May 23, 2026
She's Won Chopped TWICE, But Can't Get Her Husband To Eat Her Award-Winning Food
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RSS Feed We had the honor of sitting down with famed Chef Kathy Fang, who grew up under the tutelage of her renowned father, Chef Peter Fang, to talk about her family’s landmark restaurants “House of Nanking” and “Fang Restaurant.” Watching her parents work 7 days a week, 365 days a year to build their legendary family business drove Chef Kathy to the success she is today: a two time “Chopped” champion and a recent James Beard nominee. After getting to personally taste her award winning culinary skills, we still don’t understand how her hubby of 10 years prefers McDonald’s and spam dishes. If you’re ever in San Francisco, you need to add Fang’s restaurants to your itinerary to experience her food for yourself!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, the folks did is Saturday, May twenty third, and we try not to fall victims to the moment or to hyperboleate, but we just had the best meal we've ever had in our lives. And with that, welcome to this episode of.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: Amy and Teacher Robes. Is you get caught in the moment it ate something good.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's the best I've ever Oh my god, I've never tasted anything, Robes. We're twelve hours removed from that meal. We're here in the Bay Area and we just met a special woman and had some special food.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: Look, there is a reason, and we can verify the reason why Chef Kathy Fang was just nominated for a twenty twenty six James Beard Award because her cooking is like none I have ever tasted before. And that's no offense to you, babe, because you are an excellent chef.
00:00:45
Speaker 2: None taken.
00:00:46
Speaker 3: But this woman can cook. And look, I'm not I'll be fully transparent here. I'm not a huge fan of Chinese food. This was the best food I have ever had. And I believe she says this is Cantonese. It's that in Shanghai, like there's a mixture of blend from three generations of family recipes. But my god, I've never known that broccoli could taste the way it tasted.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: So we're here in the Bay Area here on Behalf of iHeart taking part in the Bottle Rock Music Festival. They call it the Coachella of Napa Valley, if you will, but a great, big festival I here where we spend some time in the Bay Area and we had a chance to speak to yes Kathy Fang. Her dad is as famous as they get when it comes to Chinese cooking to culture to the Bay Area. Nan King is the name of his restaurant. He's had here forever, but he opened this one with his daughter. But we sat down with her yesterday. We're going to do this interview. She wouldn't let us leave without eating some of her food, and a lot of it is what she described to us during the interview that you're about to hear and then we ate it. So we're doing this in reverse now. We did the interview and the food was so good after the interview that we said we have to go back and re record an intro because the food was too damn good. Crispy honey chili, short red robes.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: I mean, I've never had crispy short ribs that explode in your mouth, but that is it was almost like a short rib puffball.
00:02:11
Speaker 4: That just was an experience to.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: Eat five spiced whitefish.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: It was the most it was. It melted in your mouth. Have you ever had fish melt in your mouth? This is exactly what that fish did. We want to talk about the broccoli at all. I don't even know what to say about this broccoli. It is the best broccol that I've ever eaten in my life. I don't know what she did. I don't know how she did it. There's a sauce on it I can't describe. There was a crispiness to it that I don't know how she did. I'm telling you is the best broccoli I've ever eaten in my life. I couldn't stop beating it, to the point where I made myself sick. I couldn't stop beating it good it was.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: She got gassy, it was. It was a rough night here in the hotel. Sweet but it was worth it. But it was worth saying that this is an institution. You have to check it out. But those robes, the food is one thing but oh that good has to have a story to it, and it was cool to be able to sit down and talk to her about it.
00:03:04
Speaker 4: That's right.
00:03:04
Speaker 3: This is all in the family, and we cannot wait for you to hear Chef Kathy Fang talk about growing up in the kitchen with her mom and dad, who's still to this day work seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, and all that hard work is certainly paying off. Here now is our conversation with Chef Kathy Fang.
00:03:26
Speaker 4: Thank you for being with us on the podcast.
00:03:28
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, thank you. This is a huge honor for me. This is my highlight. It's an honor for us.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: We say thank you for being here with us. Thank you for hosting us.
00:03:38
Speaker 1: You're sitting in your spot here in San Francisco as we speak.
00:03:42
Speaker 5: This is your home. You come, you relax, and now this is like a huge honor.
00:03:47
Speaker 1: So no, I have to throw this in. I fan out a little bit. I have to just take the moment. Anybody who's one chopped is way way up there for me, and you wanted twice.
00:04:00
Speaker 2: Okay, that's just for me. This just thing.
00:04:04
Speaker 1: We love love that show and we have the utmost respect for people who are able to do that on the fly.
00:04:11
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pressure there, so we respect that.
00:04:14
Speaker 5: It's a fun show. And like when I went on there, I remember stepping out and telling myself, why am I doing this? I should just stay in my restaurant, But it ended up being such an incredible experience and I won so one.
00:04:29
Speaker 3: But no, what is that like, especially knowing that you're the daughter of like you have a It's not just internal pressure. This is actually like legacy stuff. We're talking about. What is it like for you to have learned from your family this traditional style of cooking and bringing in your world travels that you bring to your cuisine into what you bring and put on the table for folks who come to your restaurants. But what is it like to feel that kind of competitive pressure? Sure, knowing your family legacy so to speak, when it comes to what you do for a living.
00:05:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like the pressure is felt from many different angles. The biggest one is really honestly from my dad, right, like being able to impress my dad, which is very difficult, very traditional Chinese dad, where like nothing impresses him. But two, I think you know when I first got started, a lot of people didn't realize that my dad, Peter, who's quite famous, actually had a daughter who knew how to cook. I think a lot of people just thought, oh, well, she's just kind of writing on her dad's coattails. You know, she's called this famous dad who can cook? The can she really cook? And sometimes people think because they have a business that they can pass down the second generation may not be the well equipped ones. It just happens that they pass it down to family. So I felt like I had to prove myself in multiple different angles, and that pressure was perfect for me because it was the ammunition for me to really want to craft my own voice, to really show people that, yes, I am an amazing chef outside of what I learned from my dad.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Right.
00:06:25
Speaker 5: I wanted to create dishes that my dad could be like, oh wow, I never thought of something like that, right, and be able to put it on a menu and I can proudly tell customers that, oh, that's my dish.
00:06:38
Speaker 3: You know.
00:06:38
Speaker 5: It would be very different if we open a restaurant and was like, oh, this is a menu that we created as a family. We have dishes like that. But I told my dad distinctively that when we do this menu, half of it has to be mine and the other half has to be yours, and we can collaborate on some But that was very important to me because if I couldn't do that, then my voice is not really being represented. And it's very easy for people to then say, oh, well, then you know this is all just like within the family.
00:07:07
Speaker 2: I'm going to jump back to what you said.
00:07:09
Speaker 1: You said traditional typical Chinese dad, nothing impresses him. When do you remember a moment even where you could tell he was starting to be impressed by you.
00:07:21
Speaker 5: It's very hard to tell because my dad is so stoic. Oh wow, yes, today, even today I had a conversation with my dad and my mother in laws in town and my dad, now my dad, my husband was saying, how now that we're raising our own kids, we have to have a little bit of Peter Fang and us because we're always complimenting our kids. He's just like, you know, we need to really challenge our kids to rise up and like be the best that they can be. And I was like, well, just look at my dad right, Like he never shows It's like poker face all day long. I think The one time that I could sense it, oddly enough, was actually when I first did the cookbook reveal. So the cookbook was my idea. I told my dad, I've been wanting to do this for a long time. He always said no, no, no, no no. If I did a book, people would just make the dishes at home and no one would come to the restaurant. It wasn't until a couple of years back where he finally gave in. You know, I think old age, realizing he's created something amazing and not having a true record of what they've created if one day this were to not exist anymore. So when he agreed, he said, I don't want to do any of the work, and I promised I would interview him, I'd write the book and that would be all he had to do. And so when I presented the book all done, which he hadn't seen, there were no drafts that he saw. I recorded it and I you know, wrote a dedication to them that I couldn't even say myself in person because it was just so emotional, and Chinese people were just not emotional in front of each other. That I recorded it because I look at my dad, so I missed the reaction. But I saw it in the video that when my dad read the dedication, he did this little thing where his head was kind of up and he just kind of did this like, you know, scratched his face that was like near his eyes, and I knew my dad was like emotion and he goes, this is a very good book. It's like it'll sell really well. He's like that was It was like he wasn't like good job or anything. It was the highest pre highest phrase. He was like, this is very well.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: Was on the edge of my seat here waiting for the moment and that's yeah.
