Ugly Delicious (2018) s01e08 Episode Script
Stuffed
1 Recorded earlier in Manhattan, New York, it's the Culinary Debate Society.
Tonight, we pose the question, Italian stuffed pastas or Asian dumplings? Representing the sides will be chefs Mario Carbone and David Chang.
Hello, I'm Nick Kroll.
And for no apparent reason, I am involved in this debate.
I'm about to talk to Mario Carbone about stuffed pastas.
I'm Italian.
I know Italian food.
I'm making Italian food more Italian than any other restaurant in the United States.
Dave has a tremendous amount of animosity towards us.
Us, the Italian community.
He's very angry.
I believe it's rooted in jealousy.
Mario, before you head into this debate, any words you'd like to tell the public out there about what's about to happen? Dave's my arch-nemesis.
And I'm looking forward to really beating the shit out of him.
Of all the cultures in America that I feel is under-represented in its importance, is probably Asian culture.
So that's something that I'm obviously more passionate about.
Mario We used to cook together at Cafe Boulud in 2003.
And we've been enemies ever since.
If there's anything you'd like to say to the camera, to Mario, or to the people at home watching on their computer, or some weird other device on Netflix, uh, what do you have to say to them? Konnichiwa, bitches.
Got an urge, got a surge And it's outta control Got an urge I want to purge 'Cause I'm losing control - He's got an uncontrollable urge - I've got an uncontrollable urge It's got style, it's got class So strong, I can't let it pass I gotta tell you all about it I gotta scream and shout it Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! And now, we begin our debate.
The first question is, who did it first? Who invented the dumpling? Listen, I'm not gonna fight the "who did it first" argument.
We all know.
China did it first.
I'm not here to debate that.
I'm not.
I don't think that the question that really matters right now is, "Who did it first?" It's, "Who does it best?" Great question.
You know what I stumbled on today? - Nishi's Valentine's Day prix fixe menu.
- Ooh.
Nishi, for the judge's reference, is David Chang's restaurant in Chelsea.
Do you know what you're serving at the restaurant for Valentine's Day? It's not Italian.
Okay.
"Shrimp scampi.
Spaghetti and meatballs.
" So all of those dishes are made with zero Italian ingredients.
We're serving food that looks Italian, but made with Asian ingredients.
What is spaghetti and meatballs? - That's not Italian.
I could make - Where did that idea come from? I could do lo mein and lion's head meatballs.
You're using the popularity of my people's cuisine to get people in your door.
Ooh! In New York, Mario wants to elevate Italian-American food.
It's hard not to get excited about that.
Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi just reopened up the Four Seasons.
It is amazing.
So, what do you got here? What'd you bring? We brought the king of the stuffed pasta, the tortellini.
- Squid ink mezzaluna? - Sì, signore.
So, I grew up eating stuffed pasta.
That's a big Italian-American thing.
And the first sort of obviously grand master I worked for was Mario Batali.
Then he sent me to Italy and I didn't even commit a crime.
He just sent me there for educational purposes.
I lived in Italy for, like, a year and a half.
We made everything from scratch, as you would normally find there.
It's really important to have those, like, North Star bites of food that are like, "Okay, that's where That's where I need to go.
" So, the squid ink provides that sort of bottom-of-the-ocean flavor.
Right, base note.
And then you get the top of the ocean with the clean lobster.
All married in a big sea of cream.
"Sea of cream.
" God, you make it sound so hot.
How many different varieties of stuffed pastas do you guys do? Very few.
There are not that many.
'Cause everywhere below, basically, Tuscany, or northern Tuscany, there really isn't stuffed pasta.
There's nearly none.
- Sicily - No.
Basically, it comes down to having room for the animals.
So, there's only room for animals, really, in the northern part of Italy.
So, the ingredients, the by-products of those animals, and the dishes that came from that, make up those regional dishes.
What makes these Carbone pastas? What makes it more Queens and less Bologna? Instead of just ground pork, it's ground sausage meat.
It's done in the traditional manner, it's finished with dairy.
But it's that sweet sausage turn to it that reminds me of the sauce that has, like, the sausage and meatballs cooking all day in it.
When we finish this dish, the bite of food is very much reminiscent of, like, a Sunday Italian-American supper.
There's a little bit of your narrative of how you learned to cook in the dish.
Yeah.
This is like me learning to cook in Italy and me growing up in Queens.
Yeah.
Should we eat some? - Yeah.
As my guest, be my guest.
- Really? You barely feel the pasta.
It's as thin as it can be, while still thick enough to hold it.
Right.
It's just having a tiny little bit of texture to contribute in pasta form.
There's so much protein in this one that it is really similar to, almost, a shumai.
A really dark and rich flavor.
You know, it's like Dave Chang.
Not for everyone.
Dave's going to Italy.
He's gonna go spend time with your friend, Massimo Bottura.
It's so unfortunate that I'm not gonna be able to make it to Italy for this trip.
Some chefs have to cook.
Massimo's basically one of the biggest chefs in the world.
Three-Michelin star chef.
Number one restaurant in the world.
Smell this.
The food he does, I think, is not just representative of Italy, but it's also telling stories of Italian food that haven't been told before.
This is like ground zero for stuffed pasta.
When you are making tortellini, the pasta, you roll it and you cut.
You see? It's just perfect.
And when you are making tortellini, this is a normal size and you put the fill that is the reflection of the best product of the area.
Everything you have, you put inside.
- Right.
Right.
- You know? So ham, a little bit of mortadella, parmigiano reggiano, pork and veal.
The most important thing is parmigiano reggiano.
This cheese is sold out before even produced, because the request is so high.
Because of the quality.
- That's so good.
Fuck.
- It's unbelievable.
Fucking good, eh? Parmigiano reggiano is, I think, more beloved as a source of umami because it's a little sweet, a little sour.
Right? - Exactly.
And the acidity.
- A little salty.
And when you eat Asian varieties of umami, it's mostly like salty and fermented.
- Yes.
- Right? Just think, for the Western world, that Parmesan is so easy to understand.
It's very easy to understand.
These flavors are distilled from centuries and centuries of tradition.
And now, you can imagine how incredible the flavor is.
And you make tortellini dal dito mignolo, from the little finger.
You turn like this, you know, to have a little triangle.
Then you move like this.
And around the finger.
This is wontons.
This is a mini Chinese dumpling.
It's not a tortellini.
Come on.
"It's a mini Chinese dumpling.
" Did you hear that? Did you hear that? That's what I But you know that my old master was a Chinese man, yeah? Yeah.
I went there in that village Okay, no, no, it's not true.
Don't follow us.
Don't follow us.
Okay? - No, don't say that.
Okay.
- Don't say that.
You can see a dumpling in so many different cultures.
If you think about Asia, you have the momo in Tibet, samosas in Indian food is a dumpling.
What I've been looking for is a commonality on the creative end.
Some kind of universal emotions.
I consider this a dumpling.
Am I crazy? Uh Is a calzone a dumpling? Whose side are you on, man? I don't know, man.
Do you think that most of dim sum can be categorized as dumpling, then? - Depends what you wrap inside.
- Huh.
These two are the must dishes of dim sum.
Prawn dumplings, pork dumplings.
This is one of the best things you could ever eat.
I personally like a lot of pasta.
Damn it.
This was a recent creation.
I remember seeing photos of people eating huge soup dumplings.
This is a smaller version.
We're in this food museum.
Konnichiwa! I haven't seen any of this shit before.
It looks more Chinese.
It looks like the Tim Allen of Japan.
Yes, cheese dumplings, please.
This is like Blade Runner food.
I swear to God.
Given time, food cultures will merge into one thing.
