[music] -We come from the underground.

-If you tell me to go one way, I'm going to go the other way.

-The food that I want to cook is something that feed your soul.

-I want to put my mom's stories, my mom's dishes from Turkey.

-Come with me in the kitchen.

Come on.

-Look at me, I'm cooking.

-We're here to learn the trade.

A bunch of rebels and outlaws.

We're all degenerates.

-This program was made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill philanthropy.

[music] -This starter was started by my auntie family 69 years .. Every single piece of bread that I make, every single focaccia that has been made here at the Lele Dinner Club is made with that starter.

I'm giving to people a story, not just a piece of bread or a piece of pizza or a piece of focaccia.

It's a family history that I'm trying to tell to people.

The food that I want to cook is something that feed your soul.

When you enter over here, it's like you step in a new world.

Basically, not anymore in Los Angeles, but you are in Naples.

The music that you hear, 100% Neapolitan rap.

The rap or rap.

Neapolitan rap.

That's how you say it.

Is that good pronunciation?

A rap.

[chuckles] When you make bread, you are dealing with living things.

Any living things for me reacts to your energy.

It's like if you wake up in the morning angry about yourself, about anything else, and you try to cook, nothing good is going to come out of it.

It's like, "Oh, you're going to be angry."

Then I'm not going to rise.

I'm not going to do it.

People think that I'm crazy because I speak to the bread.

When I see that it's not rising enough, it's like, "Oh, please, come on.

We need to go.

Services starts in three hour.

I need you to rise.

Come on.

Be a good boy.

Be a good boy."

Believe it or not, the bread rises.

I don't know why, but it works.

My auntie had an underground bakery.

Basically, in our house, we used to have a little oven down the basement.

It was an ancient oven.

We used to make bread and focaccias and all kind of cuts of bread for the delis in my little town.

I loved mixing the dough because everybody was putting their hands in the beautiful sticky dough, this wooden box.

A kid is drawn to mess, like why are they having so much fun?

It's like, I want to participate.

As soon they started to understand, I was starting to get a grasp.

I said, "Maybe we can save some labor.

Let's put him to work."

Child labor.

I'm a product of child labor.

That's who I am.

Basically, focaccia is the precursor of pizza.

Focaccia used to be a plate for ingredients to go on top.

One of the focaccia that we serve at Lele is made with Concerto Romano, which is one of the oldest cheese made by the Roman Empire.

It used to be served in Pompeii.

When you taste it, it's not super sourdough-ish.

It's more on the sweeter side.

That's a technique that has been in my family for a long time.

Also, it's in Caserta.

A lot of people use this technique.

When I came to US with that starter by my auntie, I jar it, close it, wrap it like a baby, and put it in my suitcase.

Hopefully, pray God that the custom didn't stop me because otherwise, I'd let you throw away.

The moment I passed custom and I knew that the starter was with me, I was like, "God, yes."

I made it because that's the foundation of all the bread and focaccias and all the flour products that I make.

[music] All right, another day in my life.

After learning the club, this is my main job, basically.

Come with me in the kitchen.

I'll show you every little things behind Pizza.. It's my first restaurant.

Come on.

When I came to US, I had $300.

I had to live in a van on Venice Beach for seven months and a half.

I started to work in a restaurant.

A lot of celebrities start to came in.

One of the celebrity was Chris O'Donnell.

Basically, he needed somebody to go to his house and teach him how to make pizza.

The only answer I gave to him, like a good Italian, "Pizza, don't worry.

I got you, brother.

I got you."

We started, and he started to stretch pizza with me in one of these party that he used to organize.

The third try like, "Okay, you do it.

I'm just going to go and enjoy the party."

In one of these parties, I met my current partners in Pizzana, Candace and Charles Nelson.

They started Sprinkles Cupcakes a long time ago.

I came from living in a van to going all over the US and making pizza.

This little piece of dough, it's what started everything.

People call it sourdough, right?

My starter is a fermented agent that makes the pizza, all the bread, the proof.

My auntie is the one that gave it to me, this starter.

Then I came over here in the US, and I refresh it every day.

Now, it's part of every pizza at Pizzana, every Focaccia a.. It's in everything I do.

[music] You know that every Italian is going to have a guy, right?

I have a guy for tomatoes, so come here.

-Daniele.

-Hello, my good friend.

-How are you doing?

-Now, better.

This is amazing.

-Good to see you.

-I love the hat.

