Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 511 - Why Was This Vietnamese Recipe Almost Lost To History? - Daniel Nguyen from Sông Cái Distillery

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511 - Why Was This Vietnamese Recipe Almost Lost To History? - Daniel Nguyen from Sông Cái Distillery · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast today.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a wonderful recurring guest Daniel from some guy.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It used to be called some guy Jin for many years.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's how we, you know, we've talked to each other.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like gear from some guy Jin.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we are here for some guy.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: whiskey.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a new product that, uh, but this is not a product driven podcast.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is really about getting to know more of really about you and why you decided to go down the whiskey route, which I'm a huge fan and I couldn't wait for for this to happen.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here we are.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the podcast, Daniel.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks Kenneth, it's great to be back on the podcast and it's awesome because I feel like every time we meet, there's like evolution in both our lives and I think that's that makes this podcast dynamic, you know, you can follow in both victories.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, indeed, you know, we talk about you working in Vietnam and, you know, ultimately retiring to, you know, back to somewhere.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I am here for it.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here for the next 60 years of work.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: God willing we can extend our lives and be old, old guys with the long beards and talking about our evolution.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we have to, we have to definitely inspire to that.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to go into like the old, loud phases, you know what I mean?
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to really grow into that.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's a lot about you.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know throughout the years we we we talk most about your work but there's also like the jujitsu and you know this all of this stuff that the academic side the history side of Vietnam and you know you living in Vietnam speaking with a hanoi and accent while you know you know meeting your mom and dad you know at these events and there
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Completely speaking with the Southern accent and it is some of most interesting thing.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's so many things about you that we could spend hours and years and years talking about.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here we are.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're at the intersection of UN whiskey.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's kind of a culmination of a weird like migratory cycle in a way, you know, like where I don't know.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think sometimes I think about kind of my life's trajectory and it's like a strange, uh, it's a strange cycle, you know, like I think, I think, you know, Vietnamese, we talk about in so many different ways, but it's almost like it's been fun.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: is definitely how it feels to me sometimes like it's weird because like my family's history has many other family's history is tied to migration you know and it seems to there's like almost like a full circle in this migration and coming back to like
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rice, you know, like single grain, our single-game project is all centered around rice and I think that's like kind of been something that's been central in a lot of my families or what I feel like is my family's migration, you know, like end up in New Orleans, also a lot of rice-based culture around there and then back to Vietnam and to the north and then exploring how Vietnam's rice culture is rapidly changing.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But anyways, yeah, that's kind of like sometimes I think about that a lot is like the fifth circle of especially, you know, you and me, we're part of this diaspora where we are very hungry and curious about the land in which our parents fled, which is it's poetic in its own way, you know,
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: you used the word fled right now.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's probably not a kosher word and Vietnam to use.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it, I mean, I know how exact you are with your articulation and, but that's not the kind of word that you would use in Vietnam and Vietnamese in the north.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it?
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think like, yes and no, like I think it depends on who you're talking to and it depends on kind of how you want to frame history, I think there's a lot of, you know what's funny is like you and I have been going to Vietnam and have a very long relationship with Vietnam and I think.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's been long enough where we can see how the language has shifted around the diaspora experience, you know.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no beating around the bush.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was with being, you know, and there was a sense of flight, you know.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, to revise it in any other way as a historical revisionism.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think it's, uh, I am not afraid of saying that because I'm also not afraid of saying also to my parents generation is I also think, you know, it goes both ways.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm returning to Vietnam, not because of some political agenda or trying to disregard their struggle or disregard their story, which I think is still very important.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I also think that,
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're so fortunate to be part of this nation building and cultural uplift in Vietnam.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's astounding.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's kind of how I view it.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the more clear and just upfront and honest we can be about history and the more we can
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: together, proceed with the future, you know, and in the present, being the present with each other.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that answer.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cuts both ways.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think the reason I bring that up is because I feel like the government doesn't use that kind of language or doesn't allow that kind of thinking
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: to kind of like, I almost think it's got cultural things that Asians, we as a very Zika, right?
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're just very careful about how we kind of frame things around each other.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't want each other to feel uncomfortable.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, just when you say fled for me, I like it.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, I go to a lot of these government functions, and especially by, you know, the Mr. Foreign Affairs.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think,
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're telling them when different government agencies or departments are talking about the diaspora, they'll live like the language changes and it's for specific reasons.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the main underlying theme that seems to be constant throughout.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: as a couple things.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They want to ensure that there is no division within the community.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as long as you're like, which or the ethos or kind of like what you're trying to portray is not what they call like Gia's ass.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And though, you know, like trying to split apart the community,
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's okay, because overall the overarching Vietnamese government stands, especially on the Vietnamese diaspora, especially in 2 cents 2001, 2001 was when they had that decree saying that, you know, we are part of
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vietnam.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we are part of Vietnam that cannot be removed.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they call us now, Nong Bao.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Nong Bao was a strategic word that was signed into a decree in 2001.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the start of the, um, Danook thing, Danook wine, which is like the, the part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs specifically delegated to diasporic affairs.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I think overall,
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: is very strategic in the way they are trying to mend wounds.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, maybe if you engage in like online banter, you know, they're in my cats and flat from like online netizens, you know, like the red bulls, which is like Vietnam's version of like maga.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the official government
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, on a plate, the Vietnamese community and we are, they go so far to quote, Ho Chi Minh, and saying that Q-Wao is, you know, mobile phone, my home back, Zilly, call it, Vietnam, though.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are part of Vietnam that cannot be when we can't be separated from Vietnam.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even though we are not living, Q-Wao overseas Vietnamese are not maybe living physically in Vietnam.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are part of Vietnam where we go.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, um...
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of like mine counter with it.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, you know, if you're doing some paper work throughout Vietnam, sometimes they'll change up the word of like, oh, you're not fully Vietnamese, you're like, you know, American with Vietnamese roots.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's technicalities, but the overall, like, feeling of it is they want to make us feel that we are part of Vietnam.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's their way of reconciling history and moving forward.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, homo, yeah, at the time, you know, same people, um, and I think about, about means people, what is like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like like, like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like like like, like like
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to break down the the etymology of of how we're viewed in Vietnam.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So critical.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I Started a podcast called Baurla with the little psych on TV and we speak a lot about these topics and in Vietnamese.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it gets so sticky sometimes, you know?
