316: Jon Kung

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. So I made a basic like mushroom broth and I was tasting it. I was tasting it. The chef came in and gave me like a swig of his cold brew. And I still had like a little bit of that mushroom soup flavor stuck on my tongue as I was like taking a swig of the cold brew. And I was like, oh, this works.

0:51This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

0:59Today on the show, we have a really fun conversation with John Kung, a Detroit-based chef and TikTok creator we've fallen hard for over the past couple of years. We wanted to have John into the studio to talk a little bit about TikTok, his life online and off, but mostly we wanted to dig into his terrific new book, Kung Food, Chinese-American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen. Man, I really love catching up with John, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:35John Kung, welcome to This is Taste. What's up, buddy? Hey, thank you for having me. It's so great to be here. Man, last time I saw you, we were at the Shinola Hotel in Detroit having a nice lunch outside. Man, I love your town. Yeah. You should go back. The building that was across the street from where we were dining, like Al Fresco, is almost done now. It is probably the first major, most impressive building Detroit has seen since probably like the Renaissance Center was built. Yeah. Maybe like the Silverdome. Just kidding. That's truly one of the most garish buildings. I'd love to hear about what's your take on what's been going on in Detroit.

2:15I'm of such pride. I'm from the west side of Michigan. But what's going on in Detroit right now? I mean, it's an interesting energy that is happening. The thing that as a Detroiter that's been there for like, I don't know, we're going on to like the better part of 20 years now. but there has been so much investment in the city's outdoor spaces and parks and i'm a runner i paddle board on the detroit river every summer that i can i notice these things and there has just been rollout after rollout of like new and grand like million dollar investments in parks and paths i think detroit is finally leaning into the fact that it is like the biggest city in michigan and Michigan is home to like some of the most beautiful outdoor spaces and natural like Natural landmarks in the country and so the fact that we are actually we are claiming that It's just like a beautiful thing.

3:13Yeah, it's it's so well said and also on the food scene You've got this incredible like you know pocket these pockets of these cultural neighborhoods and these in these in these chefs cooking their own food, and we'll get into your story. But then you've got the farms. You go out 20 minutes, and you're in some of the most lush farm territory and land. Yes, and we have Eastern Market, which is the city's jewel of a farmer's market district. I think it is like the oldest. It's the oldest, largest, continuously running farmer's market district operating in the United States. I think it has that title so long as you use all those words.

3:55and uh and people have like a really good connection like even though detroit is a very just large city like a deeply dense urban area our connection with food and farmers access or access to farmers in that way via the market itself is very in tune i think and then we have like tons of urban farms oh yeah that has been popped that have been popping up since like 2000 I want to say nine or ten, and they have been continuously running since then. So I think there is a deep connection to food. There is still like a little bit of, I think, an underappreciation for the local produce, but it's really quickly becoming more, I guess, sophisticated in a way.

4:38Absolutely. And when you had West, too, you've got fruit. Yes. Which Abra Behrens and I have talked about at length. I'll link to that in the show notes. I feel like the West side and the fruit valve of Michigan is underrepresented. I mean, do you feel that you cook a lot with the local, with the fruit that's in Michigan? So I think, like, I really like my appreciation for apples really kicks in. For me, I'm very much like grapes in the summer. And in the fall and winter, I'm all about apples. And people think that apples generally tend to be a pretty boring fruit. But, of course, they're thinking of, like, the red delicious apple.

5:11But then if you get into, like, heirloom varietals of apples, if you start eating, like, have cider apples, for example. like they have such complex flavor and such like a super satisfying texture to just bite into like that crisp and that crunch um i think apples are something that you know obviously michigan cherries you think of that yeah very short season though yeah very short season uh comes like like a flash in the pan but apples man yeah i just and of course you got like cider and cider donut season it's it's the best apple thanks for calling that one up okay so you're pushing 40 and you're big on TikTok.

5:48I mean, that is first off, yes, very, I hear that. I love that. I'm here for that. But second, like, what's that like? I mean, you're definitely not in the demo for that platform, but you've excelled on that platform. It's been very interesting. I think after, I think this is my third or fourth year in this career as a person in social media or a new media a content creator and i just walk around in life now just expecting to be the oldest person in the room which you know in the real world that is not true like at 39 like i'm not i'm not always the old but like i feel that way so i don't know i think i have this warped view on what age is at this point and i do have like peers who are also content creators like the korean vegan she is slightly older she's like my big sister but yeah no it's working working with and and communicating constantly with like what i always can only assume as a younger audience because i don't see them most of the time just like we interact through comments and stuff um i don't know it i guess it must it must have had a change in me mentally that i was just not prepared for but i think it happened so gradually that i just didn't know you didn't even notice it but you clearly rolled with it too and like your voice um doesn't age stamp you at all you obviously don't recognize you know your age in in a way yeah well i'm definitely not going up there and being like well hello fellow kids or anything like that but i will say i think there are a lot of people on tiktok or no especially youtube they assume that i'm much younger than i am because one of the most common negative comments that I get is that these people are, they call me pretentious very much, a lot.

