♪♪
We should have got a map to where the seat starts.
The king of maps.
Do you guys have the map to One-Eyed Willy's treasure?
No.
♪♪
What is this, just like, a...scene about steps?
We couldn't have just shot this shit at a restaurant?
Tell me we're not gonna meet this kid at the top of the stairs and eat bread.
Oh, I was gonna be so mad if this scene was just me
and this kid eating bread at the top of these stairs.
I'm sure it's good, though.
So you see Cusco, known for its Cocker Spaniels.
It's cool, but let me tell you something... Buy the poster.
♪ Y'all in the wrong world ♪
♪ So look here, man ♪
♪ Welcome to "Huang's World" ♪
♪ World traveler ♪
♪ The food, whoo, good and delicious ♪
♪ Shanghai, Moscow, check out the pictures ♪
♪ L.A., New York, M-I-A, oh, London ♪
♪ The schedule's vicious ♪
♪ Welcome to "Huang's World"! ♪
If you've read any shitty food blogs or shitty food magazines,
you've probably heard of a Peruvian fusion
restaurant in your neighborhood with some acclaimed chef
cooking things derivative of Peru.
♪ Uno, dos, tres ♪
But instead of taking you to those restaurants and showing you that shitty food,
we've decided to take you to the source.
What's good, base fobs.
We are in Lima, Peru.
I've lost my bags, but I've been finessed with the Inca Kola t-shirt of life,
so we're ready for this scene.
We're gonna do something I don't think we've ever done before.
We're gonna do an entire act with fire, fine-dining-style restaurants
because a lot of countries we go to, the fine-dining restaurants is very like,
you know, selling you ambiance,
but in Peru, their number-one cultural export is food.
Their food captures the biodiversity of the land,
the geographical diversity from the coast to the Amazon,
to the Andes and also the multicultural diversity.
So we're gonna start here at Chez Wong.
Oh, you can't come, Benji.
Fresh, no smell.
Lime juice.
This is one of the most famous restaurants in Lima.
It's not necessarily about the ambiance, the architecture or the design.
It is about the food. There's no menu.
Every day, the dishes change, but it's always flounder and it's always octopus.
The key to being a master chef is footwear.
How was it that you came to love cooking?
Number one!
My only goal in this scene is to remake this photograph.
This is tiradito.
Looks like it's got walnuts.
Everything's balanced.
You get the crunch from the walnuts, earthiness from them as well.
A little, little, little bit of pepper gives it a little bite.
Black pepper grounds it.
The acid brings it up, and then you're just tasting the essence of the fish.
This is a real masterful combination of, like, Chinese and Peruvian cooking.
This is awesome, the best dish.
Thank you.
Oh, Benji, you're still here.
♪♪
Continuing our food tour, we are now going to our second restaurant, Amaz.
This restaurant is very high-end and fancy and uses ingredients from the Amazon
and tries to educate and teach people about all the fire foods
that are in the Amazon.
Hola. Hola. Hello.
I'm Eddie. Nice to meet you.
Snails.
- Okay. River snails. - River snails.
Oh, tapioca.
Wild culantro.
So in here, he's already cooked these snails for 9 hours in boiling water,
and then they took out the snails, and they're stir-frying it with tapioca,
culantro, cumin, salt, and a little bit of pepper.
Now, they've taken the snails, put it back in his shell, and they serve you.
In a order, you get four of these.
Every time I eat Peruvian food, there's certain elements that are familiar,
like the tapioca that I've had in Cantonese desserts with taro,
the snails that you get in French cooking,
the depth of flavor that you may have in a beef bourguignon.
But then the cumin hits you. Then the culantro hits you.
And Peruvian food takes things from so many places and so many influences
and then also in its own backyard in the Amazon, that every single bite is familiar
and different all in the same.
IncreÃ­ble.
Good fried rice.
Gracias.
Doug wants some fried rice.
You've got to squat while you eat it.
- Yeah. - This is pretty good posture.
So a lot of people think that the Asian squat is a racial thing,
but look at my man, Doug.
Perfect Asian squat.
Not only does this man look like a husky Christian Bale, but look at the heels...
flat on the floor, perfect form, hand ready for a bowl of rice.
