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ZIMMERN: To those of you thinking
that New Jersey's all factories and freeways,
fugetaboutit.
I love New Jersey.
Amazing things are growing in America's Garden State...
Wowza! That's so cool.
It's almost like they're alive.
...just beyond The Shore's iconic boardwalk...
Ooh!
You can see all the little wings and bones in there.
...and in the shadow of the Big Apple.
Oh, that is a stunner.
Oh, you can peel it back like a sock.
No place lives life and cooks food
with a prouder chip on its shoulder...
It's really tasty.
[ Laughs ]
The minute I see grill and heart together,
it does it for me.
Oh-ho!
...where unlikely settings spawn
some of America's greatest creations...
[ Chuckles ]
Well, I know what I'm having for lunch.
This right here -- world class.
...and the finest of Old World traditions.
You don't have crispy skin,
your customers are gonna walk away.
It's really good.
[ Crunches ]
Oh, my gosh.
Combine that with inimitable Jersey charm.
They shot three episodes of "The Sopranos" here after hours.
I'm Andrew Zimmern...
Whoa!
...and this is "Bizarre Foods: America."
Never hit the wrong button.
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
The ocean views of South Jersey
may seem a world away from the gritty urban atmosphere
celebrated in shows like "The Sopranos,"
but it's the source
of an iconic food for East Coast Italian families
that's virtually unknown anyplace else.
All right.
So, for people who didn't grow up in New Jersey,
is this a conch, a whelk, a snail, or all three?
All three.
In Rhode Island, it's a snail.
Right.
In New Jersey, it's a conch.
Everywhere else in the world, it's a whelk.
For 90 years,
Danny LaVecchia's family made a living
pulling shellfish from New Jersey waters.
Wow.
His kids will be the fourth generation
to run LaMonica Fine Foods.
People sometimes forget how big an industry that is down here
'cause they see the Jersey Shore
and they forget about all those little ocean towns
and what's gone on there for generations.
Yeah, and it's a family business.
We're farmers of the water, you know?
Husbands, wives, children are in the business.
They go out on the bay in the morning,
they bring the conch here in the afternoon,
and we process them the next day.
Some Jerseyites lovingly refer to this as "scungilli,"
or as they say on "Real Housewives," "scungille."
It's conch meat, steamed and cut into strips.
This is authentic Italian-American food
first adopted by new immigrants
hungry for something cheap and plentiful.
Now it's part of their descendents' heritage.
This is a traditional food.
I mean, very few Italian homes will go without --
Christmas Eve without having a scungilli salad on the menu.
The appetite for scungilli
helped La Monica stay in business,
even when most of South Jersey's shellfish industry imploded,
displaced by condominiums and resort towns.
Danny's family expanded from processing clams
to becoming the sole canner
of commercially harvested Atlantic conch
on the East Coast.
We're gonna dump them down. Then we'll shuck them by hand.
We'll remove the meat from the shell.
Yes.
All by hand.
All by hand? Still no machine to do that?
There's machines to do it, but we choose not to.
Because?
Better quality.
ZIMMERN: Better quality starts on the loading dock
where, in peak season,
nearly 100,000 pounds of conch arrive fresh daily,
rinsed to remove brine, grime, and detritus,
then ushered into La Monica's vast shucking room.
I used to do this as a kid.
We'd find these in the ocean,
and then we dumped them into a pot of boiling water
when we got back home.
Shucking conch by hand
means higher quality but much less quantity.
So Danny and his family expanded their operation,
opening Surfside Products,
where Danny's nephew Sal
oversees processing of ocean whelks.
They're smaller species of whelk.
For years, fishermen didn't bother to keep them.
ZIMMERN: Why get into the whelks?
Really?
We've been picking them out and throwing them away for years.
Thanks to growing demand in Europe and Asia,
this is now a mass-production facility.
Every day, nearly 100,000 pounds of ocean whelk
are crushed and cleaned
in Surfside's customized mechanical clam de-sheller.
Most end up canned and bound for the Far East.
I don't deal with that.
That's the finished product.
I love these.
Perfect size.
Very tender.
It's just all beautiful, sweet meat there.
Gorgeous.
I mean, nothing's as good as hand shucked.
We get pretty close.
