$4 Rice Vs. $52 Rice

Hello, we are Andrew Steven and Adam. Before we begin, this episode was filmed earlier in the year before we began social distancing due to Covet 19. Yes, we are currently still social distancing, but we wanted to share these great restaurants with you, including the dining room. it's not the same as it normally is now today we're making

rice

, potentially the most anticipated episode of worth it ever uh for me, okay, for my part, but a server is my favorite carb and potentially my favorite dish, and before that we arrive Today's adventure began with special thanks to Toyota that connected us with this Highlander to be the new worthwhile mobile this season.

Today, worth it, we'll try three

rice

dishes at three drastically different prices to find out which one it is. most worth it for the price, I'm thinking about rice, you know, we've eaten it so many times on this show, it's an ingredient, it's a dish, it can take many forms, say rice and then I'll say something, rice noodles . rice porridge rice pudding rice cake wait, turn it over now sticky rice fried rice crispy rice good rice we are eating it rice okay, so where do we go first? We are on our way to Azuma Restaurant, we will see the owner Hideki and the general manager.

Hitoshi, I am very excited because our good friend Sean Miro recommended this restaurant to us. He will join us for the tasting. He said they make the most fantastic unigiri. Here we are at a zuma restaurant with our good friend Sean Murray. How does it feel to recommend a worthwhile restaurant? It's quite stressful because you don't know if it's going to be good enough and you also don't want people showing up and making it harder for you to get in. Oh I see. When you walk through the door there is a great energy and vibe, it's like a sad feeling.

Can you tell us a little about the background of zuma? We bought this restaurant in 2002. It was owned by a Japanese citizen built by Okamoto. family in the early 50s and why it has been important to you to maintain this restaurant as an izakaya. Well, we liked it because the izakaya style is analogous to Spanish tapas, lots of little things, but other than that we have the normal menu. Meat items with asparagus are very popular here. Sashimi salad and what makes a really good onigiri. Lice are very important. We are using plain hikari rice but it tastes great.

It's best to start with a simple onigiri, this triangle will just be a little thick. that's like the right firmness, maybe it has a little salt and a piece of seaweed, but otherwise it will have a nice subtle flavor because it's just rice. These are giants, so this is their more standard version, no filling, not roasted. rice, salt, seaweed, it has a satisfying weight, it has the weight of a perfectly shaped snowball, like I want to throw this at someone, yes, cheers, oh, rice is naturally sweet, where are you getting sweet? Are you tasting the salt?

I'm tasting the salt, right? confused wait adam please confirm me maybe I'm crazy I have too much seaweed amazing how satisfying it is because it's so few elements it's really satisfying wait eat that now so this is um it's like a pickled daikon mmm love that's sweet I think let's find out in this episode that my taste buds are broken so this is the basis for giving you yaki and yaki comes from the verb yaku which means to grill this is how you get teriyaki this is how you get an okonomiyaki fun fact , so what they'll do is smear it with some sort of soy sauce-based mixture and then roast it.

Charred rice is one of my favorite flavors in the world. I could have salmon. a really popular one, it's my favorite umeboshi, it's like a pickled plum, it contrasts very well with the flavor of the rice, Stephen, which one do you want? I saw the fish egg on the menu, one talks about the contrast, look at that crust and then just the smell you should have. get this warm, yes, yes, health, yes, they will never sell me. Wow, that's almost like a fried rice ball. I suppose it is if you notice that in one bite it is crispy on the outside, that it is completely charred. perfection and then inside there is still this really delicious rice that has the taste of soy sauce, yes we just got to the fish egg part, yes very fishy I get it although this is really amazing it combines very goes well with the toasted flavor of the rice. well it's so good considering it's mostly just rice hey not just rice like rice it's okay you're just Andrew I'm not going to go in there no I get you I know what you mean thank you so much Sean for guide us our gastronomic experience in zuma.

I hope to return there with him. I know we're about to eat two more amazing rice dishes. I have the feeling that today they are worth everything I am worth in winter. You literally can't go wrong with rice. Stephen, it's time for a little fact about rice, and in fact, this is going to be a pop quiz about rice. How many cultivated varieties of rice are there in the world? Oh, no, guess, ah, this is difficult, I'm going to say twelve thousand five hundred and thirty-four. 12,000. the answer is 40,000 yeah you know what I'll take it's like I'm living in Pokémon Red okay I've only explored the 150 types of rice my rice decks are huh it's expanding well to expand our knowledge. of different and delicious types of rice, our next restaurant will have a very special type of rice.