-Thank you.

-Hans is one of the most amazing human being ever in Los Angeles.

It's a man that is focused on living in the past.

Hans went from having a job in a restaurant, a routine, to say, screw it, just going to be home and make my home a farm.

How many years now that you're doing all this?

-This garden I've been working on for about five years now.

I started just before the pandemic and slowly expanded to practically the entire backyard.

I have no employees.

I do all this by myself.

It's really a labor of love.

-That's why you've got that beautiful tan over there.

-I got too much sun.

I aged myself in 10 years and five years.

All right, come check out what I'm working on, Daniele.

I think this is something that's- -That's beautiful.

--near and dear to your heart.

Here, we have some of my own varieties that I've created, and they're in the finishing stages.

This is a type of pianola you've probably never seen before, except from me.

-No, it's bicolor.

-I'm the only one in the world growing it because I created it, and I get to name it.

This one is- -Can I try one of these?

-Of course, yes.

These are already about four weeks to a month old, and they've been sitting here.

This is how I prepare them to hang them.

You've obviously done that before, I'm sure.

-That's delicious.

It's starting to get on the sweeter side right now.

-[crosstalk] It's rich.

One of the greatest misconceptions I hear all the time is that, "Oh, we can't do things.

Food's so much better in Italy."

This and that.

Obviously, there's a deep tradition.

The food in Italy is incredible.

-100%.

-The ingredients are incredible.

The biggest misconception to me is that our produce isn't as good or that we can't compete.

I think the produce that we have available to us in California and some of the farmers and the talent that we have producing that are on par, can compete with the greatest produce anywhere in the world.

Anywhere.

-I agree.

When we talk about tradition, .. Tradition is something that before that became traditional, it was innovation.

I'll take the biggest example in the world.

When the first Margherita pizza was created, at the time, that Margherita pizza wasn't tradition, but was something new.

People embraced them, tried it, and then after 250 years, that Margherita pizza became something traditional.

Now, what prevents us from creating something, a technique, or a method of harvesting tomatoes like you're doing over here?

What prevents us to make something that we do over here to become tradition in 200 years?

Talking and looking over these beautiful tomatoes, it's just making me hungry.

Should we make a pizza?

-Let's do it, yes.

-Come on, let's make a pizza.

.. -I got the oven fired up.

Let's go.

I'll show you how I stendere la pizza.

-Some Italian in there.

Basically, in Neapolitan tradition, the dough usually is stretched like this.

See?

This one doesn't need to be slapped because otherwise you get too thin in the middle.

See?

Let's see.

That's pretty good.

Look, I still know how to make dough.

-Oh, yes.

-You work your fields- -All by hand, no tractor.

-Then I destroy them.

See?

I destroy your tomato.

There you go.

-You ready to open up our pizza shop over here?

-Let's do it.

-Right here.

-Another one?

-My house.

-Another one?

We are on the farm making pizza.

Come on.

Salut.

-Cheers.

We did it.

-I love you.

-I love you too.

[music] -People always associate Naples with just pizza, right?

Pizza or spaghetti, which is okay.

It's one of our staples.

There's so much variety.

It's a seafood town.

We have a lot of seafood.

During the week, we eat pretty light.

There is one of the most amazing vegetarian dish that we have.

Every day is a pasta with a different kind o.. At Lele Dinner Club, we do it.

We do pasta with zucchini, pasta with potato, pasta with butternut squash.

My favorite is the pasta with beans, pasta fagioli.

Mixing everything in this big pot with a lot of olive oil, with garlic, parsley, the tomatoes, and you reduce it down.

Then you add this beautiful bean broth in it.

Then you add pasta mista, which is all broken ends pastas.

Back in the days, the pastificio basically is the pasta factories.

Back in Naples, when the pastificio had all these broken ends pasta, instead of throwing them away, they couldn't sell, but they used to put it in a brown paper bag and just give it away to people that couldn't afford to buy the pasta for free.

A lot of Neapolitan dishes are born out of necessity, out of poverty.

To me, those are the best dishes.

-All right, ready?

Ready.

Misto.

[music] -You have nine courses, nine [?].

We're starting with the Neapolitan metodo classico.

[?]

-I cook like an Italian grandma.

Like I said, I'm not going to use my wooden spoon on.. All right?

When I started Lele Dinner Club, I started out on my house kitchen.

I wanted to cook for friends, basically.

Then my DMs started to crash.

