Ep. 480: Going Feral with the Hmong

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
You can't predict anything.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
for el First Light has performance apparel to support every
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Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hey Spencer and Yanni here before this episode of meat Eater,
Yannie and I have a big announcement about a big announcement, Yannie.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
That's right, Meat Eater Live is coming to eight cities
this December, and.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
We're going to tell you when and where to find
us on Wednesday's episode of Trivia, So please tune in
to Wednesday episode. At the very beginning, we're gonna give
you all the details you want to know about where
we're going to be, when we're going to be there,
and how you can get tickets.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
Be there or b square.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Uh trying to figure.

Speaker 6 (01:20):
It's a great start to start.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, I'm gonna do a better start here, right, start over, Phil, Okay,
what's throwing my glasses?

Speaker 5 (01:31):
They're fine, they're fine.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
I'm turning up my magnification.

Speaker 7 (01:40):
Is this one of those times where you're joking about
cutting it out or you actually want to like start.

Speaker 5 (01:44):
Over, Okay, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, I was gonna talk. I don't know you decided
later Phil, I was gonna So we recently, just to
just bring people into up to speed. First off, this
is my The episode is called well it's not. In
the old days, it would have been called Mung Dudes
Are Trouble, Part two, And we're joined by Yah Yang
and in Year Yang Vang Year Vang and yeah you

(02:09):
used to be Yeah, I used to be Yeah, yes,
that simplifies thing. How you guys, how well do you
guys know what you've met in the past.

Speaker 5 (02:18):
Never met He's familiar with your food. Well, I listened
to the pod with him on with you guys, but
other than that.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
But he's he's you've eaten at his restaurant, Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah,
probably doesn't know this, but I've been at like he
caters fun fundraisers that you did the Monk Museum fundraisers.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
Oh sure that.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
You probably don't know this, but you did a a
house catering party. This is pre pandemic, and it was
in somebody's basement. You came to the house and I
was in that party. It was for our fortieth birthday party.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
And they had your your.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
Team coach, I think I remember.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, yeah, you were introducing us to like edible flowers
and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
So yeah, like among dudes don't if they meet, they
don't necessarily like trade information.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
Yeah, I mean Steven Slay white people like, you know,
it's different white people, but you are related.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
It's different white people, white people in America. If okay,
if I was in if we have how many people
are in this country three hundred three hundred three okay, okay,
for me to run into a white dude born in America,

(03:32):
that doesn't catch my attention. If I had been born
in uh Laos, Okay, and uh was displaced by activities
around the Vietnam War and wound up in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
and I ran into another dude roughly my age who'd

(03:55):
been through a similar set of circumstances, I don't know.
I feel like you'd be like, oh.

Speaker 5 (03:59):
Wow, yeah. I think the thing that people have to
realize is in Minneapolis, there's seventy five thousand Mongk people
in the metro, Is it really Yeah, seventy five thousand
Mongk people in the metros.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
You can't keep track everybody.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
No, yeah, like we like we don't all subscribe to
the same newsletter. But you know it's you know sometimes
the media. Yeah, no, seventy five thousand. It's the largest,
most concentrated among people out outside of China, the South
China area where there's about two million there.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
But yeah, see, you guys have the problem of having
too many of of your your your culture because if
I meet a Latvian, I don't know, I don't know them.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
I know somebody that they know, they make they make well,
even even with like the monk. Like, so the thing
with the Mongk people is we have eighteen clans or
eighteen last names, you know, so there's like our tribal
names within that too. Like there's a way of finding
out like you're related to somebody to you know, some way,
if you go back far enough, you know, you'll always

(05:02):
be like, oh yeah, so like that uncle's you know,
aunt's cousin Da da da. And that's kind of what
makes among people such a really strong united front. So
like in the Twin Cities areas. They have what's called
the eighteen Clan, where each clan has a representative that
you know, and and they're kind it's kind of like
the Jedi Council. I mean they have I mean I'm serious, dude,
Like they come in, they meet and they have you know,

(05:24):
they have like they put out you know, different you know, ideas,
and they're like, okay, let's you know, go to your
clan and then you know, tell them that, you know,
this is what the new rule for this is. And
then yeah, that's I mean they do that. I mean,
so what rule for what is okay for? For example?
So in our culture some culture, I mean you could
you know, yeah, you can help me on this, yeah, Dowery, Dowery.

(05:47):
Still it's still part of our culture. Dowry Yep, Yep.
That's a good deal, dude, if you is that? Is
that just symbolic now or is there like some substance
to it a little bit? I mean there's some symbolic
stuff to it. There's some you know that there's like
all these like inside yeah, there's all these inside mung jokes,
you know, like like it's it's a it's like one
of those things where now I mean at points where

(06:08):
it's like, for example, you can trace back to like
so for examples like the Yang clan wrong, the More
clan this way, and you can trace it back and
then the dowry they'll be fines in the dollar. He's no,
I'm just using for example, Yeah, and and and you
can trace it back Steve Steve's he's like clan Trouble

(06:29):
and Mu culture. Let's yeah, yeah, we find something definitely.
And then they would be like, oh, well we can
find that group this much, and then you know, and
then it'd be like, oh, the dowary is like twenty
five k or something, you know. And you know, so
I think one of the things that they kind of
started talking about is just the ridiculousness of these fines
that are huge, and these young couples are like, I

(06:50):
don't have the money for this, you know. And so
there was, you know, there was kind of these rules
that were put out or saying, hey, let's kind of
demolish all this kind of tribal conflict from from generations
and generations ago. And so you know, they put out
a big statement about that. You know.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Also they also capped the the dowry a set amount
so that everybody should just follow that versus otherwise. It
is a it goes all night negotiation.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, you know how I just got caught being racist,
like thinking you guys knew each other. Let me tell
you something.

Speaker 5 (07:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Normally when a white guy gets caught being racist, he'll
do stuff like he'll be like, well, I'm gonna do
more listening than talking, right, I'm not, well, I'm gonna
do more talking to listening because let me tell you something. Yeah,
has been pitching you to us.

Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
I was like, you should have this guy on. So
eventually where we got you to where we got you
to come on, we said to yeah, you should come
out and hang out.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Is that bad?

Speaker 5 (07:48):
I feel like that's great. No, No, it's it's awesome.
You know, it's funny. My buddy Jordan, he like wrote
in a little something so on his episode, I was like,
this guy's awesome, my best friend.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
So you did it too.

Speaker 5 (08:01):
In June of twenty twenty one, I pulled it up today.
It took me some doing, but in Gmail, I was
like I totally sent an email. I now I don't
know if I, you know, wrote it well or not
and I know you did the same thing and the
same thing he wrote, the guys I'd like to know
each other. And it was more so, this is another
great I know, white guy. It's not exactly what I said.
I feel like that's not what I'm saying. But yeah,

(08:23):
I mean, and Jordian said the same thing, you know,
and and he's like, hey, you know, and and then
I kind of it was really funny Stevee like, especially
with the whole crew here, I kind of he told me,
I'm sending the scene on the mediator. Maybe they'll have
you out sometimes. I'm like, I prophesied, yeah. And then
I'm like, cool, bro, if you do, and I get
to go, I'll bring you and we like both laughed
and we're like ha ha ha. And then that was
where he is, can you introduce yourself?

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Done a horrible job introducing there, But I don't we
haven't even got into Yanni's Mountain.

Speaker 5 (08:49):
Sorry, yeah, sorry, Yannie, I don't just do it. Do
it quick?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
You plug yourself, plug your Yeah.

Speaker 5 (08:54):
Yeah, so Yabang we from Minneapolis area. We have a
restaurant called Union Munk Kitchen and then we're building out
a second one that's in the works and hopefully I'll
be finalized by this week. Called v n I, which
is the refugee camp that my parents met in I
was born in. Over ninety thousand Mong people went through

(09:15):
there from seventy five to ninety two, and so we
wanted to name this restaurant v n I. It's our
first big brick and mortar project. It I tell people,
it's a love letter to my mom and dad. So
that's what that restaurant will be when we get done,
hopefully twenty twenty four. Springtime. Great, but yeah we have
we have other restaurants and all the other little things
we do.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna dive into your
your food and your past and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 8 (09:40):
We worked off of just that little pitch, the like
I want one on the list love letter to mom
and dad.

Speaker 5 (09:46):
I'm sold. Yeah, it's been It's been really fun, man,
it's been really fun.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
So Ryan Callahan still me and then go ahead.

Speaker 5 (09:54):
And my name's Jordan Vold, college buddy of you. We
went to school UW Lacrosse US years ago.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
And you're the guy. He said. If he comes out
of the show you're coming.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
To tattooed on his parm right there.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's great.

Speaker 6 (10:10):
I gotta get one of them.

Speaker 5 (10:13):
I mean, there's nothing like a bluegill.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
No, my kid has one now in a tank, so
you're gonna saytoo tank. I love that thing so much. Man,
we feed it like worms and stuff with that bluegill
is trained. Now he used to be kind of spooky
that when you come in the room. Now that bluegill
is lined up.

Speaker 5 (10:35):
That w I don't want to get way into it.
But two summers ago I never met my dad's dad,
my paternal grandfather. He loved you know, he's loved to fish,
fish bluegill like any good Wisconsin. I never met him.
Was fishing with my dad and his brother, my uncle Ron,

(10:55):
and he had like a picture counter. I don't know
if people do that to like count how many fish
sugar the boat to make sure we him later yuh
hit the clicker, and my dad and my uncle Ron
were just saying, Grandpa, you know, our dad, my grandpa,
who I never met, would have loved this. And I
was just you know that moment, I was like, that'd

(11:16):
be cool, it'd be cool to do, you know.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
I was telling my kids about the other day because
I was saying to them, I can't wait till that
bluegill turns into a keeper. They're like, you know, I
can eat no what I mean, Like, Dad just wanted
to be that looking in the aquarium and it's like
a keeper bluegill in there. And I was telling him
when I was a little cap member, my dad made
us sticks that were six inches long with your name
written on it, and if you were fishing bluegills, you

(11:39):
had to have that stick. And if it wasn't as
long as that stick, you didn't bring it home. Because
he so sick of c four or four inch blue gills.

Speaker 5 (11:49):
Yep, y.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
I told you my little story about the neighbor that
fished with in North Carolina.

Speaker 5 (11:55):
He's a neighbor of my in laws.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
And he used to be like, had his sales or something,
and Rey's fishing tackle maybe anyway, so he went and
saw a lot of tackle dealers, tackle makers, et cetera.
And he said he had been in the place where
there's a bunch of aquariums with large mouthed bass in them.
He walked in there once with other dudes with white
coats on, and as you walked down these aquariums.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
The fish would.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
All just turn and watch these and the guys be like, oh, yeah,
it's time for a new batch, because like, you can't
test a lure on a fish that it's just like
waiting drop something into the association.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, we're to come right. Back's got a story. I
don't even know. I don't even know the story. I
don't even know what it is. Chester's here.

Speaker 6 (12:35):
Yep. Well, my mom was in labor with me on
Mullet Lake while my dad and Mullet were fishing bluegills.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Keep back. I just got so distracted.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
She was in the boat as well.

Speaker 6 (12:47):
We went into labor and there were fishing bluegills on
Mullet Lake, so.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
So it was like a race to get your limit.

Speaker 6 (12:55):
That's my connection to bluegills.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Holds fishing wall eyes. The day your kid was born.
Mm hmm. Yeah, Yangs here, thanks for coming. Yeah, of
course you're gonna hit youth turkeys with us again. Of course,
you know they're they're they're gonna it's things are moving

(13:18):
along to get youth season to four days. Yeah, it's great.
And your daughter got a turkey after we hunted together.

Speaker 5 (13:24):
Yes, yes, and you.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Got a buck.

Speaker 5 (13:26):
Last year, you got a buck. Last year, I got
a turkey.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
This year you did. Yeah. Oh that's right, you said, yeah,
that's great. All r Yeah, you're ready to tell this. Oh,
can I tell one thing before you tell your thing?
You bet? Yeah, he's got a mountain lion story. It's
not You're not in it, though, are you?

Speaker 5 (13:40):
No? Okay, second hand.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
I'm just trying to think. I'm trying to think of
a way to plug my buddy's uh business again, not
just thought of it. Uh, Chester explained the tax exchange
we just had.