One chef that I know that's elevated dumplings to one of the highest forms is Corey Lee, at his three-Michelin star, Benu.
And one of his signature dishes is a foie gras soup dumpling.
A xiao long bao.
The thing about xiao long bao is, I think the dough is different than other dumplings.
You need some elasticity, but you also need some strength.
So, that's what makes xiao long bao, I think, a very tricky thing to make.
The key in our xiao long bao-making process is that it's very exact.
Basically what happens is, you make a stock with things to gelatinize, and that's set when it's cold.
And then, when it gets hot, the gelatinized soup melts and it becomes this hot soup that washes over you.
What you actually do when you make it, is you pleat in three sections.
You know, I don't really count.
When I started, I started with 21.
Lot of people say it's 18.
But I think when you originally start, it helps to have a number that's divisible by three.
So, whether it's 18 or 21, I think it's divisible by three.
So, this is kind of the key thing, where you have this farce drooping.
And that just shows you how much soup and filling there is in there.
I kind of have a theory about the way the xiao long bao evolved.
If you go to Shanghai, where xiao long bao was invented, they use very thick dough.
They're tasty, but it's nothing like the very thin-skinned xiao long bao that I think a lot of people have a reference point for.
That style of xiao long bao happened in Taiwan.
And, of course, Din Tai Fung, which is an incredible franchise that's really synonymous with xiao long bao these days, that family was originally from Shanghai.
I think because that family wasn't necessarily trained, they just decided to make xiao long bao with thinner dough.
And that was how a more ethereal and thin xiao long bao was invented.
I have a restaurant in Sydney and there's a Din Tai Fung next to it, so I know it really well.
It's probably the benchmark for any franchise restaurant in the world.
- Yeah.
- Everyone loves it.
- Everybody loves it.
- Everyone loves it.
Yeah.
But Din Tai Fung is famous for its soup dumpling.
Yeah.
I had to squish that little jelly jizz that's supposed to, like, squirt in your mouth.
- That's so crucial.
Yeah.
- Yes.
"The jelly jizz.
" I've never heard that.
- The jelly The little cube.
Yeah.
- Yes.
Are we all set to order here? We wanna go with some xiao long bao, right? Yeah.
Classic pork.
If you like seafood, we have pork and crab.
And then, of course, our delicacy as well, the truffle mushroom.
- One of these, each.
- One of each.
Of course.
All right, let me get everything started for you, all right? - Thank you.
- Of course.
That was extraordinarily bright service.
- Yeah.
Like, too bright.
- Too bright? Where you worry that the quality's bad.
You want them to ignore you.
I love that part of your stand-up where it's like, the Vietnamese restaurant you want A good one is gonna have, like, a copy machine, - and cleaning - That yellow bucket with the mop inside.
The shelf with the pink opaque soap in the, like, gallon jug.
But then, like, the white people like the clean bathroom, the pleasant servers who, like, pay attention and bring you, like, a beverage when you ask for it.
But I think today, with just what's available on your phone and the Internet, you can pretty much nail down what are, like, some of the go-tos.
Right.
But Yelp is still not trustworthy.
'Cause I think as a whole, as an aggregate, it does tell you more than most people think.
Right.
But then there's those who fuck it up.
Where, like, they mislead me to some whack-ass pho place because it was People were polite and the bathroom's nice and that's why they like it.
Then it's like, "This broth is bullshit!" So, what you're really advocating for is What I'm trying to say is, I wanna know what percentage that gave it five stars are Asian? That's all I wanna know.
- Hey.
Hi, my name is Aaron.
- Hi.
I'm part of the family business here at Din Tai Fung.
Thank you for stopping by our restaurant.
Are you guys interested in our dumplings? We have no interest in the dumplings.
We find this place Yes, of course.
We're really well-known for our soup dumplings, or xiao long bao in Chinese.
So, when you bite into it, the soup just explodes in your mouth - and it's very popular.
- The jizz.
The dumpling jizz.
Dumpling Yeah, okay.
Thank you.
Never heard it.
I'm sure your founding ancestors will really appreciate me referring to the xiao long bao juice as dumpling jizz.
Thank you for going there.
'Cause now I'm free to do whatever I want.
There you go.
All right, so, this is where our dumpling chefs are making everything from scratch.
When people come in to work for Din Tai Fung, how do they pick, like, what station they're gonna be at? Is it like Harry Potter, where you put on a hat and you get to be in Slytherin or, like, Rolling School or Right.
It's kinda like an apprenticeship.
Making soup dumplings looks easy to do, but it's insanely hard to actually do.
Yeah.
- How good are you at this? - Uh, I'm okay.
Just pinch, like steps kinda, actually.
It gets messy.
- Well, that's horrifying.
- Pretty good for your first try.
You got it closed.
It'll probably steam and stay inside.
- Whoa! Look, that looks really good! - No, no.
That has the little hole in the middle.
This is the one I made.
This is the one that expert here made.
"Do you guys have anything other than ravioli?" is the question.
Do I have anything other than ravioli? Oh, my God.
Ravioli, agnolotti, tortellini, tordelli.
I mean, I could stand there all day and name shapes.
Well, stand all day.
I'll give you one minute.
We have, uh, manicotti.
We have You know what, that's probably all we need.
They have six.
They have six.
Are we not gonna eat anything? I thought we were gonna get food.
We're not getting anything to eat here? I'm trying to illustrate that the Asian dumpling has more variety.
It has more fillings.
And, most importantly, is it's so humble in its nature.
- Oh, God.
Oh, my God.
- It feeds many different kinds of people.
I think that the sheng jian bao of Shanghai is the most underrated dumpling.
And I'd argue it's the greatest in the world.
It's like a pan-fried soup dumpling, but the wrapper is a leavened, yeast-risen dough.
It was designed to give to workers as they went to the factory.
So it's sturdy, it has soup in it, it's a world-class dumpling, and I don't think there's any dumpling that even comes remotely close to it.
High or low.
So, Gary, like, I look at this, I see a bunch of Chinese grandmas.
It's made from scratch.
It's delicious.
It has all the sensibilities of why people like Italian food.
But there's something more satisfying to me, eating this.
The flavor you're used to when you're growing up is very important.
- It sticks with you forever, you know? - Nostalgia wins out.
Exactly.
I trained myself to make soup dumpling for two months.
But recently, finally, I got the flavor right.
For someone that was born and raised in Shanghai, where do you rank Din Tai Fung for soup dumpling? - Is it as good or better than what's here? - I would never go.
- You would never go to Din Tai Fung? - Yeah, never.
Aren't the skins on Din Tai Fung really nice? It is nice, but if I cannot taste the beef? Fail.
- So you're, like, a real purist? - Yeah.
You introduced me to the sheng jian bao.
Steamed pan frying.
When you add a little sugar in there, you actually pull out umami more.
So, you think the Shanghainese have added sugar to make it a little bit more umami? - More xiao.
- Exactly.
Do they add gelatin in it? Yeah.
Then you blend it, put in to mix with the meat.
And when I had it, I bit into it, and I didn't know that there was soup in it.
Oh, okay.
So you burned yourself.
- And it squirted all over.
- It's really hot.
But it was one of those revelations when you eat something, you're like, "What?" This is my favorite.
Yeah, for sure.
- Just a little bit.
- Oh, God.
- Oh! - See? It's a volcano.
That's crazy.
Oh, my God.
Now let's hear from our CDS correspondent and international playboy, Walter Green.
So I'm gonna be sampling a medley of pasta product.
We've got a range of Asian dumpling, then a range of some Italian ones.
We'll pit these two beloved cultures against each other to try to find who makes the best low-end frozen version of that.
This is Bob.
He's my friend for life.
- He's been by my side through it all.