I had 300, 400 DMs.

Like, "Where can I reserve?

When is it going to be?

Where do you do it?"

It's like, I got to find a space.

This was perfect.

We are basically at Foodstiz Studios.

There's an underground feeling.

Already, everything's set up.

It was just a perfect spot.

Also, my co-founder over here, Ferdinando Muscherino, is one of the most talented sommelier.

The first dinner I did at my house, I invited him to come and say, "Listen, I need a sommelier.

I need you to pair all the wine from Southern Italy with all the food that we do.

The menu is half written in Italian, so you don't really understand everything that's going on.

You're hit with a lot of Italian-ness.

Southern Italy is famous for the warmness.

In Naples, we do this.

When we see somebody, it's like, "Hey, how are you doing?

Oh my God, it's so good to see you."

"Where do you have to go?"

It's like, "Oh, I got to go to visit my family."

"Okay, let's go take a coffee first."

Doesn't matter what you have to do.

Let's go get an espresso.

Take the time to talk a little bit.

Over here, it's [?].

Everybody's so focused on work, work, work, and the human connection for me lacks over here.

I wanted to bring that back.

After that bite of food, you see the nod of peoples.

It's like, "Oh, this is good."

That makes my day.

You cook because you want to make somebody else day better.

[music] -We come from the underground.

We got labeled as underground barbecue.

I was like, "That's cool."

You're doing everything illegally.

People were supporting it.

Our local health department basically told us that we couldn't do what we were doing anymore.

We got the rug pulled out from underneath us.

When your livelihood depends on it, just keep fighting.

The brisket, it's the pectoral muscle.

It's one of the most toughest pieces of meat that you can cook and barbecue.

It's the muscle that actually holds up the animal.

A Central Texas-style barbecue was mainly German and Czech influence.

It was a way of preserving meat that was spoiling in a lot of the old German-Czech butcher shops.

Yes, making that meat last longer.

The pepper is what helps the bark form on the brisket.

What we're trying to achieve is this really juicy, black, shiny piece of meat that looks really delicious and enticing.

I could always tell when a brisket's done cooking because of the way it smells.

To me, it smells like chocolate, like warm brownies.

When you know brownies are done because you can smell them, the same thing with brisket, being a pit master, that's what you're doing.

You're mastering your pit.

They're all different.

They all have their own personal.. That's a time where you can pretty much figure out anything that you have going on in your life.

You have to spend that time with you in the fire to see how it breathes and how it eats and to realize that it's alive.

It teaches you how to be patient.

You're on its time.

You're sweating.

You're getting burned.

You're getting smoke in your eyes.

Then you still have to come back and do that again the next day.

It takes a special sort of individual that's going to do that over and over again.

I met my wife back in Orange County when I was in high school.

She got pregnant at a young age.

She dropped out.

I dropped out.

We were teen parents, so we struggled a lot.

We barely scraped by.

We lived paycheck to paycheck.

I just loved gathering people together and cooking, looking back that we were preparing ourselves for these gatherings and cooking for big groups of people.

My wife would be like, "Oh, these people are just coming over, and they're just mooching off of us," and this and that.

Finally, she was like, "Hey, we got to start charging for this."

It was her idea, really.

We had our first pop-up in late 2017, in the backyard of our first home in Garden Grove.

Most of them were just friends and family.

We had people show up that we didn't know.

It went on like that for quite some time until we actually got in trouble.

We got pop.

We had this raid done on us.

It was a city of Garden Grove and Orange County Health Department.

They basically told us that we couldn't do what we were doing anymore.

The hardest thing was the offset smoker.

It wasn't approved for food use.

I went back and typed out some documents, tried to argue my case on why this would be a safe way to do it.

I had to write all the procedures.

We got an answer back and that was, "Okay, well, if you can get somebody to build this apparatus with these specifications, then we will allow it."

We then went to our builder and then had the smokers build the specific .. We became the first in the state to have an offset smoker approved for food use.

Evan.

-Yes, brother.

-Hey, good morning.

-Nice.

Yes, great to see you.

-How are you doing, brother?

Good to see you.

-Yes, man.

Welcome.

-Thank you.

The Ecology Center is a regenerative organic.. in San Juan Capistrano.

One of the biggest things that they do for the city is .. education for all ages.

Yes, I love coming out here.

-Yes, beautiful day.

-You got such a hard job.

-Well, we're all doing the good work, putting the culture back in the agriculture, as we like to say.