00:09:39
Speaker 4: But you know he's just so.
00:09:42
Speaker 5: I could tell he was like, oh, there's some some moment of like maybe he will tear, but you know, he pulled it back.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: Kathy, was there a dish that you created or something that was signaturely yours that impressed your father that you knew he thought, Wow, she nailed it.
00:10:02
Speaker 5: I feel like there's actually been quite a few dishes that I've done throughout, like the last you know, this place has been around for eighteen years, and I've been creating a lot of dishes throughout. But I would have to say the one dish that is particularly memorable for me, where my dad's like, like she really really has It is a dish he fought me on. It was a dish that he did not want on the menu. Initially, it's the garlic charred broccoli. So I created this dish because I didn't want people to just eat boring garlic broccoli. You go to a Chinese restaurant, people love broccoli in the order it's in that white sauce, and I'm like, you can make that at home. So I changed it up, charted it and created a sauce that I invented. It's not like a sauce at any Chinese restaurant. Put it together, and like people just rave about it. Like people from all over the world will come and they're like, I want the broccoli. This is why I'm here. But when I made the dish, my dad looked at it and was like, Chinese people don't cook vegetables this way. If a Chinese person were to walk in here, they would walk out. The vegetables are not bright green, and they're not like crunchy and they don't pop. And I said, yeah, but like it tastes good, And my dad always said it's not about how things look. He always said, it's about how it tastes. And he's like yeah, but it's like that initial impression, like I can't get over it. And so I said, let's just put it on the menu and let's just see how people react to it. He agreed, and once he started to see people's reaction around the broccoli, he was like, Okay, there's like something to this now. And then he was like, wow, everybody comes in and orders this and he's like, okay, like she knows what she's doing, like so much so that she corrected me right. Like my dad even tried to change the recipe. He's like, why don't we keep the sauce because it's amazing, but let's poach the broccoli so it's like nice and bright, And he tried to do it while I was gone. I was like gone for a week. I came back and I was like, what happened to my broccoli? And he's like, oh, I changed. I was like, no, it's not the same, dad.
00:12:15
Speaker 4: What is that like? Though?
00:12:16
Speaker 3: Going back and forth, it's one thing to have a business partner. A lot of people we're in business with one another as romantic partners, but as a father and a daughter that dynamic. How difficult is that, especially with the Chinese father, with this authoritative person who is old school as you describe him, what's it like to kind of stand up to him and disagree with him.
00:12:41
Speaker 5: From a business standpoint, It's very difficult. I would say that I never know how to directly approach a topic without having to think about it for like weeks. I literally have to think about my tactic, my approach. It's usually never direct. It's very like I have to kind of go from the side kind of like, oh, you know, let's not directly talk about this topic. Let's talk about something else before I get to it. It's in a roundabout way. It's a very roundabout way. And then at that point my dad's kind of like, Okay, what are you really trying to tell me? But I feel like at that point he's like eased in. Right, It's not like direct because that's hard. So if I give him like three weeks of time where I'm kind of like massaging the idea in and I'm showing him that, you know, like I want his approval and his thoughts on things, but like it needs to be sort of like a discussion between the two of us. It's just a dance that like you have to continually to it is Oh, that's fascinating. But the one thing that I have to say, because it is family or even I like as a relationship, right, the thing that's most important is that, like no business decision is ever more important than the relationship. And so if it becomes something that is really jarring, then it's really not that important, right, So we just let it go, like we're like that that was not worth it, and so I'm not going to go there if it's going to cause that kind of tension. And I think I learned that because my parents work together. It's a husband and wife team at House of Nang King, And I always saw that in front of my eyes because I grew up there, that like a lot of times, it's just not worth it. So that's always the core of things.
00:14:37
Speaker 4: Did your mom give you advice at all?
00:14:40
Speaker 5: My mom actually did not give a ton of advice because my mom and my dad played very different roles. Like my dad was kind of the he was the person that would always like talk to me and lecture me about life, and he was kind of the business person. Moms more of like an operator, and so my mom was always behind the scenes, always very like supportive role for me. So anytime I had kind of a tiff with my dad, then my mom would always be in the background being like, it's okay, you know, like your dad's very tough and very difficult, but like he believes in you, and you know, whatever decision it is that you want to make, it just takes time. Because my mom's done it for so many years that it was very nice for her to kind of just play that supporting, supporting role.
00:15:43
Speaker 1: Seeing them, like you said, they were side by side, yeah, all the time, seeing them. How did that inform how you ended up eventually maybe dating, picking a partner, you married, how you love, how you parent at this point.
00:16:00
Speaker 5: But gosh, I wish I would take more of the parenting tips from my parents. But as far as who I marry and relationship wise, I think it's been like the best form of education for me. You know, my parents working in a restaurant together, very high intensity kind of job. They're always together, you would think would be very difficult, right, very difficult too, Like pretty strong characters but very different personalities and they think very differently. They've always managed to make it work because the one thing that I think is important is strong values. They have incredibly strong values and everything is centered around family. And because I grew up around that, that is something that I respect a lot, and that is something that I want to find in a partner. And you know, the partner that I ended up finding, that was the thing that drew me to him more than anything. And I feel like with that, you can almost conquer anything. So I use that as sort of the compass, and I use that on my husband. So you know, you know, like I've been with my husband for what, like I don't know, ten, twelve years, thirteen years, and there's always stuff and basically I can't remember.
00:17:21
Speaker 4: That's kind of funny.
00:17:25
Speaker 5: And you know, like I told my husband, you know, he has a really high bar. I'm like, you have a really high bar to like step up to. I was like, because my dad just does it right. And so my husband actually was like, Okay, you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna like have a monthly like chat with your dad and just get advice from him on how to do this. I'm like, great, you should ask him. I told my dad my Dad's like, I don't know what to tell him. I'm like, just be yourself.
00:17:56
Speaker 3: But I'm curious because it's so interesting having having been raised in a family business and being a part of the family business. What does your husband do and how does he fit in and what is how does that all work?
00:18:10
Speaker 5: My husband actually is in tech surprise surprise, in San Francisco, And no he is not. Uh, he doesn't have anything to do with the food business, and he should not. We joke that everything that he likes, that's like a restaurant. They always go out of business. But there's a caveat here. He does not like our food that much.
00:18:33
Speaker 4: He doesn't like your family restaurants food.
00:18:37
Speaker 5: Yes, is that controversial? Yes, that's very tell you why he does like Chinese food? Yes, Chinese food is his least favorite cuisine. How do you like that he loves Japanese food.
00:18:52
Speaker 4: He's like niese, Wow, he.
00:18:54
Speaker 5: Have Japanese and he has like the simplest palette. I always said, I need to find someone who loves food. He would prefer to just eat a pill and take care of like not having to eat food. Decisions are like the most annoying decisions and so We keep it very separate in that sense, which is good because I don't need another strong opinion. I get it plenty from my dad. I'm just like, just say this, order takeout?
