535: Southern California Road Trip: Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley

26:19Even just go to the local market and see what there is. You might be so surprised at what there is instead of going to Trader Joe's and Costco. There's a whole world out there.

26:31Chris Yang is the chef owner of Yang's Kitchen, which is one of my favorite restaurants in all of Los Angeles. Yang's is an absolute must visit for any visitor. It's an all-day cafe where you can order chicken liver mousse, oysters, the most amazing mochi pancake, incredible chicken wings, and many daily specials. I've been to Yang's Kitchen twice now. It's getting better and better each visit, and this is one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, and it's just such a credit to you and your wife and your staff. It's just a really special place. Tell me a little bit about how you found this location in Alhambra, a place that you grew up in, and a little bit about the Alhambra restaurant scene.

27:13In terms of, you know, landing in Alhambra, you know, one of my business partners, I used to work in his restaurants and I was talking him up to help me open a restaurant. And he happened to have a space in Alhambra that, you know, he couldn't really lease out. It was kind of sitting there for a while. And my mom happened to be the real estate agent. After a while, we were like, should we just open here? That's what we decided to do. Give me a little bit about your background before Yang's. I'm actually unsure of where you've cooked before. You said you worked in the industry. I'd love to get a sense of that.

27:45I started off working at Brian Ng's The Spice Table in Little Tokyo. I actually started working there for free. I was picking herbs. I had no experience. I had no idea what I was doing. I think I worked there for a year and a half or so. um that was my first job such a legendary place i was i was fortunate to visit when it was open and amazing place yeah for sure like a lot there's so many people who say they miss that restaurant and you know i don't know if you guys know the story but the metro took the space over so they basically you know the metro ruined that for everyone uh but he's still in in la cooking as well yeah so the the one of the next places i worked at is his next restaurant casilla in san Monica.

28:27You know, it's a French Singaporean Vietnamese brasserie, you know, kind of inspired by Balthazar in New York. You know, I gained a lot of my working experience from there as well, where I worked my way up to be a sous chef. And yeah, you know, those were probably the two most important places that I worked at. Oh, that's cool. So, Kasia, and now that you told me this, I see it. Like, there's some inspiration from it. You're, of course, doing your fully own version of your restaurant, but you know, the, the Singaporean brasserie with, you know, you're doing oyster service. It just like kind of comes together.

29:00And so you left Casio to open Yang's? Yes. Oh my gosh. What, what, what was the, the moment? Was it your mom's real estate tip or was it just like, you just wanted to do your own thing? Yeah. I mean, I think it was kind of naive. Like, you know, the thoughts are really simple. Like I've always wanted to, you know, since I was younger, I've loved food. And since coming out of college, I thought, you know, maybe I'll open my own restaurant one day, you know, without knowing any of the business background or how to run the business. But I knew I could cook. And working at Bryant's Place gave me a lot of great experience, you know, with cooking, with managing people.

29:39And yeah, I just wanted to open a restaurant. Yeah, yeah. Reflecting on it, was it the right decision? I think it was, it turned out to be a good decision in terms of you know just learning peer learning and experience um could i have worked in the industry longer could i have learned more things certainly i think it would have been smoother but you know i think that's kind of for everyone it's like you never really know when you're truly ready so you just have to take what you get out of it no absolutely and and the fact that you can you know open a restaurant with two eyes open and and and and correct those mistakes in real time.

30:18But painful, right? Did you have some moments where you're like, is this going to really work? Some doubt? I mean, I still think about that every day. It's been five years and it's probably been some of the most painful years of my life, but also the most growing I've ever done. So, yeah. Yeah, you're being honest here and I respect that. I mean, the business is not easy. You're on the 101, you have adoring fans, but there's still, you have to get butts in the seat every single day. And it's a very competitive city. And the costs are high too. Yeah. You know, every day there's restaurants closing around us, which is really scary.