- I live to serve you, sir.
So we're gonna be eating some mini soupy pork buns.
First thing I notice is they're lukewarm, which is not the fault of any Bob! It's fine.
We all eat some lukewarm things now and then.
I give it a 6.
5 and two-thirds out of 10.
Pesto tortellini from Trader Giotto.
Very, very bland.
There's not a lot there.
I'll give this "trip to hell and back in your mouth area.
" Bob, I can't thank you enough for all the work that you do.
So, I will not.
I will not thank you.
Very good, sir.
Chef Boyardee beef ravioli.
Not a fan at all.
Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself for the products you make.
I'll give it a D-plus, just to be nice.
You know, just thank you, again.
It's sad, really, because he won't let me in and he won't let us rise above these surface-level conversations where it's like, he's my fake butler.
And I'm just some guy.
There's a lot of things in the culinary world I sort of dislike.
Many things that I do these days that I dislike, but the whole idea of being able to feed people cheaply with something delicious is That's, like, one of the best things in the world.
It doesn't really register as to why it's a place I try to avoid.
I think I try to avoid the past in everything I do.
But I can't remember where the fuck it is.
I was 24.
First time living in Tokyo, I didn't know a soul.
Didn't speak the language.
And I had been asking everyone I knew if I could get a job working in a ramen shop, 'cause I was relatively disillusioned, working at fancier restaurants.
And I wanted to do something that was completely not happening.
I got really lucky.
I got a job at a soba shop called Fu-Yu-Rin in Mei-dae-mae.
I remember getting a call from my dad saying, like, my aunt is doing work with this reverend and one of things he had was a building where homeless people that were being rehabilitated lived.
- This is it.
- Yeah? I lived in the reverend's room, so I saw a lot of crazy shit.
I mean, I think that's why it's hard for me to think about a lot of this stuff, 'cause it was building relationships with people that were struggling, so I think I was struggling, mentally, myself.
I mean, I ran away from everything to live here.
Because of how I lived and what I could afford, things that I would never have looked at to be delicious were very, very delicious to me.
What I experienced here I think was burned into my psyche was that good food should be available to everyone.
At Carbone, the goal was, "Can we get a Michelin star with this food?" That would be an enormous coup for our culture.
We would like to order some of our famous dumplings, tortellini, lobster ravioli and then I wanna do a scungilli, so he can try it even though it's not a dumpling.
We'll do I want you to eat some scungilli.
I don't know what that is.
- We'll bring it right out for you, gents.
- Thank you.
We met at Cafe Boulud and you're working with the best cooks around.
And you know you're gonna get crushed, but you're gonna learn the best techniques.
You showed up day one with chopsticks.
Chopsticks.
AC calls me over and he's like, "What's going on with the kid and the chopsticks in the corner?" And I was like, "Dude, I don't know.
" Bro, I was just ahead of the curve.
Now everyone's using tweezers.
I just was disillusioned, coming back to America, 'cause I had just come back from working in Japan and I would tell everyone, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here, I just wanna make noodles.
" - All you guys made fun of me.
- Yep.
Incessantly.
We would, like, whisper to each other, "This guy's leaving and he's gonna go open a noodle shop.
" "Dumb! So dumb.
" And then a year later, you were, like, on the cover of every magazine and we were still just sweating our assess off in the kitchen like, "We are so dumb!" You doing Noodle Bar at that time in the industry really moved forward chefs being owners.
That completely changed the dynamic of restaurants in the United States.
It was a huge motivator for us.
- The tortellini al ragu.
- Thank you.
I don't think I've had this here.
- Have I? - Yeah, you were just drunk.
Probably.
You guys had the vision that you wanted to change Italian-American food.
Well, it started with preservation.
We were worried that this thing was gonna go away.
The great Italian-American restaurants had seen their heyday pass.
Right.
The cuisine as a whole, it got passed down and then watered down.
A bowl of spaghetti with a ladle full of sauce on top.
Massive portions of food, but it's a lot of shit.
I don't want that.
And we could take our training and put it towards this, take what we've learned, and all of our mentors, and put it towards the thing that we are.
We were out to prove that Italian-American was a regional cuisine.
If you treat the United States as a giant region of Italy, and take only the ingredients of America and treat them as an Italian would, you're still making Italian food.
Tell me that that's wrong.
But tradition cannot be still.
Cannot be like a painting in a museum that stays there and you look at it.
Like, "Wow, how pretty!" Tradition can evolve.
But where is Italian food gonna be in 50 years, 100 years? It's gonna look awfully like what it is today.
- No.
- No? It's gonna be different.
I mean, think about the potatoes, think about the tomatoes.
I mean, we would not have Italian cuisine the way that we consider it right now had it not been for ingredients and culture that comes from other side of the world.
But then at what point Who becomes the judge for when something new becomes tradition? Who needs a judge? You're gonna have the tradition, you're gonna have the grandmothers that have the tortellini made exactly the same way that were made 100 years ago, but you're gonna have something else.
A new kind of tortellini, a new kind, maybe pasta.
But that doesn't mean One doesn't exclude the other in my vocabulary.
Let me take you to a place that makes, uh, pasta.
Daniela and Monica, they are, like, two sisters, and, uh, they are specialized in tortellini and tortelli.
In Bologna, all raw products are studied to make a fantastic dough, the sfoglia.
And the eggs, as you can see, their yolk is dark yellow.
And this gives the sfoglia its wonderful color.
Yeah, that's something that you find in Italy.
It's like, you can ask for a yellow egg yolk.
So, basically, what they do is that they give a bunch of corn to the chickens.
We're very famous for ricotta cheese, so we have to stay very, very straight in this.
- We spent time in Modena.
- Yes.
And it sure seems like everyone in Modena doesn't like the tortellini or tortelloni - in Bologna.
- It's true.
Yes, of course.
Because Bologna and Modena have always fought against each other.
The origin of tortellino dates back to 1325, to the famous Battle of Zappolino.
The Modenese killed 3,000 Bolognese.
It was a real beating for Bologna! And Venus, the goddess who had intervened in the battle, decided to take a nap at an inn in Castelfranco Emilia.
When the innkeeper went to her bedroom to wake her up, he had a celestial vision.
He saw her laying on her bed, naked, and he was really impressed by her belly button.
So he decided to reproduce Venus' belly button with dough.
So, basically, the belly button always refers to life, because it's the umbilical cord and that's life.
And also, the tortelloni has a shape of a heart, so, life as well.
Modena and Bologna, to me, without even coming here, I was like, it's the same thing.
Yeah.
And no.
Everything changes.
In Italy, you travel just 30 kilometers, and everything is different.
Raw materials change completely.
Very good.
The first tortelloni very good.
What do you prefer? - Asian dumpling, stuffed Italian pasta? - God.
Are you making me argue with every single Italian that I know? Yes.
Yes.
- I love Asian food.
I really do.
- Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you! I will concede that whether it be in a simple trattoria in Italy, or a fancy restaurant here in New York City, that a specific stuffed pasta dish is delicious What about pumpkin ravioli with a brown butter and sage? But it's so singular in its focus.
It's a one-trick pony.
- You know what I hear? - What's that? Jealousy.
No, I'm angry at the fact that Italy is so overrated in its food and that all of Asian cuisine doesn't get the representation that it deserves.
I don't know why I like to eat these with my hands.
I'm a real, like, handsy pervert when it comes to dumplings.
I'm like, "Come over here and let me feel you.
" It's just delicious, too, right? So, this is never Even though it has a Michelin star, soup dumplings and dumplings in general, it's never considered as artistic and beautiful, as like a ravioli.
Or delicate.
Right.
Here's another thing.