Speaker 6 (13:53):
Uh. Steve introduced me to his buddy, Matt Matt Tros.
Matt Tros, he's got a little bar yet he opened
up mobile bar, and uh.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Is there a direct sale of alcohol with this mobile bar?

Speaker 6 (14:07):
Uh? Well, no, you have to supply, you have to
buy the boots.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Other Let's say you live in northern Michigan and you're
having an event, Yes, fiftieth wedding anniversary, a regular wedding.

Speaker 6 (14:22):
Yeah, but we didn't just have that in the text exchange.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
No, I'm just helping. Like I said, I was using
this as a jump off point. And you want to
have a great experience for your guests. So what you
do is you go to Roaming n o m I
Roaming Northern Michigan but is not Roaming Nomi dot com.
My buddy's a school teacher. This is his summertime business.

(14:50):
He has a camper trailer rigged up like a bar.
When you're doing your event and you're you know, you
get married, you're like serving booze. Anyways, he helps you
figure out what your booze order needs to be. You
call in and pay for your booze at the booze store.
He picks the booze up, brings his mobile camper bar.

(15:12):
Two year event. Him and his wife worked there, work
at it. They then open the window and your guests
at your wedding go up to the bar. They do
signature drinks, custom cocktails. They take care of everything.

Speaker 6 (15:26):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
And nothing to gain from this pretty soon if you
want it. And Chester has just out of the kindness
of his little heart.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
My parents own a cocktail garnish company out of Wisconsin.
So if you go to any grocery store liquor store
and you look for garnishes, it's probably forest flour foods.
But now you're going to be able to go to
Matt Drozer's mobile box, Droast Drost and.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
Order a bloody makes a Western big game.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
But you're going to be able to order a bloody
Mary and he's gonna have all the fixings for it.
Or you're gonna be able to order an old fashion.
You'll get a sweet pickled mushroom as a garnish or
really whatever you want. Nice cherries for kitty, cocktail for
your kids. Maybe even we throw those in there too.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
But I got more Matt Droll stories, and you'd be
able to stomach we used to drink. I remember Mad
Dog twenty twenty.

Speaker 9 (16:24):
Well, I don't really remember it, but I like Matt.
I feel like he had a thirty thirty rifle. We
used to call him MD thirty thirty because like mad Dog,
you know that's not a good one.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
I got some good if I do have some good ones.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, let's not get into Mad Dog twenty twenty stories.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
All right. The Mountain Lion story.

Speaker 4 (16:44):
Okay, so this story comes from my buddy Jeff Flood,
who I met through Bart George, who's our big game
biologist friends. It works out, yeah, for the coutiney tribe
in Washington and our buddy Bruce help Bart with a
mountain lion collaring project that you can I forget which

(17:07):
episode it is. Maybe Karent will plug it in, but
you can hear all about it. When we had bart
On telling us about this coloring study there.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
What episode is that kar it was?

Speaker 5 (17:18):
You know, I remember it was. It was COVID.

Speaker 7 (17:21):
It was early COVID because I remember we came and
it was like mid twenty.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, it was. It was remote because of COVID.

Speaker 4 (17:28):
Yeah, so they're they're researching like how much if they
can deter lions from being around humans by playing loud
human voices to them repeatedly. That's not what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's a little more complicated, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
Well, I know I'm trying to simplify it so I
can get to the main part of the story. So
to do this, they call they catch cats and they
collar them, and they catch them the first time using
hounds and they collar them, and then when they come back,
they know the location of the cat because it's been collared,
and they can walk up to it playing usually the
Meter podcast at a loud volume, and then they measure

(18:09):
at what point the cat runs how far it runs.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Because they're creating an association. Yes, in this cat's mind,
they're creating association between trouble and human voices.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
That's right, because after they hear the human voices, the
hounds are released and then they're sort of you know,
run agitated by hounds up into a tree and.

Speaker 5 (18:33):
They make that association.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
Yeah, they do that repeatedly, and then they you know,
take the data. So it's ongoing study.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
This being because in the old days, if a lion
so much has looked at a person, it was dead,
And nowadays there's a little less social tolerance for that,
for lethal control of right.

Speaker 5 (18:51):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah, Well, there's a lot of stuff going on over
there in north east Washington. We won't get into it
with just the whole the controversies around mountain lions and
people and.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Just the state and the governor and the Game commission.
We need to do a dedicated episode on that.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
Oh man.

Speaker 8 (19:08):
Yeah, we're hustling hard on getting actual current commissioners signed
off on interviews and stuff like that. I think everybody
over there knows that they're not really well received right now,
so we're not making a lot of headway.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, my least favorite governor in America used to be
Murphy over New Jersey because he campaigned against bear hunts,
and my new least favorite governor is Insley in Washington.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Go on, so they call Heed a female off of
a deer kill in late March, and a lot of
times this is Jeff doing this work.

Speaker 5 (19:50):
A lot of times.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
What Jeff does is if he sees a deer kill
and it's there's enough carcass left, he'll throw up a
camera just to see what happens. Right, So he threw
up a camera and in the first night, four adult
lions and two kittens show up that night. So he
just said, needless to say, it didn't last long. This
is that's kind of a little side story to the

(20:12):
main story.

Speaker 5 (20:13):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (20:14):
He figures, with that pressure, this mountain lion uh moved
a couple miles away. The next time they went to
uh to to catch her. They when they from the
other line from the other lions, and she he figures
now that he knows what he knows now that it
was because she was about to give birth, so she

(20:36):
moved a ways away, didn't want to be by the lions.
So the next time they catch her, she's given that
he can tell that she has kittens, because she's lactating.
So they follow the back trail on the GPS of
where they had first bumped her, and sure enough there
is three kittens. Like they're in a pile I put up.

(20:56):
I had a picture of it on my Instagram. They
were holding the kittens, so they put a he puts
a camera on the kittens. What was interesting? Sorry, I'm
trying to read an email while I relate this story,
so I get.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
The numbers right. Uh.

Speaker 4 (21:11):
He figures they were about ten days old, and uh,
he said he thought it was interesting that how how
long sometimes she would leave all of them sometimes? And
again this is just through watching pictures on a trail camp,
so you never know if mom's just behind the camera
or next to it not getting picked up. But at
some point seven hours she would leave them, oh by

(21:31):
that and not be there on May fourth at eleven
eight eleven am it can yeh?

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Can this be like this be commented on as you go?

Speaker 5 (21:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (21:41):
The reason I don't surprise me is it would be
that feeding itself is just more involved, right, exactly, like
a deer could just go grays whatever, twenty minutes right,
come back, grays, come back. But for that thing, I mean,
it's headed.

Speaker 5 (21:57):
Out right hunting.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
It's not like a mission. Yeah, you know what I mean.
So it sees that they would need to be able
to do like some kind of lengthy stash, because it's
not like, hey, I'll be back in an hour, sure,
you know.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
And I guess that the reason you would think that
it is a long time is because you would think that, oh,
how are those kittens going to survive that long without
being able to get a little milk in a seven
hour period?

Speaker 5 (22:19):
Right?

Speaker 4 (22:20):
So may fourth, first thing in the morning, she moves
her first kitten, grabs it by the back of the neck,
walks off with it, doesn't come back until six pm.

Speaker 5 (22:33):
To get grab this.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
What time did I grab the first one?

Speaker 5 (22:35):
Eight am?

Speaker 4 (22:36):
So who knows how far it moves it, but comes
back at six pm to grab the second one and
moves it same day. One kitten left.

Speaker 5 (22:46):
Right, It's like a bad children's book, but at a
parent at midnight. At midnight that next morning.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
I want to make sure I'm getting on. So it's
the first one at what time?

Speaker 5 (23:01):
Six am?

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Okay? Then comes back in the afternoon eight No?

Speaker 5 (23:04):
Eight? Well what did I say? No? Eight am and
six pm? Okay?

Speaker 1 (23:08):
So it gets one to eight am, brings it wherever. Yeah,
comes back that evening six pm. Now there's one sitting
there into the dark.

Speaker 5 (23:16):
And at midnight a skunk shows up. Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
And again it's not like documented by pictures, but the
skunk was there for quite some time. There was blood
on the skunk. Mom showed up the next day and
spent five hours there just like looking around and doing
circles before she left, and then he never saw it again.
The skunk eighth the kitten, whether it ate it or

(23:45):
it just killed it, you know, but I mean think about.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
From this skunk's perspective, that's a big win.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
Yeah, take it out now, that's one lass dude later
taking me out or my you know kid.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
Do you know how big these kittens are at what.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
Tiny this stage? Like I mean, you know, little fur balls.
I mean not not not even the size of a housecatt.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
That's a cold blooded skunk.

Speaker 8 (24:09):
I want to understand Mom's like decision making to like
how does she select a kitten. Is it totally random?

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Oh yeah?

Speaker 5 (24:17):
Or is she like yeah, oh.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, like my big favorite one, the best kitten, right,
the one in the middle is the best kitten.

Speaker 8 (24:27):
The first one to leave is super exposed or is
it less sent If you're the first one, it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
The middle is the favorite. I would think the middle
it's like, I'm gonna bring the one I like, the
one I really don't like. I'll figure it out later.
The one I sort of like, I'm gonna bring it
now to pioneer this new spot. If it looks good,
I'll go get my favorite one, and then if I
got time later, I'll get my least favorite one. We

(24:56):
should write a Maybe we could publish an academic article
about this called Favoritism, uh favor and Feline con Colorists.

Speaker 5 (25:04):
Or just writing a children's book, writing.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Children's book called tough Luck.

Speaker 8 (25:09):
Yeah, you can do little backstories on each of the
kittens and be like, this is why Mom picked you
as the middle one.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
I have a picture of my daughter on my phone.
In the other day, she's saying, the reason I have
her on my phone is otherwise i'd forget about her
because she's the middle. Where you're like, honey, you're not wrong,
because she's the middle.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
Keep a lot of things on my phone that I
don't want to forget about. Also, that's episode two that
it's called an elk hunting nudist checks the breeze.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
God's a good title, dude.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
It's called an elk hunting nudist checks the breeze. If
you want to learn all about Bart George's mountaining collaring
study in Northeast Washington.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
It was a good title.

Speaker 5 (25:53):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
We had a good run at just having titles that
didn't mean anything. What happened we started naming them stuff
that means something.

Speaker 5 (26:01):
Search engine optimization because.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Because now with the shows on YouTube, it doesn't work
to have you can't have a name that has nothing
to do with anything. Meaning if you name something a.

Speaker 7 (26:13):
Nudist or push.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Them to pot or a nudist checks the breeze, you'll
wind up in like a different land.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
Would tell you that that would have been the same
case on other platforms.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
I resisted the idea. Here's the thing I resisted and
still resist the idea that people search podcasts. I don't,
you'll hear people some people do. I don't believe that
people regularly do content searches for podcasts, meaning I don't
think people go in and search key do keyword searches

(26:50):
around podcasts. Some do, but I don't think that's how
I don't think that's how people discover.

Speaker 6 (26:55):
Searching for people maybe like certain folks.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Sure, and when we and we would we would bow
to that in some respects with our old naming convention.
But now here's another I'll tell you that that would
surprise me. What's actually the words that we're actually saying
right now actually matters for how how YouTube serves. You

(27:22):
could name it like a nudist checks the breeze, but
then never talk about nudists and all that, And it'll
be served based on content, but the thumbnail people see
is based on It'll be served based on what's actually
done within the show. The thumbnail people see will be

(27:46):
what you present them. So if you have, like if
you're talking about mountain lions, mountain lions, mountain lions, it
might go to a person that loves mountain lions, what
that person is going to see is a nudist checks
the breeze, and he'll think, why is this here for
this reason? Am I doing a good job explaining this?
Krin Is it?

Speaker 5 (28:05):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (28:05):
So?

Speaker 8 (28:05):
Like our guests today, Donald Trump and Joe Rogan are
talking about transgender rights in bathrooms, and that could possibly
help this episode pop up in people searchings.

Speaker 5 (28:23):
Nailed it.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
That's next level, right there, man. You satisfied with that?
Krin Kriinn satisfied with that? Uh. A couple of quick
things we got touched on.

Speaker 5 (28:38):
The road to twenty twenty four. Go ahead, Steve.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
We covered Roamingnomai dot com again. Probably hit that a
couple more times in the future. Vegan Landlords, this is
a this is a chatticate question. Chester. Do you know
about this?