7:32Really? Yeah, and I just don't think they see them. I just think if they assume that I'm like in my 20s and like if you're like this self-assured and probably just a little bit tired and sleepy in your 20s, you just come off as pretentious. But like, no, I'm almost 40. Like, you know. It's funny how like wisdom and like confidence reads as pretension for a certain age. Right. Do you use words like fire? Do you use fire? I do not. Okay, do you use like torched? Oh, I do use torched. Well, I do use these things in cooking context, but like I don't say, do people say torched outside of it? Well, torched is a 20s lexicon for like stale or old or dusty.

8:10Oh, I don't know any of this. I mean, thank God, John. I used fire in a previous episode of the podcast, and my wife was in the car while we were listening to it, and she was like, stop the car, cringe, stop using fire. So I have to say on the record that I'll probably not use fire. Yeah. I think like for me, fire is just like a term that you use on the line and torch is something that you associate with creme brulee. Well said. It's totally more cooking terms. John, I want to ask about the book and like how do you come to the realization that it's time to write a book? You're very articulate with your progression from a chef to a creator.

8:50And I feel like you didn't want to rush things, but clearly you decided this was the time. Yeah. Um, the decision, well, the way that the book came to be was like a lot of things just fell in place. I never thought for myself that I would write a book. Like if, when I was still cooking, the idea of writing a book was not something that I would think that I would be doing until I was like maybe 50, 60 years old, a couple of restaurants under your belt. Hopefully they did well enough that people would care enough. But, you know, at this time, just because of the newfound fame through TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, the book deal came first.

9:35The book deal came before any restaurant that I was even preparing to build. So, I mean, you don't pass up an opportunity like that. So it presented itself through an editor, Raquel at Clarkson Potter. Telzel, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She just she sent me an email after a Zoom meeting involving two different authors asking if I was interested in writing one. And after that, she hooked me up with a couple of agents. I selected one. I wrote a book proposal and we sent it back and they accepted it. It was probably not the most traditional path towards the book, I would say. But well, maybe now it's pretty.

10:17It's more and more common for people who are on TikTok now. It's definitely how we roll here at Crown, at Clarkson Potter and 10 Speed and speak about those here. Specifically, I've done books outside of this company as well. And like I love the way Raquel and other editors here work. They reach out because they love you and your content. It's almost like a scouting of talent in a way and then like building it based off of that. And I see it happening with a lot of other content creators and the books that they make, the beautiful books that they make. and yeah, I'm just very happy to be here.

10:52Yeah, well, we're going to get into the book now, and really, John, I love this book. I think it's got so many wrinkles in here. You've got this, the writing is crisp. The writing is meaningful. It's not like you phoned anything in. I just keep diving into it. I've had it for several months, and I've had the PDF and had the physical copy, and you really just got to go check out this book. It's really fresh. I want to start and ask about fusion, and quote nobody wants their food labeled fusion which is funny because that is what most american chefs cook myself included this is a quote from the book really well said i'd like to get into this a little bit because i think you have a lot to say about it i think fusion became just uh it became such a like not i want to say taboo but people didn't really think too highly of any food that labeled itself fusion especially in the after the 2000s like it was a big thing in the maybe like 70s 80s and 90s and the food that came like was of that like the term Asian fusion it was so generic and it was so based off of like an outsider's point of view of what to do with the Asian ingredients which is like you know super turns out to be superficial use of a technique or that ingredient itself it was always one-sided and it came from the perspective of usually a white male chef just you know playing around with soy sauce or terry oftentimes teriyaki sauce or um spicy mayo or that kind of thing uh so you know i don't think a lot of people wanted to be associated with that and certainly a lot of people who cooked who came on later in the scene when like a lot of asian cooks um came up they didn't want their food to be labeled as fusion because in their mind it was just like poor use of the ingredients that they loved.