Sal's machine-shucked whelk and Danny's hand-shucked conch
come here to be iced, sliced, and cleaned for canning.
I saw this episode on "I Love Lucy,"
and I've been traumatized ever since.
It never stops.
They steam nearly 2,000 pounds at a time,
using these massive winches
to load them into pressure cookers,
steaming them at well over 220 degrees.
This particular method of industrial canning
doesn't just seal the food, it cooks it, as well,
tenderizing the meat under pressure.
I'm not ready for this arcade claw game.
Whoa!
Never hit the wrong button.
I kid you not, that scared the [bleep] out of me.
Big, heavy, metal crap.
Definitely a job best left to the professionals.
DANNY: Thank you.
It's clean. It's efficient.
Apparently, one of the guys was telling me
it's been at least four days
since you lost somebody in one of these cookers.
[ Chuckles ]
Well, some people we choose to lose.
No, no, that's what I --
Oh, no, absolutely. This is New Jersey.
They shot three episodes of "The Sopranos" here after hours.
This is fantastic. I love this.
ZIMMERN: By day's end, La Monica's scungilli
will be headed to shelves
throughout New Jersey and beyond.
All I'm missing is some lemon and olive oil.
That is a lovely -- Oh, I like it.
Still a little warm.
Buttery soft, great flavor.
A lot of people don't understand
how much sort of briny, oceanic flavor
this shares with the clams of the world.
I love them soft and cooked. I love them chewy and --
I mean, I'll take this in any shape or form.
It's delicious food.
I could eat this all day long.
New Jersey reaps a lot of benefits
from its connection with the sea,
including the immigrants who make this their point of entry.
You can see all the little wings and bones in there.
One of the biggest immigrant communities in Jersey City
is bringing the Atlantic Seaboard
an authentic taste of the Pacific.
ZIMMERN: That's the key. If you don't have crispy skin,
your customers are gonna walk away.
ZIMMERN: In the shadow of Lady Liberty
sits one of the most ethnically diverse places in America.
And no, I'm not referring to New York.
For centuries, Jersey City
has nurtured immigrant groups from around the globe,
especially from the Philippines.
For generations,
Pinoy families have found homes along Newark Avenue
in the part of town commonly referred to as Little Manila.
ZIMMERN: Mm-hmm.
Once a couple people really settle in and they're happy...
...everyone comes.
ZIMMERN: Erwin Santos grew up here in Jersey City.
40 years ago, his parents opened Phil-Am --
a grocery store that provided
the booming Filipino community of the '70s
with all the comforts of home.
And you went to work at what age?
6 months. No, maybe 3 years old.
They gave you a little -- unpacking some boxes.
[ Chuckles ]
Today, Erwin runs the market his parents started,
growing it from a small storefront
to the largest Filipino-owned grocery on the East Coast.
SANTOS: It's somewhat of a hub
for Filipino people here in Jersey and other states.
Pretty much whatever you can find in the Philippines,
we have here.
ZIMMERN: From snacks of turon -- fried jackfruit and plantain --
to kare kare --
steamed bowls of oxtail, tripe, and peanut --
Phil-Am prides itself
on the home-cooked tastes and experiences of the Philippines.
Now, your sisig --
it's belly, cheek, head, both, all three?
Mostly belly and cheek.
Sisig is one of the stalwart national dishes
of the Filipino culture,
and one of my favorite foods, period.
The Phil-Am Foods version
is skillet crisped with plenty of peppers and vinegar.
So good.
That's how I know
it's gonna be a sisig that I like,
when you see those nice little bits of crispy skin, right?
Conventional market-fresh eggs come in all shapes and sizes.
At Phil-Am, happily for me, they come like this.
Balut is a popular snack
eaten throughout the central islands of the Philippines.
They're fertilized duck eggs, steamed,
served as is with the embryos inside.
Do you eat balut?
So do I.
Do you know who doesn't eat balut?
Maybe Erwin!
ZIMMERN: It's a tradition that many Filipino Americans left behind
as their tastes became mainstreamed
into their adopted homeland.
Any time a round eye peels one in the market, it draws a crowd.
It's gonna turn into a roast duck.
[ Laughter ]
It's good food.
Mmm.
Yolk and chicken all.