00:19:22
Speaker 4: What do you order?
00:19:24
Speaker 5: Oh? He orders takeout? And he loves McDonald's. He has a dream of owning a McDonald's one day.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: He's an award winning chef. How do you feel about your husband ordering McDonald's.
00:19:40
Speaker 5: I'm actually okay with it because you know, we'll go on these Michelin dinners. He's basically like, I'll skip out on all ten courses and just give me these two, like the bread course, and then he'll go home and orders McDonald's. And I'm happy because he will at least like go with me. Right, He's like, I will go with you. I just won't eat it, Like, just don't make me eat it.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: What is the finest dining he does?
00:20:09
Speaker 5: Like? What?
00:20:10
Speaker 2: Is he actually like a nice Every once in a while, is he like a y?
00:20:13
Speaker 3: Is it?
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Okay?
00:20:14
Speaker 5: He does? He does, And he'll do a filet mignon, all right, but he will he will entertain and just come with me and just not eat. And I'm okay with it because he'll come with me. And also it's very little pressure at home, so like I don't have the pressure of having to impress him to make elaborate meals. I just have to scramble some eggs and put it on top of rice and fry up some spam like spam.
00:20:44
Speaker 4: Did you just say spam?
00:20:45
Speaker 3: Yes, I grew up on spam, but not because any of us in the family wanted to.
00:20:51
Speaker 5: It was not a choice, it was a necessity.
00:20:55
Speaker 2: Spam. Probably, Oh, he doesn't.
00:20:57
Speaker 5: Want me to make it. He wants the one out of the camp. In fact, if it's homemade, he doesn't want it.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: Well, he's got great values. Crap.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: I have to ask about your children, who do they take after your husband or you?
00:21:15
Speaker 5: It's a mix. So if we talk about food, my kids take after me, and that I feel like that's all my doing because ever since they were young, I wanted to expose them to my food and not my husband's food. And then I think personality wise, it's kind of all over the place. But my daughter, who's very feisty, definitely has a lot of me and my husband. My husband does not like authority, thus he's he's actually in cybersecurity. So it's all about like kind of breaking into things. He started as a hacker, and so my daughter is very much like not afraid of authority and just like always trying to break into things. So yes, definitely takes after my husband on that. And my son's like a little bit more in line with me. He's kind of like I would say, not emotional, but he's a lot more like stable. He's not like drama queen or anything. It's just like he's he's easy, he's easy to handle.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: He's the youngest, he's the youngest, and he's the rock of the family.
00:22:29
Speaker 5: Yes, he's very stable.
00:22:31
Speaker 1: Getting back to the restaurant here, what people say it, there are different ways you put it at the top and describing just how famous your dad is and what he built here in this area. How would you put it an institution? What what would you say? How would you describe your dad's legacy now that continues.
00:22:54
Speaker 5: Yes, we would call the restaurant an institution. I think for my dad, I would say he's an I mean, I would like call him like an icon, you know, like he really did something that people were not doing at the time, you know, like people are doing what he's doing now. Right The mister Jews, like all of those like Brandon Jew My dad was doing that in what the late eighties when like he had no marketing savvy he wasn't doing any of those things, there was no pr but he was able to create all this buzz around his food. He was doing things that were so innovative. He invented sauces, invented ways to cook things. He's not even a classically trained chef. He did it out of necessity. He did it because he needed to put food on the table and try to send me to private school and give me a better life. And I think when someone can kind of create out of those types of means without like true recognition, to me, is like a true icon, right, Like my dad doesn't want recognition. He's like out of the limelight. He like, doesn't we got this James Beard nomination and my dad's just traveling back. He's like, oh no, I'm not going to go. He's like you go right, He's like that's you. He's like, that's not me. I want to be in the background. Like those are true heroes.
00:24:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, to me, that's really cool.
00:24:23
Speaker 3: So when you come to Fang restaurant, what should someone order? Like what are the you have to order this off the menu, okay, so you have to do the garlic tried broccoli. Of course, of course.
00:24:37
Speaker 5: The Thangs buns that dish I created because you know, there was this huge momofuku like pork belly bun craze when it first came out, and I was like, we could do that, but we'll do it differently. And when that came out, people were just kind of like, oh my gosh, I've never had this before done this way. So you have to get the pork belly fun, the garlic tread broccoli, and then the white fish is one of my favorite dishes. It's a poached fish and people say, I've never had fish this tunder before, just melts in your mouth with a lovely sauce. We also do this like house fried rice that we do on a sizzling platter table side. It's very fun. And then the final dish is the Fangs crispy honey chili beef short rip. It's kind of a mouthful of a description.
00:25:27
Speaker 4: That you just that's like you just that's music to my ears.
00:25:32
Speaker 5: It's the only dish, actually, it is the most popular dish here. It's the only dish that actually has been created between my mom and my dad and myself.
00:25:42
Speaker 4: That's really cool.
00:25:43
Speaker 5: Most of the dishes are mine or my dad sometimes the collab, but this one is the only one that's been made between the three of us.
00:25:50
Speaker 4: That is very cool.
00:25:52
Speaker 2: Say the name of it one more time.
00:25:53
Speaker 5: Crispy Honey chili beef short.
00:25:56
Speaker 3: I mean, if I saw that on any menu, I'd be like, can I have two speaking to exactly what I love?
00:26:03
Speaker 1: Can I add? Just chefs these days? Just for up and coming chefs? What's what's the landscape out these days? Are there we have a lot of new talent coming up? Is it more difficult form the social media play into people being food stars these days?
00:26:18
Speaker 2: Just what does it look like for up and coming chefs these days?
00:26:21
Speaker 5: I feel like it's a very exciting time frame because but also highly competitive, right. I think there's a lot of incredibly young talented chefs now that are coming out who are not necessarily like all classically trained people, are learning in really different ways. They might not be taking the normal path, And I think that because of that, it allows for more creativity to happen, Like people can just kind of do whatever they want, and so you're going to see more exciting menus, more exciting concepts. I find it to be kind of refreshing because you know, our food, that's what it's all about, right, It's always been like doing something traditional but putting a spin on it. And San Francisco is one of the best cities for it. People love that. Everybody talks about disruption here. I want to do this different. I want to do that different, but I want to disrupt the like the tech industry, the food industry. So I think it's like very exciting to have that for like the younger crop of chefs to come up into that because there's no boundaries. You can do whatever you want.
00:27:28
Speaker 3: And you know, look, we've seen all of and you've been on plenty of all of the reality shows behind kitchens and what goes on?
00:27:37
Speaker 4: Is it as.
00:27:38
Speaker 3: Cutthroat as it's portrayed oftentimes in some of these shows where we just feel like, man, there's just there's a lot of tension. Doesn't even begin to describe what it's like behind the scenes. We're sitting in our restaurant waiting for our award winning meal, but behind the scenes, what's going on in those kitchens?
00:27:58
Speaker 5: Okay, so I feel like there's two questions in there. We'll talk about like competition wise, Yeah, I feel like it is very cutthroat, and it kind of depends on like the chefs too, right. I've done a lot of competitions, and it's a mixed bag. Sometimes you get paired with chefs who are like they have big egos, they have something to prove, and usually those are kind of the more high intensity cooking environments. And then sometimes you go in and they are chefs that are just really nice and they're there to have a good time.
00:28:31
Speaker 4: We never see those chefs.
00:28:33
Speaker 5: They're like, you know, yes it's about competition, but I'm just here to like have an experience. And those chefs, which I would have to say fewer, I've all maintained friendships with and still talked to. And then when you're talking about the restaurant environment, and I only have my family's restaurant experience, I've never worked at any other restaurant. It is very intense. I would liken it to a little bit of like the Bear kind of high intense pressure cooker. Tickets are everywhere. We're not as organized as you know, what you would see at a Michelin place where you know, I feel like they'll have classical music on and it's like an operating table. It's pristine.