12:41Yeah, because it was being done so poorly. Yeah. This fusion cooking. But as you write, it's evolved and it's how we cook today. No, it's if you look back in food and in the history of a recipe and the history of ingredients and how they travel throughout the world, like every food, every dish, every cuisine in some way, shape, and form is fusion in a way. If you look back enough, it's all fusion. I agree. You then kind of pivot into a conversation about third culture cooking, which I think is a more articulate way to talk about fusion. So John, let's talk about third culture cooking and how does that represent your style of cooking?

13:23Well, third culture cooking, well, it comes from the term of a third culture person or a third culture kid. And in that is somebody who grew up constantly moving in between cultures within their everyday lives. So the culture of their parents or whoever raised them, the grandparents, whatever, and then the culture of the world outside of their home in which they were raised. So a kid that went to school every day experienced the culture of somebody. Maybe there were a Mexican-American family or Vietnamese American family. The culture that they had at home was very much different from the culture that experienced when they went to school or not.

14:00And that day-to-day interaction and that day-to-day immersion just gives you access to nuances of things with things like communication, certainly food, certainly art and entertainment. And it is something that it's a lived experience. And that translates, I think, so strongly in different kinds of expressions. Certainly, I first saw it in a lot of fashion, a lot of visual art mediums. And more recently, including through my book, it being expressed through food as well. Let's give you an example then of how you personally lived a third culture, your own background, and you're talking about the two communities that you were pulled between.

14:45Yeah. So I had like my childhood was spent between Hong Kong and for a large part in Toronto. and yeah the culture that I had in my home was very much that of like Hong Kong Chinese I like the type of food that I had when I was at home was like spam fried rice fried chicken wings with that were marinated in fish sauce uh Hong Kong borscht those type of stews and stuff and congee but then when I go to school like it's that almost like that big fat Greek wedding trope all I wanted All I wanted in life was a ham and cheese sandwich, but I was taking thermoses of cup noodles, of noodles, which people back then were even, like, grossed out by the fact that I was eating instant noodles from a thermos.

15:33Yeah. And now they have, like, subscriptions to, like, the instant ramen. Of course. And now everybody wished they had the issue one of Lucky Peach, the ramen issue. Totally. Which I do. You do? I was just talking to somebody about issue one. She had like three through seven and then some of the teens. You got issue one. I have every single issue of that. No way. We just had Chris Ying on the show. I never actually asked him about if he has a collection. But do you go back to those and read Lucky? I'm actually afraid to touch them now. It'll get you, yeah, maybe retirement. Well, John, thanks for sharing the way the book is, your background and how, like a little bit of context for what third culture cooking is.

16:13I want to ask about the Hong Kong borscht. Specifically, you have a great recipe. And I was just intrigued by this idea of Hong Kong borscht. What is it? So Hong Kong borscht, people think that it is something that I came up with, but it is actually a very traditional Hong Kong dish with like an amazing story. So it's not just my recipes that I consider to be third culture, But it is also a collection of recipes that are in their very nature, third culture. But it is just these recipes have just existed before the term existed. So Hong Kong borscht was made by obviously, you know, borscht was created by the Ukrainians who traveled through to Russia.

16:56Well, through the periods of political unrest, these chefs would travel from Ukraine to Russia to down into Shanghai. unfortunately that they had their turn in civil unrest so they eventually migrated to hong kong and how that uh dish kind of uh changed was they just really wanted to maintain the redness and i think the tartness that came in in borscht uh but unfortunately like we weren't very big on beets in china but what we did have was for some reason tomatoes so the red and the sourness came from the tomatoes and the it went from this creamy pureed uh soup into like a very brothy beef based with vegetable stew and it was something that you could see in the 80s in hong kong at like tea shops and right next to a corn chowder type style soup that we have there as well and it was like an iconic dish i had it coming home from school all the time it's not an easy one it's not an easy thing to do when you're cooking oxtails, everything always takes a ton of time.

18:07But it was delicious, and it was hearty, and it was tart and just as red, and it just played into what these traveling chefs did to appease the local population but also did the best they could to remind them of home. What's the tartness? What's the acidity in the dish? It comes from the tomatoes. So the tomatoes, is there any vin in there at all, or is it just from the tartness from the tomatoes? Oh, you could add some. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta tackle this. Yeah, it's great. And there's also like an Instapot version of it in the book, I think. I know there are like a couple of really, really involved like stovetop, like five hour on the stovetop recipes.