Speaker 6 (28:56):
Well? I just read it, yes or whatever?

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Uh, oh, we'll cover it. He was listening to the
Pussing the Pot episode, so the Pussing to Pot t
shirts came out. But they're gone already, but we didn't
order that many.

Speaker 7 (29:08):
Are we gonna order more?

Speaker 1 (29:09):
I don't know. They were gone in less than a day.
I sunk a gaff into an octopus's arm, and he
got the gaff away from me and snuck off with it.
And I'll point out they can lose their arm, it
doesn't bother them. They just grow a new one. So
then we started laughing about how that octopus probably doesn't
go anywhere without that gaff.

Speaker 5 (29:28):
Snuck off with it as an interesting way to put
hold it.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Out of my hands. We had got in the wrestling
match and he got away with the gaff. It's a
big one, but the gaff isn't barbed, so the gaff
would have just fallen out either way. It's funny to
think of an octopus now, because you know he likes
he uses the gaff for everything.

Speaker 6 (29:46):
He's gonna come back and get you.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Out if he wants to get something out of a hole.
He's like stand back boys, and he just gets that
gaff out and does what he needs to do with it.

Speaker 8 (29:54):
Anywhere, a little subtle tapping on the bottom of your boat.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
We're waiting for someday that gaff hoot up through the
bottom of my boat. I'd be like, he's back. We
made a shirt of an octopus with a gaff, but
it's gone. But anyways, on that episode, we were talking
about I can't remember, oh, we were talking about a vegan.
We were talking about vegan landlords that were in the
news for people which I supported the right to do this.

(30:20):
A landlord saying I'll rent to you, but if I
rent to you, you are not allowed to cook meat.
I don't like it, but I support that right because
I generally am like you know, I'm generally supportive of
that sort of stuff. So, and the thing to maintain
consistency to see in this world, it'd be like people
that get really worked up about First Amendment rights only

(30:44):
when their First Amendment rights are imperiled, but they're very
slow to defend First Amendment rights of their adversaries. So
the NC double A, not the NC double A. That's
the basketball people and the N DOUBLEACP. The N DOUBLEACP

(31:06):
will often defend the First Amendment rights of white supremacists
because there's so staunchly First Amendment that they'll defend the
First Amendment rights of people who'd probably like to kill them. So,
because I think that people should have more latitude to make,

(31:27):
you know, like just more latitude to make these sorts
of decisions around their own home and how you rent
your home, I was like, eh, okay, I don't like it,
but I would never tell someone that they should have
to rent a house to someone doing something like that.
I don't know, I'm just trying it on, so I'm
not sure I'm committed there, go ahead.

Speaker 7 (31:46):
I wasn't there because this was recorded in Alaska, but
if I were there, I would have reminded you that.
In the Chettiquette episode with Luke Combs, we got a
question about a landlord who would not rent a home
to gun owners, and I told them the said.

Speaker 5 (32:00):
Lie and do it anyway.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Well, if I heard from someone who if I heard
from someone who said, my landlord rendered me a house
and said I can't cook meat, but I'm thinking about
cooking some, I would say I think that you should.

Speaker 5 (32:21):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Sure, So I am. It is consistent. Okay, listen, I'm
not like a judge. I'm not like judge Jude. I'm
very aware of you, just like I gots what I'm saying.
But this guy here has got a different situation, but
it made him think of it where he he's part
of the story. I don't understand. He used to live
in a rural area, but due to residency rules, had

(32:43):
to move into the city. What would that mean? Oh,
this is exactly what you're talking about. Uh No, English,
You lived by the horror mel factory.

Speaker 5 (32:57):
Well I go down there. That's like two hour drive
north the south. Yeah, okay, you you yeah, when you
drive two hours.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
From your home is the place where they make spam?

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
And you're saying the executive leadership team at Spam.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
Yeah, in their bylaws, they have to live down in Austin, Minnesota.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Okay, So this fella might have run into a similar
thing because he's saying, I used to live out in
the sticks, but because of residency rules, he had to
move into the city. Yeah, he's in Buffalo, New York.
So he's not working down there with Spam.

Speaker 5 (33:27):
Yeah, but what one of the like, while you were
talking about that, if you talk to the landlord and
the landlord says, hey, you know, no cooking meat here,
is it okay? Just to move on to another apartment
or another house, Like, do you know what I'm saying,
because like that's what the landworth. Okay, cool, Oh yeah,
that's yeah, that's I would be in that situation where
they're like, you can't cook me, and here I'm.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Like, okay, cool, I'm gonna move.

Speaker 5 (33:49):
Yeah, I'll go find some in the place.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, or I'm gonna cook it anyway, call the cops.

Speaker 5 (33:54):
I I gotta throw this out there.

Speaker 8 (33:56):
This is like the best article I've seen in a
long time, and it really strikes me because I used
to have to travel around the country with a practicing
vegan and that person was obnoxious, and it was adamant
that I go to these vegan restaurants in different places,
and I always was just like, it is not worth

(34:17):
my money. But my assumption was that the experience would
be a lot different than what it was. And I
was actually like appalled when I finally did sit down
at a vegan restaurant to see all of my food
terms on the menu.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Oh yeah, right, the steal from you.

Speaker 8 (34:38):
Yeah, I was like, well, what, like, I'm down for
a salad, but you have like it's bacon, yeah, reuben
and fries and so that I got to hand it
to whoever wrote this article, but it's called no more
Cordon bleuir. France's long running battle over vegan food names

(35:02):
has escalated as the government published a decree banning meaty
terms such as steak, grill or spare ribs being used
to describe plant based products.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
I think that's a little bit of government overreach.

Speaker 5 (35:16):
I love it.

Speaker 8 (35:17):
That's what government overreach is. I have a fully embracing.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
I like it. Yeah, you know that we covered that
little dust up. I'm going to come back to the
story about this guy. But we covered that little dust
up where that dude, this is the weirdest thing is,
oh my god, it's one story turned into another here.
So he got three stories up in the air. Story
one is this.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
Well.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Story one is this fella here that we're talking about
who had to move to town because of the rules. Okay,
so hold that in your head. Story two is how
is this these French people in your situation? There's four stories.
Story three is that we covered how a guy was
suing buffalo wild wings because they're boneless wings aren't wings?

Speaker 5 (36:10):
Yeah, they're technically not wings, but whatever.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Buffalo wild wings. Retort was, am I using retort in
the right way? Allow me to retort? Yeah? Yeah, Buffalo
wild wings retort was, we don't sell any buffalo. Our
hamburgers are not ham. Our chicken fingers are not chicken's fingers.

(36:33):
So it should not come to you as a great
surprise that our boneless wings are not wings.

Speaker 5 (36:40):
In this article, they're just buffalo's wings either.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
No, no, I'm into story four. In this article, they
interview some dude who is like a who's made this
whole issue like his axe to grind. But he's not
the litigant, he's not the person suing Buffalo wild but
he's a person who believes, and they talk about him

(37:05):
in the article that he believes they should be called
saucy Nugs, and somehow he weasels his way into the article.
I'm standing at a book event. I'm doing a book
signing event, and there's some guy in line that looks
like not like everybody else that would come to one
of my book signing events. Meaning most of my stuff

(37:26):
is like some dude in square toe cowboy boots with
like three kids, because it's.

Speaker 5 (37:31):
A children's recognizable demographic.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
But then here's this guy that I know said I've
been using a lot of people looking like weird Al
because I was talking about Gallagher the comedian. Here's a
guy that looks like young weird Al comes up to
me and basically he's there to tell me that they
should call him Saucy Nugs, but does not know that

(37:53):
we discussed this on the podcast. Like this guy independently
just goes to anywhere he can get an audience.

Speaker 5 (38:02):
Wait, he was the guy that was in the article.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yes, that's about this in the pockets. He had no idea.

Speaker 5 (38:07):
He's just I'm just he's just just Arilla market.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
He's like sounds like there's going to be a crowd.
I'm going to go down there and and and.

Speaker 5 (38:16):
Protack, raise hell about Wow. Yeah, really that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Back to story number one.

Speaker 6 (38:24):
But if they call them saucy nugs, then some back
stoner could come in there and think that it's some
ganja and sue him for that.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Old man. You guys call weed saucy nugs.

Speaker 6 (38:37):
I'm sure something out there.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Oh yeah, you want to talk about some saucy nugs.
You ever see uh Chester's tattoo on his arm?

Speaker 6 (38:45):
Okay? Moving on too many stories.

Speaker 8 (38:48):
This comes down to, uh, why the FDA exists, right,
like patent medicine, okay, And that is why you cannot
call a vegan whatever it is, sandwich a ruben sandwich. Yeah,
everybody knows corn beef okay, and pastrami does not cut
it as a ruben sandwich either.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah. Before back of this guy had to move into town.
I do want to pick up what you're saying, because
it is frustrating what you're saying, and it would be
like if you're vegan. Besides, people that have like some
kind of major dietary reason they need to be vegan,
which I'm sure happens if you meet, you're gonna die
or something. I don't know, but normally I would guess

(39:30):
like ninety percent whatever the hell of vegans are for
ethical reasons. So they have come to a position where
they're saying, like I believe it is wrong to consume meat. Well,
say you have a give me another ethical infraction, do
like I don't want to do like pedophiles. Well that's

(39:51):
where I okay, I got it. Oh, no, go ahead.

Speaker 8 (39:55):
It is it's like your sexual yet sexual preference is
is a perfect one. Like I am staunchly this way,
but I happen to put things in my mouth that
resemble this other thing. But don't confuse that because this
is the way I am.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Let's say you have a hog fetish cheepers, and you've
recognized that that is just wrong. That is not a thing.
That is not a thing you can be partaken in.
But then you come home with a hog suit. You

(40:35):
see where this is going.

Speaker 5 (40:37):
No, is that better?

Speaker 4 (40:42):
So this guy anyway, Hey, guys, this is Yiannis. I
got a special request for you. You've heard me talk
about it before, mentioning it again and asking again. But

(41:03):
I'm asking for you guys to all help and pitch
in to save that winter habitat in Vail, Colorado for
the big horn sheep. That was a proposed development for
employee housing, and there was a big to do there.
And finally the town of Vales figured out a way
to purchase the land from the company that was proposing

(41:26):
to develop it. And now they're gonna save it and
basically and turn it into a conservation. He's meant, and
they're also going to conserve more land in that area,
so it's actually a win win. It went from only
being twenty acres to now it's going to be over
one hundred acres of bighorn sheep habitat for the bighorn
sheep that lived in the Gore Range. I was lucky
enough to hunt there two years ago and killed a

(41:48):
ram in there. I wanted to keep that secret, but
this is a good reason to bring it out publicly.
John Hayes Taxi Jeremy did a full amount of that sheep,
and I'm gonna donate that sheep to the town of
Vale and they're going to use it as a as
a as a marker, as a memorial to this project
to forever memorialize the people and the conservation organizations. They're

(42:11):
gonna work hard to make this happen. So I'm super
stoked to be a part of this, and I hope
you can too. And remember, every little bit helps. They're
looking they have to raise about three million dollars. That's right,
you heard it right by October third. There's not a
lot of time. Obviously, it's going to take some people
with some big old bank accounts to kick down big.

(42:33):
But like I said, every little bit helps. So if
you just got a dollar or five or ten, I
would appreciate it if you kick down towards this. If
you're thinking, man, I'm not a Colorado big horn sheep hunter,
look at it this way. If someone else draws their
tag there, they might take away that tag that they

(42:53):
were trying to hunt in Nevada. Or if you are
a Colorado sheep hunter, if there's more sheep here, there's
more tags there. Even though you might not hunt there,
it might free up opportunities for you to hunt somewhere else. Okay,
So it is a win win for everybody, even if
you're not a hunter. This preserves wildlife, very cool wildlife
in a very cool place. So if you want to

(43:14):
help out, go to ww dot Veil Bighorn dot com
slash ways to help and you'll find a link where
you can donate. I think it actually takes you to
the wild Sheet Foundation. They're the ones that are managing
all these donations. And just make sure that you click
on Veil Bighorn to make sure that your donation goes

(43:36):
directly towards this project. So again www Dot Veil Bighorn
dot com slash ways to help, and again for me
and for the sheep of the Gore range, help them out.
I appreciate it. Thank you, I really am.

