Asian Culture Discussion Thread

[beacon ave south]

Some have, this Shop is pretty much in the ghetto. H*** walking around throughout the day, but I noticed a lot of hipsters been finding out about this place.

LOL...Youre in SoCal? i won’t be paying $9 for one too, especially from a fusion place.

Seattle. Got a few untapped gems left. One of the few times i can appreciate none of the staff being able to speak english

 

[Deleted member 204831]

Never been but good prices. A spot by me around that price. The guy not wearing mask

They’ve been closed for over 2 months, just reopened like 3 days ago with adjustments. There’s a big plastic cover between the cashier and customer. It’s usually crazy packed but was surprised it wasn’t busy today. Heard the other day there’s still a big group of people standing in the same place on the side waiting for their orders but with masks on. Haha

 

[Deleted member 204831]

Seattle. Got a few untapped gems left. One of the few times i can appreciate none of the staff being able to speak english

There should be some decent Vietnamese places there. Isn’t there a big community of Vietnamese in Seattle?

 

[Deleted member 204831]

Never been but good prices. A spot by me around that price. The guy not wearing mask

Most of the places in the Bay is around that price.

Edit: just noticed you’re in NorCal too.

 

[beacon ave south]

There should be some decent Vietnamese places there. Isn’t there a big community of Vietnamese in Seattle?

Oh yea.. there are. Anthony Bourdain even hit up one of the spots when he visited. This place has a crazy menu. Some real authentic **** from the motherland i never even heard of.

We got a decent Vietnamese population, aint no garden grove but a good amount.

Cant find the Bourdain clip but yall might recognize these two knuckleheads

 

[thapointguy]

They’ve been closed for over 2 months, just reopened like 3 days ago with adjustments. There’s a big plastic cover between the cashier and customer. It’s usually crazy packed but was surprised it wasn’t busy today. Heard the other day there’s still a big group of people standing in the same place on the side waiting for their order but with mask on. Haha

I like that they have hot food as well. If they open up one in San Jose there'll be lines out the door as well.

 

[thapointguy]

Oh yea.. there are. Anthony Bourdain even hit up one of the spots when he visited. This place has a crazy menu. Some real authentic **** from the motherland i never even heard of.

We got a decent Vietnamese population, aint no garden grove but a good amount.

Cant find the Bourdain clip but yall might recognize these two knuckleheads

Which 2 are knuckleheads? Lol
I like their food series though

 

[beacon ave south]

Lol they good peoples. They actually from Seattle.

 

[wuchi01]

There should be some decent Vietnamese places there. Isn’t there a big community of Vietnamese in Seattle?

Oh yea.. there are. Anthony Bourdain even hit up one of the spots when he visited. This place has a crazy menu. Some real authentic **** from the motherland i never even heard of.

We got a decent Vietnamese population, aint no garden grove but a good amount.

Cant find the Bourdain clip but yall might recognize these two knuckleheads

Fyi:
Layover S02 E10-Seattle
Minute mark 34:00.

 

[moe200069]

Thanks for sharing your story and experience fam. Kinda gotta reassess everything

right on my guy. by no means was i trynna offer relationship advice. the contexts of your current relationship versus the one I was in could be very different. we all have different priorities, triggers, and tipping points when it comes to racial differences in our partnerships. it was still early enough in the relationship where i felt i could just cut my losses and walk away without despising homegirl.

definitely love and have a deep appreciation for her, but there was a constant feeling of discomfort when being around her family. perhaps that's own **** i gotta deal with, but i knew i didn't want to have to fake the funk and "play nice" anytime i was around her family. At the same time, feeling like i always had to be ready to clap back at an asinine comment "kung flu-like" comment gave me anxiety. it's a slippery slope, but if youve got a down *** partner who's willing to call-out/call-in her family then maybe she's a keeper. good luck bro!

 

[moe200069]

Seattle. Got a few untapped gems left. One of the few times i can appreciate none of the staff being able to speak english

the thicker the accent, the better the food

 

[moe200069]

Decent prices, looks like mi jangs havent discovered that joint yet.

This fusion spot by my work tried to charge me $9 for a grilled pork. Wanted to slap the gentrification off his face.