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the beauty is, we have somebody who's very, very pro-American, you know, he came in 1985, and Hankong Tui, and then Jingokland came in 2005, I came in 1975.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all have this like 20-year increment.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, these things are in my mind.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then when I look at your label,
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: for single-grain whiskey.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: My brain goes to being an American.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this idea of whiskey in America and the idea of whiskey in Vietnam.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: is really the intersection of, like, this is really cool.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really great time and you didn't start out with this, you start out with the gin.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now we're here and I wanted to talk about what inspired you to pick out this very, it's whiskey is a very Scottish, would you say it's origins is more Scottish?
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would say Scotch is a type of whisky and it's probably the most famous and it could be considered to what's on the oldest types of whisky, but it depends on how you define whisky.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hundreds of thousands of years earlier than Westerners.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it depends on what you define as whiskey.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whiskey in certain parts of the world is just serial grains that have been fermented and then distilled.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're like to be called whiskey or like say Scotch for example, Scotch has to be made in Scotland.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Burden has to be made in America and there has to be some sort of a wood component to it in modern day whiskey.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the core of it is just serial grain that's been fermented and distilled.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Civilizations had laying around at the time, and in Scotland was oak barrels, same with America.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in Asia, we've been using emphora vessels for our traditional aging method.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is that emphora vessel?
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's clays.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's chum sign.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's terracotta clay, and that's generally regarded as like the the
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would say examples are records of fermented grains was found in M4a plots in China.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I guess what I'm trying to say is whiskey, yes, as associate was Scotland, it's associated now in the newer world with like say like America, but then also the Asian whiskey culture is now rising with Japan,
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, Taiwan and now the rest of Asia as well.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that for me when I look at whiskey, it's actually really a reflection of different civilizations and how we approach the singular question of how do you ferment and distill grain and age it to create something tasty.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to me,
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That should reflect the ethos of how different regions make whiskey.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of how Scotch is different from bourbon.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even within Scotland, right?
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've got, you were saying before you like LaFroix, like the PD-Eilay whiskeys, that's also a reflection of that very particular region of Scotland.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you cross the pond to America, we're doing bourbon, for example.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's also considered a whisky.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you cross the Pacific, now with Japan where they're really coming into their own identity,
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Koji Wiski
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so they're going back and saying, we're actually gonna lean hard into our Japanese identity and what distinguishes spirits from the rest of the world.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and so when we started, soungai actually, it didn't fully mature that vision yet, but we started soungai distillery, actually, on the back of a lot of the work that I was doing before, which was around native grain research.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of my work was around native rice, corn, and other native botanicals in Vietnam, but rice was one of the key things, because you know, when people think about Vietnam, and we think about the agriculture in Vietnam, we think of rice, rice, there's so many legends of rice, and rice is something you can almost see from north to south.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are some examples of communities and regions that don't eat rice as a stable grain.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: They like man-man, for example,
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: For the large part of vast majority of Vietnamese rice is our staple grain, you know?
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And why don't we have a whiskey that embodies that?
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We should be leaning into that kind of like how the Japanese leaning into a rice-based, coji-based whiskey, and no one bats an eye, you know?
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, that's kind of, yeah, what does coji-based mean?
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they defined as Koji Whiskey, so it's basically all rice, and it's fermented using Koji Koji is the national fungus of Japan.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Koji in its scientific name is Asperger's Orze.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a fungus that is responsible for soy sauce, for miso, for mirin, for shoyu.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So all those,
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Japanese condiments, sake, shichu, all those Japanese beverages are all because of Koji.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so what's interesting is, so Koji exists also in Vietnam, but the way that our ancestors and how historically Vietnamese we produce our products, say whether it's like thung button or say whether it's like mum or we have
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: all these other things like Gum's Yoke Man or Gum's Yoke Nip or you have, you know, Zyoke Nays, Yoke Chang, all those things in Vietnam are based off of a very similar but different process using Big Man.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that we take inspiration from the Japanese in terms of like, you know, how they've kind of leaned into their heritage of Koji and Rice and say,
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: sticky rice as a base of our single grain.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the fermentation is driven by man.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not driven by Koji.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not driven by Western malting styles.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So essentially what we're trying to answer, similar to what the Japanese are doing, similar to even what the scots or the Americans is.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: If the Vietnamese a hundred years ago started making whiskey, what would it look like?
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, what would a truly Vietnamese whiskey look like?
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it should reflect our terrar.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that distinguishes Vietnam from Japan is that our fermentation is based off of Nick.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas saying Korea and Japan sake, or even Magalee, they're actually leaning into Galthen.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: As their main type of rice fermentation, whereas Vietnam specifically, because we are so known or so ingrained with our nip culture or, you know, Galthenip, that is what our
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: culture, prioritizes and values in terms of fermentation.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't go for the out there.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's kind of like what I wanted to reflect in the whiskey was, from the rice, how the rice is treated, how it's grown, has to be something reflective of Vietnam.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're not growing rice in a Japanese style.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our rice is like, for example, our rice is nip gum and it's also nip gum nule.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, a network of knowing is so important to me because if you read the about the history of Vietnam, the concept of New England's A is so political from all the way back to Chinese domination of Vietnam through the French.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, all of that, there's such a politicization of Newmze, you know, all the way back from like the Tang Dynasty, even though the era of like Machio and high-bud June, for example, the Chinese were not able to conquer the people who fled to the highlands.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: they were able to live either system of governance and taxation and things that's like that on the the Delta communities, but they had a singular phrase that loved all people, including Vietnamese, Moong, Thai, and all that into one phrase that was loud.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the Vietnamese would escape into the highlands to escape taxation and to launch a lot of the rebellion against the the Chinese from the the the the mountain side I mean you have my hat day, which is our famous figure.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's army was raised from the mountains to go fight against the Chinese
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, rebelling against the Chinese, for example.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you fast-forward to like even French colonialism, like you can, there are, there's more, even more documentary history where the French were trying to control the mountain sides, for example, and that was the basis of our resistance, and they couldn't enact taxation, but then also couldn't enact Corvée French forced labor on people on the, and in the mountain side, because we are so hard to control up there.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That style of cultivation was called Nungzei, essentially.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Zey is a borrowed word from the Tai Meng language.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nung is more Vietnamese, but it talks about hillside farming and swit in agriculture.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's something that's how we grow the rice for our whisky.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's something that...