Do you mind handing me a bowl of rice, Doug?
- Sure. - Ah. See?
I'll hand you that bowl of rice right back.
There you go.
White people can do Asian things.
♪♪
Osso... carniceria, salumeria, artisanal.
We just hear... we heard you have the best meat in Peru.
We have some meat.
We'll let you try it, and you let us know.
I mean, I know good meat.
When we started dry-aging, I wanted to do it for 20 to 30 days.
- Yeah. - But nobody would buy it.
So we started... They didn't like the flavor like that or what?
No. They didn't understand what dry-age was, so... Oh.
We had those there and people looked at them, and they look old. - They look moldy.
You know, so they don't want to buy it.
- Yeah. - So after, like, 90 days being opened as a shop,
we started having a lot of 90 days dry-aged beef.
And with dry-age, and what you're gonna see now is,
when you go extreme with it... Yeah.
You know, over 200 to 250 days, it starts getting some crazy,
funky flavors... - Yeah.
Like really, really nice.
Yeah, mushrooms and nuts, and things like that.
You want to eat something?
- Yeah. Let's eat. Let's eat. - Come on.
Chefs are really, like, celebrities in Peru, though, huh?
More than celebrities.
Peruvians became obsessed with food because it was the first reason
we had in many, many years, you know, to be proud.
We had a horrible economy.
We had a horrible problem with terrorism.
- Yeah. - We were lacking an identity.
We're horrible in sports.
And when people started coming and recognizing Peruvian food as something great,
everybody was proud to be Peruvian again.
Got it.
So these started the aging process in 9/11/2015.
One-year aged, it doesn't feel like beef anymore.
It's like tuna. It's custard-y, and you can feel the little fibers
just give like a hard custard.
It's not like beef where you're tearing.
The fibers have all broken down.
- Yeah. - Respect.
Thank you. Let's go inside.
- Yeah. - Do you want to take a look?
Oh, wow.
Oh, we got to do the "Rocky" shit. Ready?
- What's up? - Oh, look at his thumb.
Number one. Give him number one.
- Finger. - No, no. No, finger.
Yo, yo, yo, he did it.
He got it. He got it.
He did it.
♪♪
Yo, so we about to meet the homey, Diego Oka.
Diego was kind of like a young superstar in Peru.
When he was 18 years old, he was at, like, a grocery store, and ran into his idol,
like the "Jesus Christ Superstar" chef of Lima, Gaston.
And he asked Gaston for a job as a chef,
and ever since then, he's become Gaston's right-hand man.
And Diego is third-generation Japanese and Peru,
so he's gonna introduce to us a lot of the diverse influences
in Peru from Criolla cuisine, Japanese cuisine, to Chifa Chinese cuisine.
Hey. - Hey.
What's up, Diego? How's it going? How are you?
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
This is the house of Elena Izquierdo, I think the most representative cook in Peru,
and she's gonna show us how to cook two very traditional dishes
from the African influence here in Peru.
- Hi. I'm Eddie. - Hi.
- Nice to meet you. - Elena, Eddie.
Nice to meet you too. Definitely.
- SÃ­. - Smells good.
So, Afro-Chino Peruvian food.
- Yeah. Uh-huh. - Very cool.
Yeah.
So this is basil, oil and water.
- Uh-huh. - Yes.
Then she's gonna use the yellow chili paste.
- Okay. - But that chili paste is from a dry yellow pepper.
It's called aji mirasol.
Here in Peru, we take out the spiciness from the chili,
and we keep the flavor of the chili, no?
Yeah. That's smart.
Do you see the way she's making her pasta?
She's slowly cooking it and pushing it down as it softens.
- SÃ­. - Uh-huh.
She's gonna add the chicken, the shredded chicken.
Yep. This looks awesome.
- Wow. - It's delicious, no?
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
Now we're going to look at carapulcra.
Okay.
You know, Peru, we have 3,000 types of potatoes.
- Oh, wow. - Yeah.
Yeah, no. I didn't know that. Crazy.
We eat potatoes almost every day.
Irish people are very jealous of Peru.
What's very interesting that she's done is she's dissected every ingredient,
and she's bringing everything back together again in a pot like one community.