This price point, right? If I had this plate, and I put it on a plate of ravioli - Like, three of them.
- Three of them.
For three times the price.
Yeah, and it's with ricotta and it's delicious.
I'd eat it, you'd eat it, but it'd be, like, 27, 28 bucks.
Yeah.
This is eight bucks.
Or eight, nine bucks.
Why is that? That's the shit that gets me mad.
Well, it doesn't get me mad.
It just makes me feel like non-Asian people get bamboozled easier.
'Cause I hope they do not catch on, and feel like they can Don't tell them what Italian people are doing.
'Cause if they start charging more, it would be, like, outrage.
I think everybody knows that what you're paying for is ambience, and some bullshit story about where mushrooms came from from the waiter.
Right.
And people eat that shit up.
I eat that shit up.
But I don't think anybody who really knows food, really thinks that that food is better.
I'm really struggling with this idea.
How does food become legitimate because of its environment? Traditionally, fine dining was white tablecloths, linens, flowers, people in penguin suits, and for many years, that was where the best food lived.
And it's something I think I've historically always tried to push the buttons of, is stripping away the nonsense and just getting to the food.
A dumpling, whether it's Italian or Asian, is something that is humble in origin.
It's about stretching ingredients, using scraps, being as frugal as possible.
Do you make the best dumplings in the area? Well, I wouldn't say that! Just average.
We northerners love eating dumplings.
For dumplings, chop the leaves, not the root.
Chopping the root makes the water come out.
Do all the vegetables come from her garden? I planted them myself.
The dough for dumplings requires cool water.
Do you have running water? There's no water now.
Because it's cold? It's frozen? No, not that.
We have half-day water here.
Yeah.
We don't have any now.
After 9:00 a.
m.
, there's no more.
Wow.
And now the filling.
Spring onions, ginger, garlic.
Then add salt.
Monosodium glutamate.
MSG? Dark soy sauce.
This is sunflower oil.
This'll do.
The fact that they don't have gas, no running water When I just sort of fathom how hard it is for them to make everything, that's when I was like, "Oh, it's a privilege to be here.
" It feels like growing up at home.
The women in my family used to just make dumplings.
They would just make hundreds and hundreds.
This isn't so different than, like, an Italian grandma making, you know, a ravioli or something like that.
Try wrapping them.
It's like they're putting pressure in They make it look so easy.
It's not easy at all.
Look how beautiful theirs are and how stone-hands-like mine are.
How long would it take for me to get good at this? It wouldn't take long.
Pretty quick.
Two months.
You're like our kid.
We wrap dumplings and you want to help out.
Stuff some of the firewood in and the water will boil.
I just think that when you make food this way, it's gotta taste better.
'Cause you worked so goddamn hard.
It's like, "How much do you care?" When you realize, from start to finish, you've been busting your ass, you know, why would you go so far into this process only to make it taste halfway? Hu, I'll give you this tray.
Give me that tray.
She doesn't wanna cook mine.
Those would burst if they were boiled.
That looks so cool.
Looks so cool.
So, like that.
Okay, not bad.
You only put little filling, little pesto.
How beautiful! How beautiful! How is it going? Very well.
Well, very well.
Very well.
- Buongiorno.
- Buongiorno, David.
It's almost every Saturday they're trying to do this? - Two times a week.
- Two times a week.
And the grandmothers, they transfer the knowledge to the kids as So it's the nonnas' ideas.
Yes.
Point was, what they're gonna do, these kids? Once, uh, the school is over, high school.
You know? So, they start like this, you know? To produce something with their finger, work with a little movement.
But the idea is the grandmother, they have, uh, all this knowledge since their grandmothers Why don't we transfer that knowledge to these kids? They're gonna be like the witness, the people carrying the knowledge.
I just feel like this whole The history of it, passing down from generation to generation, - this is, like, a transcultural thing.
- Yeah.
I did this with my mother and grandmother.
I couldn't be the one I am if my grandmother didn't transfer this kind of, uh, emotional experience when I was a kid.
But look at that.
What is the meaning of the tortellino? That each one of them is totally different because it is reflecting the personality of each one of us.
Hmm.
Mmm-hmm.
That's real good.
Fuck.
Food here is so good.
Yeah.
This market, I like it.
You've been in Modena ten years.
Yeah, more like 13 years.
Thirteen years.
And you moved from Tokyo straight to here? Yeah.
I always worked at an Italian restaurant in Japan.
- Right.
- I wanted to see Italian culture in Italy.
You know, Japanese are, like, more focused.
Italian people more creative.
Taka's gonna make the Osteria version of the tortellini.
But do you think the Modena tortellini has reached the evolutionary peak? Is that Can't be better.
In the last ten years, we developed the perfect filling, with the perfect parmigiano, the perfect prosciutto, the perfect mortadella.
Yes, I think we reached the peak.
It's delicious.
What a surprise.
I think we're gonna try to make, uh, in theory, tiny, tiny wontons, essentially, in a tortellini.
Because tortellini en brodo is the same thing as wonton soup, so I was trying to make, like, dumplings in the form of tortellini.
We have some pork and we have some veal in here.
I'm not sure about any of this stuff.
I feel like I'm in enemy territory here.
But number one, I discovered, you actually need egg, or some kind of different flour to make it a little bit more sturdy.
Such a wet dough.
Everything was going swimmingly well and I needed some flour to roll out my dough, and then, all of a sudden, a bucket appeared, and I start folding some in, I put some on the board And then all of a sudden I'm like, "What the fuck's going on?" What happened? My dough starts to just, like, melt, almost.
It's so sticky.
And then Taka's like This is rice flour? Is this flour? It's not flour.
This is This is maltodextrin.
- Tapioca maltodextrin! I put it all on - Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
No.
Taka sabotaged me.
But he's on your side, Taka, come on! Oh, I'm so stupid.
I can't believe I put maltodextrin on my goddamn flour.
Worst thing in the world you could add.
- Sorry, guys.
The dough is terrible.
- Yeah.
Oh.
I've been humbled.
Because I was never understanding of the quality of the ingredients that goes into it, which is ultimately what makes Italian food Italian food.
Yeah.
Whenever I'm making dumplings or eating dumplings, I'm never thinking about the quality of the ingredients.
Absolutely.
Can I eat a delicious dumpling? Yes.
Is there a lot of craftsmanship that goes into a soup dumpling? 100%.
That's awesome.
But I can't tell you about the provenance of the meat, or the kind of crab or anything.
Oh, I didn't see it from your guys' perspective.
I can't make dumplings the same vein of a tortellini.
I just can't merge cultures, right? That's not my story to tell.
Maybe Taka's kids, 50 years from now, will be like, "I've an idea for gyoza.
" And that happens.
Absolutely! The tradition are changing because it's the moving, all these migrants.
And maybe there are new sparkle of new flavors that are coming up.
There are some ingredients in some dishes that would not even exist if that cross-pollination didn't exist at one point in history.
This is borderline Asian.
It's all umami.
I will say where there's similarities, whether it be Italian or Chinese dumplings, was the image of a grandma making it.
I don't know, that's just love, right? Do you ever get tired of eating dumplings and making dumplings? I wouldn't.
Eat up.
And when you bite, then you say "Wow, what is this? I never taste something like this.
" This is the very important point for people like us.
Because we are in search of perfection and emotions in food.
Because at the end, it's all about that.
I appreciate, again, my friend for coming and talking about his people's food.
And obviously, Italian food's the most popular food in the world right now.
I'd like to begin my closing statement by admitting how much I absolutely love this man and his food.
- Aw - I admire what you do - and I do love Asian noodles.
- Mmm.
Generally when I'm wasted.
And with that, we'll conclude our debate tonight.