You can see all the little wings and bones in there,
but it's got delicious balut flavor --
that roast duck, hard-boiled egg yumminess.
Mmm.
I love it.
Mmm.
Maybe I'll try one again one day.
Some day.
Balutan memories aside...
Thank you.
...the streets of Little Manila are packed with places
intent on preserving proud Filipino traditions.
Well, I know what I'm having for lunch.
Mimi Escudero runs Legal Beans BBQ.
It's the first of its kind on the East Coast --
a whole-hog rotisserie pit house
devoted to the lechon barbecue style
from the Philippine island of Cebu.
You know the old adage --
A way to a man's heart or a woman's heart is through food.
That's exactly right.
So, as for me, everything I make here,
I try to make it exactly how I would have it
in the Philippines, in Cebu specifically.
This is a Cebu lechon.
This is the number-one lechon.
Thank you.
ZIMMERN: Filipino lechon
reflects centuries of Spanish influence on the islands,
best represented in the vinegar rub Mimi uses
inside the pig.
Cebu style means whole-hog barbecue
stuffed with scallions, herbs, cilantro,
and lots and lots of lemongrass,
spit-roasted for hours
until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender.
SANTOS: Her lechon is actually very authentic.
Many other places that make it near us,
it's actually done in an oven.
Yeah.
As you can see, over the coals.
Rotating.
That is authentic Cebu.
This is three hours of rotisserie.
Hear that?
Hear that?
[ Tapping ]
That's the key. If you don't have crispy skin,
your customers are gonna walk away.
This is it.
This is a tradition.
You have to have the first taste of heaven.
Crispy skin and fat and all.
Wow.
That's phenomenal. Amazing.
Gorgeous.
It's like porcelain.
Yes.
That...
That's the way it should be.
It's amazing.
Just breathtaking.
That's real Filipino lechon.
ZIMMERN: Mimi serves her plates
with a little bit of everything --
ears, ribs, loin, and feet, hand carved,
teamed with papaya salad and a few other surprises.
Don't wait on me.
You can be as indelicate as you want.
Do you have your own foot over there?
All right, good.
Look at that. Can peel it back like a sock.
Oh.
Good?
You can taste that vinegar and lemongrass.
She cooks it in a way that it all melds perfectly together.
Scary good.
So is Mimi's take on dinuguan, another Filipino staple.
Hers is made with pig ears, pork butt, offal, and hog fat,
chopped and cooked down
with an adobo of garlic, onions, and vinegar --
a very Spanish touch.
Finished with pig's blood, chocolate meat style.
That's really exceptional.
It's excellent.
You wouldn't think they go together,
and then once you put them together...
It's heavenly.
It treasures that relationship of the whole animal
because everything that came out of the pig
between life and the time it went on the charcoal
is represented here.
Nothing does it like food.
Yeah.
Makes you remember being a child,
and then once you have that food,
all the good memories come back.
Yep. Absolutely true.
One thing New Jersey's diverse communities have in common
is reverence for tradition.
Sometimes, tradition needs a boost.
This thing kicks like a mule.
Wowza!
From oyster food that's probably best left to the shellfish.
It's really tasty.
[ Laughs ]
[ Laughter ]
ZIMMERN: In a series of muddy bags
off New Jersey's southern coast,
you'll find the template
for just about every other oyster farmed in America today.
Wow, is that a great-tasting oyster.
Pbht.
ZIMMERN: For nearly a century,
the waters off Jersey's Delaware Bay
were home to one of the richest oyster deposits in America.
Families here made millions plying the waters
until an epidemic of diseases decimated the oyster beds.
Today, thanks to a dedicated team
of scientists and volunteers, and a little test-tube magic,
there's new life sprouting up in unexpected places.
That is so cool.
Watching the *** and the eggs actually interact and connect,
that's just amazing.
Here at the New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center,
run by Rutgers University,
they're growing an entirely new type of oyster.
They call it a Triploid
for the additional third chromosome it carries.
Triploids grow faster
and can taste better than other oysters
because they're just not as interested in sex.
BUSHEK: So, the Triploid oyster
is not going through a strong reproductive cycle.
All that energy that it would've spawned out
into the water to make larvae
is now being used to grow,
and so it grows faster and reaches market size quicker.