And this is called mancha pecho.
- Oh, Machu Picchu. - No.
Machu Picchu, no. Mancha pecho.
- I love it. - Mancha pecho.
Because we have little corner... Oh, it stains the pasta, yeah.
No, it stains your... - Oh, stains you.
Oh, like Mom's spaghetti.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Mom's spaghetti.
She learned with her mom and grandmom.
That's her school, you know.
The cumin, you know, reminds you of Mexican food and the way that it's stewed,
and then kind of like the slow-cooking and the way she's fried the pork belly,
then made the stock with the pork, reminds you of Chinese cooking.
But then adding the basil and then adding the potato and then the pepper paste,
it's, like, clearly Peruvian.
And her mother is a godmother of, like, Peruvian cuisine, huh?
"Mama de la Cocina Peruana."
- Oh. - Yeah.
Mother of the Peruvian kitchen.
Yes.
You like it? - So good.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. It's really cool.
First Peruvian home-cooked meal.
Well, you got the best one.
Yeah. I'm spoiled now.
This is el centro de Lima.
This is downtown, a very popular neighborhood.
And right now, we are going to the first Peruvian-Japanese Nikkei restaurant,
opened here in Lima in 1959. Nice.
The first Japanese came here to work in the farms industry.
- Yeah. - Japanese people have a lot of experience working in the rice fields.
- Yeah. - So when Japan was in a crisis, there was an opportunity here
in Peru to work in the farms, so that's why so many Japanese came here.
You know, you're very proud to be Peruvian,
but did you ever worry that you would lose your, like, Japanese heritage and stuff?
- I'm proud to be Japanese... - Yeah.
Descendant, for sure, but I'm Peruvian.
What is coming?
This is a tamale. - Oh, wow.
Tamale with seafood inside.
It's got some pork in here.
Oh, wow.
This is incredible because they have the fish steamed with the banana leaf flavor
and then all the shellfish on top.
Mm-hmm.
This is unlike any food I've ever had, though.
- Yeah? - It's, like, you can tell some of it's Japanese
and some of it's Latin American, but together it's just, like, future food.
Mm-hmm.
So, we shut it down in there, and now we're going to have Chifa food.
- Chifa. - Number one.
We had to get some cardio before our final meal, our third meal in five hours.
Yeah, Diego.
Why do you think Chifa food is so popular here?
Like, Chinese culture, you share, right?
In Peruvian culture, also we do that.
- This is Peru's favorite soda. - Yeah.
We said it match with everything.
- Yep. - The best pairing.
Inca Kola with ceviche.
Inca Kola with Chinese food.
Inca Kola with everything, no?
- Cheers. - Cheers.
Describe the taste.
It's like the green gummy bear mixed with the pineapple gummy bear.
It tastes like green apple and pineapple.
I think it's the first time I heard that description.
- What's it made of? - Lemongrass.
Oh.
Yeah.
Make it Inca Kola time.
Can you give him a Roger Moore, like, you know, Roger Moore.
Yeah. No, more, more Sinatra.
Sinatra. - Sinatra?
I don't get it.
You've never seen his scene from "Lost in Translation"?
It's the Japanese guy telling Bill Murray, "Uh.
Uh, can you do more Roger Moore, like Roger Moore."
But he was just like you.
He was like, "It doesn't make sense."
Hello. This is hag gow.
Do you have chopsticks. - Chopsticks.
Let's try.
No offense, I thought this was gonna be shitty.
This is really good.
In Peru, it's always Inca Kola time.
I don't have anything positive to tell you
besides the fact that humans were given a gift as beautiful as the rainforest,
and piece-by-piece, we're ruining it.
♪ Uno, dos, tres ♪
♪♪
So we're on the MaraÃ±on River right now, going from Malta to Puerto Prado,
and this entire region has contaminated water
mainly because of deforestation from logging and also oil spills from Petroperu.
So this is a DEFCON 5... tap water, poo-poo-pants situation.
We're about to meet Ema, the first female president of the entire region,
and she's actually taking the initiative also
to turn this area into a conservation center.
What's up?
Me llamo Eddie.
Okay.
I heard that one of the first things
you did was turn this into a conservation area.
What's that mean?
