FARANG: The Story of Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok Thai Empire - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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[MUSIC]
My family kind of has a bit of a,
an addictive personality disorder.
Like, my, my brother went through fucking free base
time and my dad was a hard core alcoholic.
I think he's one of the only people I've ever met
who was literally addicted to pot.
You know, we've all had our addictions and
I think that I've become addicted to
various things over my life.
And they tend to not be substances, but pastimes.
[MUSIC]
I got into rock climbing and I kind of
became obsessed with rock climbing for awhile.
That's all I wanted to do for about two years.
I was real into traveling long before that.
So just kind of spent my,
you know, just traveled for like four years.
And then I got really into playing in bands and
I really like dedicated my life to that.
I was really into it.
[MUSIC]
So when the Thai food thing came around,
you know, I really didn't think that
opening Pok Pok was gonna be it.
[MUSIC]
I figured that I'd open Pok Pok and
I could live in the house that,
that the restaurant was in.
And everything would be groovy.
[MUSIC]
I do well enough that I could afford to go and
live in Thailand for
three months of the year and hang out, and
go back and have a, a way of making a living.
Of course, that didn't quite go as planned.
You know, when I finally came up for
air after opening the restaurant three years
later, I think that's kind of where I was like,
yeah, you know,
I think Thai food is what I wanna do forever.
[MUSIC]
>> That's good.
>> Farang means blonde.
Like, English, American, and Australian.
Blond hair we call farang.
Actually, farang interested in cooking,
okay, it's common.
But farang who pay more attention in
Northern Thai food, strange.
Well, because Northern Thai food very spicy.
And, the ingredients totally different with
Middle Thai or Bangkok style.
So, anytime when this is farang like entry,
having very spicy one.
We would say, huh, how come you could eat like
very spicy food, and he laughing.
How come farang could cook not in Thai and with
an authentic, and how come farang long line.
>> I don't think anyone had ever heard of him
before Pok Pok.
I had friends who lived in Portland tell me
about this white guy, has like a little place and
you can get this like, Thai roast chicken.
And I was like
that sounds like some bullshit.
But then I heard more and more about it,
and I'm like oh, this guy seems to
be doing something incredible.
>> Unless you had spent time in Chiang Mai
in Thailand.
Now remember he had been backpacking there for
20 years, he spoke the language.
>> Is it 125 baht?
>> Yes.
>> What he did, and I think,
you know, what was so fascinating, was he
brought a repertoire here that almost no one
had seen unless you were native to Thailand.
>> Here are the bowls for Khanom Jiin.
For this dish,
it is now difficult to find in Thailand.
>> The thing that I find really interesting about,
like, Thai restaurants in the States.
There's so much divide between like,
it's like us and them.
There's so much,
the divide, between the people who are coming to
the restaurant and whoever's cooking.
It might be a sort of an immigrant thing.
I have my food but
I'm gonna cook what I think is palatable.
My family opened up their spot in 1982.
I think something that just happened out of
necessity.
You know, like my
dad was in LA at the time working as a banker.
Like, working off a loan from this bank that put
him through college.
He decided to just open up a place, because there
wasn't something, it was, it was as simple as that.
At one point in this country you know,
having something like pad Thai was new,
it was altered, or adjusted in a way to fit
the sort of audience that was coming.
Is the menu like what we, or
what my family would eat at home or in Thailand?
Not really is the answer.
>> A lot of the Thai immigrants who came here
like 30, 40 years ago and opened restaurants,
they did it for commerce,
you know, not because they were interested in
spreading their culture or anything.
They had to make a living.
If you can take a bunch of these noodles,
a handful of fucking bean sprouts and
a bunch of poached chicken breasts, and
some peanut butter.
>> Right. >> And some ketchup and
make fucking Pad Thai that they buy for
$9 for a giant plate that takes you
like two seconds to make.
Why would you make this?
Like I get it.
What we're making is
a green chili dip called nempriknum.
I mean it looks just like the shit you
get in Chiang Mai.
>> Mm-hm. >> I didn't have to
do anything to it to make it better.
Fucking rotten fish is delicious.
>> It smells so good.
>> A little floral.
Also, a little disgusting.
>> It's delicious.
>> When Pok Pok came along,
it was a huge surprise.
It still is a huge surprise to
a lot of the Thai community.
They asked me why I do what I do.
How can you do that?
And they say, can, can farang eat like that, and
I say, I say,
yes of course they can eat like that.
They say [FOREIGN], but can they eat hot?
Yes, they can.
And I tell them a list of the dishes that we make
and they're like, oh.
>> Yeah this menu is different.
A lot of other Thai
restaurants don't have it.
You know what, Andy's is about the bridge.
To send a message to the American people.
And teach them how to eat it.
>> All the dishes are there.
Like, you go to Pok Pok and
all the dishes are killer.
They taste as
they would taste wherever they're from.
But he has the sensibility of a Thai
person, or the energy, or the sort of palate.
He's able to understand the context of
eating these foods the same way,
you know, a Thai person understands it.
He's a farang, but
he's as Thai as like any of my hick cousins.
>> We're gonna talk about it first, and
then you guys are gonna taste it.
And then you're gonna ask me
questions about the dishes, okay?
You guys that have the calpon go ahead and
start mixing it up and
passing it around and tasting it.
Hun chow or breakfast, morning food.
Thailand, typically at the markets is
where you find the best jok and palpon.
This is a typical morning soup.
It's filling but it doesn't drag you down.
Okay, guys,
we're gonna be eating a lot of food tonight.
Just think about we,
we have a huge menu to go through.
This is just the first menu item.
We got another 20 things to eat.
Take a bite, analyze it, call it good.
>> How long-
>> And wait, oh, oh, oh, wait, wait,
I didn't take a picture of this stuff so
that we have something to work off of.
>> I admire somebody who's like
a dog with a sock.
Like, that's, that's Andy Ricker.
My name is Karen Brooks.
I am the food editor and
critic for Portland Monthly magazine.
I have really taken a huge interest in him.
I like obsessed people.