00:29:21
Speaker 1: You know.
00:29:22
Speaker 5: They're like gloving up and they're going in and they're like Tweezer. It's like our place is like, where's the label you using?
00:29:28
Speaker 1: My walk?
00:29:29
Speaker 5: Oh my god, this is broken. I'm like slipping all over the floor and like spilling. It's more like that I come out, I have stuff in my hair. I'm just but I love it. That is what I grew up around. It's kind of a chaotic organized symphony. I would say it all works out well, but it is very chaotic.
00:30:00
Speaker 2: That's the worst kitchen injury you've ever gotten.
00:30:02
Speaker 5: The worst one is actually I was cooking a large soup in the walk and when I was trying to plate it, and so we're famous for really large plating. My dad loves huge plates. And there's this huge square bowl for the soup that was like slightly off the side that I was noticing. I poured the thing. The whole soup fell onto my legs at my feet and it went into my shoe and it was trapped in my shoes, so I had to take it off the burn. It burned my whole entire foot. I had to go to the er because my dad's like, that looks bad. He took me there and I like remember very clearly that the nurse was just like, we don't have bandaged large enough to like cover this blister because it instantly like blistered that my hair.
00:31:01
Speaker 4: There's go.
00:31:02
Speaker 5: My dad is just so inventive. My Dad's like, we're going to take this goss, We're gonna pull it open, We're gonna do all this stuff. And he's like, thank god I was here. The stars doesn't know.
00:31:11
Speaker 3: What he's doing.
00:31:12
Speaker 5: That was the craziest burn. I was like home for a whole week. I couldn't put on a shoe or sandal.
00:31:20
Speaker 4: How old were you when that happened?
00:31:23
Speaker 5: I was actually maybe like this was I think nine years ago, because I remember it was right before I got pregnant.
00:31:33
Speaker 2: The foot's good.
00:31:34
Speaker 5: Yes, the foot is good. There's no scar. I still have the photos though.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: Oh.
00:31:39
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm going to keep this photo because this is the gnarliest burn i've and it's on my foot. Of all, I.
00:31:48
Speaker 4: Wasn't expecting a burn in the shoe.
00:31:52
Speaker 3: That's tough and Kathy, I'm curious, Like, look, I I I cooked food because I had to for my family for a couple decades. TJ here is now the chef of our family because he truly does love cooking.
00:32:07
Speaker 4: But do you have to love.
00:32:11
Speaker 3: I asked, because how much of what you do and what you prepare and your and your creativity comes from just a love of the process of being a chef, and how much of it is necessity. I'm just for those of us who like balance that you you love it. I love it, and I and he does, and I see that, and I'm always in awe of it.
00:32:34
Speaker 4: For me, it was a duty rather than a joy.
00:32:38
Speaker 3: But what would you say, Can anybody be a good chef even if maybe their heart isn't in it? What would you suggest to people who are trying like I just feel like for so many years I tried.
00:32:51
Speaker 4: To to elevate what I was giving my family, but my heart wasn't in it.
00:32:58
Speaker 5: That's a really cool question, Actually, I've never been asked that before. I actually think that you can be a really good cook and chef even if your heart's not in it. I think people cook differently, and people are motivated by different things. To be good at something. So some people are good cooks because they like precision or they like, you know, executing something based on like a formula, and cooking can be done that way. Or maybe it's not love for the cooking, but it's love for the family. Then that becomes like transformed and you're like, Okay, I'm just going to make the best pasta for my son because he likes it, but like I don't really care about this pasta, and.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: You know, like I don't.
00:33:45
Speaker 5: Even eat this, but I'm gonna make this.
00:33:48
Speaker 3: I like baking, but there's a big difference between I feel like cooking and baking.
00:33:54
Speaker 4: I don't know if I feel the same way, but well I do.
00:33:56
Speaker 3: There's a precision and like a creativity, and I'm more about the decision and lets about the creativity. He can't tell you how he prepared this amazing meal, and I'm trying to like watch him and write it down so that it can be replicated. But I don't know, like, are you more of a precision or a creative.
00:34:14
Speaker 5: I'm a creative, which is why I cannot bake. Like if I try to bake, my husband's like, please don't because I need it and he's like, and it's not good. It's just like no, because I like to put a riff right, And he's like, you can't put a riff on a baking recipe.
00:34:31
Speaker 4: That's so true.
00:34:32
Speaker 5: He's so true, and it fails every single time.
00:34:36
Speaker 1: So okay, these last questions, we were just asking for a friend. No, this has been thank you for inviting us in. We want to stick around for dinner.
00:34:48
Speaker 2: As you were.
00:34:48
Speaker 5: Describing that, we will take care.
00:34:51
Speaker 1: She's supposed to be going to another dinner. I actually mouthed to her, we.
00:34:55
Speaker 4: Should see he say that he did.
00:34:59
Speaker 5: We will you all the best, all the best, and you can taste a little bit of everything. And if you still have that dinner, you can do second dinner too, Like you're here to eat and enjoy right now.
00:35:12
Speaker 3: And I actually am curious just for so like I've always been told. And look, New York is, that's where we call home. But it is notorious for just a massive turnover in restaurants.
00:35:23
Speaker 4: It's hard.
00:35:24
Speaker 3: I think the numbers are staggering when it comes to how many restaurants actually open up and stay open and are successful. It's rare, like truly to have a legacy like your family has created here in San Francisco. What do you attribute to the success of this restaurant? It was before social media, before people you know, had knew how to have influencers come to their restaurants and make it be what it is.
00:35:52
Speaker 4: What do you attribute your family's success to.
00:35:56
Speaker 5: I think there's a couple of reasons. The number one reason is the fact that my parents and myself we are deeply involved. We're always here, Especially my parents. I can't beat them because I have younger kids, and my kids would disown me if I was here seven days. But my parents are literally working seven days. If you can think of any restaurant where the owners and the chef are there every single day, and house of Banking is open every day out of the year. It's not close for Christmas, it's not close for Thanksgiving, it's open every single day. And that type of consistency dedication is really hard, right, that kind of devotion and sacrifice. Most people cannot do it. They're lucky enough that they can do it together. If my dad's you know, my mom wasn't working there, then he probably wouldn't be able to do it that way. But the fact that they are working together. Then they're they're together, right. That's the number one reason. And then number two is something that my dad has always taught me about business is that you always need to create a product right, something that matches the value. So you know, you have to give people good food at like the price that is equivalent of what it is. And so it's like really understanding the market and who you're serving. You could have something amazing with the wrong pricing and the wrong neighborhood. There's so many different factors. It's not really about like you failing as let's say a creator, or because the product failed and it's not good. Sometimes it's like the minor details of as simple as is this the right place to serve it? Is this the right crowd for it? Is this the right demographic?
00:37:39
Speaker 3: Like?
00:37:39
Speaker 5: And those things change over time. So being flexible and nimble and understanding all of that I think is important.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: It sounds like he needs to put together our podcast business plans. We can use some of that knowledge. Oh, it has been so cool to learn about you and your family and to be here in your restaurant. Really, thank you for taking the time spending some time here with us, and for folks who are listening, you know what, let them know where they can find the restaurant. If we know it'll be open, yes, seven days. We find it out here in San Francisco if they want to look it up.
00:38:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, A House of Banking is on Ninema and nine Kearney Street in Chinatown. Fang Restaurant is six six zero Howard Street and Soma, which is kind of like the tech hub And we're only what like ten minutes apart from each other distance wise, so if you want to like hit up both restaurants, you can do that too. I'm all about like two dinners in one night, lunch at a dinner.