18:45I try to also include it in a more accessible way to get that done. It's cool. This book is just the recipe writing and they just jump off the page and I have a few more questions. One is the coffee mushroom broth, which is super inventive. yeah it's a savory coffee but i'm curious when you actually serve it because it's it's really cool talk about it what it is and when you serve it so i was going through this kick and by when i say kick i mean like the studio that i lived in at the time um did not really do a very good job in maintaining heat in the building so we would constantly wake up to like 40 a room that was 40 or 50 degrees.

19:24February, Michigan too. Yeah, it was terrible. So I started making, I started this idea of just making broth and soups for drinking in the morning as a way to wake up and as a way to warm up. So I started making breakfast broths. And how that particular soup came to be was I was working at a restaurant called Gold Cash Gold in Detroit at the time. And I was just put in charge for this, I think, event that we were doing of just like making a vegetarian or vegan option broth. And so I just used what we had at the restaurant. We had like a bunch of dried mushrooms. We had a bunch of vegetables. So I made a basic like mushroom broth and I was tasting it.

20:04I was tasting it. And then I like the chef came in and gave me like a swig of his cold brew. And I still had like a little bit of that mushroom soup in like flavor stuck on my tongue as I was like taking a swig of the cold brew. And I was like, oh, this works. And so let's give this a try and see like how far I could take this. And so I was doing my own dinner series for a birthday later on, I think the next few months later. And so I just made like a coffee broth. And I've always been into like drinking broths out of mugs. And so I made one that was almost like a mushroom cappuccino with like a pea milk foam on top.

20:51And I used like a morel mushroom grated on top so it looked like chocolate. And the people were like, they were blown away. So this is kind of like, I guess, a diner coffee version of that. Yeah, with like the diner mug style of the photo. Which I love. But yeah, it is part of a groups of broths that are meant to be made over the course of the day, but then kept in the fridge to be warmed up in the morning for you to drink in the morning. Very cool to have a savory breakfast with a little bit of caffeine kick in there. Yeah. Really inventive stuff. We were talking before off mic about last night you cooked at Bonnie's and you did a wonton flight.

21:25Yes. I like to get into wontons. You have this fried curry lamb wonton and he uses cream cheese. And I want to get a sense of what the cream cheese is doing and how you think about wontons. Yeah. So like wontons, rangoons, and fried dumplings in general. I just, you know, like with the history of the fried wonton and the fried rangoon, it was almost like an outsider's romanticization and completely inaccurate perception of what Chinese food was. Like, as we know, with the rangoon, it was like probably more along the lines of something, the Polynesian. but it became something that was so beloved in this city that and so expected of Chinese American food that we I just like figured well let's just we all leaned into it we might as well continue leaning into it because it is absolutely delicious and so much fun to eat and so me going into these fried dumplings and seeing like how far I could take it and how far I could like bring it into kind of like the inclusion of what our culinary like zeitgeist i would say is now which is thinking very diversely very globally like curry yeah with the curry elements um and just like you know kind of cooking things with the i cooking things with the intention of serving it to other people in the sense that like they might be familiar with it or appreciative of it as well Like that's really the reason behind all of that.

22:56How do you make a wonton then in essence? Is it, how does a cream cheese play into it? Just like what's the food chemistry there? Oh, it just holds it all together. Yeah. It's just creamy and it's just gooey and it's just delicious. Yeah. And of course, like, you know, any kind of creamy element mixed in with the flavors of curry is just amazing. It's really like curry mayo. Yeah, exactly. So good. I love that you have a section for wontons in Rangoon. Yeah. It's amazing. Walk us through Faygo orange chicken, which it's a tribute to orange chicken or the Chinese American takeout orange chicken, but also one of Michigan's greatest exports, which is Faygo.

23:38Right, right. Mostly people from Michigan and maybe some juggalos wouldn't understand. Oh, my gosh. You had to reference the juggalos. I mean, I know they're the ones that would be, like, the most excited to make this probably. Do you drink rock and rye once in a while? Every now and then. Actually, I have a friend in, he's the chef at a restaurant called Takoi, and he makes rock and rye ribs, and those are delicious. Oh. Yeah. Soda ribs, like Dr. Pepper ribs, rock and rye ribs. So good. I'd never actually had the Panda Express orange chicken until probably, I want to say, like, 2021 2020 sometime and i knew i understood it to be like an iconic chinese takeout dish and when i tried it i you know it's sweet it's savory it probably hits the spot for a lot of people but as a cook and as an appreciator of of chinese cuisine it was kind of like one note but it was fine um and uh and so i did a little bit of research and i looked in to see like where this could have possibly come from.