I'm like my subjects.
This is my Andy Ricker dossier.
>> Oh wow. >> To
show you I have been covering the man.
>> Uh-huh.
>> Since he first opened his shack in 2006.
I don't think anyone had ever interviewed him.
Okay here, so I asked him, you know,
why does he go to all of this trouble?
>> God, damn it.
It's just become very, very
fucking apparent that I'm gonna have to come in and
retrain everybody on how to
make this god damn salad today.
>> I said, you could buy pre-made curry paste.
You could buy coconut milk.
And he says, the thing is,
90% of the people that go to Thai restaurants
wouldn't care if you did the extra steps.
So it's way easy to sell cheap food and
still make a profit.
Ultimately you're in business to
make a profit.
So why am I doing this?
Because I'm crazy.
Andy shows just how far obsession can go.
[MUSIC]
>> At this point, I have, seven restaurants.
One of them isn't quite open.
I'm bicoastal these days.
I live pretty much half the time in Portland and
half the time in New York.
I'm kind of used to it now.
I, I, at first,
I thought it might be a little bit difficult,
but, it's just like, waking up in
one city is just like waking up in the other.
My life is the same aside from the bed I sleep in.
[MUSIC]
Come on in.
We have number one.
>> Uh-huh.
>> And number 16 and
also the fried dumpling please.
I mean these things are like,
these are delicious.
I end up at this place couple times a week,
when I'm in town.
Often it's like, I'll get into town and
the flight'll be late, and
I'm tired, and instead of like going out and
doing something, I'll just come over here and
grab something to eat, and go back home.
Dana, what's tomorrows schedule look like?
>> The only the thing on the schedule's just
the moving, starting at 9.
>> Right. >> Until indefinite.
And then at 7:30.
>> You know literally I, I get the feeling that
if I hadn't brought Dana on when we did,
I'd probably be so paralyzed that I wasn't,
wouldn't be able to do anything.
It was what was starting to happen.
It's like, basically I was getting so
overwhelmed with everything that I
kind of, I would sit there and
stare at my computer screen.
And try to figure out what the fuck to do next.
Cuz there's so much going on.
And look at those noodles,
those are fucking killer, right?
>> It's so good.
>> All right.
We'll get some boxes.
This is the third apartment I've lived in,
in New York, in the last year and a half.
[LAUGH] I lived
a very kind of migratory life for a long time.
I kind of started accumulating shit like
right away.
Cuz I hadn't been able to accumulate shit ever
before, cuz it, I was always moving around.
I, you know,
I couldn't fit it into the backpack, so.
I mean here I
am putting away like 20 fucking coats.
But I don't really need that much.
[LAUGH] There shouldn't be
anything in the fridge.
[LAUGH] There's still the,
the shelf brackets in here.
My refrigerator is turned on for
six espresso beans.
My life has become exponentially more
busy since I opened in New York.
If there was a way for me to like,
remotely taste food, I'd never go to work.
I would just fucking hang out in
Thailand all the time.
It'd be great, but I can't do that, so.
>> I can't imagine how he
has that many projects going on all the time.
He like scouts locations all the time,
for new restaurants, and
that's part of his obsessive thing too.
It's like, he knows he shouldn't.
Like, he knows he's got,
he's got plenty of restaurants and
he's plenty busy but he can't help it.
If there's an opportunity to like get a space and
show people some new aspect of Thai food,
like these noodles,
he's opening a new restaurant in Portland,
a noodle shop.
I don't think he can help himself.
[MUSIC]
Restaurant openings by nature are, are,
are very fluxy.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] So now I got to,
to get an all noodle concept in Portland
called Sen Yai opened, which means big noodle.
And that's just, you know, years of going and
eating noodles in, in Thailand.
Eat on the streets,
or, you know, small shops near the streets.
Noodles are something I eat almost daily.
You know I, I haven't really found any
noodle shops in America that really,
really specifically do these Thai noodles.
Pad Thai has, one, two, three, four, five,
six different variations and sub variations.
And I may back off on that, because things
are starting to get a little bit crazy here.
And it's starting to have too many recipes for
people to wrap their heads around.
>> Very few of his cooks, I think, know anything
about Thai food when they come to his kitchen.
But Andy's so
used to explaining to people things that they
don't know.
>> You like [INAUDIBLE] here?
>> Yeah.
>> So we're gonna do the, the duck.
Get close-ups, see what we've done.
So the noodles are centered, the duck leg is
sitting with the bone up surrounded by the,
the shiitakes and the pickled mustard greens,
sprinkled with the fried garlic on top and
the herbs go in.
Notice how much herbs are there.
Not much, okay?
I want you guys to all taste this.
Taste the cilantro, just take a whole piece and
throw it in your mouth.
This is not a garnish.
This is there for a purpose.
You need to understand what it is,
what you're doing when you're putting stuff on.
All right, you guys taking notes here?
Okay.
Where are all the, the ladles?
I put somebody on that.
>> Right here, right-
>> Okay, so that's not where they go.
>> Ladles all gotta go where the ladles go.
Don't hide them.
>> [INAUDIBLE] somebody.
>> Okay, thank you.
It's very likely that I will be a line cook.
That's the way it is.
It's likely that every one of the managers here
is gonna be a line cook at that point.
When you're dealing with a situation where you
have a brand new restaurant, brand new
concept, and nobody's done it before including
us, the situation can be pretty stressful.
Not everybody here has experience with cooking
this kind of food, and
this is, there's a steep learning curve here,
so, we will get it, we will be open.
But it's gonna,
it's gonna be it's going to be a hard push.
Right now it's kind of like [SOUND] but
we'll be fine.
[NOISE] My friend Sonny's flying out
from Chiang Mai to help me get all
this stuff nailed down before we open.
You have to have a,
a memory in your palate that's, it's difficult to
keep that if you're not in Thailand, and
you're the only place that's making this food.
You don't, you kinda lose perspective.
So that's what I have to go back to Thailand so
often is because if I don't,
I begin to lose perspective, and
my palette begins to lose perspective.