I think Vietnamese food should be more expensive as long as it's great, other Asians charge a lot too.

a vietnamese chef spoke to the tension that exists between the pricing of food and how America(Americans) view the worth of a culture. I really vibe with the point he's making. yelpers/"foodies" will pay $15 for a ham sandwich from some hipster spot without question, but will go on yelp to complain about a banh mi costing $5 because they didn't expect to pay that much. not saying that i'd be glad to pay $10 for a banh mi, but if that became industry standard, i'm still getting my cold cut combo with pate weekly.

i agree that a lot of the food we eat at restaurants is born out of working-class communities, so making it affordable is still important. but this could be said across all ethnicities/cultures. short of it being fine dining or a place using locally-sourced ingredients, there's no reason why people should expect viet and chinese food to cost any less than going to an italian restaurant.

https://sf.eater.com/2019/10/14/20910565/top-chef-alum-tu-david-phu-banh-mi-ten-dollars

‘Top Chef’ Alum Tu David Phu Wants to Know Why You Don’t Want to Pay $10 for Banh Mi
9
The Vietnamese-American chef’s new Oakland pop-up is the latest battleground in an age-old debate

by Luke Tsai Oct 14, 2019, 3:14pm PDT

When Tu David Phu started making plans for BanhMi-Ni, his new lunchtime Vietnamese sandwich pop-up in Oakland, one of his motivations was that he wanted to make food that would be more accessible to everyday working-class people. Perhaps most famous for his 2017 stint on Top Chef, Phu was last seen selling $32 bowls of Vietnamese-inflected bouillabaisse at the Tenderloin supper club Black Cat; before that, he did a series of Vietnamese-inspired tasting menu pop-ups that charged as much as $90 a head.

In comparison, selling $10 sandwiches from a window inside of Uptown Oakland’s Copper Spoon seemed like a no-brainer, from an affordability standpoint.

Imagine the chef’s surprise, then, when many of the initial responses to BanhMi-Ni, which opened two weeks ago, were from customers and would-be customers who found $10 to be an outrageous price point for banh mi — especially from a restaurant that was claiming affordability as one of its main virtues. “I’m down to try,” one online commenter wrote, “but ‘affordable meals’ and ‘$10 banh mi’ seems contradictory.”

Naturally, Phu took to Twitter to clap back.

Chef Tu David Phu@ChefTuDavidPhu


What are your thoughts on #bannhmi?

RELATED
Opinion: Yelp Reviewers’ Authenticity Fetish Is White Supremacy in Action
In a tweet last Thursday, Phu argued that some of the banh mi shops that charge $3 or $4 a banh mi are only able to do so because they’re locked into leases at below-market rates. More to the point, he added, “Why aren’t you comparing me to the $15 burgers and $25 lunches in nearby Oakland spaces? Is it because we are serving POC food?”

Banh mi, of course, has a long history as a working-class food staple in America’s Vietnamese enclaves, so it isn’t entirely surprising that some customers — particularly Vietnamese Americans who grew up on $3 banh mi — might take issue with a celebrity chef selling a gussied-up version for three times the price.


But Phu believes there’s a kind of racism at play in the belief many Americans have that certain kinds of food should always be cheap — often the ones associated with non-European immigrant communities. Here in the Bay Area, prominent local chefs like Richie Nakano (formerly of Hapa Ramen) and Preeti Mistry (of the now-closed Juhu Beach Club) have argued, again and again, that it is nonsensical, and often flat-out racist, to say, for instance, that it’s okay to charge $25 for a plate of pasta at a nice Italian restaurant, but that a bowl of ramen — which might take even more time and labor to make — should never cost more than $12.

“[There’s not much] difference between dim-sum dumpling making and a three-Michelin-star Italian [restaurant] making agnolotti,” says Phu, who has practiced both categories of pasta-making in his career. “It’s just as hard.”

The same goes for the sandwiches at BanhMi-Ni, which Phu says he makes with high-quality ingredients while also wanting to pay his staff a living wage. At the end of the day, he believes what he’s offering is a good deal: $12 for a full meal that comes with a bottle of water and a bag of chips. (See the full menu below.) “Compare me to all the other lunch options,” he says.

Pork chashu banh mi Phi Tran
What Phu doesn’t want to get caught up in is arguments about authenticity. “Banh mi is a third-culture product,” he says, pointing out the history of French colonialism baked into the very origins of the sandwich. “I don’t think there are any rules and regulations regarding banh mi.”

For Phu, the essence of banh mi can be stripped down to three core ingredients: pickled carrots, pickled daikon, and pâté. All of the sandwiches at BanhMi-Ni — except the vegan option — have those elements, but beyond that it’s pretty much anything goes. There’s one version that Phu makes with spicy pastrami that is a tacit nod to the time he spent working at Saul’s Delicatessen; in another, he gives pork loin the kind of slow-poach treatment you’d typically associate with Japanese-style chashu.