-Yes, absolutely.

-No, we're lucky to be here.

This is a 28-acre paradise.

-It is.

Evan is someone who has been an advocate for su.. to nourish their bodies with the best that they can get.

-The conversation that we're having as farmers is really exploring that bioregional cuisine that's not just indigenous.

It's really this evolution of time of-- Because trading has happened from Mexico all the way through San Juan Capistrano for hundreds of years.

The Spanish came in the 1800s but before that even.

The milpa has a strong anchoring here.

We grow the milpa, the traditional corn, beans, and squash for a lot of reasons, not just to preserve the past, but really to bring culture into the future.

-Yes, you can really see why the natives would settle for this land here.

It's in this valley, and then we have the river that runs through here, right?

-Absolutely.

This is some of the most fertile soil .. This watershed, this San Juan Creek watershed that connects the Saddleback Mountain, or Calapa, as the Ahajans say, all the way to Doheny, it's pretty epic.

You want to harvest some tuna?

There's some low-hanging fruit right here.

-Yes.

Actually, I had my eye on some of these ones over here.

-Do it.

Yes, rock it.

You need a knife or you're going [crosstalk]?

-Yes, I got one.

There's an abundance of everything here, huh?

-That's true.

-I get some of these prickly pears, these tunas.

-Yes, help yourself.

It's so good.

-Yes, grab a couple more.

-This is the San Juan Blue.

This is our heritage ingredient that we've been growing here for years.

It's just starting to flower.

There's nothing like a corn field, right?

This is one of the most powerful ingredients for the Americas and for the people, which is-- This is the sustenance and the spirituality of the people of the land.

On the other side of that, in America, is we've bastardized this sacred ingredient.

We've turned it into a commodity that's not even edible.

Even though this specific corn isn't from San Juan.

That's the journey that we're all on, embarking on, is how do we become native to this place?

Of course, honoring all of our indigenous communities that are showing us the ways of being.

It starts with conversations like this, and it follows through with so many other ways.

-On my dad's side of the family, my grandmother was born here.

Her bloodline stems from being what people call Californian.

What do Californians look like?

It could be mestizo, which is a mixture of Spanish and Indigenous.

There was no boundaries back then.

The people of this land were the people that were here before anybody else.

Before there was a flag.

Who was really anywhere?

Does anybody really have a right to be someplace?

Using the land to cook with outside, there's nothing better.

We're using a local California white oak, burning it down to coals.

From there, we're going to take our beef heads that we actually marinated in some orange juice from some Valencia oranges that are here on the farm, and citrus leaves, and avocado leaves.

We are going to rub that down with a spice mixture of achiote and some other dried chili peppers.

Wrap them up in some palm leaves because that's what we have here on the farm.

We'll lower those into the pit, and then we'll cover the whole thing with earth.

They'll cook overnight.

These cuts of meat that would normally be thrown away, they were the cuts that all the poor people were eating.

Tomorrow, we'll find out how we did.

I think that's a wrap.

We're just going to let the land do its thing and trust in our ancestors to finish the process for us.

This is their method, so we'll just leave them to it.

One, two, three.

Okay.

As long as it doesn't combust right now.

[music] -There it goes.

I knew that was going to happen.

Oh, no.

No.

-Want to eat?

-No.

I've got to save it.

There you go.

-Good save, good save, good save.

-That looks good, actually.

-Yes, it does.

Look at the meat.

-There you go.

-Oh, man, that's good.

[laughter] -Yes, put it right there.

Fire is going to do what it wants to do.

We're basically going to pull all the meat off of him, the cheeks, the tongue, and we'll pull everything apart.

Come on, Dwayne.

You know I'm not going to leave you out, bro.

I'm not going to give you more brains again.

That's what I gave you the last time.

Did you know that?

I reached in and grabbed a piece of brain.

-I was going to- -You know I got to mess with you, dude.

-It's like Cooper when we made him eat the eye.

-That's some of the cheek.

-Is this some of the cheek?

-You know I got a brain left.

-We're going to take some blue corn that we got from the ecology center, make these tostadas, lay some beans down, put a nice layer of the beef head on there, a couple of eggs, prickly pears, some tunas.

We're going to roast this off.

We're going to make a nice ranchero salsa for it and some of the little nopal relish that we got from the farm, too.

Eat it with a little bit of queso fresco.

That's a ranch meal right there, right?