00:38:37
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
00:38:39
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for coming. It's like your donner, and thank you for sharing our story with all of your listeners.
00:38:46
Speaker 4: We appreciate you.
00:38:47
Speaker 3: We hope other people are inspired because your family story is certainly inspirational.
00:38:51
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
00:38:53
Speaker 5: Thank you,
Speaker 1: Hey, the folks did is Saturday, May twenty third, and we try not to fall victims to the moment or to hyperboleate, but we just had the best meal we've ever had in our lives. And with that, welcome to this episode of.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: Amy and Teacher Robes. Is you get caught in the moment it ate something good.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's the best I've ever Oh my god, I've never tasted anything, Robes. We're twelve hours removed from that meal. We're here in the Bay Area and we just met a special woman and had some special food.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: Look, there is a reason, and we can verify the reason why Chef Kathy Fang was just nominated for a twenty twenty six James Beard Award because her cooking is like none I have ever tasted before. And that's no offense to you, babe, because you are an excellent chef.
00:00:45
Speaker 2: None taken.
00:00:46
Speaker 3: But this woman can cook. And look, I'm not I'll be fully transparent here. I'm not a huge fan of Chinese food. This was the best food I have ever had. And I believe she says this is Cantonese. It's that in Shanghai, like there's a mixture of blend from three generations of family recipes. But my god, I've never known that broccoli could taste the way it tasted.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: So we're here in the Bay Area here on Behalf of iHeart taking part in the Bottle Rock Music Festival. They call it the Coachella of Napa Valley, if you will, but a great, big festival I here where we spend some time in the Bay Area and we had a chance to speak to yes Kathy Fang. Her dad is as famous as they get when it comes to Chinese cooking to culture to the Bay Area. Nan King is the name of his restaurant. He's had here forever, but he opened this one with his daughter. But we sat down with her yesterday. We're going to do this interview. She wouldn't let us leave without eating some of her food, and a lot of it is what she described to us during the interview that you're about to hear and then we ate it. So we're doing this in reverse now. We did the interview and the food was so good after the interview that we said we have to go back and re record an intro because the food was too damn good. Crispy honey chili, short red robes.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: I mean, I've never had crispy short ribs that explode in your mouth, but that is it was almost like a short rib puffball.
00:02:11
Speaker 4: That just was an experience to.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: Eat five spiced whitefish.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: It was the most it was. It melted in your mouth. Have you ever had fish melt in your mouth? This is exactly what that fish did. We want to talk about the broccoli at all. I don't even know what to say about this broccoli. It is the best broccol that I've ever eaten in my life. I don't know what she did. I don't know how she did it. There's a sauce on it I can't describe. There was a crispiness to it that I don't know how she did. I'm telling you is the best broccoli I've ever eaten in my life. I couldn't stop beating it, to the point where I made myself sick. I couldn't stop beating it good it was.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: She got gassy, it was. It was a rough night here in the hotel. Sweet but it was worth it. But it was worth saying that this is an institution. You have to check it out. But those robes, the food is one thing but oh that good has to have a story to it, and it was cool to be able to sit down and talk to her about it.
00:03:04
Speaker 4: That's right.
00:03:04
Speaker 3: This is all in the family, and we cannot wait for you to hear Chef Kathy Fang talk about growing up in the kitchen with her mom and dad, who's still to this day work seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, and all that hard work is certainly paying off. Here now is our conversation with Chef Kathy Fang.
00:03:26
Speaker 4: Thank you for being with us on the podcast.
00:03:28
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, thank you. This is a huge honor for me. This is my highlight. It's an honor for us.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: We say thank you for being here with us. Thank you for hosting us.
00:03:38
Speaker 1: You're sitting in your spot here in San Francisco as we speak.
00:03:42
Speaker 5: This is your home. You come, you relax, and now this is like a huge honor.
00:03:47
Speaker 1: So no, I have to throw this in. I fan out a little bit. I have to just take the moment. Anybody who's one chopped is way way up there for me, and you wanted twice.
00:04:00
Speaker 2: Okay, that's just for me. This just thing.
00:04:04
Speaker 1: We love love that show and we have the utmost respect for people who are able to do that on the fly.
00:04:11
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pressure there, so we respect that.
00:04:14
Speaker 5: It's a fun show. And like when I went on there, I remember stepping out and telling myself, why am I doing this? I should just stay in my restaurant, But it ended up being such an incredible experience and I won so one.
00:04:29
Speaker 3: But no, what is that like, especially knowing that you're the daughter of like you have a It's not just internal pressure. This is actually like legacy stuff. We're talking about. What is it like for you to have learned from your family this traditional style of cooking and bringing in your world travels that you bring to your cuisine into what you bring and put on the table for folks who come to your restaurants. But what is it like to feel that kind of competitive pressure? Sure, knowing your family legacy so to speak, when it comes to what you do for a living.
00:05:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like the pressure is felt from many different angles. The biggest one is really honestly from my dad, right, like being able to impress my dad, which is very difficult, very traditional Chinese dad, where like nothing impresses him. But two, I think you know when I first got started, a lot of people didn't realize that my dad, Peter, who's quite famous, actually had a daughter who knew how to cook. I think a lot of people just thought, oh, well, she's just kind of writing on her dad's coattails. You know, she's called this famous dad who can cook? The can she really cook? And sometimes people think because they have a business that they can pass down the second generation may not be the well equipped ones. It just happens that they pass it down to family. So I felt like I had to prove myself in multiple different angles, and that pressure was perfect for me because it was the ammunition for me to really want to craft my own voice, to really show people that, yes, I am an amazing chef outside of what I learned from my dad.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Right.
00:06:25
Speaker 5: I wanted to create dishes that my dad could be like, oh wow, I never thought of something like that, right, and be able to put it on a menu and I can proudly tell customers that, oh, that's my dish.
00:06:38
Speaker 3: You know.
00:06:38
Speaker 5: It would be very different if we open a restaurant and was like, oh, this is a menu that we created as a family. We have dishes like that. But I told my dad distinctively that when we do this menu, half of it has to be mine and the other half has to be yours, and we can collaborate on some But that was very important to me because if I couldn't do that, then my voice is not really being represented. And it's very easy for people to then say, oh, well, then you know this is all just like within the family.
00:07:07
Speaker 2: I'm going to jump back to what you said.
00:07:09
Speaker 1: You said traditional typical Chinese dad, nothing impresses him. When do you remember a moment even where you could tell he was starting to be impressed by you.
00:07:21
Speaker 5: It's very hard to tell because my dad is so stoic. Oh wow, yes, today, even today I had a conversation with my dad and my mother in laws in town and my dad, now my dad, my husband was saying, how now that we're raising our own kids, we have to have a little bit of Peter Fang and us because we're always complimenting our kids. He's just like, you know, we need to really challenge our kids to rise up and like be the best that they can be. And I was like, well, just look at my dad right, Like he never shows It's like poker face all day long. I think The one time that I could sense it, oddly enough, was actually when I first did the cookbook reveal. So the cookbook was my idea. I told my dad, I've been wanting to do this for a long time. He always said no, no, no, no no. If I did a book, people would just make the dishes at home and no one would come to the restaurant. It wasn't until a couple of years back where he finally gave in. You know, I think old age, realizing he's created something amazing and not having a true record of what they've created if one day this were to not exist anymore. So when he agreed, he said, I don't want to do any of the work, and I promised I would interview him, I'd write the book and that would be all he had to do. And so when I presented the book all done, which he hadn't seen, there were no drafts that he saw. I recorded it and I you know, wrote a dedication to them that I couldn't even say myself in person because it was just so emotional, and Chinese people were just not emotional in front of each other. That I recorded it because I look at my dad, so I missed the reaction. But I saw it in the video that when my dad read the dedication, he did this little thing where his head was kind of up and he just kind of did this like, you know, scratched his face that was like near his eyes, and I knew my dad was like emotion and he goes, this is a very good book. It's like it'll sell really well. He's like that was It was like he wasn't like good job or anything. It was the highest pre highest phrase. He was like, this is very well.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: Was on the edge of my seat here waiting for the moment and that's yeah.