24:45And it might have origins, I think, and I wrote this in the book, it might have origins in like Hunanese cuisine where it was just like a stir-fried dish using orange peel and it was much spicier and it was obviously a lot less sweet. So I wanted to do something in combination with that, but I also, as I like to do, want to include my surroundings and locations and pay homage to where I am in that specific point in time when I do it. And around the corner from me is DeVries, a hundred-year-old cheese shop in Eastern Market. And I know that they sell Faygo there out of the glass bottles still. Oh, wow.

25:26Yeah. That's how I grew up drinking it. Right. Yeah, I love those. Instead of like the two later plastic ones. So I bought a couple of ones of those and I was like how – and like my mission was to incorporate the Faygo in a meaningful way. Also, Faygo orange chicken just sounds like it works. So it is spicier. It is a little more balanced. It is obviously a lot more time consuming than just getting takeout. So if that is, you know, if that is more your speed, by all means, enjoy yourself. But yeah, this was something that I just wanted to kind of bring to create a dish that was home for me in multiple ways.

26:05It's cool because you're doing the marinade first and then you're frying it using a dredge and a batter or some of that sort. And then you're making your glaze. Yeah. You're tossing it. Yeah. In a wok. Yeah. Which is a very like standard way to make like your Chinese takeout fare, which is a lot of it is just like dredge, batter, fry and then toss it in a sauce. There are a couple of recipes that are like that, such as like the Canadian ginger beef that's in there, mapo peminere that is in there. So if you learn that technique, know that you're not just doing it for one recipe. But it is also a technique that can take you really, really far because a lot of takeout places cook with that specific way.

26:46And as we know, you can do a lot of it ahead. Yeah. You can fry ahead and then just toss to order. Or even just make the sauce the day before. Make all the sauces the day before. Those hold. I mean, for a dinner party, who doesn't want Faygo orange chicken? Orange chicken. It sounds super good. As an aside, what's your take on Detroit pizza? Oh, it's Superior. Love it. I mean more. Let's just go. Let's get some tape. We used to be like better representation of it outside of the city, though. I have been to a couple of non-Detroit specific chains. I think like I haven't had one here and it was just fine.

27:30and I don't want people to think that it's like oh it's not one of those things where like Chicago has got great Detroit style pizza. It does. And I think New York has Jets here We have a Jets. I walked by and it looked like the whole window was smashed. Oh no It was a bad look for Jets. But we have a place called Emmett's that's supposed to be pretty good. Okay. For Detroit style. Yeah. But yeah we have a Jets here man. Yeah. Totally. And people should people should definitely like experience that. I feel like they would be a reliably good source of Detroit-style pizza because we enjoy Jets back home.

28:01Oh, definitely. Jets night is a great night, and there's buddies, of course. Of course. What about local one-offs, two-offs? Do you have any of those spots in mind? We do go out for buddies when we do. It's mostly a proximity thing. We don't like to go very far, which means we generally just order Jets. I like ordering Jets pizza in because it is a very good Detroit-style pizza, but I can also put my own chili oils and stuff on top of it. 100 % I love a condiment. We can talk about ranch. Ranch is pretty great. I want to hear a little bit now that the book is out and you're doing the tours and you're out in the world.

28:37But I know that was such a big commitment. Is there a thought that you're going to reboot your Eastern Market pop-ups? Because I just jealously would love to attend one. Because they looked so great. And just retroactively looking at the menus you were doing and some of the video content, it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, the problem with that is, is like the building that where I filmed all that content, where I did all those dinners right now. It is like a sad story, but it's not the end of the story of that building. But it was in half construction. It was like in half demolition of becoming a full fledged restaurant before the pandemic hit.

29:15And it just got like too expensive to continue on with that plan with the things that are going on now. And also I'm really busy. So it is in the far, like in the grand scheme of things, something that I would like to bring back. But maybe like in the, a little bit farther out in the future. Yeah. So you'll bring, what about like a restaurant though? Is there like opening a restaurant? Yeah. You're like, I love your reaction.

29:42No comment. I mean, it's, I understand how hard it is now. Well, I've always had a good understanding of how hard it is to run a restaurant. and so I will still like say with my full of a chest that this is an easier job. And so I'm happy to do this for now. Respect it. Absolutely. That is such an honest take. Yeah. The restaurant industry is impossible. Yeah. I feel like I'm still tired from my time there. John, on This Is Taste, we asked guests about their discerning tastes. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? Oh God, okay. Your favorite Detroit only food.