Are other groups, other people in the community,
still in favor of chopping down the trees and logging?
Muy bueno.
So she's gonna make us a patarashca fish.
They wrap the fish in a palm leaf, and it looks like they put it on fire,
but then it's cooked by the charring of the leaf as well as the steaming.
The thing with this patarashca dish that I find really interesting
is that it's utilitarian cooking.
It comes from an inexperience in certain environments,
and when nature gives you banana leaves or taro leaves or palm leaves,
this just makes sense.
And you saw techniques like this at Alma's
where they took a chicken leg, wrapped it with rice,
then wrapped it with the leaves, and then boiled it.
This salsa is the same salsa we had in the kitchen at Alma's,
but this actually has a lot more flavor than it did at Alma's.
Alma's, it's cooking the food in a way
that foreigners to this food won't be intimidated, and it'll open their eyes.
It'll educate them, and hopefully one day,
encourage them to actually meet the plug.
She's the plug.
So there's not really a solution for the water contamination issue here yet.
Usually, on this show, I try to give you hope,
and most places we go, there's something that can be done,
but I don't have anything positive to tell you besides the fact
that humans were given a gift as beautiful as the rainforest,
and piece-by-piece, we're ruining it.
I hope Ema runs for, like, President in America, 2020.
She has more vision than pretty much everyone that ran in America.
What's up, guys? What are you doing?
Is that your pet duck?
What's the duck's name?
They must know they're gonna eat the duck because they didn't name it.
You're gonna eat it.
Gisela? Very cool.
We met her husband. Yeah, Tom.
Nice guy.
I have an ulcer?
♪♪
As we've gone deeper into this country and come to Iquitos and seen the Amazon,
you start to understand the source of all that creativity
that's going on in Lima's kitchens.
The power of the Amazon is undeniable.
So we're gonna meet Josias, who is a indigenous man from this area
and a real survival dude.
So he's gonna teach us how to catch piranhas.
So is it hard to catch piranhas?
- It's not that hard, man... - No?
As long as we have some good spot. Yeah.
We're gonna go upriver now.
Were you born and raised in Iquitos?
No. I born in a small tributary, like, south of Iquitos.
What was it like growing up in the Amazon?
Growing up is pretty wild, but going upriver, fishing and have a chance
to see all kinds of wildlife like monkeys, birds, you know,
even fighting with snakes.
I love to catch snakes and play with them.
Yeah. So you lived, like, the real-life "Jungle Book" basically. - Real, yeah.
Did you ever get bored in the Amazon?
Never. There is no chance to get bored here.
There is a lot of things that you could be doing.
This looks like a good spot.
Okay.
Treating them to some flank steak.
This piranha's last meal is gonna be nice.
This is when you're gonna see the Orlando come out in me, some real Florida shit.
Oh, look at that.
Oh.
Yeah. They ate my bait.
- The current took me into... - Yeah.
I got some. It's a piranha.
- Oh, wow. - Look at it.
Goddamn. Look at it.
That's what basically the result.
The Black Piranha.
Oh, look, he's biting. Can you hear that?
- Caught one. - Got one?
Good job, mate. Good job.
Slowly, slowly. - Oh.
Congratulations.
My first piranha. Success, Dave.
We have 30 minutes until we have to go to the hotel.
Shut up.
Front-page news... Panda catches piranha.
Oh, he's gutting the piranha. - We're ready to eat.
Fire and bread, piranha, for lunch.
Let's cut some grass to make us a table.
That's why it's important... the machete.
- We have a grill. - This will go like this.
You could survive anywhere, I think.
- I'm trying, man. - Yeah.
How often do you eat piranha?
- It was, like, once a week. - Oh, yeah?
So this is, like, Ovengold turkey breast.
- Pretty much. - It's a basic food.
- Yeah. - Look at this.
- Wow. - It's hot.
It's hot.
Mmm.
Taste that. - Delicious.
The meat is actually a little bit like the meat on a flounder closest to the bone.
- Yeah. - It's, like, fine and fleshy.
You're right. Yep.
Bucket list food item... Amazonian piranha.
- Great. - Gracias.
- We made it. - We made it.
♪♪
Either she doesn't like this brand, or she's cooking something. Oh, or it's ice.