00:09:39
Speaker 4: But you know he's just so.
00:09:42
Speaker 5: I could tell he was like, oh, there's some some moment of like maybe he will tear, but you know, he pulled it back.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: Kathy, was there a dish that you created or something that was signaturely yours that impressed your father that you knew he thought, Wow, she nailed it.
00:10:02
Speaker 5: I feel like there's actually been quite a few dishes that I've done throughout, like the last you know, this place has been around for eighteen years, and I've been creating a lot of dishes throughout. But I would have to say the one dish that is particularly memorable for me, where my dad's like, like she really really has It is a dish he fought me on. It was a dish that he did not want on the menu. Initially, it's the garlic charred broccoli. So I created this dish because I didn't want people to just eat boring garlic broccoli. You go to a Chinese restaurant, people love broccoli in the order it's in that white sauce, and I'm like, you can make that at home. So I changed it up, charted it and created a sauce that I invented. It's not like a sauce at any Chinese restaurant. Put it together, and like people just rave about it. Like people from all over the world will come and they're like, I want the broccoli. This is why I'm here. But when I made the dish, my dad looked at it and was like, Chinese people don't cook vegetables this way. If a Chinese person were to walk in here, they would walk out. The vegetables are not bright green, and they're not like crunchy and they don't pop. And I said, yeah, but like it tastes good, And my dad always said it's not about how things look. He always said, it's about how it tastes. And he's like yeah, but it's like that initial impression, like I can't get over it. And so I said, let's just put it on the menu and let's just see how people react to it. He agreed, and once he started to see people's reaction around the broccoli, he was like, Okay, there's like something to this now. And then he was like, wow, everybody comes in and orders this and he's like, okay, like she knows what she's doing, like so much so that she corrected me right. Like my dad even tried to change the recipe. He's like, why don't we keep the sauce because it's amazing, but let's poach the broccoli so it's like nice and bright, And he tried to do it while I was gone. I was like gone for a week. I came back and I was like, what happened to my broccoli? And he's like, oh, I changed. I was like, no, it's not the same, dad.
00:12:15
Speaker 4: What is that like? Though?
00:12:16
Speaker 3: Going back and forth, it's one thing to have a business partner. A lot of people we're in business with one another as romantic partners, but as a father and a daughter that dynamic. How difficult is that, especially with the Chinese father, with this authoritative person who is old school as you describe him, what's it like to kind of stand up to him and disagree with him.
00:12:41
Speaker 5: From a business standpoint, It's very difficult. I would say that I never know how to directly approach a topic without having to think about it for like weeks. I literally have to think about my tactic, my approach. It's usually never direct. It's very like I have to kind of go from the side kind of like, oh, you know, let's not directly talk about this topic. Let's talk about something else before I get to it. It's in a roundabout way. It's a very roundabout way. And then at that point my dad's kind of like, Okay, what are you really trying to tell me? But I feel like at that point he's like eased in. Right, It's not like direct because that's hard. So if I give him like three weeks of time where I'm kind of like massaging the idea in and I'm showing him that, you know, like I want his approval and his thoughts on things, but like it needs to be sort of like a discussion between the two of us. It's just a dance that like you have to continually to it is Oh, that's fascinating. But the one thing that I have to say, because it is family or even I like as a relationship, right, the thing that's most important is that, like no business decision is ever more important than the relationship. And so if it becomes something that is really jarring, then it's really not that important, right, So we just let it go, like we're like that that was not worth it, and so I'm not going to go there if it's going to cause that kind of tension. And I think I learned that because my parents work together. It's a husband and wife team at House of Nang King, And I always saw that in front of my eyes because I grew up there, that like a lot of times, it's just not worth it. So that's always the core of things.
00:14:37
Speaker 4: Did your mom give you advice at all?
00:14:40
Speaker 5: My mom actually did not give a ton of advice because my mom and my dad played very different roles. Like my dad was kind of the he was the person that would always like talk to me and lecture me about life, and he was kind of the business person. Moms more of like an operator, and so my mom was always behind the scenes, always very like supportive role for me. So anytime I had kind of a tiff with my dad, then my mom would always be in the background being like, it's okay, you know, like your dad's very tough and very difficult, but like he believes in you, and you know, whatever decision it is that you want to make, it just takes time. Because my mom's done it for so many years that it was very nice for her to kind of just play that supporting, supporting role.
00:15:43
Speaker 1: Seeing them, like you said, they were side by side, yeah, all the time, seeing them. How did that inform how you ended up eventually maybe dating, picking a partner, you married, how you love, how you parent at this point.
00:16:00
Speaker 5: But gosh, I wish I would take more of the parenting tips from my parents. But as far as who I marry and relationship wise, I think it's been like the best form of education for me. You know, my parents working in a restaurant together, very high intensity kind of job. They're always together, you would think would be very difficult, right, very difficult too, Like pretty strong characters but very different personalities and they think very differently. They've always managed to make it work because the one thing that I think is important is strong values. They have incredibly strong values and everything is centered around family. And because I grew up around that, that is something that I respect a lot, and that is something that I want to find in a partner. And you know, the partner that I ended up finding, that was the thing that drew me to him more than anything. And I feel like with that, you can almost conquer anything. So I use that as sort of the compass, and I use that on my husband. So you know, you know, like I've been with my husband for what, like I don't know, ten, twelve years, thirteen years, and there's always stuff and basically I can't remember.
00:17:21
Speaker 4: That's kind of funny.
00:17:25
Speaker 5: And you know, like I told my husband, you know, he has a really high bar. I'm like, you have a really high bar to like step up to. I was like, because my dad just does it right. And so my husband actually was like, Okay, you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna like have a monthly like chat with your dad and just get advice from him on how to do this. I'm like, great, you should ask him. I told my dad my Dad's like, I don't know what to tell him. I'm like, just be yourself.
00:17:56
Speaker 3: But I'm curious because it's so interesting having having been raised in a family business and being a part of the family business. What does your husband do and how does he fit in and what is how does that all work?
00:18:10
Speaker 5: My husband actually is in tech surprise surprise, in San Francisco, And no he is not. Uh, he doesn't have anything to do with the food business, and he should not. We joke that everything that he likes, that's like a restaurant. They always go out of business. But there's a caveat here. He does not like our food that much.
00:18:33
Speaker 4: He doesn't like your family restaurants food.
00:18:37
Speaker 5: Yes, is that controversial? Yes, that's very tell you why he does like Chinese food? Yes, Chinese food is his least favorite cuisine. How do you like that he loves Japanese food.
00:18:52
Speaker 4: He's like niese, Wow, he.
00:18:54
Speaker 5: Have Japanese and he has like the simplest palette. I always said, I need to find someone who loves food. He would prefer to just eat a pill and take care of like not having to eat food. Decisions are like the most annoying decisions and so We keep it very separate in that sense, which is good because I don't need another strong opinion. I get it plenty from my dad. I'm just like, just say this, order takeout?
00:19:22
Speaker 4: What do you order?
00:19:24
Speaker 5: Oh? He orders takeout? And he loves McDonald's. He has a dream of owning a McDonald's one day.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: He's an award winning chef. How do you feel about your husband ordering McDonald's.