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: has been for for centuries our domination like the people who've been trying to dominate Vietnam have been trying to squash this culture but it's something if you go to Vietnam and you talk to people people will select out like oh is this rice grown?
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: is it nip nune or is it nip zool?
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, is it got noon got as well, you know, like our nuanced understanding of how rice is growing and how it impacts flavor is so nuanced.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's like asking Italian to go pick out pasta.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so many types of pasta in this it's not the same way.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I was probably a force removed from that, you know.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So as you are explaining all this to me, my brain has fucked up as it is about stratification.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking about Khoji as something that's, you know, like something that's very high attainable and because of social conditioning and I'm aware well aware of that.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking of like, is that process that the Japanese chose to do at a more, you know,
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I hate to have these scales that go vertically, but in my brain, I'm like, okay, they're winning awards.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're like master craftsmen.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything they pick and choose has a lot of intention.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the way that you're approaching it also has a lot of intention.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is really thought out.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when I think about,
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: all of the Koji and the man, these are all yeast, right?
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it fermentation agents?
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the fermentation agents, they're basically microbes, but Koji is a fungi.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So by man, the reason why it's different in Koji is it's a combination of fungi, bacteria, and yeast into one.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would say like it's interesting because the way I look at how the Japanese have done their branding, it's masterful, you know, they've turned fungus, which is something that's kind of freaky to look at, and turning into something so mystical that places like noma, all these Western chefs are like fonding over in terms like this new fermentation renaissance, you know, you've got
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've got white guys in Brooklyn now making, you're making socket from Koji, you know, you got random bakeries and delicate testins in the Midwest in America, aging salami with Koji.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's how amazing the Japanese history has done.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's insane, right?
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have, you know, there's a global conference now called Koji Khan.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we presented at Koji Khan one year, but that's how good the branding around Koji is.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's the question I was asking when I'm thinking of when I'm hearing this and I'm thinking about the degree of difficulty, perhaps.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, what is it, I'm trying to figure out what is it that makes code you so valuable and it sounds a lot like the idea of time put into storytelling and marketing and just building the equity of the code you sort of mystique, right?
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm going to go with, this is what it all reminds me of.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you listen to artists, any artist, music, or fine arts, or sculptors, or painters, I feel like they're talking about
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reasons, the intentions, all of these things on why they're creating that peace and the more you lay into that the more you can explain it in a way that's clear and intentional and well thought out the more money
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: the more value that peace becomes.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it sounds like the Japanese have done very well with Koji.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think whisky from Scotland has a deserving place in the world of awards.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now you've thought a lot about man.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you've thought about the place that
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: we are using this sort of fermentation.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how did you get to this?
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's my first question.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, why that?
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm sure there's so many different types of fermentation.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But why did you choose that?
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think that when I hear an easy way to do it, it would be to take the code you wrote, bring it into Vietnam.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But to rebuild a legend or story or a modality
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's brand new.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You got to really introduce this idea to the world and really spend a lot of time building that brand equity for that particular thing.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then so we all began to like taste the whisky and we're like, all right, we can relate to why Daniel did this.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, why why that?
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like I think like for me, when you're making the analogy of like a music artist explaining like some like the meaning of the drive behind a song like I think of I automatically get driven to like hip-hop, you know, like I think that
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, for me, I think that where hip-hop has gone, there's so many elements of hip-hop, you know, but then hip-hop stands on the shoulders of so many things.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a lot of remix that's built into hip-hop, paying homage to whether it be jazz artists from before or whatever samples you can get, you know.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not by any means trying to say that, you know, bank man's better than Koji or better multi what it is is it's a little bit of like we're standing on their shoulders as well and taking a lot of inspiration and remixing it in a sense.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: In a way that's uniquely Vietnamese.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's what really makes
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: hip hop also very unique is it's become a global movement where countries can put their own spin or remix onto hip hop.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So at the other day, we're still paying homage to this is still whiskey.
• 25:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're playing by some of the rules of whiskey.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're aging it in oak.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: that does not come from Vietnam.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that is our making sure that we're continuing the lineage of whiskey, just how people are continuing the lineage of hip hop, but our spin or our remix on to make it very uniquely Vietnamese is,
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: the rice and the by man, the fermentation.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the reason why we went down the by man route was if you travel across Vietnam, their in villages, there will be inevitably someone who is a fermentation specialist.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they are like a fermentation who fermentation shaman or like, you know,
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: of that nature where their soul purpose is to continue passing down the by man from generation to generation.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And people in the village who are making their own moonshine, their own zeal, their own ferments are getting their by man from this person.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't know, so cool because the more we collected the by man, the more we saw one,
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: there was variance in in recipe.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then too, because of just the locality, there was also variance in the microbes.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so a ferment, say like you take doom, right?
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You take doom.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Doom bun, as opposed to another doom in say the central region or the south.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: or even if you take zero, zero made from it from the north to the center to the Macon Delta, it may have the same basic inputs of rice by man and distillation, for example, but it's going to taste different.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to reflect the term on.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that is so poetic to me.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's something that the variance is much greater than if we're just looking at Koji, you know, and even in Japan now, then the people who are actually making Koji, this less than like, I think it's around like five.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually a very, very small number, whereas in Vietnam there's so many people are still trying to make my men.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so why wouldn't we
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's a mysticism and a magic behind it, yes, but there's also a lot of fear.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think one of the reasons I wanted to do this was one was to understand something that drives so much of Vietnamese cuisine and food and beverage, but then also to help demystify some of the fear around it.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we spent years collecting and studying how by man was made from a north to the south, working with labs to isolate out what was in by man and what makes by man tick.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that we can clearly articulate to people.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like when you're asking, why by man instead of Koji?