So, when Sonny does come,
he almost always has a fresher perspective.
He also has a longer perspective than I do,
I mean he, he's been
eating this food since he was a child.
[NOISE] Shit, I don't
know which one it is.
I don't even know what airline he's coming in
on, to be honest with you.
I've been asking him to come.
He's been to Portland but
it's been like six years I think.
It's been difficult to get him to leave.
And he said it was because of the dogs,
like, he has 12 dogs, or 13 dogs at this point.
He'd, he'd miss the dogs too much.
A good way to finally convince him
to come was to, basically say, hey, come and
help me open the restaurant.
Oh, oh.
Hello.
[LAUGH] Where have you have been hiding?
>> No, I just walk around there and then I,
I didn't see you and then I, I thought that this
is international arrivals, so I come.
>> Yeah.
>> Oh, thank you.
How are you? >> Good, how are you?
>> I am a bit tired.
>> A bit tired?
Did you sleep well?
>> Good.
>> Good, right?
>> Good.
>> Okay, okay. >> Okay.
>> You came to Portland at the right time.
How many liters of chitosan?
>> Six.
>> Oh, excellent.
>> Six, yeah.
>> Angel's gonna be so happy.
Cuz he's making fish balls already.
The other six at home I think [INAUDIBLE].
>> I'll, I'll show you everything on
the schedule.
Crazy right now.
Crazy.
Since I've been back from Thailand,
I didn't stop at all.
I don't even think I had a day off yet.
>> Now it's not open yet?
>> No.
>> Okay. >> Right now the menu is
set because we're opening very soon.
Today they're prepping all day today.
Tomorrow morning, and
then tomorrow afternoon we will taste all of
the dishes one at a time to see.
>> Okay.
>> On a certain level he's been
a professional cook his whole life.
He'll run around and taste all the food and
help me recalibrate some of the, the flavors.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Oh, I can smell >> The reason I come to
Portland, as a friend, close friend,
I just want to come,
not only to help but make the relationship closer.
>> So Sungya, this is Sonny.
>> Hi, Elizabeth, good to meet you.
>> Sonny brought us some piklab.
>> Oh, very good!
>> Lots of it, and also a big bag of chitosan.
>> Oh really? >> Really, nice.
>> Oh yeah this right here, this should last us
another year or something.
So >> Where is the kitchen?
>> Kitchen is in here.
>> Sunni! [LAUGH]
>> You never change.
>> He's more tie than he used to be actually.
>> I have to come to learn from you,?
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I can teach you a little bit more.
[LAUGH] Make 'em perfect for tomorrow.
>> Okay. >> I have a lot
of work for you. >> Okay.
>> He's the kitchen manager now.
>> So, this is the kitchen.
How did the sangkhaya turn out?
They cooked it some more?
>> Mm-hm, yeah.
Mm, yummy. >> Yummy.
>> This is sangkhaya so,
it's like a custard made with,
made from pandanus leaf, you eat with a,
with a little fried doughnut or with toast.
In Thailand,
breakfast is whatever you want to grab.
And how long until you're not
hungry anymore, Sonny?
Soon right?
>> One hour.
>> Yeah.
>> [LAUGH].
>> I don't really have anybody else around me
that I could actually turn around and
go, is this right or not?
We can both be sitting there eating food and
look at each other, and one of us would kinda go,
he'll be like, and I'll be like.
You know, and
we just, we both kind of, share similar tastes.
Little bit too much.
>> Sour.
>> It should be a teaspoon of the,
of the vinegar.
>> Mm.
>> Not a tablespoon.
>> Different flavor.
>> And what I told you?
>> He's very, very sure of himself.
He's very, very opinionated.
And to give him credit, he's usually right.
He's usually right.
Or at least my palate matches his.
>> It does not look beautiful.
>> It's thick.
Too thick.
>> Too thick. It does not taste good.
I think that he wouldn't mind if
I come to criticize.
Like the way I've been doing, like no, no,
no this one.
No, no.
>> No. >> Correct.
>> Correct. >> We have to not
fight in order to get the good things to the, for
business.
>> Sonny's always like reprimanding Andy, like,
no, bad organization.
You know,
Andy's developed his way of cooking.
Like things he's comfortable doing or
things he's seen and, but Sonny is an amazing cook.
And he's always telling Andy he's doing it
the wrong way.
>> The color does not look right.
>> Because the, I told you the nam
prik pao is not correct.
>> No.
Not like that.
>> That's what I said.
>> No. >> It is wrong.
>> No, no, no. >> That's what I
told you, it's wrong.
>> You ever check it before today?
I could tell. >> No,
I checked it yesterday, and I said it was wrong.
>> Oh, okay.
>> Look, see the problem is
that sometimes they just, they don't do correct.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Because you can't stand in front of
everybody and watch them all day long.
>> No, no, no, no. >> [INAUDIBLE] Maybe
they- >> Sometimes they
make a mistake.
>> They, they don't know the concept of.
>> No, no, they, they, they just,
they were in a hurry, they forgot about it and
they put it away.
>> Uh-huh.
>> Smells good.
>> She could not pass into the five, finally.
>> [LAUGH] Right now, no.
>> No.
>> We have a sibling relationship.
>> Yeah. >> He's like an older
brother to me.
Sometimes things start getting a little tense
because he's like, he's up in
my face telling me how to run a restaurant,
which he has no business doing whatsoever.
The other thing is that because he is so
opinionated and
so willing to express his opinions that I
can actually get an honest answer out of him.
Whereas other Thai friends might go, oh,
it's delicious.
>> Mm.
We are similar.
I love cooking and he like cooking as well.
And I've been trying another Thai
restaurant here also.
Totally different.
People here are lucky that they could have
noodles the same as in Chiang Mai.
The same as in Bangkok.
Homesick, never ever happened to me.
Because I could have authentic Thai food here
in Pok Pok.
>> Have you met other Americans that were,
wanted to learn how to cook like this, or?
>> No. >> No.
>> First one Andy.
I would say that he's crazy.
>> One, two.