After all this hard work, that's something that we deserve.

-I love the cabeza.

It tastes just perfectly cut, soft, with a little bit of crispiness, the salsa de tuna.

What I really love is the tostada, because most tostadas, they just shatter.

There's nothing to it.

You eat it, all right, it's hard, but.. you can still taste the corn in it, and it's the tiniest bit soft on the inside.

Danny never messes up.

-Heritage Barbecue is full of ragtag chefs, but we all find a common interest, and that's cooking.

I try to give them something to think about when they hear our story of where we started in our backyard, with no money, and that sort of thing, and you can be anything that they want to be.

Not any of us are here because we did amazing in school .. We're here to learn the trade.

A bunch of rebels and outlaws, and we're all degenerates.

Barbecue is the only really thing that I've been really good at.

I'm very blessed that it found me because I don't know where I would be if I didn't have it.

-The ale churro is just, it's a statement piece now, which is cool.

It was my way of being bratty.

Also, me being out here in LA.

I love representing the city, too, that it's just like what we're doing is taking what is traditionalist to somebody, but still twisting it to what we know.

If you tell me to go one way, I'm going to go the other way.

I grew up going to games and everything.

You always had those churros that they're carrying around in the bag, or if I go somewhere to certain bakeries, they offer churros, and they have them sitting under a heat lamp for who knows how long.

It was never like a fresh bite.

That Ale Churro started at Cha Cha Chá.

When I first took over the pastry department, I was very like, I don't want to do a churro.

Because having a churro in a Mexican restaurant, you kind of fall into that gimmick.

If you don't do it right, it sucks.

For me, it was just very the brat moment of like, "No, I don't want to do it."

Then one day, just playing around with the shapes, and we piped an ale inside.

We were like, "Damn, I think I did something."

It just kind of blew up.

When it came to Santa Canella, I want a stadium-sized churro.

I want it to grab people's attention.

There's no sugar in our dough, too.

We just cook it until like a thick paste develops, and then we take it from there to the mixer.

Then once that's ready, we'll bag it up.

We pipe the ale.

We froze it, and then we fry it from freezer to fryer that held so cool and so clean that we're like, "All right, this is it.

This is our shape."

Santa Canella is the bakery that can play with traditional things that we grew up with just through the eyes of somebody from LA.

My first year at Cha Cha Chá, the owner brought it up to me of planning on opening a space that is a churrería, and that's why we wanted to develop a really good churro.

They're like, how about we switch the concept to a bakery?

Then it was just like, "Oh, oh-oh."

I'm such a restaurant person.

They were putting baby in the corner.

Then it became really important to me, and now I'm like, I don't think I could see myself anywhere else now.

[chuckles] Oh, that's cute.

-I could be a pastry chef now.

That's all it takes.

Right?

-Look at me, I'm cooking.

-Look at me, I'm a pastry chef.

-I wasn't going to walk for graduation and high school, so my dad took me to this trade school.

My mom was like, "Just do the medical assisting route."

I was just working in the ER for a little bit.

It was just so sad to me that I didn't want to see everybody suffer.

I love doing things for people that is going to make them happy and whatever.

At some point, it wasn't doing it for me anymore.

I signed up for culinary school behind my parents' back, and nobody knew.

The only way they found out was because they sent my toolkit that they give you to my house.

Then when I got there, my mom asked me like, "What is this?

@ She was like, "Why would you do that?

You're going to end up at a Denny's."

I always remember her telling me that.

I was just like, "Damn, that's crazy."

Then somewhere, my dad came around and was like, "Hey, I know you want to bake, but if you want to learn something, you need to learn everything."

He's like, "If you're going to do that, you need to learn how to cook fi.. and then you can do whatever you want at some point."

That's what I did.

[Foreign language] [music] -Paco and I go way back.

We go almost now 12 years.

He is the executive chef of the restaurant group we work for, like my mentor.

I wanted to take Paco through where I grew up in El Sereno and all over LA to show him where my inspirations come from.

La Águila is one of the main panaderías in El Sereno.

It's somewhere I grew up going to for the last 25 years probably.

-[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] How long have you been coming here?

-[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[?]

That's crazy.

-They make about 450 conchas in the winter of each kind.

-They have two different sizes here that they do nine trays of both the small and the big ones.

-Just two guys.

-Just two guys.

Isn't that crazy?

[chuckles] [Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] Yes.

-Take the one that I wanted to try, right?