00:19:40
Speaker 5: I'm actually okay with it because you know, we'll go on these Michelin dinners. He's basically like, I'll skip out on all ten courses and just give me these two, like the bread course, and then he'll go home and orders McDonald's. And I'm happy because he will at least like go with me. Right, He's like, I will go with you. I just won't eat it, Like, just don't make me eat it.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: What is the finest dining he does?
00:20:09
Speaker 5: Like? What?
00:20:10
Speaker 2: Is he actually like a nice Every once in a while, is he like a y?
00:20:13
Speaker 3: Is it?
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Okay?
00:20:14
Speaker 5: He does? He does, And he'll do a filet mignon, all right, but he will he will entertain and just come with me and just not eat. And I'm okay with it because he'll come with me. And also it's very little pressure at home, so like I don't have the pressure of having to impress him to make elaborate meals. I just have to scramble some eggs and put it on top of rice and fry up some spam like spam.
00:20:44
Speaker 4: Did you just say spam?
00:20:45
Speaker 3: Yes, I grew up on spam, but not because any of us in the family wanted to.
00:20:51
Speaker 5: It was not a choice, it was a necessity.
00:20:55
Speaker 2: Spam. Probably, Oh, he doesn't.
00:20:57
Speaker 5: Want me to make it. He wants the one out of the camp. In fact, if it's homemade, he doesn't want it.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: Well, he's got great values. Crap.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: I have to ask about your children, who do they take after your husband or you?
00:21:15
Speaker 5: It's a mix. So if we talk about food, my kids take after me, and that I feel like that's all my doing because ever since they were young, I wanted to expose them to my food and not my husband's food. And then I think personality wise, it's kind of all over the place. But my daughter, who's very feisty, definitely has a lot of me and my husband. My husband does not like authority, thus he's he's actually in cybersecurity. So it's all about like kind of breaking into things. He started as a hacker, and so my daughter is very much like not afraid of authority and just like always trying to break into things. So yes, definitely takes after my husband on that. And my son's like a little bit more in line with me. He's kind of like I would say, not emotional, but he's a lot more like stable. He's not like drama queen or anything. It's just like he's he's easy, he's easy to handle.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: He's the youngest, he's the youngest, and he's the rock of the family.
00:22:29
Speaker 5: Yes, he's very stable.
00:22:31
Speaker 1: Getting back to the restaurant here, what people say it, there are different ways you put it at the top and describing just how famous your dad is and what he built here in this area. How would you put it an institution? What what would you say? How would you describe your dad's legacy now that continues.
00:22:54
Speaker 5: Yes, we would call the restaurant an institution. I think for my dad, I would say he's an I mean, I would like call him like an icon, you know, like he really did something that people were not doing at the time, you know, like people are doing what he's doing now. Right The mister Jews, like all of those like Brandon Jew My dad was doing that in what the late eighties when like he had no marketing savvy he wasn't doing any of those things, there was no pr but he was able to create all this buzz around his food. He was doing things that were so innovative. He invented sauces, invented ways to cook things. He's not even a classically trained chef. He did it out of necessity. He did it because he needed to put food on the table and try to send me to private school and give me a better life. And I think when someone can kind of create out of those types of means without like true recognition, to me, is like a true icon, right, Like my dad doesn't want recognition. He's like out of the limelight. He like, doesn't we got this James Beard nomination and my dad's just traveling back. He's like, oh no, I'm not going to go. He's like you go right, He's like that's you. He's like, that's not me. I want to be in the background. Like those are true heroes.
00:24:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, to me, that's really cool.
00:24:23
Speaker 3: So when you come to Fang restaurant, what should someone order? Like what are the you have to order this off the menu, okay, so you have to do the garlic tried broccoli. Of course, of course.
00:24:37
Speaker 5: The Thangs buns that dish I created because you know, there was this huge momofuku like pork belly bun craze when it first came out, and I was like, we could do that, but we'll do it differently. And when that came out, people were just kind of like, oh my gosh, I've never had this before done this way. So you have to get the pork belly fun, the garlic tread broccoli, and then the white fish is one of my favorite dishes. It's a poached fish and people say, I've never had fish this tunder before, just melts in your mouth with a lovely sauce. We also do this like house fried rice that we do on a sizzling platter table side. It's very fun. And then the final dish is the Fangs crispy honey chili beef short rip. It's kind of a mouthful of a description.
00:25:27
Speaker 4: That you just that's like you just that's music to my ears.
00:25:32
Speaker 5: It's the only dish, actually, it is the most popular dish here. It's the only dish that actually has been created between my mom and my dad and myself.
00:25:42
Speaker 4: That's really cool.
00:25:43
Speaker 5: Most of the dishes are mine or my dad sometimes the collab, but this one is the only one that's been made between the three of us.
00:25:50
Speaker 4: That is very cool.
00:25:52
Speaker 2: Say the name of it one more time.
00:25:53
Speaker 5: Crispy Honey chili beef short.
00:25:56
Speaker 3: I mean, if I saw that on any menu, I'd be like, can I have two speaking to exactly what I love?
00:26:03
Speaker 1: Can I add? Just chefs these days? Just for up and coming chefs? What's what's the landscape out these days? Are there we have a lot of new talent coming up? Is it more difficult form the social media play into people being food stars these days?
00:26:18
Speaker 2: Just what does it look like for up and coming chefs these days?
00:26:21
Speaker 5: I feel like it's a very exciting time frame because but also highly competitive, right. I think there's a lot of incredibly young talented chefs now that are coming out who are not necessarily like all classically trained people, are learning in really different ways. They might not be taking the normal path, And I think that because of that, it allows for more creativity to happen, Like people can just kind of do whatever they want, and so you're going to see more exciting menus, more exciting concepts. I find it to be kind of refreshing because you know, our food, that's what it's all about, right, It's always been like doing something traditional but putting a spin on it. And San Francisco is one of the best cities for it. People love that. Everybody talks about disruption here. I want to do this different. I want to do that different, but I want to disrupt the like the tech industry, the food industry. So I think it's like very exciting to have that for like the younger crop of chefs to come up into that because there's no boundaries. You can do whatever you want.
00:27:28
Speaker 3: And you know, look, we've seen all of and you've been on plenty of all of the reality shows behind kitchens and what goes on?
00:27:37
Speaker 4: Is it as.
00:27:38
Speaker 3: Cutthroat as it's portrayed oftentimes in some of these shows where we just feel like, man, there's just there's a lot of tension. Doesn't even begin to describe what it's like behind the scenes. We're sitting in our restaurant waiting for our award winning meal, but behind the scenes, what's going on in those kitchens?
00:27:58
Speaker 5: Okay, so I feel like there's two questions in there. We'll talk about like competition wise, Yeah, I feel like it is very cutthroat, and it kind of depends on like the chefs too, right. I've done a lot of competitions, and it's a mixed bag. Sometimes you get paired with chefs who are like they have big egos, they have something to prove, and usually those are kind of the more high intensity cooking environments. And then sometimes you go in and they are chefs that are just really nice and they're there to have a good time.
00:28:31
Speaker 4: We never see those chefs.
00:28:33
Speaker 5: They're like, you know, yes it's about competition, but I'm just here to like have an experience. And those chefs, which I would have to say fewer, I've all maintained friendships with and still talked to. And then when you're talking about the restaurant environment, and I only have my family's restaurant experience, I've never worked at any other restaurant. It is very intense. I would liken it to a little bit of like the Bear kind of high intense pressure cooker. Tickets are everywhere. We're not as organized as you know, what you would see at a Michelin place where you know, I feel like they'll have classical music on and it's like an operating table. It's pristine.
00:29:21
Speaker 1: You know.
00:29:22
Speaker 5: They're like gloving up and they're going in and they're like Tweezer. It's like our place is like, where's the label you using?