If you've never made this food before,
do not make shit up.
Do not alter the recipes.
This is the most important aspect of,
of cooking food that you're not familiar with.
You have to do the recipe exactly as it says.
So let's throw this out and start over again.
I mean the way that the restaurant's run
are direct reflection on the way that I think.
I'm not educated, I don't have a college education.
I don't have any kind of like, formal training of
any sort, for anything.
I think that everything I've approached in
life has been from the standpoint of,
learn by doing.
Learn by watching and then doing.
And when you do that you, you gain, like,
you gain a particular perspective, I think.
Especially when
you're partially OCD like me, right?
Where you, you, you, you just watched shit,
and you notice details right, and
you just, you can't help it.
You notice details and
you try to figure out how,
you know, how shit works.
And that's how the restaurants have
developed.
[NOISE]
There's no
secret to
success.
There's no formula that gives you an instant hit.
There's no formula that gives you
an instantly great restaurant.
You kinda, you, you get lucky sometimes.
And you, you know,
you do something you think's okay and it turns
out to be the biggest smash hit of your life.
>> There's nothing in the Andy playbook that
says he should have made it, except he was so
damn determined.
His dream was he wanted us to know and understand
what kept driving him back to this country.
Several things separate Pok Pok.
Andy came into this restaurant in
his early 40s.
If he had
started this restaurant when he was 25,
as a lot of these other chefs did, we probably
wouldn't have ever seen the Pok Pok empire.
>> Hi guys.
>> Good afternoon.
>> Allah.
>> You know, he worked in kitchens, but
not in that aspirational way.
Not in like I'm gonna work in this kitchen for
five years, and then I'm gonna open my own place.
He just, was like a, a line cook.
He's a blue collar dude.
>> You know, he's got an unusual story of how he
came to the kitchen.
He'd done a lot of things and been a lot of people.
He had lived a lot of lives.
>> And people just walk up to you and
go, hey, man, how's it going?
You're looking at them and
going, I'm fuckin' great, how are you,
what are you doing these days?
That's my stock answer.
What are you doing these days, cuz,
it could be somebody that I used to paint with, or
it might be somebody that was in the music scene,
or it might be somebody that I
worked in a restaurant years before that.
This happens to you if you live in Portland,
you live in a town this small and
you've lived here this long and you've
had as many different lives here as I have.
If you're able to leave somewhere and
not look back, and not feel bad about leaving,
it makes it easy for it to keep moving, you know.
Might have been a desire to
escape from my childhood.
Like I didn't, I didn't have,
I didn't have a like,
I didn't have a shitty childhood or
anything like that at all.
>> Yeah. >> It was, it's not
like that. I was just,
I think I was just bored, you know?
I was bored in Vermont.
>> Uh-huh.
>> I didn't like really,
maybe it was more traumatic than I know,
who knows.
But I, you know, basically, I,
I just never felt like I fit in.
I was born in North Carolina.
My parents moved out to California when I
was about one, where my brother was born.
My mom and dad split up.
My dad went back to California, and my mom
took us to Philadelphia where her mom was.
It was a memorable trip.
We showed up in Philadelphia, and
we moved into the ghetto, I didn't, you know,
I didn't, never felt really comfortable there.
But then we, you know,
then we moved to Vermont and
here I'm in redneckville and like,
I certainly didn't feel, you know, at home there.
Because I hadn't, I didn't even learn,
you know, I didn't even know there was such
a thing as the Pledge of Allegiance, you know.
You know, they started picking on me and
I would be just like,
why the fuck are you picking on me, you know?
So when I left Vermont,
it was just like after years of like,
being kind of, like an outsider.
Not in like kind of like a desperate way, but
just you know, I never fit in so,
when I left it was like, fuck, thank god,
you know?
Graduated from high school in '82.
Dropped acid for graduation,
two days later I was on a bus for Colorado.
Moved to Vale and I was a ski bum there for
like three and half, four years.
Just bailed the fuck out.
As a matter of fact, here's a picture of me
with my first ever girlfriend.
What's this, I'm not, I can't give you this.
Round. It looks like
I'm drunk and stoned.
I was like 19.
I had no testosterone at that point.
I was still an embryo.
The great thing that came out of that was I
learned how to be a line cook there.
You know, I never worked on the mountain.
I always work in the bottom of the mountain.
Wherever you worked there was super busy, and you,
you had to be on top of your game and
that was invaluable.
You know, after being in Vail for
four years, I think, some friends of
mine moved out to California and
a good buddy of mine is like, hey,
come out to California for the summer.
I was like, great.
I started DJing, playing dance music and
stuff like that.
And got a job as a pizza delivery guy.
That's where I kicked off
the around the world trip.
I left California to Australia,
I didn't have any money, you know,
I was just gonna wing it whatever,
I'll do something.
Ended up going to New Zealand and living there
for almost two years, working in mountaineering
shops and then went back to Australia to
go climbing and from there I went to Thailand.
[MUSIC]
My first trip to Thailand was in 1987.
I was a backpacker.
I loved Thailand the first time I went, for
different reasons than I love it now.
I think it was an overall thing.
I think it's the thing that, that gets
people about Thailand is probably the same for
most people is, especially back then.
You know there wasn't a lot of tourism.
The people are very friendly,
the girls are real pretty.
Boys are real pretty too.
And sometimes they get mixed up if
you're not careful.
They call it the land of smiles.
It's just the general feeling of the place.
It's a very welcoming place.
People fall in love with that country.
[MUSIC]
To this day, they go there and they feel like
they've had this amazing experience.
The food's cheap and delicious, and
the beaches are, like, gorgeous.
I spent my whole time in the south of town
pretty much on a little island there call Ko Tao,
which is now this amazing dive center there.
At the time there was nothing going on.
Those days no longer exist in Thailand.
You just can't you, like,
the big money bungalows have taken over but
at the time, it was, you know,
this was adventure travel.
Wow, this is from the first time I
was Thailand, this book.
So this was like the little bungalow that I
stayed on in Ko Tao up on the hillside.