There's no resolution to this.
I'm wearing a winter coat as a blazer.
Hmm.
Tonight, we pose the question, Italian stuffed pastas or Asian dumplings? Representing the sides will be chefs Mario Carbone and David Chang.
Hello, I'm Nick Kroll.
And for no apparent reason, I am involved in this debate.
I'm about to talk to Mario Carbone about stuffed pastas.
I'm Italian.
I know Italian food.
I'm making Italian food more Italian than any other restaurant in the United States.
Dave has a tremendous amount of animosity towards us.
Us, the Italian community.
He's very angry.
I believe it's rooted in jealousy.
Mario, before you head into this debate, any words you'd like to tell the public out there about what's about to happen? Dave's my arch-nemesis.
And I'm looking forward to really beating the shit out of him.
Of all the cultures in America that I feel is under-represented in its importance, is probably Asian culture.
So that's something that I'm obviously more passionate about.
Mario We used to cook together at Cafe Boulud in 2003.
And we've been enemies ever since.
If there's anything you'd like to say to the camera, to Mario, or to the people at home watching on their computer, or some weird other device on Netflix, uh, what do you have to say to them? Konnichiwa, bitches.
Got an urge, got a surge And it's outta control Got an urge I want to purge 'Cause I'm losing control - He's got an uncontrollable urge - I've got an uncontrollable urge It's got style, it's got class So strong, I can't let it pass I gotta tell you all about it I gotta scream and shout it Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! And now, we begin our debate.
The first question is, who did it first? Who invented the dumpling? Listen, I'm not gonna fight the "who did it first" argument.
We all know.
China did it first.
I'm not here to debate that.
I'm not.
I don't think that the question that really matters right now is, "Who did it first?" It's, "Who does it best?" Great question.
You know what I stumbled on today? - Nishi's Valentine's Day prix fixe menu.
- Ooh.
Nishi, for the judge's reference, is David Chang's restaurant in Chelsea.
Do you know what you're serving at the restaurant for Valentine's Day? It's not Italian.
Okay.
"Shrimp scampi.
Spaghetti and meatballs.
" So all of those dishes are made with zero Italian ingredients.
We're serving food that looks Italian, but made with Asian ingredients.
What is spaghetti and meatballs? - That's not Italian.
I could make - Where did that idea come from? I could do lo mein and lion's head meatballs.
You're using the popularity of my people's cuisine to get people in your door.
Ooh! In New York, Mario wants to elevate Italian-American food.
It's hard not to get excited about that.
Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi just reopened up the Four Seasons.
It is amazing.
So, what do you got here? What'd you bring? We brought the king of the stuffed pasta, the tortellini.
- Squid ink mezzaluna? - Sì, signore.
So, I grew up eating stuffed pasta.
That's a big Italian-American thing.
And the first sort of obviously grand master I worked for was Mario Batali.
Then he sent me to Italy and I didn't even commit a crime.
He just sent me there for educational purposes.
I lived in Italy for, like, a year and a half.
We made everything from scratch, as you would normally find there.
It's really important to have those, like, North Star bites of food that are like, "Okay, that's where That's where I need to go.
" So, the squid ink provides that sort of bottom-of-the-ocean flavor.
Right, base note.
And then you get the top of the ocean with the clean lobster.
All married in a big sea of cream.
"Sea of cream.
" God, you make it sound so hot.
How many different varieties of stuffed pastas do you guys do? Very few.
There are not that many.
'Cause everywhere below, basically, Tuscany, or northern Tuscany, there really isn't stuffed pasta.
There's nearly none.
- Sicily - No.
Basically, it comes down to having room for the animals.
So, there's only room for animals, really, in the northern part of Italy.
So, the ingredients, the by-products of those animals, and the dishes that came from that, make up those regional dishes.
What makes these Carbone pastas? What makes it more Queens and less Bologna? Instead of just ground pork, it's ground sausage meat.
It's done in the traditional manner, it's finished with dairy.
But it's that sweet sausage turn to it that reminds me of the sauce that has, like, the sausage and meatballs cooking all day in it.
When we finish this dish, the bite of food is very much reminiscent of, like, a Sunday Italian-American supper.
There's a little bit of your narrative of how you learned to cook in the dish.
Yeah.
This is like me learning to cook in Italy and me growing up in Queens.
Yeah.
Should we eat some? - Yeah.
As my guest, be my guest.
- Really? You barely feel the pasta.
It's as thin as it can be, while still thick enough to hold it.
Right.
It's just having a tiny little bit of texture to contribute in pasta form.
There's so much protein in this one that it is really similar to, almost, a shumai.
A really dark and rich flavor.
You know, it's like Dave Chang.
Not for everyone.
Dave's going to Italy.
He's gonna go spend time with your friend, Massimo Bottura.
It's so unfortunate that I'm not gonna be able to make it to Italy for this trip.
Some chefs have to cook.
Massimo's basically one of the biggest chefs in the world.
Three-Michelin star chef.
Number one restaurant in the world.
Smell this.
The food he does, I think, is not just representative of Italy, but it's also telling stories of Italian food that haven't been told before.
This is like ground zero for stuffed pasta.
When you are making tortellini, the pasta, you roll it and you cut.
You see? It's just perfect.
And when you are making tortellini, this is a normal size and you put the fill that is the reflection of the best product of the area.
Everything you have, you put inside.
- Right.
Right.
- You know? So ham, a little bit of mortadella, parmigiano reggiano, pork and veal.
The most important thing is parmigiano reggiano.
This cheese is sold out before even produced, because the request is so high.
Because of the quality.
- That's so good.
Fuck.
- It's unbelievable.
Fucking good, eh? Parmigiano reggiano is, I think, more beloved as a source of umami because it's a little sweet, a little sour.
Right? - Exactly.
And the acidity.
- A little salty.
And when you eat Asian varieties of umami, it's mostly like salty and fermented.
- Yes.
- Right? Just think, for the Western world, that Parmesan is so easy to understand.
It's very easy to understand.
These flavors are distilled from centuries and centuries of tradition.
And now, you can imagine how incredible the flavor is.
And you make tortellini dal dito mignolo, from the little finger.
You turn like this, you know, to have a little triangle.
Then you move like this.
And around the finger.
This is wontons.
This is a mini Chinese dumpling.
It's not a tortellini.
Come on.
"It's a mini Chinese dumpling.
" Did you hear that? Did you hear that? That's what I But you know that my old master was a Chinese man, yeah? Yeah.
I went there in that village Okay, no, no, it's not true.
Don't follow us.
Don't follow us.
Okay? - No, don't say that.
Okay.
- Don't say that.
You can see a dumpling in so many different cultures.
If you think about Asia, you have the momo in Tibet, samosas in Indian food is a dumpling.
What I've been looking for is a commonality on the creative end.
Some kind of universal emotions.
I consider this a dumpling.
Am I crazy? Uh Is a calzone a dumpling? Whose side are you on, man? I don't know, man.
Do you think that most of dim sum can be categorized as dumpling, then? - Depends what you wrap inside.
- Huh.
These two are the must dishes of dim sum.
Prawn dumplings, pork dumplings.
This is one of the best things you could ever eat.
I personally like a lot of pasta.
Damn it.
This was a recent creation.
I remember seeing photos of people eating huge soup dumplings.
This is a smaller version.
We're in this food museum.
Konnichiwa! I haven't seen any of this shit before.
It looks more Chinese.
It looks like the Tim Allen of Japan.
Yes, cheese dumplings, please.
This is like Blade Runner food.
I swear to God.
Given time, food cultures will merge into one thing.
One chef that I know that's elevated dumplings to one of the highest forms is Corey Lee, at his three-Michelin star, Benu.