30:56And I think too, since COVID happened, like every year, there's been no consistency, you know, year after year after year. We don't really know what's the new normal. We don't know what's going on. So that's the really scary part too. Yeah. You opened kind of quietly, but then people started to come here. And what I have observed is that the media members, the folks who I really respect in food, also people who work in the industry, had been saying, you've got to get out to Yang's. Yang's is so special. Yang's is like they're turning, you know, the French bistro on its head by offering, you know, like raw oysters in addition to a mochi pancake in addition to a Japanese style breakfast set.

31:38And I mean, it was just cool to see you open quietly. What are those first couple years like? Yeah, so we actually, we opened in 2019 right before COVID. And we actually had opened with a separate concept. You know, we tried to do something that was more fast casual. We were doing kind of like Taiwanese comfort food at that time. But it was more Asian American, but a lot of people label us Taiwanese because we did some dishes that were like very near and dear to like Taiwanese comfort food. And things were tough because we had no idea what we were doing. you know I had worked in restaurants for years and I knew how to cook I did work my way up to a management position but I never had run a business before so you know we were just trying to cook we were trying to do something different we were trying to kind of push forward Asian American cuisine you know using local ingredients seasonal ingredients farmers market ingredients cooking things from scratch, paying attention to the details.

32:39And yeah, that's kind of just, you know, it's been a journey. And then with COVID, we had to close. We had to reconsider our business model. And it just, it's kind of been nonstop adapting and learning. You know, when I say French bistro, of course, it's not a French restaurant. And to be clear, it's Taiwanese, it's Japanese, it's Chinese, it's modern. but just for some reason the style of service with the the all-day menu and then you go into a dinner service it feels like there's a route of France in here is is that an accurate observation so the funny thing is I've never been to France but you know I'm on Instagram I follow all the restaurants and definitely like I admire really strong food cultures you know such as French food culture, you know, I've been to Spain, Japan, Hong Kong.

33:26I think a lot of those food cultures share things in common. And, you know, they're kind of fanatic. They're like the foodies over there in those countries are fanatical about the ingredients, about the technique, you know, to the point where, you know, we kind of all obsess about food in almost an unhealthy way. Yeah, you're my people. I love that. Chris, tell me, how do you see yourself redefining modern Asian American cooking? And really, how has the San Gabriel Valley really been this mecca for Asian food of all types in different formats, but in such a modern way? And on this episode, we have plenty of examples.

34:12Yeah, I don't like to consider myself as redefining Asian American food because, you know, the more I think about it, I think it's just a natural evolution. You know, I have two cultures. My parents are immigrants from Asia and I was born here. So that's what makes me Asian American. I do think our cuisine is kind of like a natural evolution of what's going on in the San Gabriel Valley. I mean, there's thousands of other kids like myself who are second generation Asian Americans. And we grew up on our parents' home cooking. We grew up on American food, fast food. So kind of, you know, just kind of merging those two cultures together is it's kind of just the natural next step of what's going on in this country, in this area.

34:59Yeah, we're just slowly heading in that direction. Yeah, it's an exciting place to follow as a food writer. I don't live here, but I get to visit quite a bit. And I always try to make it out to a couple new restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. And I like that you pushed back on the idea of redefining because I think that that's a really – I love that you said that. I think that it is an evolution. It's not about the hard redefinition. So thank you for correcting my statement. Let's talk food. I think what's cool about your restaurant, as I mentioned, is there's multiple formats. It's an all-day cafe.

35:28There's a really strong breakfast. If you come in at 9 a.m., you're going to have your version of the Grand Slam. We'll talk about that. But also at dinnertime, you switch gears. But let's start with the daytime menu. You've got the mochi pancake. You've got this incredible idea. I think your fig salad yesterday was such a highlight. Talk about how you came upon some of these dishes for your daytime menu. So when we started doing brunch at Yang's, we wanted to make it our way, which is as we were going, as we were learning, as we were growing, we wanted to start with the ingredients. You know, we have a farmer's market right next to us every Sunday.