-This is my favorite one.

-How did you come up with the concha?

Did somebody teach you how to make it, or you just learned it on your own?

-No, I just learned it on my own.

Concha to me is a brioche base with some type of either just a plain vanilla shell or a flavored shell, and then you cut it using a shell stamp.

This one we make with vanilla bean and orange blossom in here, and then I just do a little ball, and hit with my palm of my hand to flatten it out bigger than what my brioche base is here.

Then I just push down, and I squish.

I'm going to start to tuck in and go the opposite, one down, one up.

Then I just give it one quick stamp, and then I shape it back, and then it goes on to the next one.

My first trip to Mexico, all I saw was the concha that is completely covered, and so that one we do one here to honor that, what I saw in my time there.

My mom was from DF in Mexico.

I want to uplift my mom being from DF as much as I can.

We have the Santa Canela concha, which is filled with a burnt vanilla cream.

You almost have this really cool cinnamon crust, and then the filling inside is just a burnt vanilla that carries this very-- I don't know what it is for me, but it's a nostalgic cookies and cream flavor almost.

Then when you eat the entire thing, it almost tastes like horchata, which is another cool little twist.

I'm half Salvadorian from my dad's side.

For me, it was very important to highlight both sides of my upbringing.

I always tell people if they ask me what I am, I'm like, "Oh, I'm half of this, and I'm half of this."

I was also born here, and I'm from LA.

My parents had their experiences where they are, but I'm not from Mexico, so I don't really know the super deep culture there.

I'm not from El Salvador, so I know what I know from them telling me stuff and showing me things.

Also, me being out here in LA, I love representing the city, too, that it's just getting to do all three is pretty cool.

[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] From what I know, champurrado is an old-school-- A lot of people say it's an Aztec drink because they needed to incorporate masa, which was always on hand for them.

-[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] -[Foreign language] [music] -LA, you have so many donut shops here, and I felt like it was important for me to have a donut.

My favorite donut is a maple bar.

It's very subtle and it's so sweet and it's really good.

I also wanted to try to incorporate champurrado into it, which is also such a common thing for us to drink.

For me, the idea behind that donut was how can I incorporate something that's so LA and also so Hispanic that it just put two and two, and I made the champurrado glaze, and now it's a donut.

My mom is very happy.

Now she's very like, it's crazy to see how much you love what you do.

You basically told me and your dad, "Shut up, and you did what you wanted to do anyways," and that for us, makes our sacrifice of coming here worth it.

When she told me that, I was like, "Damn, that's crazy."

We were taken in by the community so well here that shifted my.. okay, now that we're here, how can we keep the traditions alive, and how can we be that next step for the next bakers here?

How can we keep the momentum alive of what a paneria is?

-This is the chef.

It's me.

I'm a line cook, CPA, dishwasher, and I'm a server.

Looks like I'm octopus.

I'm everywhere.

I'm owner.

[laughs] I'm owner, too.

Everything I do by myself.

I want to put my mom's stories, my mom dishes from Turkey, and then my experience a little bit Japanese, and I work so many years French restaurant, and I'm thinking, I'm going to mix these three.

I think it tastes crazy.

[music] My mom made kitel twice a week, and I saw it always.

The kitel good with yogurt and butter.

This is the bulgur, like a pasta dough, pizza dough, similar.

If you make mistake, the broken.

That's the deal.

There's nothing inside.

Just salt and water.

The meat, I use very high-quality ground beef.

After I make dough, I just pour inside and then close it.

Looks like dumpling.

I remember the taste.

I know this.

I know how much my mom put in the spice.

It's ready.

My mom made twice a week.

When I go school, she say tonight have kitel.

I can't wait.

I need to finish the school and to go home and eat kitel.

Now I have every day now.

[chuckles] My family have the restaurant when I young, and then I learn everything, but it's not professional.

Cut, I cook, but it's not like technique.

Then I want to go school, like culinary school.

I want to learn how to cut, how to clean, how to organize.

Nobody show me anything.

Then I start culinary school.

After two months, they send me to Japanese restaurant for the stash.

I saw Japanese restaurant, it's not easy.

Maybe like two months, I just clean shrimp.

After 20 days, I'm like a machine.

Boom, boom, boom.

Then I move French restaurant.

I learn French cuisine, like sauce, puree.

Then I start working.

Eleven Medicine Park, three Michelin-star restaurant in New York.

I learn everything over there.