Now we are on our way to Lakshan, where we will see Chef Sang Yoon and try his traditional black rice. Very good black rice. Lakshan was My first traditional restaurant came from a world of French haute cuisine. Blockchain is kind of an interpretation of how I perceive Southeast Asia, a place full of mystery and incredible history, and this is where I interpret Southeast Asia through a very modern lens. my interpretation of beef and broccoli completely changes the dish and we do some things that are very, very traditional, but there are a lot of things that we use that are tricks, we use a lot of modern cooking techniques that were not available and are not traditional. something called flaky beef tendon and from afar it will look like a chicharrón, but we call it the bovine cousin of chicharrón, so I think it's authentic but not traditional, you can try something that is so old and still incredibly relevant in cooking.

It won't be possible with just the old or just the new they have to harmonize so tell us a little bit about this traditional black rice dish so black rice dish is also another mysterious ingredient that people used to call it forbidden rice and I thought, why? it was banned, the story is that it was only available once to royalty and if you were a normal person you weren't allowed to have it, although technically it's not banned, it's not incredibly available even in China, so I wanted to make a rice dish which was about the rice itself, there is a small amount of sweet Cantonese sausage called lemshang, the rice is the star of the show and not just a side dish.

I think it's a completely different perspective on rice. The thing about black rice is that it's very forgiving in that it can absorb a lot of heat from the wok, the black rice actually becomes smokier, almost burns slightly, that burst of smoke. I've actually never seen black rice cooked this way. I'm willing to bet this is going to be a whole new experience too, steven mmm, wow yeah, it's a nice chewy, chewy fat, wow, I thought I was a rice expert, I don't know, rice has you stumped, How do you describe that texture? It's elastic, bouncy, almost sleazy.

I want to buy this rice I'm going to find out where they get it from they have a guy I want that guy bring me that guy you want to have some egg with him now this is what I like to see now that's the familiar taste that I know and love, but then earthy, nutty, herbaceous, another rice flavor. I notice each grain of rice when I eat it, each grain stands on its own, all the other things on this plate remain very separate until you bite into them, yes. I'm eating it, oh this is good, that's good too, when I saw this bowl of rice, my mind is stuck, it's like you're looking at a negative image, like why the white bar is black, actually, as it should not be. eating it, I guess that's why it's called forbidden rice, my goodness, what a tasty grain of rice.

I think it's made me reconsider my personal rice choices at home, so I'm used to eating what I grew up eating, but I think it's time to start. We bought another bags of rice, so we have eaten two tasty rice dishes, our last rice dish will actually be a dessert, but before we get there, it's time for one more fact about rice while the great wall of china was being built in the 15th century and 16th century workers used a porch made of calcium carbonate and rice as mortar to hold the stones together. Steven Lim loves a good chemical engineering rice.

See, that's the basis of my diet and the basis of a mortar. I wonder if people ate snacks in secret. and inadvertently closed their stomachs, so we headed for our last plate of rice. We'll go to Auburn, where we'll talk to Chef Eric and actually eat the dish at the restaurant's bar. It's white chocolate risotto, which is the creation of pastry chef Diane, it also has white truffle, as someone who has eaten rice their entire life, this will probably be the craziest rice dish you've ever eaten. Auburn is a modern, product-driven restaurant that seeks to deformalize good food make it accessible I mean, the first thing I noticed was what you're wearing is this your day job where's this what you're wearing during service?

Does that mean to me that at Auburn it means eliminating the rules? Usually you go to a fancy restaurant, they tell you how many horses you need to take, everyone takes the same thing, so you wanted to deformalize the fancy restaurant and then if that's too formal, we still have the bar exactly yes, we want it to be energetic for everyone, so where the dining room is tasty menu format the bar is completely out of the cart we use the same products only in a different way, so the sea bream is a beautiful product, this is Japan is very well treated, for what is brought in on the ship line, so the meat is pristine.