Speaker 8 (43:57):
This guy thought the door was open for your uh yeah,
and you gotta jump in on the vegan side of things.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
But oh, anything to add I'm cutting a lot of
stuff up. But you got to get back to this guy.

Speaker 5 (44:11):
Uh you know, yeah, like we even with what you know,
we we we. I actually wrote a little article about it.
I was I was asked once in a panel. You know,
you know, monk sausage is something that we make at
a restaurant, and it's it's an old recipe. My father
gave me, right, he passed it down and and you know,

(44:31):
we it became really just kind of popular around Minneapolis
and the way we make it, you know, And there
was a panelas who you know who or somebody asked.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
Me, can you give us a brief descriptor a monk sausage? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (44:42):
Yeah, so it is uh our recipe we use. And
the thing that Dad showed me was seventy percent shoulder, uh,
thirty belly. And then the aromatics inside is lemongrass, ginger, garlic, shallots, fish, sauce, tie, chilies.
And then and then it's very important because the grind
is coarse. It's not a lot of people they do sausage.

(45:04):
They're more like Eastern European style, where it's you know,
you kind of get a multified Ours is more course
because because of the fat content so high that you
actually want that fat to render. And while you're grilling it,
you're not grilling at hot, you're kind of grilling at higher,
so it renders. Now yeah, you know, you know, you
know what I'm talking about renders. And and as it does.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
That, you say you're not grilling it hot, you're grilling
it lower.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
Yep. Sorry, So what I meant high was like higher
on the grill. Yeah, yeah, you know, And and and
you kind of let it go. And and you know,
I teach my a lot of our chefs and cooks
who cook with us, they aren't a lot of them
aren't munk. So I have the re like like re
engineer their mind to be like, no, we're not cooking this,
like if it was an Eastern European style, you know,

(45:45):
sausage is the Southeast Asian sausage is a little different. Anyways,
there was a lady asked and said, hey, you know,
would you ever can you know, She's like, I'm vegan,
can you make this sausage vegan? And I and I
I politely said to her no, because.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Because you realize this is one hundred percent made out
of like we got seventy.

Speaker 5 (46:05):
This yeah, so yeah, absolutely, But I wasn't trying to
be meaner. But then I also said to her too,
that there's a legacy that comes along with this. See,
my father when he came to this country, he didn't
have anything, you know, he didn't have land, he didn't
have anything his name. But what he did was he
knew how to do this, and then he passed it
to me, you know, And it was one of those
things that as kids we learned how to do it

(46:26):
with him. And and for me, it's more than just
some recipe where I could just change it to people's preference.
It's like, no, we're we're gonna stick to this, you know.
And and so for me, it's it runs deeper in that.
And it to me, like there's sometimes food and I'm
a food guy, it runs deeper than that, you know,
just say oh, hey, like let's make this vegan ruben

(46:47):
whatever you know, and it's like yeah, but I we
always say with her on our restaurant is if if
when you eat something, be curious about it, like why
is it the way it is? And so that's where
I come from, especially with this whole like changing it
this way, changing it this way, And so that was
like my big thing. And then a lot of the
vegans got mad at me. And then you know, when

(47:07):
this article came out and they were like, oh my gosh,
like you you hate vegans, and I'm like, I never
said I hate vegans. I have you know, It's like
I never said that. I said that we choose to
make this this way and keep it this way when
we have people who aren't pork eaters, and they're like, well,
could you do it with chicken, I'm like, doesn't taste
the same, you know it. And to me why it's
so important to me was that this is part of

(47:28):
Dad's legacy. See, my father didn't have this, like he's
not like my parents don't have this thing with was like,
this is this land and we're gonna give this to
you when we pass away. No he didn't, but he
had these recipes. It's his legacy. Yeah, and it's like
we get to carry it and we get to pass
it down and so you know, yeah, we could probably
talk about this forever, but just this idea of like
what it means to me, mung is to carry down

(47:48):
these legacy, to carry down this you know, these things
that it's not written in a document anywhere, you know,
but we carried down from our parents and they took
it from their parents. And so for me, when it
became a vegan issue, I was just like, hey, this
is this is where I'm at. And then everyone just
you know, everyone on the.

Speaker 8 (48:07):
Such a god ball thing, right, It's it's like really
an inappropriate question. It's like can you take that very
unique and special thing to you and then completely change
it for my personal.

Speaker 5 (48:18):
Taste yeah, and that's I mean again.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Can you leave, man, I don't have any ill will
toward vegan I don't. Yeah, I like to laugh about it.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
Yeah. But then like even with the you know, the
article you're talking about, I'm like, I'm I'm firmly I
believe the way that you believe where it's like, you know,
like everyone like, if we're going to stand for like
the first time, I'm right, you know, if if we're
going to stand for that other side, we gotta know
we got to keep it consistent. We got to keep
it consistent, you know. And that's how I believe that
was Like, bro, go find another place to live. You know.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Well, let me tell you this dude's situation. He moves
to his neighborhood and they find out that he uh hunts,
and they start leaving them letters.

Speaker 5 (48:59):
Oh boy, even to.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
This point, this is I'm taking his word for it here.
I don't know. This is what he said. He said.
He gets a letter that says this community is vegetarian
and doesn't greet with your hunting presence or the presence
of murdered meat in the neighborhood.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
I'd love to know the size of the neighborhood. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Uh, he's wondering what would you do to keep the neighborhood,
to keep things in the neighborhood's civil?

Speaker 6 (49:28):
Man, I just can confuse if he's a hunter and
stuff and why he's living there? Was that, Like, how
would you know?

Speaker 5 (49:37):
I mean, if it's a vegetarian neighborhood. I mean you
think they'd have a sign.

Speaker 6 (49:42):
Was it in the contract? You sign a renter's agreement.
If he's not in the contract.

Speaker 5 (49:47):
Meat, I agree with you. Yeah, if the landlord made
it very clearly.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
No, No, this dude, I don't think this is that different,
pointing out that that just happens to me where he lives.
Oh it was so he got a letter from a
neighbor saying that aut out the neighborhood. This is not
a formal thing. Oh yeah, So I think he's just
saying so outside of any rule break, and he's wondering,
how do you maintain stability.

Speaker 5 (50:09):
I would invite them all over for a barbecue.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
That's not gonna work.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
Meat diplomacy.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
You could have him over for a veggie barbecue and
then after say hey, let's let's chat because there's a
little problem.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
I would just chat if you want to try it.
I have some of this freshly killed venison over here
that's pretty tasty. That ate nothing but plants.

Speaker 5 (50:31):
I eat a lot of grilled zucchini this time of
year on the barbeque. That's good stuff. You know.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Just let me tell you what I think. Then I
want you to say what you think. They'll be the
final word. I think that he should go about his business,
but just don't don't rub their noses in it, like
you know, I.

Speaker 5 (50:46):
Mean, don't you.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Hang you here in your backyard just as well as
you can hang in your front yard. Hang in the backyard.

Speaker 6 (50:54):
Yeah, I'm I would.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
I don't know I would.

Speaker 6 (50:57):
If he's getting all this these letters and stuff, there's
there's not much he can do about it other than
maybe talk to I would probably talk to the landlord
and try and have a nice civil conversation, even though
they might not understand that they make the choices that
they do for reasons.

Speaker 5 (51:16):
I had anything to do with the landlord. There's nothing
about renting. This is just his.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Neighbors hostile to These people are not going to be
appeased until he quits hunting.

Speaker 6 (51:28):
Okay, well then, yeah, just keep to yourself or the
people that are sending you the letters, because you know
how I don't know how many people are sending him
letters and stuff. Maybe just literally try and have a
civil conversation with them and be like you guys, make
the choices that you make for reasons that you stand by,
and you know, please let me make the choices that

(51:51):
I stand by, and you know I won't shove it
in your face. I won't be roasting a pig in
my front yard. I'll cook it.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
I'd put a chunk of bloody hide maybe in their mailbox.
That is a phenomenal movie.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
Try and keep it to yourself.

Speaker 8 (52:11):
The kill them with kindness. I'm a big like you
can just grind people down with kindness and you kind
of get satisfaction out of it because you know, it's
just like irksome. But they can't say anything, they can't respond.

Speaker 6 (52:24):
They'll even get send more letters.

Speaker 8 (52:27):
But I had the impression that when I was living
in and catch them, the neighbors across the street from
me did not like me for whatever reason, no idea,
And I was always cordial and uh, you know, would
wave when they pull in or whatever. But kind of

(52:47):
a wide street it's not like it was forced interaction
at all.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (52:51):
And one day I look out the window and I
was always out and about working on the place, running
a chop saw in the front yard and stuff like that,
but not like would be like normal business hours, not
crazy early or crazy late. One day I look across
the street and here's mom, dad, the two kids, a

(53:14):
dog like little nuclear family, and they have a brand
new refrigerator in the box in the back of this
guy's pickup and they're trying to negotiate this thing out
and it's not going well. And so I drop what
I what I'm doing, run across the street. I'm like, hey,

(53:35):
can I help you?

Speaker 5 (53:35):
And they're like, eah no. And I was.

Speaker 8 (53:39):
Like, ah, you really look like can I just help
and kind of force the issue a little bit in
you know, fifteen seconds had the refrigerator out safely. Now
it's on the ground, they have a dolly. I'm like,
I can help you get inside, and they're like nope,
and literally never spoke to me from that day forward.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
Really, yeah, just bizarre. Some people are just that way.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Couldn't kill them with kindness.

Speaker 8 (54:06):
Yeah, The moral of the story is, some people are
just that way. Right, It's like doesn't matter what you do.
So I wouldn't go out of my way to change
my life. But you know they're miserable inside their house
writing letters and you gotta understand that too.

Speaker 5 (54:23):
Yeah, And I've I've learned too, man, like hurt people
hurt people. You know, like people that are hurt, they
hurt people because it's like you have all this bs
inside of you and you got to project it somewhere.
And then being hurt sometimes, like they hurt people. And
that's where I mean, I've I've learned that in my
lifetime is hurt people hurt people. And sometimes that's like

(54:43):
the final answer, and I'm like, yeah, that's it, you know,
that's there's nothing else, nothing you're gonna do. Yeah, nothing
you can do about it until you know, they get
help or until they you know, recognize that hurt or
until they you know, confront that hurt. You know.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Uh, can y'all can you tell me how your name
changed over time?

Speaker 5 (55:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (55:02):
So the name given to me at birth was Yeah,
so you actually can have two years in the studio.
The story is I was very sick and then the
moon culture. You know, sometimes they you know, there's there's
a lot to do with the namesake. And so in
the Moon culture, sometimes when you just don't get better,

(55:26):
they change your name oh to you and and they'll
they'll say, do you know.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
What was the I mean, did you have a specific
ailment or you just weren't thriving?

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Now they just said, I was just sick all the time.
And so you know, one one of the first I
guess you could sell. You could say it in remedy.
They'll maybe consult with the shaman. And then a lot
of times they'll just say, hey, maybe you just need
to change his name. And actually, in this case, my
parents gave me to my aunt uncle and my uncle

(55:56):
was the deacon of the Catholic.

Speaker 5 (55:58):
Church, and so they gave me to go live with
my aunt uncle.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
And because you weren't doing well, because.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
I wasn't doing well, and so I want to say,
this is when I was just a few months old
even and so he since he was a Catholic, a
deacon Catholic church, he uh the translated there's a translated

(56:28):
Bible in mung So and in the in there John
the Baptist. Uh the name translated in mung is jah.
So I shared this when I was here the first time,
my name is my name is Jah and Mun and
so he named me after John, renamed me John the Baptist. Uh,

(56:49):
my name after John Baptist in the mung translated version
of the Bible. And I got better and then he
gave me they gave me.

Speaker 5 (56:57):
Back to my parents, so and so yeah, so in
our culture it's animism, right, So it's the belief of,
you know, the the ancestors of the are the good
spirits and their evil spirits. So when yeah, I was young,
I I you know, this is from what I've learned.
I bet you it was probably like, Okay, we're going
to change his name because we're going to attract to

(57:17):
trick the evil spirits who's making him sick to think
that it's a different person. So that's the changing of
the name. And so I have friends who have had
name changes and stuff like that. And then even even
that whole idea of like the like what the name
carries along with it in the meaning. And so my
name yeah, which you know, yeah, I used to be yea.
It literally translates to iron skillet or fry. Yeah. Yeah,

(57:42):
So as you go into it, and I dude, I
hated it.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Growing up, man, are you kidding me?