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, tell you why.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Come to your nip would not be possible in Japan, 100%.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's because the way that by man works is reflection of our terrar.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: grows at a very low temperature compared to by men.
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about 25 to 30 degrees Celsius.
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because of that, it produces different aromas and whatnot and the fermentation is a little bit different.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it does not create gums, you'll need.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I mean with that is if you were to put Koji on to to nip and you tried to make comes on nip it wouldn't come out.
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you put by man into nip and you do it, it comes out.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You get all the liquid that really nice sticky, sweet rice wine essentially and that's the magic of it.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it reflects our cultures of flexion of what nature was gave us in terms of like ingredients and by man's one of them, and so the question is why.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we found out it's because in by man there's more than just coachy there's so many other different types of microbes and fungi that couldn't liplify rice.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because by man can survive and ferments at a higher temperature based on Vietnam's climate, we're talking about 35 degrees Celsius, where coaching would die off, that's where we start to thrive, you know.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So why replicate the Japanese?
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We should be leaning into our ter war.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're a hot and sticky climate, our rice liquefies, you know, we have gummed your knit, we don't have sake, we don't have Amazake, but we have our own thing.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it's equally as good and I think that's something that I would rather spend my life building a story and uplifting that than to try and copy Japan, you know.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a huge fan of comes you, Nick.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's good.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's such a wonderful treat.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think my mom was giving it to me, even before I was 21 in a legal age.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what it is is comes out.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Net is exactly what it sounds like.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fermented into like alcohol, but you bite on the grains.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, I imagine like eating such a weird visual, but like biting down an anze with the crispy,
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it makes sense to me, I think of it differently, I think of it, you know like when you have like rice crispy streets or like the rice crispy cereal and even the milk too long, that's how I think of it.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the and thing does make sense is like really sweet answer though, I don't know what you're saying.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Usually sweet answer, I'm just, it's the pop for me, for me it's like whoever can do it with that, with there's like a genuine pop.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know what's like a perfect cookie, right?
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the perfect cookie is when it's crispy and it's chewy and it's just gooey, but then there's a like a crispy pop element to it for me.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's like a perfect cookie and comes in an apple and it's done like for me and my my.
• 31:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: the way I like it is when you have the elements of crispy, obviously you're not going to get crispy in liquid, but as close to that as I can explain it, and the flavor that comes out of it, I did not know that it can only be made coming from Vietnam, because it's a very distinct taste that
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: beautiful.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a national, it's a national dessert that's not talked about enough because what other dessert in the world has this natural alcohol fermentation, you know, in the world, this natural, you know, alcohol that has, you know, just like it's a dessert and
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's considered medicine, you know, women eat it after childbirth, you know, people will get sick and Vietnam, because it's just like, it's all the nutrients in rice.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's, it becomes liquefied and easily digest or, you know.
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I always, you know, that people were to try Japanese Amazake, side by side with Gumdioni, it's all made from rice, all made from fermentation, but it tastes completely different.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just,
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's reflection of where we come from, you know what I mean?
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just, I think it's magical.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know what's crazy?
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The pop and the crisp of come to your lip is like, if you just leave it for men to just long enough where it starts to bubble and have like gas, that's where I think like, when you're saying crisp, I totally get what you mean.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I totally get what you mean.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is crisp.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just got to leave it a little bit longer where it's just a little bit of a bite from the alcohol, you know, and a little bit of gas.
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wait, so that gas, for me, there's sometimes a level of carbonation in it that makes me not comfortable.
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And because I'm like, is this by design or did you guys leave it on the shelf a little too long without thinking everything has to have an intention right and for me, it has You know, if you're not experiencing this carbonation all the time and it's just a hit or miss some time you go to the same shop and sometimes there's carbonation some of the most times there's not carbonation right.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: should it have carbonation, Daniel?
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, dude, that's the natural process.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's weird because I first had come to an hip in America to growing up, but when you move to Vietnam and a lot of the places like the wet markets are selling in a community of native, they will actually have come to a different stage of fermentation, because it's different uses.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dude, it's different uses, man.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you can get a buzz and I'm telling you, because I like, like, younger kids nowadays who like to eat sweeter will get the one that's just fresh.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's like no carbonation, it's super sweet, but like,
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: older people, you know, like they like it's spicier.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: They like it a little bit like with a fermentation, you know, like a little bit drier.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But dude, once you get used to the fermentation and like how it's got a little bit of kick to it, it's like you can't go back for me.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dude, so you can't go back to the sweet one, the new one.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've always been then I've always been the tongue of the old because the old tongue because I Like it not sweet.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like it.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: However you describe.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know that there's a level so this shit.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just mind-blowing.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did not know at the wet market So there's like levels to it
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you come to Hanoi next, I'll take you out to a web market, but we'll end with low guy going to your nip because you'll see like the uses of going to your nip in different forms of fermentation.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for low, for example, let's clear this up with everybody low guy comes up.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is low.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is hot pot made from comes up flavor.
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We just
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the firm, no, it's made from comes in.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not even the flavor.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is literally the broth is coming in.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like this fermented rice, but imagine, right?
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you did not let this firm end, you'd be dipping your chicken into like sugar syrup.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you need to let it ferment.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, ferment and it develops this really rich, like mommy rice flavor and just like being clean, you know.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was wondering, did they come up with this dish?
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: When did they come up with this concept?
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's old school.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's old school.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because this has been around, it has been used in cooking in Vietnam because one, it tenderizes meat.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Two, it adds a little flavor and acidity and umami.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And three, it's also like, you know, it's alcohol.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It extracts flavor from ingredients, you know, and it's also a good thing to drink while you're eating.
• 36:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this low, this hot pot is served with no guilt of coming to a nap.
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So basically the coming to a nap, that's been aging.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's more carbonated, it's more alcoholic.
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: They strain out the rice and you're drinking these, these, these shots of it.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So.
• 37:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You think that you know like you go on living on this earth and you just you think at 50 or a 70 you've seen it all right you you eat and everything and this is like in in my mom's backyard and I've never heard of it from her have never heard it from anybody and you're like this has been going on for
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: for eons, right?