36:05So that's where we, that's our jumping off point. And just, you know, breakfast is really simple, but it makes a big difference in the ingredients that you source, you know, starting with the eggs to the proteins, you know. So in our mochi, cornmeal mochi pancake, we actually, the idea came from using blue cornmeal from gristintol. Gristin Toll is a local grain mill out here in Pasadena. And, you know, we had never made a cornmeal mochi pancake before, but we just wanted to use our ethos of finding a really great local ingredient and kind of adding an Asian twist to it. So that's where the mochi part came in.

36:46And for the mochi, we use Coda Farms' Glutenous Rice Flour, which is from Sacramento. So, you know, it's domestic, it's local, fits our ethos. You know, they farm really great. they're at the farmer's market um and so we we tasked our chef de cuisine elaine with putting together a recipe you know it's like we we there was no recipe online for a cornmeal mochi pancake so we kind of had to like put together existing mochi pancake recipes and you know we made it happen and that's kind of the story of how we're serving that dish yeah and then you had persimmon uh you know jam on it yesterday or compote and then you you have instead of uh traditional maple syrup, you're using condensed milk, which I think is very cool.

37:29Yeah. So the persimmon jam is a seasonal component. It's fall right now. Persimmons are actually, it's winter, fall, winter, but there's persimmons everywhere at the farmer's market. There's a lot of seconds because they get kind of mushy, but those are perfect for jam. We cook them down for a few hours. In terms of the condensed milk, in Asian cuisine, we like to put condensed milk on toast, on like buns, French toast. It's kind of like a fun twist on syrup. So that's kind of like, you know, that's kind of where our Asian Western mishmash continues. Tell me about this salad. You know, it's multi-green rice.

38:05It's got kale and cilantro. It has this wonderful miso dressing. And of course it has persimmons, but you're not using the mushy kind. You're using the ones that are a little bit firmer. And my man, what a dish. I like we see a lot of beautiful salads in Southern California. But when when that's my favorite dish of our meal yesterday, I just love that. Yeah, the salad came from, you know, when we opened the restaurant, we want to provide something healthy. And actually, when you go to a lot of restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley, you don't really find raw vegetables or salads on the menu because that's not really part of, let's say, like authentic Asian culture.

38:46but you know being asian american we wanted to put a salad on the menu you know because first of all we want to eat healthy we want to eat salads and you know we know that a lot of our customers feel the same way so it kind of started from there and from there again building off the ingredients in our base and our core menu items it actually started with the multi-grain rice which is part of the grain base of that salad we serve that in our set meal it's like a healthy rice with black rice brown rice white rice and millet um and then you know kale salads are popular and we wanted to put something together and then you know uh the seasonal components the persimmon put some herbs we put some dates some crispy rice oh yeah the dates i'm sorry i forgot about like the most important part the dates beautiful salad yeah thank you yeah yeah let me uh let me just jump in and ask you about the breakfast sets.

39:42The breakfast sets are, are they traditional Japanese or is it your version of it? I mean, I think that if you're here during the day, you've got like a beautiful steelhead, you could do braised tofu, beautiful miso soup there, some pickles, a great egg. It's just, it's amazing. I love it. Yeah, the sets are inspired by Japanese breakfasts. You know, one of my favorite places to travel for food inspiration is Japan. And, you know, know, they do these incredible, really well-balanced breakfasts that have like rice, vegetables, soup, egg, protein, all the things that you just mentioned. And we just want to do our take on it because we don't, you know, we don't necessarily want to say that we cook authentic Japanese food because we don't.

40:25Yeah. So it's kind of like a Californian Asian version of it with, you know, seasonal produce. We still have the rice component, the soup, the protein, and it's our version of it. And, you know, I think people appreciate it because it's different from just having your typical hash brown pancake protein, which we also serve. Yes, you do. And my last visit a couple months ago, you were doing amazing hash brown with, I think, creme fraiche and some ikora or something like that. Yeah. So we have a dish called our smoked salmon hash. Yeah. Which we have house-made hash brown brick, basically. We put a Meyer lemon creme fraiche on top, smoked salmon, ikra, dill, chives.