I had to hike, you know, every day when I, when I,
it was time to go to bed,
I'd hike up this trail for, you know, seven or
eight minutes to get to my little bungalow with,
I don't even think that there was power.
I think it that,
I just had like a lantern that they gave me.
Candles, you know.
Lots of weed.
>> [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH] Loads of weed. [MUSIC]
Hang out, rip bongs, play volleyball.
Fuck around in water.
That was the life.
So that is what I did for almost four years.
Funny thing is, is that we never got homesick.
You know, a lot of people go travelling and
if they're away for
a few months they start feeling like,
wow I really want to go home,
but I never ever felt that.
I never felt it.
Until the very end, and it wasn't
homesick the way that you think about homesick.
It was like, I've been moving around,
living out of a backpack for
close to four years now.
I think I'm ready to,
like, have a dresser and a bed.
And so that's how I
eventually ended up in Portland.
I was looking for a home.
[MUSIC]
Well, when I first arrived in
Portland 23 years ago, you could find a place to
live really quickly and easily.
Everybody was really friendly.
There were these really cool grassroots arts
and music.
[MUSIC]
You've seen that sticker Keep Portland Weird.
I mean it's always been kind of a city of
maverick-y kind of
people doing their own quirky ass shit.
[MUSIC]
>> It's time to relax your mind and
your spirit.
>> Well when I got back to the states,
this is what I ended up looking like.
[LAUGH] I was sick of traveling, and
I wanted to be somewhere.
At that point,
I was more interested in hanging out, you know,
playing in bands, living with other people, cuz
that's, you know, that's the nature of travel.
Unless you, kind of,
you know, stop, it's all temporary.
>> You know, I show up in, in Portland, and
the dude's like, you like music?
And I like, yeah.
He's like, what do you like?
I'm like, well, you know, I like rock, you know,
and he's like,
well you should check these guys out.
They're pretty cool.
And he gave me like, a cassette of, of Bleach.
And I was like, Nirvana, hm.
And pretty soon after that you know,
the whole crazy you know, late 80s,
early 90s rock scene really started to
foment in the Pacific Northwest.
Hazel was blowing up and Pawn got signed to Sony.
It was a really interesting time to
be in Portland,
cuz I had started playing music at this point.
The first band I
was ever in was called the Moxie Love Crux.
Everybody in the band was a, a bike messenger,
except for me, and so I was, I kinda looked like
a bike messenger cuz I traveled that way.
And so we're kind of like the unofficial,
official bike messenger band of Portland.
It was a fun band to be in, but that was,
that was the times, you know.
I, I really loved playing music.
When I was younger playing in
bands was like what I wanted to do.
You know, I wanted to go on tour.
I was a fucking idiot.
I wanted to like open for all these big name bands.
I got a little taste of all that shit but I,
you know, it never, it never really gelled into
something like a career.
And I never really put,
I didn't, never fully dedicated my life to it.
[APPLAUSE] [CROSSTALK].
I'll show you a picture from the record cover.
[MUSIC].
So this is, me, Mike, and John in Mike's house,
was, was actually our house.
We all lived there together.
This band is like the,
the favorite band I was ever in.
>> Something called Vehicle,
which was kind of like a power pop trio.
>> Me and Mike and John were like three of
the most different people you'd possibly imagine.
But, you know, to a certain h,
they got along really well,
but, but there was some profound differences in
how we [LAUGH] looked at life.
[LAUGH] Wanted us to practice because I
sucked more than everybody else, you know?
I was,
I was like that fucking Capricorn, you know?
>> His personality, I would just say driven.
Good lord, [LAUGH].
When we lived together,
I don't think he ever slept even, you know?
It was just like, boom, boom, boom you know?
It was him. There's no
other way of doing it.
When the first time I met him, he was cooking.
He used to do these things on Saturdays.
It was like a, a crepes.
In this, he had this a little apartment up on
Clinton Street.
I was highly skeptical, Owen,
just because I was like,
I barely even knew about crepes.
And so he was working Zephros, I believe.
You know, they were kind of the heavy,
gourmet people of Portland, back then.
He was kind of in that scene as well.
Like kind of the northwest, kind of ritzy,
that was a happening scene, but
a totally different scene than what we
see over here, southeast rock scene.
>> Well the thing is, if you look back on it,
during the days that I was playing in bands,
a lot of people worked in restaurants.
Cuz that was the way that you could, you know, have
a job and you could leave and go on tour, and.
Yeah, there's me in front of Zefiro restaurant.
I kinda had,
fallen out of love with the restaurant industry.
I'd been working in restaurants for
my whole life at this point, I,
you know, on and off.
And I remember walking out to the dining room
and looking at everyone eating and,
and it made me feel nauseous.
I was just like,
this is fucking disgusting, ya know?
People are just like, [SOUND].
They're just like, taking this food and, and
I don't know why and it just kind of hit me.
It was just like, the norm,
we're just shoveling like we're getting these
massive cases of food in the back and
we're butchering it up and we're roasting it
up and pouring fucking olive oil on it.
You know cream and all kinds of shit and
we're just shoveling it onto plates and
people are just gorging on it.
And I don't know why man it just, it like,
it literally made me feel sick to my stomach, and
I was just like, I was just like fuck this.
You know, this is not for me.
I just, it was like I,
I had to get out of the kitchen.
I was just, like, this is fucking bullshit.
I'm not, I'm not cooking anymore.
I gotta do something else.
[MUSIC]
I think I was,
I had just started painting houses in 97.
I think that was the first year that I
went full time.
>> When I met him, Andy was a painter.
He was painting houses.
I first met Andy at my first location I
opened up for Stumptown.
I was behind
the bar everyday making coffee and
Andy would stumble in in his grubby painting gear.
>> I got to that sort of similar feeling in
my gut that I had with the restaurants.
Where I would show up at work and just like,
I would look at the wall, and I look at the paint,
and I'd look at the you know, I'd just be like.
I couldn't do it anymore.
I was just comp, I was just done.
You know I had to do something else.