Speaker 5 (57:48):
It is strong. I think you might think it's cool,
but not when you were seven years old and you're
with all your cousins then like hey, where's the yea
And then they'll be like no him, like no, not him,
like you know, you made got made fun of.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
It's not a common name.

Speaker 5 (58:03):
Oh no, not not really. It's how many years do
you guys know? Not a few one here. But but
here's the deal. My youngest brother's name is which means
blessing of God literal translationist blessing of God. So we
have no question. We can absolutely so we have. So
we have like you know, like a like a pan,

(58:26):
an iron skiller, and then we have blessing of God.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
You know it's like, dude, come on, we know how okay,
how how directly does that mean iron skillet?

Speaker 5 (58:36):
It's literal little like yah means the iron skiller or
the walk or the you know, the pan, the frying pan. Yeah. Yeah,
I hated it growing up.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Well, okay, can I tell you them?

Speaker 5 (58:47):
When I got my citizens, I.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
Got one more question about about the name, just to
make sure I was talking about being out on book tour.
When I was on a book tour, I met a
kid and his name was Talon, which that was a
great name. His name's town. So clearly it's a you know,
the foot of a predatory bird. But it's a name.

(59:09):
So when I hear Talent, because it's not a common name,
I make the thing that like, oh, that name means
a raptor's claw. If I meet an Autumn, I'm like,
autumn is a name. But if she were to go

(59:30):
to another country and they speak a different language and
people are like, what does your name mean? And she
would say, well, my name, my name's autumn. It means
the season between summer and winter. That might seem noteworthy
to someone, But then this autumn would be obligated to say.
But it's so common, no one thinks of it that

(59:52):
way because it's so integrated into naming. So if your
name's iron skillet, it's enough that people like, hold on
your name's iron skillet, or is it so integrated that
it's not noteworthy?

Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
So so the little translation is iron skillet, you know,
or walk or whatever, you know, an iron skillet, iron pan.
But my mom said, the metaphorical name represents like like
an an iron skiller pan is uh, it's uh, it's
a vessel you use to cook with. And she said
that what she said to me was that it means
that like you will be a servant of men, like

(01:00:29):
in a good way, like not in a you know
what I mean, like like to serve or to help,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Really.

Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
But yeah, but then I'm like, dude, he got blessing
of God. You know, it literally means blessing of God,
you know. But nah, man, it's it's one of those things. Yeah,
I mean he's I love my little his name again,
hon or, Yeah, go home?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
What what what does American bodies call him?

Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
So it's spelled kob mob that's the monk spelling. So
growing up they just called him coub kob. So he's
called Kube or kooby. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
So and to pronounce his name again for me.

Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
And it's or sometimes we just say moan.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
So how how would how would how does how would
a native speaker say your name? Very similar to what
we're saying?

Speaker 5 (01:01:11):
Yeah, okay, you would? I get my name butchered all
the time. So when I got my citizenship, they asked
the last question to ask you is would you like
to have a new name because you can take on
like an American name, uh the immigration officer. Yeah, seriously,
Oh yeah, you can get it, dude. I had in college.
I had a list of like what names and all
my buddies can pick, you know, And it was like I

(01:01:34):
literally when he when she said this, and I was
sitting in the office with her, I almost want to
be like Optimist Prime, please call me. That would be myself,
that would be my government name, Optimist Prime.

Speaker 10 (01:01:46):
Thang, can you imagine getting like credit card statements from
Optimist Prime, you know, like, dude that or Chad, yeah,
location he pays, Like, hey mx Oultimate is prime here?

Speaker 5 (01:02:03):
Yeah, do you know what I could do to this place?
Oh dude, I know it was that or it was
like chatter Trevor. I joked. I always joked about that,
you know, just get a good white name, a good strong.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Did you know did you know people? Well, first off,
how old were you?

Speaker 5 (01:02:16):
Oh, when I got a citizenship was like two years ago,
three years ago? Yeah, it was pretty recent. Yeah, yeah,
I just kind of waited.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
You know, you only became a US citizen two or
three years ago?

Speaker 5 (01:02:26):
Yeah, yeah, what year did you move to the US?
Eighty eight? So it was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
It was a lot what ages you moved to the US.

Speaker 5 (01:02:32):
I was four and a half five, so started kindergarten
right away.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
So give me the base chronology where and when you
were born. Yeah, it's the flow because I know you
mentioned the refugee camp.

Speaker 5 (01:02:41):
Yeah, so my parents met in bonvina I, which is
a very you know, famous, big refuge It's the largest
refugee camp northern Thailand. It's like ten kilometers off the
borders of a Louse in Thailand. That's where a lot
among people came to after the war.

Speaker 6 (01:02:57):
That's where my dad spent peace corps there for four
years teaching small engines.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
One stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
What year, I mean, what are the years? Do you know?

Speaker 6 (01:03:04):
A while ago?

Speaker 5 (01:03:06):
Like what year was he there?

Speaker 6 (01:03:07):
Like, you know, I'm not sure, but it was it
was wild, like probably like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Howl shooting attacks Chester maybe they.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Yeah, And actually I think Yea's family and my family
overlapped in the in the camp.

Speaker 5 (01:03:22):
When did you guys leave? We left in eighty okay, yeah,
we left in eighty eight. Yeah, my dad had a
chance to leave early, but then he stayed because my
dad fought in the war, and you know, and it's
man just to hear their stories of what they did
running missions for the CIA in US government, you know,
Northern last there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Y'all sent me. Y'all sent me a great book about
all those campaigns.

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
What was that book called, y'all Tragic Tragic Mountains, A
good one.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he sent me the details all those campaigns.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
And he goes back and for the history too, like
you know, you know, fighting with the French back in
the day and just like you know, back. But yeah,
it was a good book. Eighty eight we left. We
landed in Saint Paul, Minnesota, so yeah, and came there
and then we moved out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
To like your own back up on your folks met
as refugees.

Speaker 5 (01:04:05):
Yeah. So my dad fought in the war. He escaped,
my mom. They escaped. They had a horrible time. They
got caught, were put in prison camps by the communists.
Finally escaped that and then in seventy seven they met
in the camp and then in seventy eight they got
married and then they were there until eighty eight, So
ten years they.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Were there, ten years in the camp.

Speaker 5 (01:04:27):
Yeah, because they were because the moment, people were stuck,
because the Americans didn't want them, because They're like, I
don't know, it's the Thai government was like, dude, we
don't like we're borders with Laos and Laos doesn't like
you guys, so we don't want to you know. So
literally it was this really awkward like even among people
that were born in the camp at that time, where
they weren't they're not. I'm not considered a citizen of Thailand,

(01:04:50):
you know, because but I was born in Thailand, so
I am.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
But your family came from your parents were loud born, yep,
but they don't hold I mean, there's no citizenship for them.

Speaker 5 (01:05:01):
For do you have a second citizenship somewhere? No? No, no.
I was just kind of you're.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Like a citizenless person, a citizenshipless person. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:05:11):
But you know, but one of the crazy things is
like when I got my citizenship, a buddy of mine
who you know, his friend, came to me. It is
a couple of years ago, and he said, hey, why
would you want to be a citizen of America? Like
right now, like America, like things weren't you know, I
mean this is after, you know, like things aren't going
too hot for America. Why would you want to be
a citizen in America, and I'm like, bro, you were
born here. You know, you became a citizen when you
were born here, like my grandparents and my parents fought

(01:05:34):
a war to get me here. It's a little I
feel like it was a little different for me, you know,
like I always talk about I was talking about this
scene from Saving Private Ryan. You know at the end
when uh, you know Tom Hanks character Captain Miller, you know,
he's dying and he looks at uh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Tom dies in the end of Saving Private Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:05:50):
Spoiler, Like, come on, you know what I'm talking about, right, Yeah,
it's like slow bleedout.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
I know that movie really devolved. Like it starts out
like all this grand Dday and then there's that they
have that you know, it kind of centers in on
that really bad german.

Speaker 5 (01:06:03):
It's like a clock winding down. Yeah. And then at
the end, in the end, yeah, at the end, well
remember because they all died finding Private Ryan, right, and
and he whispers Captain Miller to prior. Ryan whispers and says,
earn this earned this. And then you know, and then
it goes into like the present and he's you know,
he's this old guy now that he's standing over Captain

(01:06:23):
Miller's grave and he looks at his wife and he's
an old grandpa and goes, did I live a good life?
You know? And I I tell people.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
So Tom Hanks meaning earned the sacrifice that was made.

Speaker 5 (01:06:34):
Absolutely and and that to me, that's a it's a
good haunting I have that. When I got my citizenship,
I was I thought about my grandpa. I never met
my dad's dad who died in this war, and the
sacrifices they made, and all my some of my uncles
who have passed away in the war to get us
here right. So I've learned that freedom isn't free. Like

(01:06:55):
you might not have paid for it, but somebody did.
And that's and and and even understanding like like themong
like are like some of our dads and our grandpas
who fought for America before they even were given the
ability to step foot in America. So they fought for
a country that later on denied them. And I, to me,
that's true patriotm That's where I think, like man like,

(01:07:17):
that's what really wrapped in my head as I got older,
I'm like, I want to be a citizen because there
comes a point for me where I'm like what am
I doing with the sacrifice that was done for me?
And that's why it was really important for me to
go through that process to become a citizen and to
be able to talk about it and to honor them,
to honor their legacy, to honor who they are through

(01:07:39):
and it's as simple as through the food we make
and we get to talk about that. It's so cool.
We get to travel the country. I get to do
shows and talk about the legacies of you know, my father,
my grandfather by the sacrifices they made for this country.
And I get to talk about that by cooking mung food.
And so that's why one of the things I get
really excited about.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
You know, I want to get back into a little
bit of stuff from early in your life. But I know,
I think that growing up in I grew up in Michigan,
spent a lot of my life in Montana, a handful
of other states as well. I know about among people

(01:08:19):
through the lens of hunting. Yeah, it's like I feel
like if I didn't if I didn't know all there's
these uh, if I didn't know that there was these
avid hunters in the US that came from laos as refugees,
like I wouldn't know about Mung culture. I know it

(01:08:40):
through the hunting lens. If you're a Mung chef and
you're bringing a cuisine around, I have to imagine that
at times you need to go. Before we get to
the food, let me explain that we exist. Meaning everyone
holds in their head like all Americans hold in their
head like, oh Max food. Yeah, it's this country to

(01:09:01):
the south of US. They speak Spanish. I got the
basic gist. But to say to most people Mung food, well,
I mean most I would say, the majority of people
aren't gonna know what the hell you're talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:09:11):
Yeah, true or not true? Completely true. So you know,
if you know, I get some craft from I call
them hardliner among people, They're like, you aren't making real
Munk food. It's blah blah blah blah. You're bastarizing your food.
You make money, they do that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Oh dude, yeah, that's not that you're not suffering that.

Speaker 5 (01:09:29):
Well yeah, yeah, yeah, every every you know, every culture
has that right your own people kind of like you know.
So one of the things I say within our restaurant,
we have this mantra we always say, we say every
dish has a narrative. If you follow that dish long
enough and close enough, you get to the people behind
the food. And once you're there, it's actually not about food.
It's about people. That food is a catalyst into cultivating
great relationships. So that's why I ask people. Every time

(01:09:51):
you eat a food and you go, hey, I want
to change it or it should be changed this way,
you know how we were talking about, I always go, hey,
ask yourself why it was made like that? Because if
you follow the story, you follow those crumbs, I bet
you, you get to the people and once you get there,
you get to know their story, and then it opens
your eyes of saying, this is why the food is
done this way, you know. And So I grew up

(01:10:13):
not wanting to cook munk food. I didn't want to
be a cook at all. Dude, I went to school
for all this stuff. Like I graduated college with a
degree in interpersonal communication and minor in PR and marketing.
Like I wanted to run as far as I could.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
From what does interpersonal communication?

Speaker 5 (01:10:27):
So you work with a lot of it's kind of
one on one from when you majoring that you can
go to grad school, you can do you can teach
it and then you can work like doing counseling, you know, counseling,
you know, therapy, you can do all that, you know
after that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
But you were raised eating mung food.