41:07And, you know, it's kind of like a fun dish that we thought would go really well for brunch. And it's funny about how many people ended up liking it. A lot of people, you know, it says it reminds them of certain like European dishes or, you know, in Jewish cuisine. There's a lot of like crossovers. So people have been really happy with that dish. It reminds me of Pomme Dauphin or other French style of doing fried potatoes. And order it. If you're coming out here to SUV, Tieng's Kitchen, order that one. Well, I have to ask you about your soft serve because you have legit fans. I mean, people will come here just for the soft serve.

41:44And there's a lot of great ice cream in this town. But your soft serve is on the top of many lists. Talk about the evolution of that. Yeah, so the soft serve idea actually was inspired by our trips to Japan. It's a funny story. Basically, when I traveled to Japan, there was this thing called soft cream or milk soft serve. It's plain. There's no vanilla flavor. And the first time I ate it, I was like, this is incredible. You know, like compared to, you know, if you compare it to McDonald's in America, the Japanese soft serve wins hands down. And the funny thing is my wife will, you know, kind of laugh at me for this.

42:21But every time, basically almost every time I saw a milk soft serve in Japan, I would order it. So that means I might eat like five in a day, which is kind of ridiculous. But anyway, so to tie that back to Yang's is the thinking was, you know, this isn't really prevalent in America. And I was wondering how come no one's serving it. So, you know, we just got, you know, just on a whim, we got a soft serve machine. We sourced a really great soft serve from Strauss, you know, up in NorCal. You know, all organic, all regenerative, pasture-raised. It starts with high-quality dairy. And then kind of we also started adding a sorbet line because, you know, there's a lot of people who are either lactose intolerant or they're vegan.

43:02So we started using seasonal produce and making our own sorbets in-house. And, you know, one of the really fun ones that we've been doing is the Wiser Melon sorbet. And, yeah, that one, you know, one of my customers kept asking me to do it, and I was kind of resistant. You took a request. yeah it's so great so yeah we tried it and we're like wow this is really good and you know people who tasted it were kind of blown away and yeah that's kind of ever since then we've been doing seasonal sorbets and just you know just cranking out soft serve oh my god so what's on the vision board for for 25 uh for for soft serve flavors we kind of have a rotation now um you know in in the winter there's not too much fruit available so we do like citrus and passion fruit um early in In the spring, we've done a strawberry sorbet before.

43:51Melon kind of rolls around in the summer. But yeah, it's all inspired by the market. So if there's ever something different we want to try, you know, we'll give it a shot. Yeah. Well, I have to close by asking you, I know it's impossible to pick favorite restaurants in SGV. You grew up here, you run a restaurant. I know you can't go out to all the restaurants. So simply what pops into your head right now, maybe places you've been to recently, just restaurants that we should be maybe visiting. Yeah, the most recent restaurant I went to is this little Taiwanese mom and pop joint called Golden Leaf.

44:22It's actually kind of like right down the street from us. You know, Taiwanese food, as popular as it is, it doesn't get a ton of representation in this area or in America in general. And I just think that this family over at Golden Leaf, you know, I think they run it a mom, a dad, a son. You know, it's really tight business. I think there's a certain element of really homestyle cooking to them like authentic or honest cooking to their food that I enjoy you know there's no frills it's just delicious it's accessible what's a dish or two to order there? so they do a braised pork rice that we love and then you know they'll do like an oyster pancake you know Taiwanese oyster pancake one fun one that's kind of like you know if you're a little adventurous get their fried intestine dish.