And one of his signature dishes is a foie gras soup dumpling.
A xiao long bao.
The thing about xiao long bao is, I think the dough is different than other dumplings.
You need some elasticity, but you also need some strength.
So, that's what makes xiao long bao, I think, a very tricky thing to make.
The key in our xiao long bao-making process is that it's very exact.
Basically what happens is, you make a stock with things to gelatinize, and that's set when it's cold.
And then, when it gets hot, the gelatinized soup melts and it becomes this hot soup that washes over you.
What you actually do when you make it, is you pleat in three sections.
You know, I don't really count.
When I started, I started with 21.
Lot of people say it's 18.
But I think when you originally start, it helps to have a number that's divisible by three.
So, whether it's 18 or 21, I think it's divisible by three.
So, this is kind of the key thing, where you have this farce drooping.
And that just shows you how much soup and filling there is in there.
I kind of have a theory about the way the xiao long bao evolved.
If you go to Shanghai, where xiao long bao was invented, they use very thick dough.
They're tasty, but it's nothing like the very thin-skinned xiao long bao that I think a lot of people have a reference point for.
That style of xiao long bao happened in Taiwan.
And, of course, Din Tai Fung, which is an incredible franchise that's really synonymous with xiao long bao these days, that family was originally from Shanghai.
I think because that family wasn't necessarily trained, they just decided to make xiao long bao with thinner dough.
And that was how a more ethereal and thin xiao long bao was invented.
I have a restaurant in Sydney and there's a Din Tai Fung next to it, so I know it really well.
It's probably the benchmark for any franchise restaurant in the world.
- Yeah.
- Everyone loves it.
- Everybody loves it.
- Everyone loves it.
Yeah.
But Din Tai Fung is famous for its soup dumpling.
Yeah.
I had to squish that little jelly jizz that's supposed to, like, squirt in your mouth.
- That's so crucial.
Yeah.
- Yes.
"The jelly jizz.
" I've never heard that.
- The jelly The little cube.
Yeah.
- Yes.
Are we all set to order here? We wanna go with some xiao long bao, right? Yeah.
Classic pork.
If you like seafood, we have pork and crab.
And then, of course, our delicacy as well, the truffle mushroom.
- One of these, each.
- One of each.
Of course.
All right, let me get everything started for you, all right? - Thank you.
- Of course.
That was extraordinarily bright service.
- Yeah.
Like, too bright.
- Too bright? Where you worry that the quality's bad.
You want them to ignore you.
I love that part of your stand-up where it's like, the Vietnamese restaurant you want A good one is gonna have, like, a copy machine, - and cleaning - That yellow bucket with the mop inside.
The shelf with the pink opaque soap in the, like, gallon jug.
But then, like, the white people like the clean bathroom, the pleasant servers who, like, pay attention and bring you, like, a beverage when you ask for it.
But I think today, with just what's available on your phone and the Internet, you can pretty much nail down what are, like, some of the go-tos.
Right.
But Yelp is still not trustworthy.
'Cause I think as a whole, as an aggregate, it does tell you more than most people think.
Right.
But then there's those who fuck it up.
Where, like, they mislead me to some whack-ass pho place because it was People were polite and the bathroom's nice and that's why they like it.
Then it's like, "This broth is bullshit!" So, what you're really advocating for is What I'm trying to say is, I wanna know what percentage that gave it five stars are Asian? That's all I wanna know.
- Hey.
Hi, my name is Aaron.
- Hi.
I'm part of the family business here at Din Tai Fung.
Thank you for stopping by our restaurant.
Are you guys interested in our dumplings? We have no interest in the dumplings.
We find this place Yes, of course.
We're really well-known for our soup dumplings, or xiao long bao in Chinese.
So, when you bite into it, the soup just explodes in your mouth - and it's very popular.
- The jizz.
The dumpling jizz.
Dumpling Yeah, okay.
Thank you.
Never heard it.
I'm sure your founding ancestors will really appreciate me referring to the xiao long bao juice as dumpling jizz.
Thank you for going there.
'Cause now I'm free to do whatever I want.
There you go.
All right, so, this is where our dumpling chefs are making everything from scratch.
When people come in to work for Din Tai Fung, how do they pick, like, what station they're gonna be at? Is it like Harry Potter, where you put on a hat and you get to be in Slytherin or, like, Rolling School or Right.
It's kinda like an apprenticeship.
Making soup dumplings looks easy to do, but it's insanely hard to actually do.
Yeah.
- How good are you at this? - Uh, I'm okay.
Just pinch, like steps kinda, actually.
It gets messy.
- Well, that's horrifying.
- Pretty good for your first try.
You got it closed.
It'll probably steam and stay inside.
- Whoa! Look, that looks really good! - No, no.
That has the little hole in the middle.
This is the one I made.
This is the one that expert here made.
"Do you guys have anything other than ravioli?" is the question.
Do I have anything other than ravioli? Oh, my God.
Ravioli, agnolotti, tortellini, tordelli.
I mean, I could stand there all day and name shapes.
Well, stand all day.
I'll give you one minute.
We have, uh, manicotti.
We have You know what, that's probably all we need.
They have six.
They have six.
Are we not gonna eat anything? I thought we were gonna get food.
We're not getting anything to eat here? I'm trying to illustrate that the Asian dumpling has more variety.
It has more fillings.
And, most importantly, is it's so humble in its nature.
- Oh, God.
Oh, my God.
- It feeds many different kinds of people.
I think that the sheng jian bao of Shanghai is the most underrated dumpling.
And I'd argue it's the greatest in the world.
It's like a pan-fried soup dumpling, but the wrapper is a leavened, yeast-risen dough.
It was designed to give to workers as they went to the factory.
So it's sturdy, it has soup in it, it's a world-class dumpling, and I don't think there's any dumpling that even comes remotely close to it.
High or low.
So, Gary, like, I look at this, I see a bunch of Chinese grandmas.
It's made from scratch.
It's delicious.
It has all the sensibilities of why people like Italian food.
But there's something more satisfying to me, eating this.
The flavor you're used to when you're growing up is very important.
- It sticks with you forever, you know? - Nostalgia wins out.
Exactly.
I trained myself to make soup dumpling for two months.
But recently, finally, I got the flavor right.
For someone that was born and raised in Shanghai, where do you rank Din Tai Fung for soup dumpling? - Is it as good or better than what's here? - I would never go.
- You would never go to Din Tai Fung? - Yeah, never.
Aren't the skins on Din Tai Fung really nice? It is nice, but if I cannot taste the beef? Fail.
- So you're, like, a real purist? - Yeah.
You introduced me to the sheng jian bao.
Steamed pan frying.
When you add a little sugar in there, you actually pull out umami more.
So, you think the Shanghainese have added sugar to make it a little bit more umami? - More xiao.
- Exactly.
Do they add gelatin in it? Yeah.
Then you blend it, put in to mix with the meat.
And when I had it, I bit into it, and I didn't know that there was soup in it.
Oh, okay.
So you burned yourself.
- And it squirted all over.
- It's really hot.
But it was one of those revelations when you eat something, you're like, "What?" This is my favorite.
Yeah, for sure.
- Just a little bit.
- Oh, God.
- Oh! - See? It's a volcano.
That's crazy.
Oh, my God.
Now let's hear from our CDS correspondent and international playboy, Walter Green.
So I'm gonna be sampling a medley of pasta product.
We've got a range of Asian dumpling, then a range of some Italian ones.
We'll pit these two beloved cultures against each other to try to find who makes the best low-end frozen version of that.
This is Bob.
He's my friend for life.
- He's been by my side through it all.
- I live to serve you, sir.
So we're gonna be eating some mini soupy pork buns.