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm legit, first time even hearing about it and I'm so blown away.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love the fact that this exists and I can't, I mean, this is one of the biggest things I'm going to get, I can't wait to go back to Hanoi to try, you know?
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's such a beautiful place, it sounds like such a tasty and delicious dish.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's crazy because not many places still make it and it's like if not uniquely the phenomena of forgetting and and sometimes losing recipes It's not a phenomenon you need to Vietnam, you know, I think like all countries and all I mean just so diverse We have so many things going in lives and not everyone in every culture is a foodie and when we're talking about wartime and like era of like scarcity food you know
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: eating the best hot pot is not on everyone's mind.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like so many recipes would be awesome.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then like when you're a refugee coming to America, like you like sometimes like I don't know like my dad, for example, was in seminary school, all his childhood.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like he was not in culinary school.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was not out there eating like all the different types of fun.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you only leave and come to America with what food memories you have.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when you're a teenager, that's not gonna be the
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: the most broad thing, you know?
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, maybe my mom was studying at College of the Arts, for example.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, she was not out there, like, you know, being a foodie.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, being a foodie was reserved for very specific types of people.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's, it wasn't something that was as big as it is today, you know?
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I think like it's so fascinating to compare notes of like what people bring in terms like their food memories to to America, but then also
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: what cuisines are on the fringes, you know, like what cuisines before, because of like, you know, because before, like making during wartime or war scarcity, there was a time where, you know, fermenting rice or using rice to make alcohol was forbidden, because rice was scarce, how can we let people turn rice into alcohol, you know, like we need to deserve rice to feed people.
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So over time, those things will get lost or will be like,
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a dish recently that I tasted.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been working with Chef Wynn.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just here in an ounce and I've been working full time with him at next robot, working in sales and spokesperson when we're out on shows.
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's great.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a remote job.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I love the work, obviously, because it's food.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've spent so many years, decade and a half of my life in food.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the team that we work with, the older management teams are from China.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they take us to these restaurants and the six to six Singapore Valley, unmarked restaurants.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, unmarked as there's no English, it's all in Chinese.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you roll in, it's like,
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: act restaurant and it's all Chinese people.
• 40:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's dishes that I've never had.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've never seen in my life, you know, and when you tell me about a dish like, uh, low, uh, guy with, um, uh, comes with me.
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think about this experience that I just recently had, um, eating, uh, a dish that was eggplant, bell pepper, and thousand year eggs with sesame oil, and some chili.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was like the most, it was a, it was a cold dish and then they brought out like a mortar and pestle, and then they
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yamma, they've got it all like beat down.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was the most magical dish that I've had in a, it's like innovative.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this thing has probably been around for a long time.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the first time I'm eating it and the first time I'm listening to you talk about Loga, you know, comes to an app.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just like there are so many millions of recipes out there that we don't know about.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just,
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: like the way that human beings create these things is there's all stories and intentions and cultural artifacts that it is being lost I think as time goes on the McDonald's of the world and you know KFC takes over.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: They call it nowhere maxing now, like nowhere maxing is just like everywhere is just like the same as everywhere.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you feel like you're nowhere, everywhere you go, like tusk and he's going to the same as I gone, and Simon's going to look the same as LA, it's nowhere maxing.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really sad.
• 42:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, uh, do you think that friend is going to go away?
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think nowhere maxing is?
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, shit.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so because the forces that propel us into Normaxing are just so powerful.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like Star Wars, man.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, Normaxing is like the Death Star, dude.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're like the rebellion with freaking flimsy, two, three, X-way, I'm sorry, I mean, it's like, Nerddard, it was like Star Wars, you know?
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like David and Elias, you know?
• 42:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's so much money behind Normaxing.
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, but there's people like you and, you know, minfam doesn't want to be called a chef anymore.
• 42:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, I'm in our, you know, it's like, artists, you know, but there's people like you and her and chef win buoy.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You guys are, you guys,
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: live for the, not revival or resuscitation, but just to, I mean, I live this way too is to bring out the cultural nuance
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to live in the other way.
• 43:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to I definitely enjoy my chicken wing nuggets, but at the same time I live 99% of my time in the space of what is more that I don't know about the Vietnamese culture.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, 100%.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's like, you know, like,
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would say that we need this to keep going.
• 43:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're definitely, you know, it's the story of David Goliath or like, even Star Wars.
• 43:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're not dying off.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're not gonna be a limiting forever.
• 43:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we're fighting such an uphill battle because every second that goes by is something else that's getting lost.
• 43:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I look at it like, look at ecological degradation, species extinction.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also think about knowledge extinction too,
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to research about Vietnam.
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's just so daunting of a task.
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, let's take food, for example.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Romanized alphabet has only been proliferated in Vietnam.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: for a little over like a hundred years, you know.
• 44:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's insane because what that does is it allows us to proliferate writing and literacy in Vietnam.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so like people like, you know, tech, lamb, vubang, bang sun, you know, lead out to eat all these writers in Vietnam.
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're actually writing and documenting the culture, the food around them at the time.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's all such a small part.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: of Vietnam's history because of the access to the Romanized alphabet.
• 44:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was documentation that happened before.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'm not trying to disregard that, but that ability to write and read and write,
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: to the educated elites.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so their perspective is only going to be a very small nuance of, you know, but to make it even more broad as time goes because we are now in the period of history where this is the democratization of
• 45:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: language of being able to document your own experience.
• 45:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the insane ability of social media is like, anyone can this, you know, Daniel, anyone can be the next and Anthony Bourdain, you know, you don't need to have a deal from CNN.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's insane democracy.
• 45:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's only in the very, very, very recent history in human history, you know.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so like what I think about that, what I mean by that is like,
• 45:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: when you read these books before social media from the early 1900s, people who've been around since the late 1800s, they witnessed the birth of fall.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that freaking insane?
• 46:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you have to imagine at the time because they're also human, imagine us, right?
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine us, right?
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: In America, all of a sudden, much of becomes like super famous, all of a sudden,
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, much as viral.