45:15So basically, you know, it's braised pig intestine and then you deep fry it. So it's crispy and it's gooey at the same time. A little, it could be a little scary, you know, if you've never had intestine before, but it's a really fun dish. Golden Leaf, definitely gonna put that on my list. What's another couple of restaurants that we should go to? Another really fun one right down the street from us is a Sichuan restaurant called Xiang La Hui. You know, I think David Chang and Jonathan Gold talked about that restaurant a lot. It's interesting because every time I go to that restaurant, it's kind of like roulette.

45:49The food is so spicy that I kind of have stomach problems like 50 % of the time after I eat there, but the food is delicious. Yeah, it's worth it. Yeah, certainly. We know that situation where it's like, the burn is what you get, but we're okay with it. Yeah, I think one more restaurant, if you want to impress people really high-end cooking, really nice space, a lot of different dining options available. Obviously, Bistro Na. Yeah. Tell us when you go to Bistro Na, what are you ordering? At Bistro Na, you definitely got to get the crispy shrimp. But, you know, what's impressive about their offerings is they have, like, they have the whole gamut, like, kind of cold dishes.

46:32They have seafood. They have the carbs. They have dessert. They have proteins. So it's really hard to go wrong because, you know, I think they have pictures. on the whole menu. Yeah. So it's kind of like every time you can get something different. It's a book. It's literally like a thick book menu. It's amazing. Well, Chris, thank you so much for the conversation. And really, you got to head out to Yang's Kitchen. It's one of my favorite restaurants in the country. So nice to meet you. Thank you. And, you know, thank you for your time. You know, thank you for talking to everyone about, you know, what we do, this area.

47:07Yeah, I think, you know, everyone should support restaurants as much as they can right now, especially mom and pops, independent restaurants. There's a lot of them out here. So it's a tough time. So yeah, thank you. So well said. Thank you so much.

47:26Well, as we are here, we have some highlights. We've had such a great trip. We've had, you know, amazing tour guides. We've had some meals. We've consumed some calories and had an amazing, we've had some amazing travels through Southern California. Let's start with Orange County with your highlights. Give me one. Orange County. Wow. We had really so many meals over this entire trip and a lot in Orange County. But I think one of my standouts was going to Northgate Market, which people listening, if you're from California, probably know about Northgate Market, Northgate Gonzalez Market. Two favorites, two sweet things that we had.

48:01Going to El Moro, which is like this very famous Mexico City Charles place that it's their first location outside of Mexico. I was just so excited to wait in line and get one of their really beautiful, long, slender churros and dip it in chocolate and cajeta. And it really tasted just like I remember it tasting on my trips to Mexico City. And I was doing some research and I saw that they're actually opening another location in Echo Park next year. So exciting to see that they're going to have more churros. But right now, the fact that you can get them at that Northgate Market was so special. And I also really love the Mame Paletas that they were selling just right by the register.

48:35The paletas are from La Nena, and it really was just creamy. It had that delicious kind of caramelized mame flavor. And I just, you know, I wish I lived here so I could go there all the time. Well, I'm going to stay down in Orange County. I'm going to stay in Costa Mesa, actually. We had to make an important choice. We had to try some pizza on this trip. And, you know, there's a lot of great pizza in Orange County. And really, when tapping into our experts and doing the research, this name kept coming up, and it's Folk's Pizza. Now, Folk's is located in a retail plaza called The Camp. And, you know, there's a lot of cool shops there, some indie markets there.

49:18It's a really, like, nice afternoon place to stroll around. But really, the longest lines are for this great pizza. The owner is Joey Buderbach, and he told Eater, quote, what we're doing is artisan style pizza. We don't check boxes from any other style. So I love that quote. I read this great piece about the history of this restaurant and he had worked in restaurants in LA and he moved down there because he wanted to start a family. It was a great story. And really, it isn't a classic Neapolitan, even though he uses a high temperature wood oven. I felt that the flavor development in the dough was tremendous.