Program director Dave Bushek
has been studying them for over 25 years.
They're sterile, more disease resistant,
and stay crisp and flavorful during the summer months
when, traditionally, oysters are spawning.
That's when they taste flat
and have an off-putting mushy texture.
Which, ironically, is a time of year
that a lot of people really want to eat seafood.
That's when everybody's going to the coast,
enjoy the beach, go out for a nice seafood dinner.
Have your oysters, there they are.
On the West Coast,
nearly 80% of farm-grown oysters are lab-created Triploids.
Sterile oysters have always existed in nature,
and no oddball genes are being added to the DNA strands here.
Rutgers' Aquaculture Innovation Center
sells nearly 10 million seedlings a year
to oyster farms on the East Coast.
Now, if you look down here,
it looks like a bunch of sand on the bottom of this.
Those grains of sand --
each one of those is a baby oyster.
Want to see one?
Wowza!
You have quite a few there.
There's probably several hundred in my hand right there.
I love that. It's amazing.
They're trickier to open when they're that size,
so I suggest growing them.
Their trick to growing baby oysters?
Finding the perfect formula for them to eat.
Here at the Aquaculture Center, they do it themselves,
growing 10 different strains of the microscopic algae
these guys would naturally feed on in the wild.
Hi.
I've always wanted to say that on TV.
I never have. First time.
Dr. B.J. Landow has been running the Center's algae program
for the past seven years.
Using dozens of concentrations of her lab-grown algae,
Dr. Landow is helping to create oysters
with vastly different tastes and compositions.
That glorious oyster taste really starts here,
whether it's in a lab or in nature.
Exactly. Exactly.
And of course, what animal doesn't like
a nice big glass of Shellfish Diet number 1800?
No, I'm sure it's --
Really tasty.
[ Laughs ] It is.
[ Chuckles ]
All right, this is really -- I love this.
And here's why.
It's super intense.
It's like you took a basketball of pureed seaweed salad
and just shoved it into your mouth all at once.
I mean, your head just fills with that vegetal sea life.
It's not salty.
No, it's good.
Sharing a diet
with the next generation of American oysters is great.
Having the opportunity to put your name
on one of B.J.'s customized algae strains is even better.
"The-Zim."
So there. Not bad, right?
We only put the names of gods on there.
So true, doctor. So true.
A Herculean diet of algae
will grow a Triploid from flecks of sand
to quarter-size cups in the span of 60 days.
From there, they're ready to leave the nursery
for the muddy waters of Delaware Bay.
Even out here, they're getting lots of TLC.
There we go.
Twice daily at low tide,
these bags are flipped, washed,
and inspected for problems like mud worms.
What it does is it forms a mud casing
which fouls the bag,
and it'll suffocate the oysters.
The hotter it gets, the faster the mud grows.
It's a constant process, and it's an important process.
Rutgers' Triploids
have led to the creation of dozens of new oyster farms
and hundreds of jobs on Delaware Bay.
Here's the Triploid and the Diploid.
Wowza.
This is the traditional summer-spawning oyster
filled with reproductive material.
This is a Triploid.
That has an unexpected combination
of brine up front and sweetness in the back.
Now, I thought it would be flatter-tasting,
to be honest with you.
This one has a nicer briny saltiness up front.
The spawning oyster isn't terrible.
It's just nowhere near as good.
This one has the same briny saltiness up front,
but it washes out right away
and it doesn't have that sweetness at the end of it.
Exactly.
ZIMMERN: It's a taste made sweeter
by the work going into making them,
and it's helping the Jersey shoreline get a leg up
and stay on the rebound.
There's something just really special about this.
Yeah, from the East Coast oyster,
these are, in my opinion, some of the best.
This right here -- world class.
ZIMMERN: It's no surprise
finding world-class oysters in Jersey.
Oh-ho!
More surprising, perhaps,
it's home to some world-class Hungarian eating,
where you an taste what happens when you combine paprika, pork,
and a platoon of Hungarian grandmas.
It's being held together by angels' wings.
It's crazy.
If you're hungry for more "Bizarre Foods,"
like my top-five video countdowns,
just log on to travelchannel.com.