First thing I notice is they're lukewarm, which is not the fault of any Bob! It's fine.
We all eat some lukewarm things now and then.
I give it a 6.
5 and two-thirds out of 10.
Pesto tortellini from Trader Giotto.
Very, very bland.
There's not a lot there.
I'll give this "trip to hell and back in your mouth area.
" Bob, I can't thank you enough for all the work that you do.
So, I will not.
I will not thank you.
Very good, sir.
Chef Boyardee beef ravioli.
Not a fan at all.
Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself for the products you make.
I'll give it a D-plus, just to be nice.
You know, just thank you, again.
It's sad, really, because he won't let me in and he won't let us rise above these surface-level conversations where it's like, he's my fake butler.
And I'm just some guy.
There's a lot of things in the culinary world I sort of dislike.
Many things that I do these days that I dislike, but the whole idea of being able to feed people cheaply with something delicious is That's, like, one of the best things in the world.
It doesn't really register as to why it's a place I try to avoid.
I think I try to avoid the past in everything I do.
But I can't remember where the fuck it is.
I was 24.
First time living in Tokyo, I didn't know a soul.
Didn't speak the language.
And I had been asking everyone I knew if I could get a job working in a ramen shop, 'cause I was relatively disillusioned, working at fancier restaurants.
And I wanted to do something that was completely not happening.
I got really lucky.
I got a job at a soba shop called Fu-Yu-Rin in Mei-dae-mae.
I remember getting a call from my dad saying, like, my aunt is doing work with this reverend and one of things he had was a building where homeless people that were being rehabilitated lived.
- This is it.
- Yeah? I lived in the reverend's room, so I saw a lot of crazy shit.
I mean, I think that's why it's hard for me to think about a lot of this stuff, 'cause it was building relationships with people that were struggling, so I think I was struggling, mentally, myself.
I mean, I ran away from everything to live here.
Because of how I lived and what I could afford, things that I would never have looked at to be delicious were very, very delicious to me.
What I experienced here I think was burned into my psyche was that good food should be available to everyone.
At Carbone, the goal was, "Can we get a Michelin star with this food?" That would be an enormous coup for our culture.
We would like to order some of our famous dumplings, tortellini, lobster ravioli and then I wanna do a scungilli, so he can try it even though it's not a dumpling.
We'll do I want you to eat some scungilli.
I don't know what that is.
- We'll bring it right out for you, gents.
- Thank you.
We met at Cafe Boulud and you're working with the best cooks around.
And you know you're gonna get crushed, but you're gonna learn the best techniques.
You showed up day one with chopsticks.
Chopsticks.
AC calls me over and he's like, "What's going on with the kid and the chopsticks in the corner?" And I was like, "Dude, I don't know.
" Bro, I was just ahead of the curve.
Now everyone's using tweezers.
I just was disillusioned, coming back to America, 'cause I had just come back from working in Japan and I would tell everyone, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here, I just wanna make noodles.
" - All you guys made fun of me.
- Yep.
Incessantly.
We would, like, whisper to each other, "This guy's leaving and he's gonna go open a noodle shop.
" "Dumb! So dumb.
" And then a year later, you were, like, on the cover of every magazine and we were still just sweating our assess off in the kitchen like, "We are so dumb!" You doing Noodle Bar at that time in the industry really moved forward chefs being owners.
That completely changed the dynamic of restaurants in the United States.
It was a huge motivator for us.
- The tortellini al ragu.
- Thank you.
I don't think I've had this here.
- Have I? - Yeah, you were just drunk.
Probably.
You guys had the vision that you wanted to change Italian-American food.
Well, it started with preservation.
We were worried that this thing was gonna go away.
The great Italian-American restaurants had seen their heyday pass.
Right.
The cuisine as a whole, it got passed down and then watered down.
A bowl of spaghetti with a ladle full of sauce on top.
Massive portions of food, but it's a lot of shit.
I don't want that.
And we could take our training and put it towards this, take what we've learned, and all of our mentors, and put it towards the thing that we are.
We were out to prove that Italian-American was a regional cuisine.
If you treat the United States as a giant region of Italy, and take only the ingredients of America and treat them as an Italian would, you're still making Italian food.
Tell me that that's wrong.
But tradition cannot be still.
Cannot be like a painting in a museum that stays there and you look at it.
Like, "Wow, how pretty!" Tradition can evolve.
But where is Italian food gonna be in 50 years, 100 years? It's gonna look awfully like what it is today.
- No.
- No? It's gonna be different.
I mean, think about the potatoes, think about the tomatoes.
I mean, we would not have Italian cuisine the way that we consider it right now had it not been for ingredients and culture that comes from other side of the world.
But then at what point Who becomes the judge for when something new becomes tradition? Who needs a judge? You're gonna have the tradition, you're gonna have the grandmothers that have the tortellini made exactly the same way that were made 100 years ago, but you're gonna have something else.
A new kind of tortellini, a new kind, maybe pasta.
But that doesn't mean One doesn't exclude the other in my vocabulary.
Let me take you to a place that makes, uh, pasta.
Daniela and Monica, they are, like, two sisters, and, uh, they are specialized in tortellini and tortelli.
In Bologna, all raw products are studied to make a fantastic dough, the sfoglia.
And the eggs, as you can see, their yolk is dark yellow.
And this gives the sfoglia its wonderful color.
Yeah, that's something that you find in Italy.
It's like, you can ask for a yellow egg yolk.
So, basically, what they do is that they give a bunch of corn to the chickens.
We're very famous for ricotta cheese, so we have to stay very, very straight in this.
- We spent time in Modena.
- Yes.
And it sure seems like everyone in Modena doesn't like the tortellini or tortelloni - in Bologna.
- It's true.
Yes, of course.
Because Bologna and Modena have always fought against each other.
The origin of tortellino dates back to 1325, to the famous Battle of Zappolino.
The Modenese killed 3,000 Bolognese.
It was a real beating for Bologna! And Venus, the goddess who had intervened in the battle, decided to take a nap at an inn in Castelfranco Emilia.
When the innkeeper went to her bedroom to wake her up, he had a celestial vision.
He saw her laying on her bed, naked, and he was really impressed by her belly button.
So he decided to reproduce Venus' belly button with dough.
So, basically, the belly button always refers to life, because it's the umbilical cord and that's life.
And also, the tortelloni has a shape of a heart, so, life as well.
Modena and Bologna, to me, without even coming here, I was like, it's the same thing.
Yeah.
And no.
Everything changes.
In Italy, you travel just 30 kilometers, and everything is different.
Raw materials change completely.
Very good.
The first tortelloni very good.
What do you prefer? - Asian dumpling, stuffed Italian pasta? - God.
Are you making me argue with every single Italian that I know? Yes.
Yes.
- I love Asian food.
I really do.
- Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you! I will concede that whether it be in a simple trattoria in Italy, or a fancy restaurant here in New York City, that a specific stuffed pasta dish is delicious What about pumpkin ravioli with a brown butter and sage? But it's so singular in its focus.
It's a one-trick pony.
- You know what I hear? - What's that? Jealousy.
No, I'm angry at the fact that Italy is so overrated in its food and that all of Asian cuisine doesn't get the representation that it deserves.
I don't know why I like to eat these with my hands.
I'm a real, like, handsy pervert when it comes to dumplings.
I'm like, "Come over here and let me feel you.
" It's just delicious, too, right? So, this is never Even though it has a Michelin star, soup dumplings and dumplings in general, it's never considered as artistic and beautiful, as like a ravioli.
Or delicate.
Right.
Here's another thing.
This price point, right? If I had this plate, and I put it on a plate of ravioli - Like, three of them.
- Three of them.