And the only the only other thing I
really know how to do with any kinda, you know,
consistency is cook, or bartend, or wait.
But I also knew that I
didn't wanna ever work for anybody ever again.
That was just, there was no way that I
was gonna punch somebody else's clock.
So, that kinda left me
with opening a restaurant.
oh, here's a picture of me with my friend Chris,
the second time I went to Thailand.
This is the trip where I
learned about northern Thai food.
[MUSIC]
I had just gotten back in touch with my
friend Chris who I'd grown up with in Vermont.
And he was in Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is like this very,
very beautiful, sleepy college town.
It's one of the nicest places in the country and
Chiang Mai is kind of
considered the cultural capital of Thailand.
People there,
generally speaking, tend to be much more laid
back than the people that are down in the big city.
It was just very quiet and nice, and
you know, a lot of the roads are still dirt.
The friends of ours said,
well, have you had Thai food before?
And I said well yeah, you know,
I've had this and that.
And they took us to some places where we had some,
sort of, more Thai type stuff.
And then she said, well look,
this is the season for
which is a kind of mushroom.
It's like,
it's kinda like a bitter puff ball type mushroom.
And I know a place where they make gang or
curry or soup out of it.
This really good, we should go and try it.
And I was like,
hell, that sounds great, let's go try it.
And the guy brought out this, this soup and
I looked at it and it was like very brothy.
There's was no, nothing to do with coconut.
There were a lot of herbs.
There were these really dark colored mushrooms in
it but the soup itself had a lot of spices and
stuff in it.
It was kind of bitter, really herbaceous.
There was like spice profile that I
couldn't recognize at all.
The whole thing altogether was like
really, really surprising because A, it didn't
taste like any Thai food that I'd ever had before.
Cuz it wasn't Thai food,
it was Ahamnoom, the food of the north.
Different people, different ethnolinguistic
background although they're in Thailand.
Not only that, but it was unlike anything I'd,
I'd had anywhere else in the whole world before.
Holy crap, this is delicious.
What's going on here?
Are you saying that you can only get this
at this time of year?
She said, yeah, you're very lucky to
be here right now cuz it only really comes up this
time of the year and only for a couple of weeks.
I was like, okay, so
that means that this is local and it's seasonal.
And it's regional,
because you can't get this in,
in southern Thailand.
So therefore, Thailand must have regional,
local, seasonal food.
Yet if you look at a menu here in America,
it's the same 50 dishes all year round, and
it never changes.
And none of those things that are seasonal,
regional are included in that.
And this was a huge revelation,
though I didn't realize it at the time.
It was like,
that was my moment where I was like, okay.
There's way more to Thai food than I ever thought.
And that's what started the journey.
[MUSIC]
The northern Thai people live in this really,
you know, this beautiful mountainous region.
Their in the jungle.
It's cooler typically at
certain parts of the year.
And the people there don't have
a lot of money.
They are very resourceful, so
the food tends to be really direct.
[SOUND].
Really spicy, fermented.
Mm.
A lot of offal from buffalo.
[FOREIGN] Buffalo fetus.
Bitter is definitely one of
the things that you taste from herbs,
from bile from various different animals.
Chicken, frogs, lots of pork.
>> [FOREIGN].
>> Pig tits, that have been grilled and chopped.
Super delicious, really good.
We're right here along the highway as
you can see at a [FOREIGN] one of my
favorite places in Chiang Mai, maybe one of my
favorite places in all of Thailand.
And it's just a dirt-floored restaurant
with little in any way of ambiance except for
what's created by the lights on the trees.
And they serve a dish here they're famous for
which is grilled meat that's been hit with
a hammer.
How many years has this restaurant been open?
>> 13 years. >> 13 years already in
this one location.
As you can see it's a very,
very rudimentary kitchen.
And this is a very, very
simple method of cooking food very old style.
Gin means beef or meat in northern Thai.
Pook means to hit.
So the beef gets grilled so it's, it's quite well
done but still a little bit juicy because he
brines it in and I think probably, it's an MSG.
And then beats it with a hammer until it shreds.
Puts it on a plate and it gets served with
a nimpicou or a colongal chili dipping paste.
Spicy, crunchy, meaty, salty.
This is the pork version of the gentu.
It makes me wanna drink more whiskey.
Which is what the whole, this is all about.
Okay, Boom, so everyone is gonna wanna know,
what's the deal with these worms or grubs?
>> This is silkworm.
>> Silkworm, this is silkworm.
>> Deep fried,
last chance to make good thing on their lives.
[LAUGH].
>> The humor here.
>> I don't think he wishes he had a Thai
grandmother because he wants to cook her food.
>> [LAUGH] >> He's really intent on
celebrating the people who cook this food.
He's just like a, a student of, of the like,
street vendors and
always reminds me that he's not an expert.
And I'm like, well you're the most expert person I
could imagine in,
you know, in, about Thai food.
He would, he would argue that, that's absurd and
he'd still like foreigner,
he's still an outsider, and
he's still trying to understand.
>> Hello.
[FOREIGN].
>> What would you like to have today?
>> Today I will have chicken Khao soi.
>> [FOREIGN].
>> This is one of my favorite dishes in
the whole world.
And this restaurant is my favorite place in
Chang Mai to get it.
So boiling to order, freshly made noodles, and
then when they make the soup, they add the,
the coconut cream to order.
Yeah, you can smell this.
This is a very,
very fragrant there's a lot of dry spice,
very Muslim smelling.
It doesn't smell like a lot of the khao soi's in
Chiang Mai.
Thank you.
I like to add a little bit of
pickled mustard greens.
Some chile.
And a little bit of fish sauce here.
Mm.
Coming to Khao Soi
has definitely had influence on how we
formulate our own khao soi back in Portland.
Typically I will go to several different places,
try them all, and
I end up making a sort of a mixture of all the good
things that I like about the different places.
>> Pok pok is a very accurate representation
of what it's like to eat in Thailand.
Crazy amounts of Thailand photos.
I'm helping Andy write his first cookbook.