[ Singing in Hungarian ]
ZIMMERN: One day a year,
the small town of New Brunswick, New Jersey,
plays host to the largest gathering
celebrating Hungarian culture and cuisine in America.
[ Hungarian folk music playing ]
The Hungarian Festival honors all things Hungarian,
drawing crowds of thousands.
[ Music ends ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
What draws me?
Oh-ho!
Well, it's the chance to see
Hungarian-American food in a unique setting
and find out what the local future looks like
for one of my favorite under-appreciated cuisines.
You want to break a piece -- Yeah, go ahead.
This one is perfectly cool.
It's nice and soft inside.
Yeah.
Greg Hajdu-Nemeth is a lifelong resident of New Brunswick
who helps run the festival he grew up attending.
The Hungarian community's been here about 100 years.
In the 1920s and '30s, one out of every three citizens in New Brunswick was Hungarian.
Much of the original community has left New Brunswick,
leaving the old neighborhood
to new waves of immigrants from Mexico and Latin America.
[ Singing in Hungarian ]
ZIMMERN: Come festival time,
New Brunswick's Hungarians come home.
So, kind of like the swallows returning to Capistrano,
weekends, it just fills back up again with Hungarians.
We're all over the place, but it's nice to have
a place called home like New Brunswick, so...
[ Chuckles ]
Those returning families bring with them
their own versions of classic Hungarian comfort food.
We always say there's a friendly competition
Exactly.
Of course I like pork.
WOMAN: And we have pork cabbage,
and this is our chicken paprikash.
ZIMMERN: Oh, it sure is.
Thank you so much.
Our pleasure.
ZIMMERN: The color on the plate says it all.
Think of paprika simply as dried and ground red peppers --
essential seasoning in Hungarian cooking.
It will turn just about any food reddish-orange
and imparts an unmistakable velvety-sweet peppery flavor,
and in large volumes, adds texture, too.
HAJDU-NEMETH: So it begins.
Mmm.
Oh, my gosh.
Takes you back to the Old Country,
the way things used to be done.
Like a family sitting down.
Community, absolutely.
I'll tell you something.
You can taste the Hungarian community
in that stuffed cabbage and this sausage.
The cabbage melts like butter.
I mean, it's being held together by angels' wings.
It's crazy.
That's nothing like my mother-in-law's, unfortunately.
Oh, hers was the gold standard?
Yeah.
That's one of the risks of cooking Hungarian food for Hungarians.
Everyone always thinks back to how it was at home
or how your grandmother made it, and you're always comparing.
At this festival,
there are about as many variations of chicken paprikash
as there are hands to make them.
The chicken is essentially brazed
with sour cream, onions, garlic,
and, you guessed it, loads of paprika.
I love this.
It's a mild paprika cream gravy over spaetzle
with melt-in-your-mouth chicken made by somebody's grandmother.
Someone's Hungarian grandmother, I might add.
Absolutely.
Alongside the varieties of home cooking,
there's street food just like you'd find in Budapest.
And again, this is one of those nice light foods on a day like this.
Washes down the pork perfectly.
Lángos.
Lángos, which translates from the Hungarian as "salad."
Pretty much. Pretty much.
Lángos is deep-fried Hungarian flat bread,
and in Jersey style, it comes topped with your choice
of dozens of sweet or savory ingredients.
I'm gonna have it with sour cream.
Okay, that's the super Hungarian way.
See, she knows.
And do you want to know something?
I'm super Hungarian.
Oh, really? Okay.
Into the sour cream. Don't be stingy.
MAN: So, what do you think?
It's okay, right?
Hungarian soul food.
City street snacks sit side-by-side
with the gloriously borderline-illegal taste
of the countryside.
This is authentic Csabai kolbász --
garlic and paprika sausage
smoked and air dried for three days
and never seeing the inside of a refrigerator.
It's how we've preserved meat for thousands of years.
Good use of paprika.
Oh, yeah.
And your fingers look like this.
Hold that up.
[ Chuckles ] Finger-licking good.
This festival offers a shot of cultural adrenaline
for people trying to keep their heritage alive and relevant.
You guys know each other?
Old bride.
[ Laughter ]
ZIMMERN: So, let me ask you a question.
I've been married for a while, too.
What's the secret? Don't you say anything.
You know what's the secret?
Shut your mouth.