Speaker 5 (01:10:44):
Oh yeah, dude, Like yeah, like that that was it.
That's what mom knew how to cook, and that's what
we ate and it was incredible. But yeah, but at
the end of the thay too. I'm a Wisconsin boy, right,
So Culver's you know, double cheeseburger, but burger from Culvers,
come on, man, like, you know, like cheese curs. I
am mad at dan, you know, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:11:02):
So, yeah makes what's that saying? Makes butterburger better?

Speaker 5 (01:11:05):
Like yeah, better brand of beef.

Speaker 6 (01:11:07):
Better brand of beef, makes a butter burger better.

Speaker 5 (01:11:09):
Yeah. So like growing up, it was like, yeah, do
you like munk food or do you like American food?
Or the mong word for American is mika. Like do
you like meeka food or like American food? I'm like yes,
like I could like both. Right, What's I means mung
It's it's the it's the long way of saying American.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
Okay, So I thought it was like an abbreviate.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
It's like a shortened version.

Speaker 5 (01:11:27):
Yeah, yeah, so so so our parents couldn't say American,
you know, but in their accident of alliteration, it came
out mika. So so when so when you're around among
people and you hear they're probably talking about you, guys, honest?

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
So when when?

Speaker 5 (01:11:42):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Okay? I was want to understand the relationship to mung
food and American food for a prior generation. So your
parents had long history and their home country. Were they
when you were kid and you guys went out If
kids are like, hey, I go to McDonald's, did they
embrace that or were they reluctant to get into that

(01:12:08):
because it would mean that it would take you down
this path of moving away from mung food, moving away
from mung culture or were they like down with America
not down like yeah yeah yeah yeah that comes out wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:12:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Did they embrace sort of like fast food culture or
did they resist it because it would be a forfeiture
of culture? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:12:28):
I mean I think my parents it was survival. It
wasn't like hey, like so right, now I get this
great opportunity to talk about the in depth understanding of
mung food and whatever it represents. My parents grown up
it was like, how do we work our job that
we're getting paid eight bucks an hour? And how do
we provide for our family? So it wasn't like they

(01:12:49):
had this moment of like, oh, like, let me think
about how our food can influence the way that our
kids think about our culture. No, it was like what
can we scrounge around to survive? So sometimes if it's
a buck nine nine happy meal at McDonald's back in
the day when it was bucket nine, and I remember that, boys, uh,
you know, like then that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:13:06):
Some days, you know, you know, some days it's like
if some noodle dish, some blinklot dish or whatever, you know,
like and then they had to make it work with
the and with the garden and they just pull stuff
from the vegetables from the garden. Then that was it,
you know. But what what I get to do is
I get to look back on those moments because I
have the privilege now to look back and think about that.

(01:13:26):
I have the privilege to dissect and break down the
thoughts of like how this what this food represents for
our people because they sacrifice and they worked so hard
for for me, you know, and so yeah, I don't
think that, you know, because I think that we do
a lot of shows and stuff like that, and I
think that they are editors and you know, producers who
want to give me this like this like beautiful like

(01:13:49):
and you know Netflix Chef's table kind of like you
stood there with your mom and you guys made sticky
rice together. I'm like, dude, it wasn't like that, you know,
like there's not that you know what I'm saying, where
it's like all chef has is like beautiful story of
like sitting with grandma. She's teaching you how to make whatever.
It's like no, man like they were hustling all the time,
Like you know, we ate instant ramen, you know, we

(01:14:09):
ate you know, I learned how to cook fried eggs
with tomatoes, you know, and stuff like that. Those are
the things we did. There's nothing sexy about it. It
was tough. We lived on food stamps, you know, yeah,
and it was like but like man like to me,
I feel so blessed to be in a position where
I am, where we get to interact with people who
value food at a very high economic level, you know,

(01:14:32):
where it's like they're willing to pay a lot of
money for food, and we also get to tell this
incredible story that comes along with it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
You know, did your folks raise food when you're growing up?
You talk about having.

Speaker 5 (01:14:51):
Guard Yeah, man, you know you understanding among people. We
so right now, my parents, you know, they're in their seventies,
they're retired. They have a ten acre farm, right she
my mom calls it a little garden, but it's ten
acres and everything they grow every year they harvest it
and bring over to the restaurant. So yeah, and that's
what it is. Oh dude, Yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Your restaurant serves food at your folks raise.

Speaker 5 (01:15:11):
Oh absolutely, that's the whole point of the restaurant. Like
you know, like what you know, we just got done
with the state fair, you know. So so in Minnesota
state fair is huge. It's like this year they had
one point eight million people walk through in twelve days. Right.
And so my mom makes these gallipau where there are
these steam buns. Right. So she makes these steam by
as a family tradition. And this year we sold a
little bit over twenty three thousand of them. And so

(01:15:32):
my mom and my aunt and three church four church
ladies made twenty three thousand of these you know, steam buns,
and that's I mean, that's my mom has this thing
where she says, I don't know business, I don't know math,
but my hands have been taking care of you for
the last almost forty years until the day I die.
I will always take care of you. If my hands
can make it and I can produce it, I will

(01:15:53):
do it for you, you know. And so it's like
when you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
Hear stuff like that, Mom, Bro, when.

Speaker 5 (01:15:57):
You hear stuff like that, how huge not not keep
talking about them? You know, And so like I get
super emotional about it. But like, man, it's like, no quit.
She's in her seventies, no quit. She's out working half
our chefs, you know. And I love it. And it's
not something where I asked her to, but she's just like,
this is what we do. This is how we help
each other. This is what we do. And that's what

(01:16:19):
I love about our culture. You know, there's no quit.
It is if we come together, we can you know,
we can accomplish more. Dad told me that the Mung culture,
in the Mung people, what happened was hundreds and hundreds
of years ago. There's always this argument between the eighteen clans,
right who is the rifle like clan name to to

(01:16:39):
be to lead these people. Right, so it's like this fight,
it's a game of Throne style, right, it's like what
clan should be the you know, it is the direct
line for the first Monk Empire. And you know they
didn't argue about the plan.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
I'm a Vang Yeah yeah, you're Yangyanglan yeah yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:16:56):
And so it's like game of throne whatever it kind
of deal and which plan is better? I don't know. Yeah,
everyone always yeah, but that's how it is. Yeah, yeah, okay,
cool from you got it, you win, you know. But
but but what Dad said that during the war, during
the genocide of our people, So you have to realize
that in the Mountain of Laws, there's about three hundred
thousand moongk people that live there. Through the genocide or

(01:17:18):
the Mong people. After the war and nineteen seventy five
there about fifty five thousand Mong people were killed, just slaughtered.
So think about that fifty five thousand to sixty thousand
Mong people killed and thirty it was about three hundred
thousand people there. And he said he got so bad
that the eighteen clans came together and said we can't
fight anymore about which clan should be the number one.
We have to unite, and if we don't unite, our

(01:17:41):
children will never be free. They will live in war.
And Dad said that they made this commitment, that eighteen
clans made this commitment to each other, says no more
will we fight. We have to come together. And you know,
I always say that if you want to know our food,
you have to know our story. Right, it is kind
of what you were asking me. And I always say
that our cultural DNA is intricately woven into the foods
that we eat as Mung people. And I asked my

(01:18:04):
mom what's the best way to describe Mong people to
people who have are munk food to people who haven't
eat Munk food before, And she said, balance, because you
look at Mung food, we have four basic element always
on the table. There's a rice, there's some kind of protein,
there's a vegetable, and sometimes I have vegetables in a broth,
and then there's a hot sauce. And she said, out
of all those four elements on the table, one is

(01:18:26):
never better than the other because we need all of
them together to make this complete meal. So I always
get asked, what's your favorite mung dish. I'm like, I
can't talk about you know, the grilled pork that my
dad taught me how to make the grill over a fire.
I can't talk about that without talking about the sticky rice.
We well, i can't talk about the sticky rice unless
I'm talking about the whatsal, which is, you know, the
pepper sauce and man, the mung mustard green we have that.

(01:18:49):
You know that the mom girls in her garden has
this bite that cuts through the porkiness and the fattiness
of the pork, So you need that too. So I
can't talk about one dish. It's all about a combination
of one. And you know, in the last few years
of me being able to do the show Fair Oh
for Outdoor and being able to meet all these different people,
I've really learned that the Mong mentality when it comes
to life and food, it's basically conservationism. It is this

(01:19:13):
idea that everything is on a balance, it's an ecosystem.
If one thing goes wrong, like for example, like if
the if the sticky rice, yeah yeah, I knows what
I mean. If the sticky rice is not on the table,
It's like you don't start eating, It's like, nah, and
we need the rice there first.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
Yeah, we have.

Speaker 5 (01:19:26):
We used to like we used to forget about putting
the pepper, the hot sauce on there, and my mom
would stop dinner and we would quickly make it and
then put it on the dinner before it comes together.
And it's this idea that this is, this is an ecosystem.
Everything needs to work. And that's what I think about
Monk's food. And when I talk about the philosophy of
munk food, that's what I'm talking about, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
So in the most in the most basic sentence level way, Yeah,
how do you what would you say, like, what is
mung food?

Speaker 5 (01:19:53):
Yeah? So I always say the munk food isn't a
type of food. It's a philosophy of food, you know.
And what is that philosophy. It's the philosophy that we
live in a living world around us and using the
living world around us to make food that nourishes our
soul and brings our community together. And the great thing
about munk food, and this is what I love, and

(01:20:13):
I'll get pushed back from some of the hardliners, is
that munk food is not it's represented of what regions
we're in so we're scattered all around. Did you know
that in nineteen eighty six hundred Mongk people resides in Missoula.
They can't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
Yeah, they dominated the market.

Speaker 5 (01:20:33):
Absolutely because we are people of you know, the ground,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
But I feel like a French person that lives in
the French countryside. If I said, like, what is traditional
French food, they could say the sentence you just said, yep, absolutely,
And so I said, there's got to be another way
to describe mung food.

Speaker 5 (01:20:47):
Well, I what I what I talked about with munk
food is that like, like our story is involved in its.
So for example, my dad always said to me, no
matter where you are in the world, wherever you go,
if you find another monk person there, you always find family.
So the kind of you know what we talked about
in the beginning, right, like, yeah, if I like, I
go to Idaho somewhere and I see another Munk family,
I'm like, WHOA, what's up? You know? And but we

(01:21:08):
share that same history, right, That's what happens when you
have an you don't have a country of your own, right,
And so I would say that if you want to
talk about flavor profile our flavor is representative of Southeast Asia.
So you know, you got you know, you got your
lemon grass, you got your gingers, you got your you know, garlic,
you know a lot a lot of you know, you're
kind of like the weird cousin to like Loo Thai

(01:21:28):
Vietnamese food. You know, you know a little bit of that.
But I think that what if you really want to
get to know munk food, you have to know the
monk people regional because there's more people that live out
in Fresno, California. There's people that live in Boco Raton,
There's people that live in Low Rock, Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
You know, So are you do you see manifestations of
like where where those regions have bled into the culinary tradition? Absolutely,
because the thing I want to ask you about is
when your folks, like, because your folks grew up in proximity,
no doubt, to raising food and sourcing food, all of
a sudden you wind up another continent. It mm hm,

(01:22:02):
just just the climactic with gardening food that's available right. Uh,
you had to they had to have been forced in
some way to lean right, to lean into this whole
new way of trying to achieve something that made sense
to them, absolutely from an ingredient standpoint.

Speaker 5 (01:22:20):
Absolutely, And I love the fact that they did because
it's about advancing our people, you know. So in April,
I got a chance to go back to Laos and
I actually I was with a production crew. We did this,
you know, we filmed this Little Dock series. And I
actually went to the village that my mom was born
in Okay and and I found out that I have
one hundred years of our our family lineage comes out

(01:22:41):
of that village. And I went to the exact same spot.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Are there still in that village?