When Andy and I first started working together,
one of the first things he said was,
if we do this book together,
you have to come to Thailand.
He wanted me to have that experience that he had.
That he wanted to show me that Thai food was
entirely different in Thailand.
And I was actually writing pitching
an article to the times, the travel section,
going to Chiang Mai with Andy and
sort of retracing his steps.
The steps that led him toward Pok Pok.
[MUSIC]
I went to the roast chicken guy, Mr.
Lit, the guy that Andy befriended and
they've been friends for 20 years.
[FOREIGN] Mr. Lin, how are you?
Good to see you.
>> Good to see you too.
>> Yeah, one of my favorite places in
Chiang Mai.
Mr. Lin has been owning this restaurant for
33 years already and these
are the best roasted chickens in Chiang Mai.
>> 1977 I started my own business.
In the beginning we have almost 100%
Thai customers.
And now it's about 80% foreigners [LAUGH] who
come here.
Some foreigners even take some Thai
people to introduce them to our place also.
One day ten years ago Andy took him here to
have dinner with friends.
He came up to me and
asked a few questions about that, how I made
my chicken, that he was thinking about opening
his own restaurant in the United States.
So I cooperated, and willingly.
>> SP Chicken was probably the original
influence for Pok Pok in Portland.
I thought that the machine that they used to
cook it was very interesting.
I just thought it was a very clever way of
cooking chicken, and I didn't see anybody else
doing it in the states, and I wanted to replicate
something special, not just anything from Thai,
but something very special.
Mr. Lit's been doing this for
33 years, so he can tell if a chicken is
ready just by touching it.
>> Very important thing is the,
the machine itself.
It's very important.
>> And this is the same machine that I use in,
in my restaurant in Portland, and Mr.
Lit helped me to understand how it works.
Taught me how to use this properly.
When Pok Pok in Portland first opened it
was just a small shack in my driveway with one of
these rotisseries in the back with a very
small menu, only eight items, I believe.
So we started the whole
business based on grilled chicken and papaya salad.
More or less that was the whole concept.
[MUSIC]
[CROSSTALK].
Wait, I have to take your picture.
You just have to stand so
I can get Pok Pok in the background.
Perfect. [LAUGH] Pok pok,
changed but the same.
And it, actually, this building is very old.
The first, the front part was built in the 1800s,
1890 something.
Yeah, I used to sleep in the upstairs dining room.
Used to be my bedroom.
[LAUGH].
>> This is the original one.
It's 2005 and the little shack right there,
that was the original area, you know.
Yeah, that was it.
It was a sushi retail shop.
>> I used to love the place where
Andy put Pok Pok.
Actually one of my
favorite little sushi places.
It was kinda like a sketchy shack where this
old dude hung out in.
>> Uh-huh. >> And he just had it
all ready to go.
And then he bought it,
and took, so that was gone.
I'm like, oh, nice job, you know.
No, no, no.
[LAUGH]
Division Street was just any old busy street.
No restaurants really there.
>> Super busy.
Mm-hm.
We lived in a neighborhood,
southeast Portland,
Andy was one of the first on Division to,
open up restaurant.
And now it's, getting to be known as, you know,
one of the restaurant roads in Portland.
Since then,
Southeast Division Street has grown quite a bit.
[MUSIC].
>> So they're building this one.
As soon as they finish building this one,
building this one also.
Well in 2005,
I was just coming off of being a house painter for
eight years.
Food wasn't a big deal at that point.
There were a couple of places around.
But Portland was just like
totally under the radar,
totally underserved, just packed with opportunity.
Still is packed with opportunity.
>> This was my
annual restaurant guide called Diner.
And as you can see the sub head
sparks are flying in Portland's food scene.
Around 2005 Portland was, was just a rumor.
I mean, a drone couldn't have
found Portland's food scene.
It was just kind of a stop over,
a place for Indie music in a small food uprising.
A very small, but
wonderful farm to table movement.
Around 2005, 2006 a young generation of
chefs just walked away from the white tablecloth
world to create something of their own.
They were supper clubs.
They were pop up restaurants.
They were sort of a come-as-you-are,
do-it-yourself, food first kind of gastronomy,
and I thought, this is really fascinating.
People could find affordable real estate
over on the east side.
In most cities, if you have to get a bank loan,
million dollars, that already limits the number
of people who can open a restaurant.
If you can just find a little space to have your
little dream, what that means is the line cook,
maybe even the dishwasher can go, hey, I've got
an idea, I'll go get a storefront, I'll do it,
and Andy Ricker was very much part of that.
>> Okay this is June 30, 2005.
First day, just took possession of 3236
Southeast Division where I'm probably going to be
spending great deal of my time for
the next several years while I build it out and
try to do what I've been planning to do.
Little funky, needs a lot of work,
but I think I'm up for the task.
You know, have to ask me in about six months from
now whether I thought it was a good idea or not.
And the kitchen where I can see this
being the restaurant kitchen eventually.
Then moving back into what
will eventually become the lounge,
which is now rather a dirty basement.
It needs a lot of love.
My best friend,
Adam, came over after I found the space and,
you know, I showed it to him,
and he's just like, you're fucking crazy.
You can't put a, you
can't put a restaurant in this place.
You're gonna lose, like, all your money.
It's gonna be a huge failure.
You just can't do it.
And I was, like, well, no.
[LAUGH] There's lots of opportunity here.
You're just not seeing it.
He, he was convinced that I was gonna
ruin my life basically.
>> Now, at this point it was barely more than
a chicken shack in the front yard
of Division Street next to a dilapidated
Victorian home.
This looks like a place like Matt Dillon in
Drugstore Cowboy.
The flea bag hotel.
This is breaking every rule of location,
location, location.
No operating funds.
I mean, nothing about it
on any level should have worked.
I thought, wow, this place is amazing.
There were just, like, six dishes at that time.
Look, look at him.
This is, what, how you usually saw him,
was just poking his head out of his little
take-out shack window with his knit cap.
And people would just be out there,
you know, fighting the flu bugs and
shivering outside, to go eat this khao soi.