So we're going to the Belen Market because, right now,
a lot of our antibiotics and synthetic chemicals
that people have been using to treat disease and ailments in the western world
are reaching the end of its utility.
There are supergerms and superbacteria that's developed offenses over the years.
And one thing that scientists are looking towards
are ethnobotanist's plant medicine because plants have been fighting
bacteria themselves to survive for over 400 million years, so Otilia's gonna show us
some of the things she knows.
How long have you been studying plant medicine?
Oh, there's an armadillo.
The wild culantro that they were using at Alma's is here, too.
The roots are for the IBS gang?
Do you want to see the IBS handshake?
It's elbow... because you wipe your butt with your hand.
My issues is digestion, immunity defense and allergy.
Okay.
I got real problems.
Panda. Panda kid.
All right. We have all the ingredients we need?
So we're just walking to Otilia's crib.
Nice, leisurely 30-minute walk from the road.
I wonder how she Ubers. This is so far.
I feel like we've walked 100 Amazonian blocks.
Buenos tardes. - Buenos tardes, seÃ±or.
Gonna get diagnosed.
Toilet paper?
The TP treatment.
I feel like I'm doing ecstasy, rubbing Vapo all over myself.
I have an ulcer?
This was supposed to be a one hour docu-comedy, but I think it became a drama.
That's why I taught you the IBS handshake before, remember?
Usually I'm eating rice when I do this.
So the challenge now is, how are we going to become an industrialized country,
and at the same time, protecting our biggest legacy,
which is the tropical rainforest?
Here in the Andes, nature dictates cuisine
just like it has everywhere else we've been in Peru.
Mother... So I'm still out of breath.
We're about to meet the most interesting Andes man in the world, Cesar.
How's it going? - Good.
- Nice to meet you. - Same.
Yeah. Tell us your background.
Well, I was born in Lima, my mother's Jamaican,
and my father is Peruvian, Irish and Spanish.
And now you consult on environmental issues in Peru?
Yeah. The first and most important concern is that Peru is a natural-resource
extractive country.
So the challenge now is, how are we going to become an industrialized country,
and at the same time, protecting our biggest legacy,
which is the tropical rainforest?
- Yeah. - 70% of the country is tropical rainforest. - Yeah.
So we are a very difficult country because we have coast,
mountains, jungle, and 47 different dialects.
It really feels like there needs to be a case-by-case approach
to each resource being extracted out of Peru,
the communities being involved, and then pricing.
There is a major challenge because Peru recently has a Ministry of the Environment.
That ministry, like the EPA in the United States,
is trying to regulate extractive operations, and at the same time, regulating
and keeping an eye and enforcing "standards."
If you were not following environmental standards, we will have social conflicts
because local communities feel they're not being considered.
If these sources disappear, my whole modus operandi of 100 years
or 20 years will disappear.
Yeah. It seems like, with Peru, because of all the different communities,
you have to look at the pieces and figure it out.
But in a way, if Peru can figure it out, it becomes a model for a lot
of the other countries in the world.
There's an NGO called AMPA, AmazÃ³nicos por la AmazonÃ­a,
and what they're doing is bringing in famous chefs to develop regional dishes
incorporating jungle products and, in a sense,
offering the local communities an opportunity to keep those trees standing.
Once we have these dishes and promote conservation towards gastronomy,
we might have the industrialized country that we're talking about.
So we're gonna go to the sacred valley, to a friend's house.
He is an awesome cook and chef.
He has a restaurant here in Cusco as well, and he's gonna cook us an amazing meal.
Your jaw's gonna drop, okay?
We see these ovens all around the Andes.
It's the typical oven made of adobe.
He has to heat it four hours before.
Oh, okay.
Oh, so you heat it four hours before, get it hot, hot, then put it in?
That makes sense.
His only thing was heat, no, no fire.
Yeah.
Peruvian black mint.
Alpaca lomo saltado.
- Alpaca lomo saltado. - Yes.
He's basically created his own wok station next to his big oven.
Yeah.
It's because people live together, and then it reflects in the food.
You know, when people say fusion food,
I don't really like it because fusion food to me
is, like, when chefs purposefully combine things, and it's not from an experience.