49:52It was a really beautiful pizza. The pizza, the one we tried, was actually a potato pizza from Weiser Farms. Potatoes, the Carlo Rosa potato, with lots of onions that were slow cooked, some beautiful cheeses, Tilegio and Fontina and Pecorino all together. And really, I thought this pizza, I love potato pies, but they can be not good sometimes when the potatoes are undercooked or if it's imbalanced. They're known for their sausage and fennel pie, but we went with the potato. I thought that it was a great pie but really they have some french fries and like ordering french fries before you get a pizza not the typical one-two.

50:31I saw that it was a$10 french fry. I'm like okay guys you're coming to play with a$10 french fry. And we were all extremely excited about these fries. They're fried in beef tallow and there's clarified butter that's kind of drizzled on top of them so they have this nice shine and there's a lot of salt there. Two dips, a whole grain mustard, aioli. Aioli, I always mess that up. I'm just going to keep mispronouncing it. And Heinz, really nice basket of fries. I like the way they cut it too. It's like a nice and short. Really cool. So like French fries and beautiful pizzas at Folk's Pizza. Really nice discovery.

51:05Thank you to our friends who suggested it. Yeah, I think we had a lot of pizza on this trip and that was definitely my favorite as well. So I'm glad they're calling it out. What's your next thing? My next thing, also down in Long Beach area, We went to A &J Seafood Shack, which is a little like drive up, walk up, Cambodian style seafood place in Long Beach. It's run by the same family, the Tan family that also has Phnom Penh Noodle Shack, which has been kind of a staple in Long Beach since they opened in 1985. This is kind of like the younger generation's take on a seafood restaurant. And it was just so delicious.

51:40I really loved the garlic butter shrimp that they did over rice with cilantro and pineapple and also the Khmer sausage that comes over rice. I think, you know, obviously you come for the seafood, but just the rice that's soaked up that kind of garlicky marinade and the shrimp flavor was so delicious. And I think if you're going to the beach or like to watch the sunset at the marina, it's kind of the perfect place to pick up something and go. I loved our dinner there. And, you know, I get to meet your family. I get to meet your parents. Yeah, bearing the lead, this is what I will say is that my parents are Westside LA folks and they were lured down to Long Beach maybe because they wanted to see me and Clayton and Matt, But I think mostly because I sent them some photos of the shrimp and they were interested.

52:18So if that's not a glowing endorsement, I don't know what is. Yeah, I love that restaurant. It was cool. It's like a really nice outdoor stand. And you can on a hot summer night, I can see that being a really fun place. Sticking in Orange County. And really, this is a restaurant that has locations in proper L.A., out in El Monte as well. I finally got to go to a proper Burritos La Palma location. Now, I've talked about Burritos La Palma on the show in the past. They have had a stand at Smorgasburg on Sundays in downtown L.A. for years. And I've always enjoyed them. But I finally got to go to a proper location out in Costa Mesa.

52:55And let me tell you, when we went to the counter to order, of course, we had the cheese and bean burrito, which is what they're known for. We asked them, so who does your tortillas? and the response was what we have a guy something like that yeah they have a guy he brings tortillas they have a guy like we were just like trying to like these are amazing tortillas these flour tortillas are are pressed and i actually read up about it and they have like a whole factory and they're beautiful flour tortillas that make this burrito one of the best in in southern california and they have locations all over as i mentioned but i really like uh the size of them they're very pocketable they're very um they're very they're kind of tiny you can have a couple of them and you're not going to go crazy.

53:36And I just love them. I mean, I just love a good flour tortilla and you have to seek out Burritos La Palma. We went to the one in Costa Mesa, as I mentioned, but I love that spot. Yeah, they're doing a really great Zacatecan style burrito. The family's from Zacatecas where they had their first taqueria and you're right. It's almost like a hot pocket size burrito and they're less than$5 each. I think my favorite was the Bedia taco and you can get it with the bean and cheese as well. So it has a little bit more of texture going on. But I really, you know, I love a good flour tortilla as well. And I think it was a good stop.