[ Laughter ]
Wiser words were never spoken.
Just keep your mouth shut.
Have a nice day.
Yeah, absolutely.
The crowd here at the community's youth center
represents real hope of cultural continuity.
For 60 years, the Hungarian Scout House
has worked to inspire American-born generations
with a love for the culture of the Old Country
and a taste for things like pacalporkolt,
the stewed beef tripe classically cooked with onions,
peppers, and a healthy dose of hot paprika.
It can be an education, even for Greg.
Are you a fan of tripe?
You did?
It looks very good.
Frankly, I didn't even know what it was.
It smells even better.
You know, if you can smell the tripe
before you get to the steam table,
you know you might have an issue.
Now that's beautiful.
Holds together well, has nice chew,
just faintly tastes of the stomach.
Tripe doesn't really have a taste in and of itself, does it?
Sure, it does.
No.
If you went away camping with the boys for three or four days,
no shower, no toilet paper,
and you came back home, you'd kind of smell like tripe.
[ Chuckles ]
This community stays strong despite the diaspora
by celebrating their culture every year.
It's all about continuity.
You got to understand that you're part of someone's history,
and luckily, we have a vibrant community here.
They can come and they can be part of it.
They can get interested in it. They can learn their language and their culture.
So, we're truly blessed to have something like this here.
That's awesome. It's awesome.
Some of New Jersey's richest food traditions
come from around the world.
Some are created right here.
Wow. That's some machine.
In this case, it's a combination of both.
Who knew that Jersey was a hub
for a worldwide revolution in the making of ramen noodles?
Not the cheap stuff in plastic bags.
UKI: We're able to extract the marrow from the bones,
and also, using the collagen from the pig's head.
Perfect.
ZIMMERN: One of the hottest trends
in the food world these days is ramen.
Not the three-for-a-dollar freeze-dried stuff
that feeds starving college kids.
Real ramen is a marriage of perfectly constructed broth
with just the right kind of noodle.
There are as many varieties of soup and seasoning
as the human brain can devise.
The challenge is trying to come up with all the different kinds
of fresh, high-quality noodles needed to match them.
The ramen explosion across the United States and Europe...
Wow.
...is being fueled by one family business
in an office park in Teterboro, New Jersey.
How many different types of noodles do you guys run here?
We have 30 different types of dough.
From there, we can customize it by the thickness, by the cutter,
so overall, we have 150 different types of fresh ramen noodles
that go to different restaurants across the East Coast
and then Europe.
Kenshiro Uki is the owner of Sun Noodle.
We sit down with the chef and we talk about,
"Okay, how was your soup? Is it dense, is it clear?"
And from there, we'll work with finding the right flour
and the right texture to match their soup.
To appreciate the genius of this noodle-making technology,
they encourage you to step next door
for a tasting session at their renowned ramen lab,
conceptualized by one of the world's best chefs.
Chef Shigetoshi Nakamura and marketing director George Kao
host these tastings for clients and VIPs.
Where did you learn all this?
I don't know. I just...
You're just walking down the street one day, and it came to you?
I don't know.
My mother always cooking with her own soup stock.
A ramen bowl is all about noodles and soup.
The soup is a combination of broth,
liquid seasoning, and aromatic oil.
On top of that, ramen chefs will add other ingredients
for flavor and texture.
With this soup broth made from chicken carcass and feet,
a liquid seasoning of mirin, salt, and sugar,
and chicken fat for the aromatic oil.
14% of my body weight is chicken fat.
[ Chuckles ]
It's a style of ramen
that originated in Tokyo a century ago --
one of the first to become widely popular in Japan.
It's made with the Tokyo wavy noodle --
thin but extremely chewy.
This is extraordinary.
Thank you.
The toothiness of the noodle is superb.
It does marry perfectly.
I'm assuming this is the firmest, densest noodle
to go with the thinnest broth?
It's very firm. It's very dense.
Another variety is Tonkotsu ramen
from Kyushu in southern Japan --
a region famous for its pork.
Tonkotsu ramen is made with Hakata noodles,
which are thin and brittle
to balance a thick, creamy pork broth.
The broth has been stewing for 20 hours.
We're able to extract the marrow from the bones,
and also, using the collagen from the pig's head,
the trotters, the soup is extremely creamy.