This is regional, localized cooking where people have lived together
for a long time, and this just starts to make sense.
- Exactly. - What I love about Peruvian food,
From the first day, so many things are familiar,
but you've never had it in this combination before.
But just also the idea of putting fava beans and black mint into mashed potatoes,
you would never think of it.
Only a Peruvian would think to do this.
Bueno.
So I think the question for Peru and all the developing countries is,
how much can you give and still maintain who you are?
Like logging, if you're not willing to reforest
and whatnot, you lose your resources.
Gastronomy's really important for this country.
It's a huge challenge for this country.
Why? Because eventually you have this boom.
People are willing to incorporate these resources, and whatnot,
promoting this famous gastronomy.
And suddenly these resources are becoming more expensive.
Farmers cannot buy quinoa for their food now because it's too expensive.
There's a new trend.
These people have a very sustainable way of life, but then we're praying on it.
We could create an equilibrium with this resource extraction.
Fair trade is difficult. Why?
Because you have to start with some sort of standard,
and people get paid to develop those standards.
Who pays that burden?
The producer. You see?
So they need to follow these standards to be able to have that right price.
There's a tendency to just become fanatics and get excited when you see something
and you taste something that you love.
But I think everything Cesar's telling us
is extremely important to think about as you consume
because it's not just a relationship between you and this plate.
For that food to hit that plate, to hit that table and sit in front of you,
it had to touch a lot of hands.
And cultures are at stake. The environment's at stake.
So when you eat, you're voting, and I hope you continue to vote
for biodiversity and Peru.
6 ounces to 8 ounces of pink salt
will cost you upwards of $8 to $10 in a grocery store,
but Lorenzo is only getting 25 soles for this entire bag.
We're in Maras now, and it's known for its pre-Incan salt mines.
No matter how good your meat is, no matter how good the aromatics are,
it's nothing if you don't salt the food correctly.
And here in these mines at Maras, you're gonna see pink salt.
It has a rounder, deeper flavor.
So we're gonna meet a farmer here who's gonna take us down in the mines.
He seems to be intent on taking us to the furthest terrace possible to scrape salt.
Wait. How did he just get down there?
Do you know why the saltwater runs through Maras, and it's so special here?
We're gonna go with it, the salted-rock theory.
I approve. "Huang's World" approves salted-rock theory.
How much could you sell the salt in each pit for?
So once a month, he does this.
He waits till it evaporates to this point, and he breaks it up.
Nice.
I heard that there's pink salt here, but this all looks like white salt.
What are we gonna do once we get all this salt together?
Yeah. So one thing I realized while talking to Lorenzo was,
he didn't know what pink salt was.
He was explaining the levels of salt, the three different grades.
About 6 ounces to 8 ounces of pink salt
will cost you upwards of $8 to $10 in a grocery store,
but Lorenzo is only getting 25 soles for this entire bag,
which comes out to about $6.50 U.S.
So the people making money are the not ones that actually live here
and own the pits and work the pits,
but the company distributing it and packaging it to us.
Okay.
So this is a leg of alpaca.
That's pretty good.
It was good. The salt was good.
Mmm.
I definitely feel like I just put my head in the ass of an alpaca.
In America, if you sell one bottle of this pink salt, like 6 to 8 ounces,
people are paying upwards of $10 or $12 for it.
Did you know that?
So you guys are not aware of the amount of money they sell your salt for?
You know, pink salt is just one of the things
that the global economy desires from Peru.
China buys copper.
You know, people in our neighborhoods buy quinoa.
Other people buy pink salt.
Everybody wants acai.
We consume, and we eat, and we take, only seeing the end product.
Very rarely do we see all the pain and struggle that goes into
what we're consuming with all culture.
And when we came to Peru, we came because we loved the chefs,
and we heard about the fantastic restaurants, and we saw them in Lima.
But when you go deeper into this country, and you see the Amazon and its power,
you realize that there's nothing without this.
This is the source.
This is the inspiration.
And it's very important, when we eat and we cook,
to be conscious of what we're discarding
because if we just focus on the restaurants and just focus on the chefs
and just focus on the food in front of us,
we're gonna lose everything that gave it its power.