Speaker 5 (01:22:45):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They came back after the war?
Ye oh yeah yeah. So so the Mong people couldn't escape.
They just came back and lived in the mountains and
they just kept quiet, you know. And so I'm I'm
here in this village and I'm standing on the the
village Bond I think I think it's Bond sound right now,
because it didn't have a name, but it it The
government named it with the there's like this little river

(01:23:07):
that comes by it, and so they named him bon
Bon and laosh and Lao it means village of you know.
So Son is the name of the river. And and
it's in the mountains. And when I say it's in
the mountains, like you're in a car, you're in a
four wheel drive car. You're driving through the treacherous mountain
for about I don't know, you're about three four hours
to get there. You know, there's nothing up there, you know,
and there's a there's you know, people that live up there.

(01:23:29):
And I remember standing on the plot of land where
the house that my mom was born in the little kid, yeah, dude,
And and and to find out that it was one
hundred years like my great grandmother was a shaman in
that village too, you know, so like it's like our
families connected that village time.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
So your mom had to she had to explain like
here there.

Speaker 5 (01:23:47):
No, my mom wasn't there with me. It was like
another cousin of theirs that lived in in Pansavan and
in Laos that kind of took me up there and says, hey,
we found Yeah, it was. It was kind of like
one of those things I'm a late processor about you guys,
but like also it's like okay, cool, like this is cool.
And then I remember flying back from from you know,
we flying by it's like thirty hour flight back, and
I'm like just sitting in my playing seat and I'm

(01:24:08):
just start tearing up, and I'm like, yeah, what's going
hot going, you know, and it starts hitting me like dang,
like and Mom's never been back there ever, you know,
in like almost seventy some years. She was born there.
She was born there, you know, and they had to
escape right away. They had to leave, you know, because
it was like like you know, and so I was
I was standing there and I'm watching all of this,

(01:24:29):
and I go.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
Wow, other people, there's people living there.

Speaker 5 (01:24:32):
Yeah, there is there's people spot Yeah. And and I
was watching the way that they make the food and stuff,
and man, it still carries a little bit of like
there's these flavored tones and these notes that still carry.
But if you go to those villages, their technology is
barely past the bronze age for real. Like you go in,
it's just all like you know, they it's very very primitive.

(01:24:55):
But the way they do things. I loved it, you know,
because I'm watching them do things and I'm like, bro,
I'm like bringing that technique back like that. And I
felt like, you know, I've never been to Loust before, right,
But I felt like the best way I explained it
was it was like going to a home that you've
never been to, but you still feel at home there.
So that's how I felt up there. I was like dude,
and and it was you know, seeing your own people there.

(01:25:17):
And it was funny because like I'm a bigger dude,
so I don't look like most Munk kids, you know,
So a lot of times, like I was there, they
didn't think I was Mung because the crew we were
with had Lao Tai and you know, you know, like
white people, and so they were just like they just
thought I was one of the other helpers. And then
I started speaking among them and they're like what you know?

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
And I'm was it clear to them?

Speaker 5 (01:25:38):
You know? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, if you deal
with this. But like I get, like I I work
with like a lot of non Mung people. So when
I do speak Munk, I go when I go home, right,
you know with mom and dad, and then I'll speak Monk.
But I don't speak monk, you know, like daily a lot,
you know, And and I was really nervous. I was like, shoot,
because like the OG's up there, man, they will wreck
you if you're mong is like, you know, like if

(01:25:59):
your mung is good or if you had the wrong accent.
They're like, dude, you're a stupid kid, like, don't even
say that start, but you're.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
Like, you know. Yanni says something similar about, uh, we're
at a conversation recently where the Latvians in America police
the Latvian. Then you go to Lava, they just want
to talk English. Yeah, yeah, because they want to practice English.

Speaker 5 (01:26:19):
And when I got there, there was something inside of me.
I don't know if it was like flight or flight
inside of me. Then I started just speaking Monk and
I did something to the translation part of the show,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm actually doing a
lot better than I am.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
You know, can you give us a sense of what
Monk sounds like?

Speaker 5 (01:26:32):
I don't know, it's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
I mean just like, can you just say say some
stuff just to give a sense of what the language
sounds like for people. I'm guessing most people have not
heard monk.

Speaker 8 (01:26:41):
Yeah, if you want to talk about the white people
at the table with that's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
Bunch of white people talking about the mom I don't
even know how to start it.

Speaker 5 (01:26:49):
It's so weird.

Speaker 2 (01:26:50):
Uh, I'll say yeah and jikon.

Speaker 5 (01:26:58):
Studio can it yeah? Which okay, you know she thought
yea and named that's you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
How much overlap is there with I'm a little ignorant
on the language structure. Is there a Laosian there's like
there's yeah, is that the native language is called Laotan?

Speaker 5 (01:27:22):
Yeah, lao Okaya. Is there a lot of overlap.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
There's a few words, a few words, but generally they're
like the sting.

Speaker 5 (01:27:29):
So for example, like the word burrito is not an
English word, right, it's a Spanish word, but it's part
of the English language. We say burrito burrito, right, Well
you play it in scrabble, yeah, yeah. But in long words,
there there's a few words that I wouldn't say overlap,
but it's like art. Just because our cultures like are
right with each other, they use different words, like like

(01:27:49):
when I was in laos bathroom and long word is honah,
that's bathroom, but for the laower is honam.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
You know, So it's like a little bit that would
be that would be an example of a similarity.

Speaker 5 (01:28:01):
Yep, you know, uh yeah, the word the word go
like by right, that's that's like I've learned that that
was that's thaie yep so thy lao uh you know,
and even even a little bit of Vietnamese like they
share like culinary wise, they all kind of share the
same kind of word, right, even a little bit of Chinese,

(01:28:23):
you know, like the steam bund you know, like the
Chinese seam bun is called bao, but the the Lao
Thai and mungk version of his callabao, you know, because
they have the word bow at the end, you know.
So so like there's all these little like you know,
I don't want to say that they're crossovers, but there's
like you you you pull from each other right again,
Like like my my example is always the word burrito

(01:28:43):
when I tell sometimes, I told this guy wants to burrito,
isn't no, no, that's like an American word. I'm like, bro,
burrito is not an American word, okay. And I had
to explain to him He's like what I always thought
it was like an American thing, and like stop like stop,
you know.

Speaker 6 (01:28:57):
But you know, like kind of like that, could you
guys understand tie, I.

Speaker 5 (01:29:01):
Know, I don't speak to no, no, no, we it's
it's all, and you know, growing up like you grow
like among is, it's totally its own, totally different language.
And our our language has eight tones to it, so
it's our language is completely tonal right. So here's here's
a funny one I always tell people. So when you
don't know something, this isn't related to the number of clans, no,

(01:29:24):
no tones in your language. So for example, like when
I say I don't know, like in the word I
don't know, guccipo, you know, but if you do it
with the wrong tone guccio, which means I smell like
fart yeah yeah, well yeah fart yeah. Uh, it's so
so it's like that. So it's like when when I
have white friends.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
What a minefield, man, Dude, Like I learned the language.

Speaker 5 (01:29:45):
The thing is when you have white friends that are
teaching me among the phrase, and I'm like, okay, but
if you say it in the wrong tone, you're gonna
totally say something horrible, like what what do you mean?
And then it's always like it sounds the same right,
And I'm like, no, dude, you just said you smell
like part like you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Steve Steve, the the written form of the Monk language
wasn't actually created by a monk person.

Speaker 5 (01:30:07):
It was created.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
It was founded by a French priest. So he came
into and I shared this a little bit when I
was first here. He came into that that region, worked
with the monk, understood language, learned language, and came up
with the written version.

Speaker 5 (01:30:24):
Of it in using English letter. Yes, using English.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
Try to dance around the tone issue.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Oh, he figured a way to He found the tone,
He figured a way to capture the tones, and he
created this in the early forties.

Speaker 8 (01:30:39):
Yeah, you just add a lot more words, oh, clarifying, Yeah,
by which I mean, well.

Speaker 5 (01:30:45):
Like what what was incredible with what he did when
he took our language from an oral history to a
written history is he didn't realize what he did was
he changed history for our people. So in our culture
everything's oral, right, So it's like you tell us story
and the next person tells that story and they have
to keep it to exactly the tea right, you can't
divert from it because for us, like for example, like

(01:31:07):
my father would always tell us like two like two
fathers making a deal. It was you just said it,
you have people witnessed to say it, and then you
shook your hand and that was it. It wasn't like
we write a contract and we sign it out. So
in our culture, your word means everything. Being a man
of honor, being a person of honor, being a person integrity.
That means everything. You keep to your word. You say

(01:31:27):
I'm going to be here on Tuesday to help you,
I'm gonna be here on Tuesday to help you. There's
no contract that needs to be done. That's our culture.
When the French priest came in and said, hey, I'm
going to put this into written form, he changed our
world because before the way that we would tell our
history is you hand it down from generation to generation.
One father talks about his father that who told him

(01:31:48):
a story from his father. Right our elders right now,
they are elders that are in the seventies and eighties
that are passing away there they are our historical archives.
Inside their minds hold our history. As they are passing away,
our history is going with them. So there's a project
that where I'm working on saying how do we record this?

(01:32:11):
How do we write these things down? How do we
film this? How do we record this? Because the idea
of just writing something down for our people was so
brand staking new in the fifties.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
There's like a recapture.

Speaker 5 (01:32:23):
Yeah, but what it does is you were able to
record history. Like for example, my father when he came
to this country, he had to make up a birthday
because he didn't know when he was born, so he
chose January first, it's his birthday. A lot of the
most the first day that came to my mind, well
a lot of if you look at a lot of
refugees and immigrants from Southeast Asia at the time, January

(01:32:45):
first is what they use because it was the most simplest, like, hey,
this is the day, you know. And then he was
asked to give a signature.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
But they're going off the Gregorian calendar and not the
lunar calendar, or they just knew that it was.

Speaker 5 (01:32:58):
They just did that because because of the NGO workers
that were in these refugee camps, it goes, well, January first,
that's the first of the year, and so that's what
they did, I mean. And then it was then he
had to learn how to sign his name and by
at the point because he didn't have to. But now
when he signed his name on those documents, like it
was literally what he said was the NGO worker wrote

(01:33:22):
out my dad's name incursive, and then my dad put
a paper on top and he traced it. So dad
had to learn how to write in English. The first
thing he wrote was his name to sign his name
on those documents for our family to come here. It
changed the course of history for his family and changed
the course history for me. So like to me, writing
is very important and how it preserves our culture, that's

(01:33:44):
very important because anytime we need information we're gonna do
we go to our phone and we you know what,
I don't second think like reading. I don't think about
much about it. It's like I read. My parents can't
read English and they can't speak English. And so growing up,
when we went to doctor's visit a year a year,
had to be the translator, so I would remember. Really, yeah,
imagine how awkward it is is you go into the

(01:34:06):
doctor's office and you have to translate about your mom's
health issues somewhere on her body to the doctor, and
then the doctor had to tell you these other things
about some infection whatever, and then you had to explained
that you're at his eight year old. We did that
growing up. That's what we did and we I just
thought that was normal, but it's incredible about like the
reading and writing and how that changed the course of

(01:34:28):
history for our people.

Speaker 2 (01:34:30):
I purposely text my dad and Monk just to keep
up with, you know, the reading and the writing, because
I learned how to read and write it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:39):
Is there a monk keyboard on an iPhone? No, it uses.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
Uses, you know, the regular used alpha alphabet, and so
if you know the eight tones, also the monk.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
There's no mong al, there's no.

Speaker 5 (01:34:54):
No, no, the friend. Yeah, it's it's all English letters.

Speaker 2 (01:34:58):
It's not phonetic because if I wrote some stuff out
here and you read it, you it wouldn't it be gibberish? Right,
So if you didn't know kind of the conventions of
the language in.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
Order to use it, using the letters as symbols.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
But it's not phenomical, it's not phonetic, but you're using
the letters as the Roman indicators of what you know.
Like for example, the last letter in the word. If
I wrote out a word, the last letter indicates what
tone you're supposed to say that word in.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
Okay, let me, let me, let me hate, let me
hate you with this, you see, I'm using this this
conventional quirity keyboard or whatever. I kep using like these
letters the English alphabet, and I put down A. Okay,
and you see A. What do you see when you

(01:35:49):
see A with your Mong brain? That's not that's not
among word? Then okay, but I'm saying the letter U.

Speaker 5 (01:35:57):
I guess I would go with. I would start it
would start out as kind of phonetic, so I would say,
you're trying to get ah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Yeah, all right, I thought you meant maybe that they
were It doesn't matter what thought. I thought you meant
that they use these symbols but assign them totally different meanings.