This noodle, the mouthfeel of it is just extraordinary
in terms of that brittle quality in your mouth.
It's cooked perfectly.
It's tender,
but it does have a stiffness to it in the mouth
that's -- Yeah, I just said that.
[ Laughs ]
That is extraordinary.
The different varieties of ramen noodle
have a few things in common,
going all the way back to the 1600s
when the first ramen noodles
found their way from China to Japan.
There's always a faintly alkaline taste,
and there's such a refined density to the dough
that with top-quality noodles, you can squeeze them into a ball
and re-separate every strand with a gentle shake.
Wow.
Particularly proud of that.
So, how does Sun Noodle
make huge quantities of noodles this good
in the countless varieties demanded by chefs
who are preparing classic ramen
and constantly inventing new variations?
With this custom-built $50,000 noodle-making machine.
We're able to control the speed, the thickness,
how wavy we want the noodles to become.
We're able to customize each part
to fit the customer's needs.
The customizing begins with the flour.
Ken scours the world,
finding and blending different varieties.
Even though it all starts as flour and water,
no two blends are exactly alike.
I'm trying to think of another business that does that,
and I really can't.
It would be like a wine maker making wine
for 1,000 restaurants across the country
and each one of his, you know, Zinfandel is different.
Yeah.
It's a staggering thing to think about.
The crowning touch for good ramen
is the distinctive texture that usually comes
only when it's made by hand.
This is the massager?
Oh, my goodness.
We're gonna pamper these noodles.
We're gonna bring them in here,
and then they're gonna come through 360 degrees.
We're gonna roll it.
We can determine how much you want to massage it
Right.
I'm a straight up and down guy myself.
[ Chuckles ]
Take it off the line here,
and you can see that it looks like it's been hand massaged.
There's different thicknesses.
It's all uneven.
This is something I love as you're eating.
The texture -- it's a natural chew.
You can see that uneven quality,
and that's what you're looking for.
Thank you.
Even more fantastic is what can happen
when you put this kind of perfectly crafted noodle
into the hands of a master like Chef Nakamura.
These are tsukemen, or dipping noodles,
and the dipping sauce
is a pork broth flavored with fish powder.
So, we're blending three different types of silverfish.
So, we have bonito, we have mackerel,
and we have sardines.
I can smell it.
After it's shaved, it's pulverized.
So, it's very fine powder,
and we incorporate the powder into the broth.
The noodles are smooth, almost sticky --
perfect for coating in that thick, rich fish and pork broth.
The combination of smokiness,
intense salinity, that aged fish flavor --
the really nice fermented-fish flavor --
just extraordinary.
The mouthfeel on this noodle is just out of control.
Seriously, the tooth is just -- it's just...
It's the density within the bite.
It's also the elasticity of it.
Do you want to know what's amazing?
Is that we're having this experience
not in some little storefront in Tokyo.
It's that right outside that door
is an alley in an office park in Teterboro, New Jersey.
Truth is there are lots of new traditions
being created in unexpected places all over New Jersey,
like this one,
where people put a lot of heart into their food.
Really.
The minute I see grill and heart together,
it does it for me.
ZIMMERN: The streets of Manhattan are packed with restaurants
pushing the limits of good eating.
The streets of Jersey City, not so much...
until now.
Here's what happens when a woman who helps run
David Chang's Manhattan-based Momofuku empire by day
meets a certified Jersey boy with a passion
for all the great food his home state has to offer.
Mmm. Oh. Mmm.
This is Thirty Acres --
a labor of love
and the brainchild of Kevin and Alex Pemoulie.
Kevin is the chef. Alex runs the house.
Order chicken.
They're a culinary power couple with the skill set and résumé
that would place them at the top of the food chain in New York
or any major-league food city in America.
So, why Jersey City?
I grew up in New Jersey,
wanted to do something in my home state
'cause I can remember eating Jersey corn in the summertime
when I was a kid, and tomatoes.
When, you know, berries come out,
going raspberry picking as a kid,
and it just made sense.
To see how Jersey grit gets into someone's DNA,
get up early and come along
to share Kevin's passion for his favorite breakfast.
Probably the first thing I cooked myself
was a Taylor Ham egg sandwich.