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So everyone talks about much of these guys are probably the same.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're all like, you know, they're the foodies of the era.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, Phones, probably they're only talking about for imagine all the other stuff that they're not talking about.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 46:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: stuff that was in trend at the time.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, full was just coming into like popularity.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Southerners didn't even eat football before 1954 that people wrote about it who were alive during that time.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were saying literally in Saigon there was five full vendors before 1954.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was no fault.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was probably all who do me.
• 46:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's all who do.
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so like all these things are so fascinating to me because it's like, sometimes it's like it's so hard to not idolize romanticize authors who are no longer around.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you have to remember, they're just like you and me.
• 47:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, when we get caught up in the match of praise, when we're getting caught up in whatever it looks, Maxing phase, they are also subject to the same kind of popularity.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were doing some other Maxing, you know what I mean?
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were romanized alphabet Maxing, you know what I mean?
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were not actually no Maxing anymore.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that was the trend at the time.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like imagine all the slang that we're using now, they're slang was, we're gonna use an alpha butt, the alpha bit for get fuck, you know what I mean.
• 47:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's single-brain whiskey max right now I don't do I don't know why we don't do this once a month you know I get to nerd out with you on so many of these ideas you know it's almost seven right now or seven third almost eight o'clock and I'm gonna pour myself some
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yours is you're you're doing you're calling Chabu Sang.
• 48:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing a nightcap.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you know what's honey?
• 48:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a Chabu Sang man.
• 48:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me what's that here?
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cheers.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll put stuff in the small glass to you.
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did match yours.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So So it's so smooth.
• 48:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, man.
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: This so this whiskey is like
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: you're gonna get like a lot of savouriness at the end like nutty notes, you know, um, there'll be definitely wouldn't there.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I think like for me,
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we'll get the tasting notes out of the way and we can get back to whatever, like, historical text-maxing we were doing.
• 48:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that was, this whiskey is Vietnam-maxing, essentially.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, so what we do is, so we start off with Nipcom.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Nipcom for everyone's listening is, it's a purple sticky rice.
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was really renowned in the northwest of Vietnam.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was a type of rice that back in the day was reserved and offered to kings because of its nutritional value and its taste, it tastes like tawny port, it tastes a little bit like raisins, a little bit like chocolate, it's an amazing, amazing rice and one of the cool things about Vietnam is the north of Vietnam, north west specifically in the south of China.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: is actually one of the hotspots of this mutation that creates what we call sticky grains.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when we talk about sticky rice, nip, we talk about sticky corn, we talk about sticky anything.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's anything in Vietnam where the word nip in it has this mutation and it creates a stickiness with what the Italians might call out dente, recall zale.
• 49:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's such a little part of Vietnamese food light and vocabulary, it's like the chewiness that the Italians are looking for in in in in in pasta.
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We look for in our starches and we call that zail and that's associated with nip.
• 50:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you knew go anywhere in Vietnam.
• 50:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: They will often be like,
• 50:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: gay, which is millet, you'll have gay nip, you'll have gout nip, you'll have bop nip.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So bop is corn, uh, gout was rice, gays, millet, I've had, you know, sudden nip, which is cassava root, and it has any little bit, anytime you have the word nip, it indicates zell, in zell is, uh, what is what is the English word?
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's texture.
• 50:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I say, I'll dente.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, right, right, but you said it's um, there was a word you just use it was that because I was like trying to translate this out into English, but you said it, uh, it's out and chew, you know, it's chewy chewy chewy, it's chewy, it's chewy, it's like chewy, it's like chewy, it's like salty, so I've had corn, so many varieties of corn, but my mom loves this corn that's really chewy.
• 51:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is well, now I make sense now.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's my nap.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you know what's crazy is that is a texture that Vietnam and Vietnamese people where where you're united by because even the home, that is actually what I think about because if we don't all eat rice, so it's like saying a moan in the gnome, they have the equine meal in the sort of the instead of rice, they call it man, but they have corn
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, and if you talk to any Vietnamese person, they love, we love that kind of chewiness kind of like, I mean, I'm like, you can't, you can't, you can't have fun, you know, I mean, is this in any other Asian cultures?
• 51:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Mochi is kind of like that, right?
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, when you think about,
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Moji is, Moji is, but the thing I want to emphasize is the obsession with sticky rice and glutinous rice is in Japan, it's not on the same level as Vietnam.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not on the same level.
• 52:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because we regard, we have such a high regard for sticky rice.
• 52:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: We reserve sticky rice.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dude, I don't know if you've ever grown rice before, but maybe you should come for a growing season,
• 52:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'll see how hard it is to grow sticky rice.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's much harder to grow sticky rice.
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we need something that's harder to grow to make into these amazing, you know, bindings, all these cakes, all these desserts, alcoholic beverages.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We reserve nip for the highest expressions of our cuisine.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's how much we review nip.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's beautiful.
• 52:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And look, the client read it.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what does net give you a different flavor when it's in an alcohol form than rice?
• 53:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the starch content.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's two main types of starches.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's amylose.
• 53:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So amylose is like long, like strains of starch like this.
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're like long strains.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Amylopetin is like, they're like tied together like this.
• 53:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is what gives sticky rice its texture.
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rice with amolo pectin, that's high, is glutinous or sticky rice.
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you actually tell when you look at a grain of rice.
• 53:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when you biograph a bag of rice at the store, when the rice grains are translucent, they're high in amolo and low in amolo pectin.
• 53:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're not going to be sticky.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you buy sticky rice and you ever look at it, it is not translucent, right?
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's white.
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is because it's high in ammo pectin.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know the whole thing of like, uh, light gout.
• 53:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you, when you cook sticky rice and you leave it out at room temperature, it becomes raw again.
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you notice that?
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you come in love, we call it like gout or like, like, like, um, and then we're way, so you dehydrated and you let it get back to being dry.
• 54:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It goes back to its original.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you reuse it again and cook it again?
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it definitely has to lose something, right?
• 54:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because all the, because, you know, like regular rice, right?
• 54:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can take rice that's been cold, like regular rice.
• 54:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And talk about got there.
• 54:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can eat it cold.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I wouldn't recommend it.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you can eat it cold.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You could not do that with with with with soy.
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's scientific phenomena only because of the amylopectin.