Did you try that?
Once you eat it, there's no going back.
You eat his food and
you're, like, like, oh my God.
And I can't wait to have it again.
>> I think it was a hit, right at the beginning,
right when he opened up.
I call Andy the Colonel Sanders of
Southeast Division Street because of the amount of
chicken he's pushing out of that shack there.
Literally had no idea it
would become what it became, and
it became something [SOUND] like that.
I got scared a couple of times financially at
the very beginning, but
it never felt like, you know, this was a mistake.
>> By the next year,
I named Pok Pok the restaurant of the year.
>> Most people the idea of,
a restaurant of the year, and
in that time was a white tablecloth place, valet
parking, not a chicken shack in a front yard.
I mean, Portland drives on people believing
you can make something amazing happen for
almost nothing.
And, I think Andy sort of helped break that mold
and show if you invest in what you believe in,
then genius cooking can happen anywhere,
as long as people have access.
>> You know, Portland has a really unique
business environment for someone opening and,
and thriving within this industry.
You know, it's very ent,
entrepreneurial toward new ideas, ideas that,
you know, aren't established before.
And I don't know, there's something very unique in
the air out here.
>> You know, the ultimate goal is to
deliver this food that I'm in love with.
And in order to do so, it's unorthodox food
served in unorthodox manner for
the U.S. is to find a way to make that work and to
do it in a space that the rent isn't too high cuz I
don't wanna charge too much money for the food.
In order to do that you have to
move into odd spaces in odd neighborhoods and
hope that you kind of have something that's
compelling enough that people will come to you.
>> I think it's rare that people actually get to
the point of opening the doors without
softening something, and I
don't think he attempted to soften anything.
>> But the food's delicious.
I mean, I think that's like the key thing,
is that he's not just like shoving orth,
orthodoxy down people's throats,
he's making delicious food,
you know he's pairing it with like good drinks.
So you can go there and have fun,
but he's not wavering from what is vision of,
of authentic Thai food is and,
and he's finding acceptance with that.
There's a much bigger question here, though,
which is should a white dude be making the food
of, of a Southeast Asian culture and
making a business out of it.
And, you know, that's, you know,
that's a fair enough question to ask.
>> Really?
>> Well, as long as you also ask, you know,
about, the American guy who's doing Spanish food.
Or the American guy who's doing Italian food.
Or the American guy who's doing Indian food.
Or, whatever the fuck it is,
that, honky's making that isn't his own.
Do, am I relegated to making,
you know, hot dogs and fried chicken for
the rest of my life because I'm an American?
It doesn't make any sense.
And I've spent
20 something years studying this food.
And I feel like it's okay for
me to make the menu that I have.
I learned so much and I owe so
much to the people there and, and to that culture.
It's hard to find a way to really pay that back.
And to me the best way to pay it back is to say,
you know, don't, you know, don't look at me,
look at, at the food.
Like I'm not, it's not me.
And- >> Mm-hm.
>> I go to great pains and lengths, and
I sincerely believe this is not.
People say, we love your food.
I'm like, but it's not my food.
It really isn't.
My, my answer is always like, but
it's not my food.
[MUSIC] This food
exists somewhere else.
It's one thing for a six foot half balding 50 year
old honky to do it.
It's another for a Thai woman to do it.
There's a woman in Portland named Nong.
Nong's Khao Man Gai.
There's only one dish on the menu.
She's an old employee of mine.
I'm super proud of her.
>> I'm ready.
[LAUGH] My name is Nong.
And we are at Nong's Khao Man Gai,
Portland, Oregon.
Khao Man Gai is what I make.
Chicken and rice.
That's it.
That deal.
[LAUGH] I move to Portland from Bangkok,
Thailand, in 2003.
And when I first move here, I, I feel that
people that, that live here are above me.
American is above me.
You know, example, on the menu it say yellow curry.
I knew that at home it has potato.
And I was like, whoa, have potato.
But like you know I can't say anything because
afterwards, like, people that lived here before me
now I see that not everybody will have
opportunity like me to work at Pok Pok.
I have somebody like Andy explain to
me like the culture.
I, I learn a lot from Andy.
You can do it, you just have to do it.
>> One guy in Los Angeles named Kris Yenbamroong,
born and raised in America but
he's not from Thailand.
He speaks Thai.
He's raised in Los Angeles, and
his parents own a Thai restaurant and
conventional American Thai food.
The other side is Night Market but
he wants to make real flavor.
>> I was running my
family's restaurant next door, and
was just sort of failing miserably at it, just
like the biggest I've ever failed at anything.
I took over the space next door,
basically out of spite, and
eventually just thought, hey you know,
I was like this could be a blank slate for me.
Like, there's already a kitchen.
I'll do all the food for Night Market myself.
I've already tried to do it
the sort of compromise way.
Why don't I just do it the way I think it
should be done.
>> Some mang da.
Mang da is water bugs.
That's gonna be a [FOREIGN].
Sort of like a Northern style, like, chili dip.
You use these guys right here to,
to scent the dip.
Sort of like you would use truffles,
except it's, it's water bugs instead of truffles.
It's definitely not wings,
you know what I mean?
Like, maybe 20 plates of wings, and
one plate of [FOREIGN].
I don't know, I just mean,
I mean having that one person order it,
you know, like a couple people a night, and
that's still cool by me.
Without, like, being too snooty or
philosophical about it.
It's like, if you don't make this food or
continue to make it, it's gonna die away.
I mean, I just hope that if there's more people
doing it you know, that they're people like Andy.
You know, you talk to him and
you know he cares about the food.
Andy talks a lot about giving Thai food a voice.
The last year or
two, more restaurants are opening Thai style,
serving the real flavor.
Somebody opened one in Seattle,
Washington D.C., Miami, so
maybe if you come to visit me in ten years,
Pok Pok is just going to be another of many.
Like, right now still we're one of very few in
America, but
I think in ten years, something like that,
every city is going to have something like that.
So you see, slowly, the real flavors is changing,
and good, I think it's good.
Mm, bones.
[MUSIC]