54:09What is your next thing? My last one that I'm going to call out is one of the many highlights from our amazing San Gabriel Valley tour that Christy Heng took us on. And it was actually our first stop, but it was so memorable to me, which was the banh mi at Banh Mi Hua Fat. They're doing a couple of different styles, but it's their crispy roast pork banh mi that I think everyone comes for. And we were talking with one of the regulars in line And he was saying that he's tried everything on the menu, but that's the one that he comes back for. It's just like the perfect combination of this really pillowy, like not too sharp and crunchy French bread that they bake in the back every morning.

54:44And then this really crispy roast pork. I really respect what they're doing there so much. And, you know, even the roast pork banhmi, which is the most expensive one, is like$7.50. Also, they're very much in demand. Like Christy was saying that people will call in on the weekends at eight in the morning to reserve theirs and that they honestly sell out by noon and just stop answering the phone. So I think if you want to try it, you absolutely should. And maybe like call in so you can have that experience. Well, I loved Christy's tour and I love that she took us there. And really, I talked to the chef, you know, on the side.

55:17He said they were doing between 500 and 800 sandwiches a day out of that small shop. and about the crispy pork, reminds me a bit of porchetta, the way that you've got that really crispy outer skin and just intense flavor inside of it. It really is this crispy pork in its finest form, but of course with the banh mi, with all the great herbs, and of course this beautiful sauce. It's definitely fish sauce and lime. I didn't ask him his secret recipe for the sauce, but I enjoyed pouring little splashes of the sauce over the sandwich at different points in having the sandwich. The bread was perfect.

55:56I mean, it's beautiful bun, me bun. I loved how crispy it was. It was just a great sandwich. And obviously the lines justify this. Yeah, I'm already thinking about it again. Do you have one more to share? I have two more to share. I'm a stick in the San Gabriel Valley. On the tour with Christy, she took us to Good Alley, which you heard about on the episode. But what I liked most was this Moscato grape slushy drink. I don't know how to describe it. But so this drink, it's really it's really special. It starts with grapes that are muddled. There's a little bit of green tea in there, crushed ice.

56:36It's all working together. And then at the top, there is a salted cheese foam that marries with the grapes and the tea. And as you put your straw down, you're kind of like lifting up this beautiful grape green tea liquid. And you're getting a little bit of that foam. I cannot stop thinking about this drink. It was such a cool combination that I'd never had myself. I'd never really had Moscato grapes in a drink like that. And I thought it was terrific. Yeah, I mean, there's so much care that goes into that drink. They peel every grape by hand before they muddle them so that you don't have any of the tough skins going on.

57:14And then that cheese foam is so creamy and aerated. And it's almost like, you know, the crema you would get on top of a latte. Yeah, I love that. And the last one, Yang's Kitchen, you heard the interview at the top. And really, I love this salad that they were doing on this weekday for this weekday. Special, it was kale and cilantro were the greens. And I love that. I love that blending of greens. Dates and persimmons. And a bed of malted green rice with a miso vinaigrette. I love the way it all worked together. It was the highlight of this meal. We, of course, had the mochi pancakes and the beautiful coffee drinks there.

57:50And we've talked about Yang's quite a bit. It was one of my top meals of the year. But I love, I was surprised by a special there. And I just think that what Chris is doing there is so, it's like a very special place. You should go to Yang's Kitchen if you can. If you're there and work or there for pleasure, you should take a quick Uber down to Alhambra to Yang's Kitchen. What a salad. I love it. Yeah, thank you for taking me on all of these meals. We had so many amazing experiences. It's been fun to recap them with you. What a fun trip. What a great episode. I just want to come back to Southern California.

58:22I want to come back to California. I love the state. So much interesting food happening. And I think we just got a little slice with this episode. But man, I cannot wait to get back. Yeah, me too. Thank you for listening to this very special episode, brought to you with support from our friends at Visit California. Special thanks to the fine folks at the Hilton San Gabriel and to all the guests we spoke with on the episode.

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