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of these trainings, I'm always like, amylose, amylopectin, amylose, amylopectin.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's such an easy way to remember.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, that's what makes it so special.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what gives it that chew.
• 54:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then,
• 54:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're at, when you're talking about alcohol is because amulose is like this and amulose pecs is like this.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're, when the, the fungi or the yeast are breaking down the starch, this creates a lot of different flavor profiles, then breaking down starch like this.
• 55:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It takes a little bit longer to break down, but you get a lot of different aromas that we wouldn't get from regular rice.
• 55:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um,
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for some reason our ancestors said that smells and tastes way better than regular rice.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas in Korean Japan, they're using regular rice, got there, were there, sock in, their fermentation.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But also because they didn't have as long a culture cultivating sticky rice as we did.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Daniel, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: the last maybe 15 years of my life drinking whiskey uh it's it's not that I'm embarrassed to say that like a volunteer for a um or my choice my drinks of choice but they are I like that
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other than the fact that I liked it because it was just like it was just strong and it hit me in a way that, you know, it's not subtle, but I think From now on when people ask me like, what is my wish?
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is the whiskey?
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is my go to whiskey?
• 56:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be some guy because a, the, the, the, the The connection to the my pallet on, uh, Zootenham.
• 56:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, comes it now.
• 56:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It, it's bringing me this deep connection with, it really is bringing me to Vietnam.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did I lose you?
• 56:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, you lost me for just a second.
• 56:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was saying that now for me this is bringing me to my entire life of Gumsunepp and it makes me understand the history of
• 57:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: of Vietnam's beauty in the nozzel of our grains and putting it in this flavor, putting in this bottle.
• 57:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I can I can say with confidence that this is definitely something that I that is a new favorite.
• 57:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I only get to have this one bottle and I'm like sitting here trying to figure out I'm going camping this weekend I can alone by myself kill this bottle as I'm drinking with my friends But where can we get this stuff now?
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can get in the U.S. now we're sending another shipment so we're pretty much almost sold out our first shipment in California.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the retailers that we really love is high times in Costa Mesa and Southern California for people who are listening in your area and they still have some in stock.
• 58:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We just found out yesterday.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but we're sending another shipment in another month.
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just been it's crazy.
• 58:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We reposted some Instagram videos and now we have a waiting list for this whiskey.
• 58:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's it's it's it's it's you know what's crazy.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of it's like
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think spirits for us like me really did hope that making spirits was going to be like a platform to talk about Vietnam and some of the questions that we've been getting from like non Vietnamese people about how this whiskey's made is insane.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's insane, in a good way.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: People are asking, because we talk about openly, what is by man, they're like, what the heck is by man?
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, can you go over their detail?
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: People are asking us like, what is the effective like, dry farming in a noon system as opposed to flood?
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we have, I literally, I have this in a word document, because we're trying to answer it and make videos of all these topics that people are asking.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like, people are so fascinated.
• 59:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like really inspiring to me because, you know, sometimes, like you and I grew up in a generation where we grew up in a generation where Vietnamese food was not cool yet.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember one of my friends, I remember I brought my name in Sozya to my school lunch and my friend was like, oh, I love Asian food.
• 59:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He took a bite of it and it's cool not being in a trash can dude.
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it just like,
• 59:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what really sucks?
• 59:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it ruined by name for me dude?
• 59:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was one of my favorite childhood snacks.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just watching my best friend just like this face he got.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it just like destroys you as a kid.
• 59:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: like now to see like people so curious about all the most like obscure things in Vietnamese like cuisine and even fermentation cultures like it just blows my mind you know I wish I was making that was like it's like to me it's like surreal you know to go from like in one lifetime where no one was like yeah not gonna so zing or like you know didn't know what that long was like water
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like I have Australians who are making these symbols with like, oh, now I know all the different like starches and I'm like, dude, it's like, to me it's like super humbling and I think that's kind of like what we hope to achieve with making spirits like the single grain is like, you know, there's every single spirit should reflect the place where it comes from and we think that Vietnam is super worthy beyond that national stage, you know, that global stage, you know, and so yeah, people should
• 1:00:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm not going to say how whisky's the best or anything like that, but it's more of like, we want this to be of a Vietnam Max in whiskey, you know, that's my goal.
• 1:00:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is ultimately going to be a bigger seller than gin, you know, because, is there more people to drink whiskey than gin?
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, by far, I mean, it's just a guess.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think so.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like the way that it's taking off is I hope that one day it'll overtake the, um, the gin because, you know, to be honest, like, um, it has a huge impact on the communities that we're working with.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I think, um, bigger than the gin.
• 1:01:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I would say in a different way.
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So gin allows us to work with people who are flower farmers, who are food farmers, whereas this whiskey allows us to work with rice farmers, you know, and the volume of rice that we're moving through is insane.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is not like, our single malt is like, it takes it even step further where we're actually, you know, we're hiring farmers to make malt for us.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But by the way, yes, I think this past month we've had like triple the amount of like farmers that we're working with to start to meet demand.
• 1:02:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's really good because I feel like this was the goal is like, hey, in the age of obsession of modernity in Vietnam,
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: we want to show that there's so much value in the cultural traditions, in the beautiful past and history that we have.
• 1:02:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think you and I, we have something in common where we're romantic.
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like we are romantic for the slow, beautiful, like the whole thing here history that we have.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes that is not convenient with the modernity of Vietnam.
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, where everyone's chasing these modern dreams, we need to somehow show that there is still space.
• 1:02:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: for the slow growing funky little purple rice sticky rice on the hillside.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's what I want.
• 1:02:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I want places of Vietnam and be like, you know what, like there's so much value in this, you know, and that we're so proud of this.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of like always chasing the traditional brain, you know?
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, I think that we,
• 1:03:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: the way we look at it will never get old.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that there is actually a new trend.
• 1:03:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know, it's not even new.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably the linear old tradition of when things are highly niche.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: you get in these little pockets of taste and you have to really be in the know of that bullshit of if you know you know.
• 1:03:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not even about wearing your Gucci, your armani sweater and with the logos.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is on some other level, which is signifying our appreciation in a way that's not even
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: you have to have a deep appreciation and ability to kind of like taste it, break it down, understand the history.