Work, work, work, and then go home.

Sleep, another day, same.

Focus.

Turkish cuisine, not just Turkish cuisine, it's Middle East.

We have a lot of dishes, and we eat a lot of meat, and actually, we eat fish too.

I use a lot of spice.

Very hard to find it but I'm trying.

I use tarhana.

Tarhana like a Turkish dry soup mix.

Tarhana tastes similar to miso.

I use a lot of miso for the shrimp, lobster, and some fish.

Then I'm thinking why I'm not using the tarhana.

Then I got this idea.

Tarhana inside have yogurt, tomato paste, pepper paste, and some Turkish spice.

I use with yuzu kosu and butter.

Then I cook with the shrimp.

It tastes like Turkish-Turkish.

I put Japanese-style more umami.

It tastes like fusion.

[music] I'm in New York.

Then my wife got a offer job in Los Angeles.

Then I feel like, "Okay, we got to go."

Can change.

Change your life.

Then we move here.

I'm always looking for the space to open my restaurant.

What is the rent?

It's expensive.

Every day, I make little, little money.

Then I put something in the menu.

Two months, very bad because no money.

I'm trying to survive.

I feel like that I'm not lucky guy.

Every single person say, "You are crazy.

Why you spend money for this restaurant?

You are stupid.

Lost your own money."

Nobody trust me.

What should I do?

What should I do?

I'm going to drive maybe Uber after restaurant all night.

I need money.

-Hi.

-Hello.

-Welcome.

How are you?

-How are you?

-Hi.

Come.

-All right.

How was your trip?

-It was perfect.

I bring you a lokum actually.

-Lokum?

Oh, yes.

-Here.

Try.

Is it good?

-Yes, it's good.

-Yes, I will not c.. -Some Turkish people came to my restaurant for dinner.

Selin, she comes with the husband here.

She solved my plate because I don't have the money.

$1.

IKEA.

You know the last chance in IKEA?

I buy there.

I'm going to clean this.

I touch a lot.

She say I have a studio, ceramic studio.

I really want to help you because I saw you work alone.

"What should I do for you?"

I'm like, "I don't have money".

That's the deal.

She say, "Don't worry about that.

I'm going to make him for you."

Then I'm like, "Are you sure because I don't want regular plate."

She say, "What you want?"

"I want interesting."

She say, "I can do it.

Tell me your dream."

-I feel it's so close to my story too.

We are all coming from Turkey.

He learns Turkish cuisine and Japanese cuisine.

I feel myself I'm doing the same thing with my designs.

My master was Japanese, and we connect.

-We measure all dishes, like kebabs, fish, and then we choose this plate for kebab.

-We measure it.

-This is for kitel.

This much area for dumpling.

That looks beautiful.

-Do you want to try to throw this plate?

-Yes.

Let's do this.

[chuckles] I think if you're working with right person, you're going to make every day better.

You need to find the right person.

Okay.

[laughter] -Yes.

Normally, my brother, my father, they call me during the day because they know I'm sleeping in the night.

When I saw 5:00 AM, my brother call me, I feel like, okay, I lost someone, father or mom.

Then I open the phone, then he say, "Mom."

Actually, after I lost my mom, I never go back in Turkey.

I feel like she's over there still.

I'm trying to be not emotional.

[chuckles] Six years now but I think she's going to be happy we are together.

We see each other.

When I lost her and then I really want to open restaurant for her.

I'm going to make the kitel because my favorite dish.

[music] Every single day, coming three or five people in the restaurant all day.

I make little, little money.

I'm starting to use very, very high-quality meat, all farmers market.

Just money coming, whoop, go other side.

Coming in incredible ingredients, look at this filet, how big?

Then when the people came, they say, "Wow, what is this?"

I'm like, this is the high-quality experience.

The LA Times, they do two different article.

After that, my Instagram is going up.

300 DMs, people coming here, that time, crazy.

I can't sleep.

I sleep here too.

No time.

I'm trying to my best.

I want to cook everything perfectly, no mistake, because this is-- I have one chance.

Everybody going to be happy.

Every single person.

I don't like saying the VIP.

Every single person is VIP.

Thomas Keller say every day a little better.

I try every day a little better, but I don't have team.

Every day, I try little.

Not like Thomas Keller say a little better.

It's like health, but I try.

If I try more, I think I'm going to burn out.

Make better, little, it's okay, little, it's good.

Every day, little, it's good.