We really want to highlight the steak in the dining room and then in the bar, obviously the neck is usually a fattier cut, so our bar gives us the possibility to offer that to the guests we are going to eat this risotto which is a dessert is a dessert is between a dessert and something savory which makes it unique and super delicious white chocolate risotto yes, with white truffle I guess I wonder how you came up with this dish. We got these beautiful hazelnuts as the best hazelnuts I have ever tasted and then we received our orders for white truffles.

We use a very good risotto rice called aquarello after harvesting. If you age it for one to three years, it enhances the flavor but also makes the rice able to absorb as much liquid as possible but maintain the structure of the rice where you cook it and it's not mushy and you eat it and you still feel the individual grains of rice. in your mouth while you chew them, so we are here in the bar of this beautiful restaurant that is behind this wall. I like that it's like a good unplanned meal since it's a dessert, even though we should.

Prepare the experience well, so first let's get the crispy pig's ear. I grew up in North Carolina. We have a lot of crunchy pork rinds. We braise the pig ears for about 12 hours, we cut them up, we dehydrate them and then we fry them and what we get is like a very puffed pork rind, we cover it with powdered sea salt vinegar and fresh black pepper flying into amazing chips in a bar , I like its weirder texture, it reminds me of a packet of ramen noodles before boiling it, yes, cheers, okay. wow wow, i could eat this forever, vinegar tastes sweet compared to all the other stuff going on, that's crazy, and this is like a salt and vinegar zing, but like some kind of pork puff, da afraid because we have some shrapnel flying out of the mouth there the color of the sea ray is unique smaller delicious we cure it in a mixture of salted sugar and citrus fern citrus and fish go very well together in California here we have a unique citrus called finger lime looks like little pearls of caviar, so we come up with a little spice, a lot of acidity, a little funk, it is not seasoned, it is put very simply on a plate, cheers, oh God, oh, when the fish is Well, it's the best meat, oh my God, oh yes.

Oh man, okay, that's heaven. I could eat 30 of these, why would you want to order a dessert plate with everything with white truffle in it? Well, I think if you're really interested in food and want to try something you haven't tried. before I spoke to you naturally, I think it's something you'll have to try and you should let me know. Well, at first I thought it smells like some kind of nutty dessert and now I'm back at it. It smells like I'm about to eat pasta. I feel like you only know the world when there is a portal.

We are at the portal about to enter another realm. Yeah, okay Stephen, let's get into that realm. Greetings, Stephen, to the portal. Come on. oh i feel thatmy muscles when i eat this they just expand and i want to stretch and i don't know what is causing that feeling. This is really good, it's much sweeter than I thought it was going to be. I thought the truffle was going away. to dominate all the sweetness that went behind the rice pudding that I am receiving yes, it is like a very rich rice pudding, it is very comforting yes, the truffle is not that rare here, I think it does share a nocturnal character with the hazelnut that it shares a buttery character with the white chocolate that goes with the vanilla broth that the risotto was cooked in it's actually nothing crazy that's one of the smartest things you've ever done on this show well done, I can't get over the idea that I'm just eating truffle rice krispie, porridge, truffle rice krispie, it's so good that there's not a moment where I'm confused by what I'm eating, but maybe it makes sense, it's like immediately. delicious, I'm completely satisfied with that rice trip, it was a very satisfying day eating rice, what was your favorite thing from the episode that wasn't good?

My favorite part of the episode where we talked not about the food, but the chestnut design it remembers. I from a Danish alternative life that I will never be able to live, what about you? My answer is tea salad in lakshan mmm salad salad was maybe the best in Luxon whoa bold words yeah ok Andrew which one was worth it winner my worth? The winner will go to Luxon. Wow, that traditional black rice is so unique, it tastes so delicious and different. You know, what's crazy is that I'm about to choose something and that leaves out the other one, yeah, and I can't believe it.

The other one is not one of our worthy winners because the worthy winner goes to Azuma, the rice ball, it is the simplest version of this dish that could have been made. My winner doesn't go to the grilled onigiri. Oh, really, he's actually going to the plain. rice ball its simplicity is unmatched but i can't believe auburn isn't because it was spectacular auburn is truly next level adam what was your value as a winner adam says auburn man auburn was so good next let's continue a little journey down off road road trip