• 1:04:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that that ever will get old.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that that ever will go away.
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there's a new term for it in the world of food and dining.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I read it the other day, our son, Instagram clip.
• 1:04:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's called Hush Battality.
• 1:04:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have you heard of this?
• 1:04:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: No.
• 1:04:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is fucking wild.
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hush, fatality is when you walk into a place.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's no longer about caviar and like the gold, right?
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The gold, whatever sprinkles.
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is about knowing your gumsuit nap.
• 1:04:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is about knowing your single grain whiskey from some guy.
• 1:04:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: not having to be loud about that knowledge, but the hospitality of it is whatever that restaurant is serving, that restaurant understands the story of where everything is brought in from, and so the patrons that are going there,
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: aren't the highest levels.
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, it's no longer hospitality, but now it's hushed.
• 1:05:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Potality.
• 1:05:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, we don't need to talk about it.
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you know, you know, this is like an exclusive club of people that can afford that.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like a new thing.
• 1:05:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like this.
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: but it's not a new thing.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always been for the elite and for the people who are sort of like who get it, who just understand and who nerd out on the details.
• 1:05:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying like I'm one of those guys, but I certainly think that your longevity in this world will never, it's not going to die.
• 1:05:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to die because that idea of hospitality is
• 1:05:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be it's it's a thing as we as we moving to moving away from you know visual cues like Gucci and and you know a data isn't and you know that's for the masses, but this other stuff.
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to go away.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope not.
• 1:06:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I think like the more that we're going into this like nowhere maxing and modernity, it's so crazy, right?
• 1:06:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think you write, that's my hope.
• 1:06:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why I'm like still optimistic to fight this fight because I feel like there are people who appreciate that.
• 1:06:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that,
• 1:06:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: When people start to realize that this crazy modern rat race is just like degrading in a way, they always look for the slow and like the real mastery versus perceived mastery, especially when there's going to be so much AI slop, you know, going up like people are trying to look for something real and raw, you know.
• 1:06:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think about that a lot and get numb too,
• 1:06:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: this past week there's been like these investment conferences and you know there's going to be in the regions we're working with there they're proposing a new like golf course and like resort and like you know you know villas being built and then taking over these these hillsides and so what they're saying is you know in the future there will be less land to grow rice and they're already capping
• 1:07:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: expansion of rice growth.
• 1:07:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: We just find that, you know, it's moderately and we can't fight that wave, but what that means is in the future, it's going to be much harder to find nip gum.
• 1:07:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be much harder to find, you know, galzo.
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be much harder to find these treasures of the past, you know, and you, it's like what you're going to say, you're saying is right, it's like,
• 1:07:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually it's going to be like, if you know, you know, when everyone else is eating the same rice grain, you know, like chasing the same rat race dream, there will be people who are just like man.
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is a beauty in taking time to chew and digest and really ruminate on your rice.
• 1:08:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, that's a crazy thing about.
• 1:08:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: living in Vietnam's taught me is that when people really taste their rice it's insane people like slow down to chew and taste every single more soul you know what I mean and so crazy it's just opposed with like how crazy the speed of life in Vietnam is and yet people can still take the time and be like you know when we choose rice and like rice of different harvest you will taste it when you chew and that's like the juxtaposition I think we're talking about it.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I love the fact that I can slow down my day and have this conversation with you, you know.
• 1:08:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, the irony is the irony is I'm going into work with with with with an automation, you know, we're we're on the brink of bringing automation into the kitchens everywhere in the United States at the moment and it's exciting.
• 1:09:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's also like we need it all.
• 1:09:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to be able to crank out food quicker because labor shortage here and labor pricing.
• 1:09:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the really the precision of a machine to cook is important.
• 1:09:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But also to understand and slow down process and go for the taste and texture of these different things is a beautiful thing.
• 1:09:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, technology has always been around, you know, and technology is inseparable from our human experience in our journey, you know, but it's like we always, you know what else is also inseparable from the human experience is the philosophical, the metaphysical, you know, like we, we're separated from machines because we have these philosophical dilemmas that we deal with.
• 1:09:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of those is like the contradiction
• 1:09:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: modernity and losing a part of ourselves, losing a part of our history and how do we reconcile that?
• 1:09:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can both be romantic about the past and the history and tradition and all these things that we can be romantic about and art and slowing down, but then also be tied to the fast pace.
• 1:10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 1:10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think like those contradictions and those like those like dilemmas is what makes the human experience uniquely human, you know?
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the next time we talk, which is hopefully soon, we can talk about, literally what you just said, you lost me, once you said metaphysical, philosophy and metaphysics, I'm like, we can make a massive departure from this idea of alcohol and product and really talk about.
• 1:10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: metaphysical aspects of Vietnam and the culture and the philosophy and what draws you and bind you and I to this wonderful culture called the Vietnamese.
• 1:10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and what really is like the Vietnamese dilemma and like what drives us as like a philosophical culture.
• 1:11:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are so philosophical, like you look at all of our poetry, all of our literature and our music Vietnam and our artists are so philosophical, it's insane, you know.
• 1:11:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wish we had more time in the world even break down like just like just the craziness of how deep someone's like Vietnam's poetry and music is it's like yeah I want to hear from you because I don't know much about it and I want to you know sit down with you in another episode in the next few weeks and we can I want to get into it because I want to be introduced to that stuff and really you know absorb a lot of this stuff.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 100% I think that's that's something that we also need to make sure that somehow our diaspora, like we're still connected to that, you know, because it's so important to any culture to be able to have our own philosophical engagement with the world and I'm spinning on those things, you know.
• 1:12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Daniel, thank you so much once again.
• 1:12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: This has been a treat.
• 1:12:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always a treat to be able to sit down and talk to you about these wonderful aspects of Vietnamese culture and living.
• 1:12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again, man.
• 1:12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, thanks, kind of pleasure is mine.
• 1:12:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I hope you have a good day at work.
• 1:12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I hope to be talking to you soon, brother.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, same here.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
• 1:12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
• 1:12:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.