00:29:28
Speaker 1: My walk?
00:29:29
Speaker 5: Oh my god, this is broken. I'm like slipping all over the floor and like spilling. It's more like that I come out, I have stuff in my hair. I'm just but I love it. That is what I grew up around. It's kind of a chaotic organized symphony. I would say it all works out well, but it is very chaotic.
00:30:00
Speaker 2: That's the worst kitchen injury you've ever gotten.
00:30:02
Speaker 5: The worst one is actually I was cooking a large soup in the walk and when I was trying to plate it, and so we're famous for really large plating. My dad loves huge plates. And there's this huge square bowl for the soup that was like slightly off the side that I was noticing. I poured the thing. The whole soup fell onto my legs at my feet and it went into my shoe and it was trapped in my shoes, so I had to take it off the burn. It burned my whole entire foot. I had to go to the er because my dad's like, that looks bad. He took me there and I like remember very clearly that the nurse was just like, we don't have bandaged large enough to like cover this blister because it instantly like blistered that my hair.
00:31:01
Speaker 4: There's go.
00:31:02
Speaker 5: My dad is just so inventive. My Dad's like, we're going to take this goss, We're gonna pull it open, We're gonna do all this stuff. And he's like, thank god I was here. The stars doesn't know.
00:31:11
Speaker 3: What he's doing.
00:31:12
Speaker 5: That was the craziest burn. I was like home for a whole week. I couldn't put on a shoe or sandal.
00:31:20
Speaker 4: How old were you when that happened?
00:31:23
Speaker 5: I was actually maybe like this was I think nine years ago, because I remember it was right before I got pregnant.
00:31:33
Speaker 2: The foot's good.
00:31:34
Speaker 5: Yes, the foot is good. There's no scar. I still have the photos though.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: Oh.
00:31:39
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm going to keep this photo because this is the gnarliest burn i've and it's on my foot. Of all, I.
00:31:48
Speaker 4: Wasn't expecting a burn in the shoe.
00:31:52
Speaker 3: That's tough and Kathy, I'm curious, Like, look, I I I cooked food because I had to for my family for a couple decades. TJ here is now the chef of our family because he truly does love cooking.
00:32:07
Speaker 4: But do you have to love.
00:32:11
Speaker 3: I asked, because how much of what you do and what you prepare and your and your creativity comes from just a love of the process of being a chef, and how much of it is necessity. I'm just for those of us who like balance that you you love it. I love it, and I and he does, and I see that, and I'm always in awe of it.
00:32:34
Speaker 4: For me, it was a duty rather than a joy.
00:32:38
Speaker 3: But what would you say, Can anybody be a good chef even if maybe their heart isn't in it? What would you suggest to people who are trying like I just feel like for so many years I tried.
00:32:51
Speaker 4: To to elevate what I was giving my family, but my heart wasn't in it.
00:32:58
Speaker 5: That's a really cool question, Actually, I've never been asked that before. I actually think that you can be a really good cook and chef even if your heart's not in it. I think people cook differently, and people are motivated by different things. To be good at something. So some people are good cooks because they like precision or they like, you know, executing something based on like a formula, and cooking can be done that way. Or maybe it's not love for the cooking, but it's love for the family. Then that becomes like transformed and you're like, Okay, I'm just going to make the best pasta for my son because he likes it, but like I don't really care about this pasta, and.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: You know, like I don't.
00:33:45
Speaker 5: Even eat this, but I'm gonna make this.
00:33:48
Speaker 3: I like baking, but there's a big difference between I feel like cooking and baking.
00:33:54
Speaker 4: I don't know if I feel the same way, but well I do.
00:33:56
Speaker 3: There's a precision and like a creativity, and I'm more about the decision and lets about the creativity. He can't tell you how he prepared this amazing meal, and I'm trying to like watch him and write it down so that it can be replicated. But I don't know, like, are you more of a precision or a creative.
00:34:14
Speaker 5: I'm a creative, which is why I cannot bake. Like if I try to bake, my husband's like, please don't because I need it and he's like, and it's not good. It's just like no, because I like to put a riff right, And he's like, you can't put a riff on a baking recipe.
00:34:31
Speaker 4: That's so true.
00:34:32
Speaker 5: He's so true, and it fails every single time.
00:34:36
Speaker 1: So okay, these last questions, we were just asking for a friend. No, this has been thank you for inviting us in. We want to stick around for dinner.
00:34:48
Speaker 2: As you were.
00:34:48
Speaker 5: Describing that, we will take care.
00:34:51
Speaker 1: She's supposed to be going to another dinner. I actually mouthed to her, we.
00:34:55
Speaker 4: Should see he say that he did.
00:34:59
Speaker 5: We will you all the best, all the best, and you can taste a little bit of everything. And if you still have that dinner, you can do second dinner too, Like you're here to eat and enjoy right now.
00:35:12
Speaker 3: And I actually am curious just for so like I've always been told. And look, New York is, that's where we call home. But it is notorious for just a massive turnover in restaurants.
00:35:23
Speaker 4: It's hard.
00:35:24
Speaker 3: I think the numbers are staggering when it comes to how many restaurants actually open up and stay open and are successful. It's rare, like truly to have a legacy like your family has created here in San Francisco. What do you attribute to the success of this restaurant? It was before social media, before people you know, had knew how to have influencers come to their restaurants and make it be what it is.
00:35:52
Speaker 4: What do you attribute your family's success to.
00:35:56
Speaker 5: I think there's a couple of reasons. The number one reason is the fact that my parents and myself we are deeply involved. We're always here, Especially my parents. I can't beat them because I have younger kids, and my kids would disown me if I was here seven days. But my parents are literally working seven days. If you can think of any restaurant where the owners and the chef are there every single day, and house of Banking is open every day out of the year. It's not close for Christmas, it's not close for Thanksgiving, it's open every single day. And that type of consistency dedication is really hard, right, that kind of devotion and sacrifice. Most people cannot do it. They're lucky enough that they can do it together. If my dad's you know, my mom wasn't working there, then he probably wouldn't be able to do it that way. But the fact that they are working together. Then they're they're together, right. That's the number one reason. And then number two is something that my dad has always taught me about business is that you always need to create a product right, something that matches the value. So you know, you have to give people good food at like the price that is equivalent of what it is. And so it's like really understanding the market and who you're serving. You could have something amazing with the wrong pricing and the wrong neighborhood. There's so many different factors. It's not really about like you failing as let's say a creator, or because the product failed and it's not good. Sometimes it's like the minor details of as simple as is this the right place to serve it? Is this the right crowd for it? Is this the right demographic?
00:37:39
Speaker 3: Like?
00:37:39
Speaker 5: And those things change over time. So being flexible and nimble and understanding all of that I think is important.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: It sounds like he needs to put together our podcast business plans. We can use some of that knowledge. Oh, it has been so cool to learn about you and your family and to be here in your restaurant. Really, thank you for taking the time spending some time here with us, and for folks who are listening, you know what, let them know where they can find the restaurant. If we know it'll be open, yes, seven days. We find it out here in San Francisco if they want to look it up.
00:38:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, A House of Banking is on Ninema and nine Kearney Street in Chinatown. Fang Restaurant is six six zero Howard Street and Soma, which is kind of like the tech hub And we're only what like ten minutes apart from each other distance wise, so if you want to like hit up both restaurants, you can do that too. I'm all about like two dinners in one night, lunch at a dinner.
00:38:37
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
00:38:39
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for coming. It's like your donner, and thank you for sharing our story with all of your listeners.
00:38:46
Speaker 4: We appreciate you.
00:38:47
Speaker 3: We hope other people are inspired because your family story is certainly inspirational.
00:38:51
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
00:38:53
Speaker 5: Thank you,