For three times the price.
Yeah, and it's with ricotta and it's delicious.
I'd eat it, you'd eat it, but it'd be, like, 27, 28 bucks.
Yeah.
This is eight bucks.
Or eight, nine bucks.
Why is that? That's the shit that gets me mad.
Well, it doesn't get me mad.
It just makes me feel like non-Asian people get bamboozled easier.
'Cause I hope they do not catch on, and feel like they can Don't tell them what Italian people are doing.
'Cause if they start charging more, it would be, like, outrage.
I think everybody knows that what you're paying for is ambience, and some bullshit story about where mushrooms came from from the waiter.
Right.
And people eat that shit up.
I eat that shit up.
But I don't think anybody who really knows food, really thinks that that food is better.
I'm really struggling with this idea.
How does food become legitimate because of its environment? Traditionally, fine dining was white tablecloths, linens, flowers, people in penguin suits, and for many years, that was where the best food lived.
And it's something I think I've historically always tried to push the buttons of, is stripping away the nonsense and just getting to the food.
A dumpling, whether it's Italian or Asian, is something that is humble in origin.
It's about stretching ingredients, using scraps, being as frugal as possible.
Do you make the best dumplings in the area? Well, I wouldn't say that! Just average.
We northerners love eating dumplings.
For dumplings, chop the leaves, not the root.
Chopping the root makes the water come out.
Do all the vegetables come from her garden? I planted them myself.
The dough for dumplings requires cool water.
Do you have running water? There's no water now.
Because it's cold? It's frozen? No, not that.
We have half-day water here.
Yeah.
We don't have any now.
After 9:00 a.
m.
, there's no more.
Wow.
And now the filling.
Spring onions, ginger, garlic.
Then add salt.
Monosodium glutamate.
MSG? Dark soy sauce.
This is sunflower oil.
This'll do.
The fact that they don't have gas, no running water When I just sort of fathom how hard it is for them to make everything, that's when I was like, "Oh, it's a privilege to be here.
" It feels like growing up at home.
The women in my family used to just make dumplings.
They would just make hundreds and hundreds.
This isn't so different than, like, an Italian grandma making, you know, a ravioli or something like that.
Try wrapping them.
It's like they're putting pressure in They make it look so easy.
It's not easy at all.
Look how beautiful theirs are and how stone-hands-like mine are.
How long would it take for me to get good at this? It wouldn't take long.
Pretty quick.
Two months.
You're like our kid.
We wrap dumplings and you want to help out.
Stuff some of the firewood in and the water will boil.
I just think that when you make food this way, it's gotta taste better.
'Cause you worked so goddamn hard.
It's like, "How much do you care?" When you realize, from start to finish, you've been busting your ass, you know, why would you go so far into this process only to make it taste halfway? Hu, I'll give you this tray.
Give me that tray.
She doesn't wanna cook mine.
Those would burst if they were boiled.
That looks so cool.
Looks so cool.
So, like that.
Okay, not bad.
You only put little filling, little pesto.
How beautiful! How beautiful! How is it going? Very well.
Well, very well.
Very well.
- Buongiorno.
- Buongiorno, David.
It's almost every Saturday they're trying to do this? - Two times a week.
- Two times a week.
And the grandmothers, they transfer the knowledge to the kids as So it's the nonnas' ideas.
Yes.
Point was, what they're gonna do, these kids? Once, uh, the school is over, high school.
You know? So, they start like this, you know? To produce something with their finger, work with a little movement.
But the idea is the grandmother, they have, uh, all this knowledge since their grandmothers Why don't we transfer that knowledge to these kids? They're gonna be like the witness, the people carrying the knowledge.
I just feel like this whole The history of it, passing down from generation to generation, - this is, like, a transcultural thing.
- Yeah.
I did this with my mother and grandmother.
I couldn't be the one I am if my grandmother didn't transfer this kind of, uh, emotional experience when I was a kid.
But look at that.
What is the meaning of the tortellino? That each one of them is totally different because it is reflecting the personality of each one of us.
Hmm.
Mmm-hmm.
That's real good.
Fuck.
Food here is so good.
Yeah.
This market, I like it.
You've been in Modena ten years.
Yeah, more like 13 years.
Thirteen years.
And you moved from Tokyo straight to here? Yeah.
I always worked at an Italian restaurant in Japan.
- Right.
- I wanted to see Italian culture in Italy.
You know, Japanese are, like, more focused.
Italian people more creative.
Taka's gonna make the Osteria version of the tortellini.
But do you think the Modena tortellini has reached the evolutionary peak? Is that Can't be better.
In the last ten years, we developed the perfect filling, with the perfect parmigiano, the perfect prosciutto, the perfect mortadella.
Yes, I think we reached the peak.
It's delicious.
What a surprise.
I think we're gonna try to make, uh, in theory, tiny, tiny wontons, essentially, in a tortellini.
Because tortellini en brodo is the same thing as wonton soup, so I was trying to make, like, dumplings in the form of tortellini.
We have some pork and we have some veal in here.
I'm not sure about any of this stuff.
I feel like I'm in enemy territory here.
But number one, I discovered, you actually need egg, or some kind of different flour to make it a little bit more sturdy.
Such a wet dough.
Everything was going swimmingly well and I needed some flour to roll out my dough, and then, all of a sudden, a bucket appeared, and I start folding some in, I put some on the board And then all of a sudden I'm like, "What the fuck's going on?" What happened? My dough starts to just, like, melt, almost.
It's so sticky.
And then Taka's like This is rice flour? Is this flour? It's not flour.
This is This is maltodextrin.
- Tapioca maltodextrin! I put it all on - Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
No.
Taka sabotaged me.
But he's on your side, Taka, come on! Oh, I'm so stupid.
I can't believe I put maltodextrin on my goddamn flour.
Worst thing in the world you could add.
- Sorry, guys.
The dough is terrible.
- Yeah.
Oh.
I've been humbled.
Because I was never understanding of the quality of the ingredients that goes into it, which is ultimately what makes Italian food Italian food.
Yeah.
Whenever I'm making dumplings or eating dumplings, I'm never thinking about the quality of the ingredients.
Absolutely.
Can I eat a delicious dumpling? Yes.
Is there a lot of craftsmanship that goes into a soup dumpling? 100%.
That's awesome.
But I can't tell you about the provenance of the meat, or the kind of crab or anything.
Oh, I didn't see it from your guys' perspective.
I can't make dumplings the same vein of a tortellini.
I just can't merge cultures, right? That's not my story to tell.
Maybe Taka's kids, 50 years from now, will be like, "I've an idea for gyoza.
" And that happens.
Absolutely! The tradition are changing because it's the moving, all these migrants.
And maybe there are new sparkle of new flavors that are coming up.
There are some ingredients in some dishes that would not even exist if that cross-pollination didn't exist at one point in history.
This is borderline Asian.
It's all umami.
I will say where there's similarities, whether it be Italian or Chinese dumplings, was the image of a grandma making it.
I don't know, that's just love, right? Do you ever get tired of eating dumplings and making dumplings? I wouldn't.
Eat up.
And when you bite, then you say "Wow, what is this? I never taste something like this.
" This is the very important point for people like us.
Because we are in search of perfection and emotions in food.
Because at the end, it's all about that.
I appreciate, again, my friend for coming and talking about his people's food.
And obviously, Italian food's the most popular food in the world right now.
I'd like to begin my closing statement by admitting how much I absolutely love this man and his food.
- Aw - I admire what you do - and I do love Asian noodles.
- Mmm.
Generally when I'm wasted.
And with that, we'll conclude our debate tonight.
There's no resolution to this.
I'm wearing a winter coat as a blazer.
Hmm.