School of Cooking in California where she earned her professional cooking certificate. She then combined her educational and professional backgrounds in journalism with her passion for food into a successful blog and online cooking-variety show, “Aarti Paarti” . She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband, Brendan.
The AFI thesis film “Samnang” is a donut shop love story set in Long Beach, California. SAMNANG is a recent Cambodian immigrant who works nights at a donut shop. He’s a solitary man who has found comfort in his new country by building a life of routine. But when his boss, NGOUN, orders him to train a new worker – his sister, VANNY, a spunky, single mom, he begins to discover that life could be a bit sweeter with another baker in the kitchen.
“Samnang” is inspired by writer Vanara Taing’s childhood memories of watching her family work to build a life in the United States through making donuts.