Taylor Ham is a spiced ground pork roll --
a super-salted mass of pig parts
created in Jersey over 150 years ago.
At Wonder Bagels, they prepare it to spec.
10 slices scored and fried on the griddle
topped with American cheese and served to go.
I grew up with it.
My mom and dad are both from New Jersey.
I didn't know it wasn't available
to anyone outside of New Jersey until I went to college.
ALEX: It's like salami mixed with Canadian bacon.
I had it for the first time, and I was like, "Holy..."
I had the same...
"This is amazing.
How have I not been eating this regularly my whole life?"
It is that good, but you want to know something?
You go a quarter mile behind your back,
there are people who don't even know what Taylor Ham is.
I know.
It's a micro-regional food.
ZIMMERN: Kevin and Alex share a passion
for under-appreciated, hyper-regional food.
That enthusiasm drives the unexpected pleasures
turning up at Thirty Acres.
I love fluke.
ZIMMERN: Fluke is an Atlantic Ocean fish.
In spring and summer,
they come into coastal inlets, bays, and canals.
Generations of Jerseyites have known they're easy to catch,
simple to cook.
You know fluke is, like --
Me too!
Dude, I was -- Let me tell you something.
The fish of my childhood -- fluke and bluefish.
Swordfish, too.
I think it's, like, just the beginning
of the Jersey fluke season right now.
ZIMMERN: Oh, that is a stunner.
Out of this one fish,
Kevin and sous-chef Nathan Soderblom
will conjure up a whole roster of dishes,
making use of the rich resources
that give the Garden State its name.
The cartilage in this fluke fin is dressed in yuzu vinaigrette
then topped with turnips, radishes, and pickled mushrooms.
There are only a few portions of this small muscle
on even the largest fish.
Mmm.
Oh, my gosh.
The texture of the fish is just sublime.
So clean and beautiful-tasting.
KEVIN: It really is. I mean, the fluke, too.
My favorite flat fish.
It's an awesome canvas for a lot of different ingredients.
This is world-class.
The belly from the bottom side of the fish
becomes an all-Jersey version of an Italian crudo,
topped with peppers, shallots, trout roe,
and house-fried potato chips.
Oh, this is spectacular.
Thank you.
I love the heat of that pepper.
And again, you have between potato chips, trout roe.
Which is nice, as well.
It's clean. It's sweet.
You get every single nuance
that you should get from the fluke itself.
That is a beauty.
The meatier, thicker fillet from the top side of the fish
become fluke a la plancha,
paired with red pepper, spring onions,
duck-fat fried potatoes,
and a whipped Spanish olive oil
sprinkled with salsa verde powder --
technical wizardry influenced from Kevin's days at Momofuku.
Oh, this is spectacular.
Thank you.
You know what I mean?
Oh.
You can see how soft and delicate that fish is.
I mean, it just flakes up in a way
that you know you're eating a flat fish like this.
This tastes like New Jersey in the early summer.
This is the flavor of New Jersey.
The true New Jersey goes beyond The Shore.
Rural farmland covers 75% of the state,
allowing Kevin and Alex to design dishes
that showcase New Jersey's vibrant agricultural community,
like these grilled hearts from locally raised duck
with celery leaf, ramps, and strawberry mustard jam.
Oh, God.
This is so yummy.
The minute I see grill and heart together,
it does it for me because there's so little fat,
it takes on a lot of the flavor of the...
It does, yeah.
...of the vessel it's cooked in or on,
and I just -- I don't know.
ZIMMERN: Food like this is Kevin and Alex's best answer
to my question, "Why Jersey City?"
Do you get sick and tired of people asking you
about being trailblazers?
I don't think people realize how awesome it is out here.
It's beautiful, and the people are so nice here,
and it just feels like a breath of fresh air,
and we're only a mile away from Manhattan.
Nobody really realizes we're out here.
ZIMMERN: Those kinds of surprises are in full bloom
all over the Garden State.
From Jersey City to the Jersey Shore,
this is a place where folks stay passionate
about the land that feeds them,
the traditions that define them,
and the freedom afforded to try something new.
And they do it with that timeless Jersey attitude
of "our way or the highway."
So remember, next time you're in Jersey,
if it looks good, eat it.