Most controversial is probably Phu’s decision to eschew the traditional crisp baguette in favor of a soft Mexican torta roll, which he then toasts on a panini press — hence the name, “BanhMi-Ni” — so that the outside still takes on a little bit of crunch. “Give me hell or high water, I liked Wonder Bread [growing up]. I like soft bread,” he says.

Phu says he’ll steer the traditionalists who expect the hit of Maggi seasoning (and MSG) you get at old-school banh mi spots toward his chashu banh mi — which, to be clear, doesn’t actually include Maggi seasoning. As for the customer who comes to BanhMi-Ni craving a classic banh mi dac biet — the one with the cold cuts, often “No. 1” at the top of the picture menu?

“I would just tell them, ‘This isn’t the place for you,’” Phu says.


Instead, Phu says he’s happy to champion the matriarchs who are typically the ones running the Bay Area’s more traditional banh mi shops. “They can do that [type of banh mi] way better than I can,” he says.

At the same time, the chef believes that customers need to reexamine their assumptions on pricing if they want their favorite old-school pho shops and banh mi joints to stay in business for the long haul.

“All the Chinatowns and all the little communities of nostalgic feel that everyone loves — all of those are going extinct right now,” Phu says. “It’s a fact: If people don’t adjust the way they think, if they’re not willing to change their perspective on what they expect from those food community spaces, those spaces are going extinct.”

 

[Deleted member 204831]

Never been but good prices. A spot by me around that price. The guy not wearing mask

What's the name of your spot? Where at?

 

[beacon ave south]

the thicker the accent, the better the food

Truer words have never been spoken. Also, if they got anything above a C rating from the health department, im not going in.

a vietnamese chef spoke to the tension that exists between the pricing of food and how America(Americans) view the worth of a culture. I really vibe with the point he's making. yelpers/"foodies" will pay $15 for a ham sandwich from some hipster spot without question, but will go on yelp to complain about a banh mi costing $5 because they didn't expect to pay that much. not saying that i'd be glad to pay $10 for a banh mi, but if that became industry standard, i'm still getting my cold cut combo with pate weekly.

i agree that a lot of the food we eat at restaurants is born out of working-class communities, so making it affordable is still important. but this could be said across all ethnicities/cultures. short of it being fine dining or a place using locally-sourced ingredients, there's no reason why people should expect viet and chinese food to cost any less than going to an italian restaurant.

https://sf.eater.com/2019/10/14/20910565/top-chef-alum-tu-david-phu-banh-mi-ten-dollars

I feel and agree with dude 100%.

But on the flip side, im not eating $25 burgers from some yuppie joint either. So personally, i wouldn't be able to compare the two if i never even step foot in said establishment in the first place.

If i have the option of getting a similar meal for a fraction of the price, best believe I'm doing that regardless of cuisine.

 

[shibadekobe]

*KPOP POWER

 

[danger style]

Roderick Kingsley - did you broke up with him yet ?

 

[Roderick Kingsley]

Roderick Kingsley - did you broke up with him yet ?

 

[shibadekobe]

TOP U.S DIPLOMAT FOR EAST ASIA STILWELL SAYS DESIGNATED CHINESE NEWS OUTLETS WILL HAVE TO INFORM STATE DEPARTMENT OF THEIR PERSONNEL ROSTERS, REAL-ESTATE HOLDINGS

 

[shibadekobe]

 

[wuchi01]

For the Koreans.

Spoiler

 

[Nawzlew]

Japan's 2018 kit was fuegoooo

 

[computersputin]

what were they thinking with this one.

 

[wuchi01]

Was able to pickup the 2018 China black away jersey on lowkey US site at slight promo code discount when released. Not that have any feelings for their national team, but fire design. Sold out super fast everywhere and actual jersey was never approved for competition.
Enter the Dragon.

Closer Look | Nike China 2018 Home + Insane Away Kit Released

Update: Football shirt nerds Classic Football Shirt shared two images of the Nike China 2018 away kit, giving us a perfect look at the incredible dragon design.

www.footyheadlines.com

 

[Xennial]

wow how much was this?

Was able to pickup the 2018 China black away jersey on lowkey US site at slight promo code discount when released. Not that have any feelings for their national team, but fire design. Sold out super fast everywhere and actual jersey was never approved for competition.
Enter the Dragon.

Closer Look | Nike China 2018 Home + Insane Away Kit Released

Update: Football shirt nerds Classic Football Shirt shared two images of the Nike China 2018 away kit, giving us a perfect look at the incredible dragon design.

www.footyheadlines.com

 

[shibadekobe]