Speaker 4 (01:36:15):
No, No, I think it's like if you wrote out dog,
but then at the end of dog there was an S,
and then you wrote out dog and then there might
have been an R. You might say dog one way
that means one thing with the S, and then you
might say dog a different way.

Speaker 5 (01:36:30):
Yah, yeah, and then and then don't forget. Don't forget that.
The Mung language we also have two dialects too, yes,
correct tones. Two dialects, well sometimes three, because if you like,
they have their own dialect too, then the monk Shua
they have their own dialect too. But yeah, but basic Mung.
There's two dialects. You have your white and your green,
you know, or blue, because the Mung word for green
and blue is the same word ju, which means blue

(01:36:53):
and green.

Speaker 4 (01:36:54):
I got a couple of questions. Okay here putting that
out there before we get too late.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
The I'll say what I was gonna ask weave this in.
I was gonna ask when you went to that village,
did they have air guns? And did they hunt and whatnot?

Speaker 5 (01:37:06):
Yeah, you want to go there, you throw it into
the mix real quick.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
One about birthdays, But prior to having a birthday or
like picking a date, did they celebrate some sort of
version of our birthday? Like did the monk celebrate that
before being Americans annual milestone of some sort.

Speaker 2 (01:37:27):
Yeah, that's a good that's a good question. Oh, go ahead,
I would say, even if they did, it probably wasn't
like how we do it here, No big care.

Speaker 5 (01:37:37):
It's yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
No cake and can.

Speaker 5 (01:37:42):
Mounts of loose candles aren't like the number one priority
to buy. It's like, oh, hey, we have thirty cents candles.
That's where we're going.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
And you know, you know, for the longest time, you know,
I would say that I don't even know my true
birth date, right, It was kind of just something that
was given to me, right and so and so they
kind of go by, Oh, actually if you yes, our
parents they'd be like, oh, yeah, you were born in
this time frame.

Speaker 5 (01:38:06):
It's like a guess.

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
You don't know your you don't know you're actually.

Speaker 5 (01:38:11):
The one time or school government. I have one, but
is that really truly the day? So you just you
know if you were born in the spring or the fall. Yeah,
it's it's a guess. It's like, yeah, it's really funny though.
This is exactly like talking to my mother. Suld be like,
well you're you're born in yeah, well you know the harvest.

(01:38:38):
See what's fishing walleye when you were born or something
that's awesome.

Speaker 8 (01:38:43):
I do want to hear about like the proteins, like
the cooking side. So not a lot of fish. I
guess specific to your it.

Speaker 5 (01:38:54):
Depends, like for for our restaurant or like just for
munk food in general. I guess munk food in general,
it depends. Uh, you know, I think that a lot
of our people are mountain people, so it's what you
get from the mountains, you know, and then you know,
if there's streams and stuff like that, you get you know,
little fish, you know, and stuff like that, but it's not,
you know, we're we're not. We're not like you know,
we're not in the lowlands by you know, the ocean.

(01:39:16):
So it was like like so the idea of shrimp
and different kinds of octopus and stuff like that, and
crabs and you know that's really later on, you know,
because that's kind of like the high life. Like and
when I say in the mountains, dude, I'm talking about
like the reason why in nineteen eighty there's six hundred
month people that ended up in Missoulu. It's like they
love the mountains because you just want to be left alone.

(01:39:36):
It's like our people has been like we only left alone.
We want to be farmers, that's all we want to do.
And so for them to for for for them, it
was like when if you go to a city, it
was like back in you know, back in the day
my mom's times. They were said it would be like
as five to six hour walk that you would just
trek down the mountain and then you you know, you
sell some vegetables, you get enough money to buy salt,
and then you just trek back up and you'll use

(01:39:57):
that salt, you know, and then it's like when you
get down there, you're like, whoa. You see these shrimp
and crab and it's like, wow, just to have one
would be incredible, you know. And so but again a
lot of that changes with our people changing, you know,
as some home people came down from the mountain and
started living in the lowlands, and then even us being
here in America, you know, and you know, I mean,
I love seafood and you know, but normally you don't

(01:40:18):
you don't see that it's you know, it's a heavy pork,
a lot of small games, and a lot of vegetables,
a lot of broth, you know, a lot of soup,
a lot of stew. And if you want to go
old school, I mean it's a lot of the meat
is actually jerky basically, you know, like they season it
really and then they hang it and they have a

(01:40:39):
fire inside they hang it, and it is so cool
to be in these villages and see them still using
this technique and they hang it from the top and
they dry it and then you take the meat out
when you're done. And what the meat really is is
it's a flavoring to your soups and your stews.

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
Yeah, conservatively, absolutely, yeah. Did you still see some did
you still see some hunting going on when you went back?

Speaker 5 (01:40:58):
Oh? Absolutely yeah, Yah yeah. We were hunting like these
like little small squirrels and you know, lizards, you know,
like monco lizards, and it's just anything that the jungle provides,
you know. And that's like, that's the thing I love
about being mung And that's what.

Speaker 1 (01:41:10):
Was the hunting deliberate, meaning like you were going out
or was just that you would encounter stuff throughout the
day of raising your crops and it traveling around.

Speaker 5 (01:41:18):
So again, in every culture, it's like the idea where
it's like hey, boys, you want to go Oka, cool,
let's go, you know, and so like sometimes it's literally
like hey, let's go out. A lot of times, dude.
One of my favorite scenes where we went was they
weren't home. They were a loud but there were like
five or six of them. They have scuba gear and
the little like a little gear set and they jumped
themway with a little spear guns and they would go

(01:41:39):
spear like in the river they go and they would
go spear little Tilapias and they came out and they
freaking looked like a bunch of navy seals coming out
of the water. And these these like little like you know,
these Lao kids and they all have little spear guns
and then just fishing on the other hand, and it
was the most ba scene ever standing on the river
and I'm like, man, you would kick the crap out
of any American, you know. I'm like, if North Korea

(01:42:01):
ever attacks, i want you on our team, you know.
And and so I mean, that's that's what it is.
It's a lot of times it's the when you're a
little you know, where you're growing up, especially with the boys.
It's like you go out with dad, you go out
with your uncles. You learn they have little like snares
and stuff they set up and you know, and then
you know, you follow Grandpa and you go and grab
the snare and see, oh look they gotta squirrel today
or whatever, you know, and yeah, and so it it

(01:42:24):
was just part of the repeat. I mean, like we
went and we even caught bats, you know, so we
ate bats, and people were, you know, freaked down, They're like, oh,
what would you do that. I'm like, you have to understand.
We don't have a whole foods out here, like we
have a whole jungle, and you just get what the
jungle provides for you.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
How they catch targets.

Speaker 5 (01:42:41):
Uh, so you figure like they figure out a bad cave,
you know, and and then uh, during the night the
bats will fly out. Uh, and so like six thirty
best fight out and they just put up a big
net and just catch all the bats in there and.

Speaker 1 (01:42:53):
Coming back into when they're leaving them, they catch them
as they leave.

Speaker 5 (01:42:58):
Yes, sorry, yeah, leave and then they come back out
like six in the morning. So it's like you know
that it's like a million of them and you put
on that and they kick it all caught and you know,
and then you uh, you know, you braize them and
you eat them. Yeah, it was just braise the hair
right off of them. Well they throw it over the
fire to kind of charge the hair off, and then
they don't cut it out, you know, there's no you
know whatever, and then guts it all right in the

(01:43:19):
and then and then you they stick it in the bamboo. Actually,
and they so they season it with like garlic, ginger,
you know, you know, and all that stuff. And then
they put it in a bamboo and they close the
bamboo off with put it in there like a container,
the bamboo, yeah, like yeah, as a container. And then
they put a little water in there, and then that
becomes a steaming vessel and they throw that rod over
the fire. So bamboo is like like cooking inside of

(01:43:40):
bamboo is like, by the way, that's going to be
the thing where we want to try to do to
just like I mean, it's this old school way of
cooking when you really got to know how to do it.
But like my father was telling me about it, where
it's like basically the bamboo itself is it's a vessel
and it's bamboo is just water and moisture. So you
put you know, your meat in there, and then you
close it the end off with banana leaves, and you

(01:44:02):
just tough and you throw it right on the fire
and just keep turning it and it just brazes inside.

Speaker 1 (01:44:07):
The problem with that ship is, uh, I brought a
bunch of that home. Our buddy Clay, he's got a
bunch of bamboo in his yard. I brought a bunch home.
But it's cool, but ans soon as it drives out,
just cracks the hell yeah, so you're gonna need a
steady supply. Yeah, and it's really funny won't be able
to have and you won't be able to have one well.

Speaker 5 (01:44:22):
Down in North Carolina, North Carolina, there's a bunch of
monkey that lived down there. Uh, they planted bamboos in
the back of their yard and now it's like invasive there. Yeah,
and so they're just cutting down. And if you I
got some cousins down there, you call them, they'll just
send you a bunch up. Yeah. Yeah. Green Bamboo wrote
real fresh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
What was your earliest experience? Uh in uh, how old
were you when you came to the US.

Speaker 5 (01:44:46):
It was like four and a half.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
So I'm assuming that they that your people they didn't
hunt and fish in the refugee camp just because of
the nature of the camp, right, they did too, like
really like you could they could go as they please
within a certain.

Speaker 5 (01:45:01):
Kind of yeah. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah, I mean
it was it's a huge So so you got to
realize that that refugee camp, held from seventy five to
ninety two, held ninety thousand people. So it's like it's
a city. Yeah, and it was big, and there wasn't
like here's here's the borders, here's the wall. It's just like,
you know, you can go into the jungle and you
can hunt and you can do things. There were people
that were they had gardens and you know they were

(01:45:22):
you know, people that were selling stuff in there too.

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
So yeah, then when he in the US, what was
your earliest exposure to hunting here in the US.

Speaker 5 (01:45:30):
My parents like hunt, my aunts and uncle or you know,
my uncles and them hunt, and so it was, you
know when when deer season came around, and you know,
like we always had a deer, you know, one or two. Yeah.
And the cool thing about the moon culture and yeah,
you can contest to this is like the way that
it works in our family because I grew up in
a small town in Wisconsin. It was all cousins, right,
uncles and them all living around there. And if one

(01:45:51):
of them got a deer, no matter at the time
of the day, like if it was like nine o'clock,
we got a deer, they call, and then our whole
family would just go over there and everybody just breaks
it down and then we just make a meal out
of it. Oh yeah, dude, Like I didn't understand. I
didn't know that you can get the deer process. I
was just like, wait, what what like you pay someone
else the process you're deer. I'm like, why don't you
guys just do it? And they're like no, why or

(01:46:14):
you know, and it's just like it was always like
and when I when I got into the food world,
everyone was like, oh, knows the tail cooking man, that's
the cool thing. Knows the tail cooking. I'm like, do
we call it a Tuesday?

Speaker 1 (01:46:24):
At house?

Speaker 5 (01:46:25):
That was an everyday thing, you know, so it was normal.
It was normal growing up. You know. We didn't go
to the grocery store for pork, like we went to
an amage farm and then like picking lobster, Dad goes
that one and then he you know, and then he
does his thing to it, and then we all kids
like okay, everyone grab a knife and then we helped
break it down, you know. And I was like, I didn't.
I didn't grow up playing, didn't go in basketball camp

(01:46:46):
or you know, throwing learning how to throw a baseball.
This is what I did. And I thought it was normal,
you know. I thought it was like every kid did this.
Then I found out. I remember the day I found
out that way you can just buy pork at the
grocery store all chopped. Yeah, like what it blew my
mind in college when I figure that out, that's amazing.
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
At what point did you think that you're gonna get
into the food biz like the rest of Yes, So
it did it seem like a lot of obstacles.

Speaker 5 (01:47:11):
No, I was always so I'm a I'm a like
if I touch it with my hand, I can understand
it better. I'm not. My brothers and sisters are super academic.
They're really smart. They're incredible. But for me, I was like,
I'll read a book and I'm like, duh, I don't
know what happened here, you know. But like if you
put stuff in front of me and says, hey, like
break down this chicken, and i'm'll show you where the

(01:47:33):
joints are or where they're like, Hey, this is how
we break down a deer, or this is how we
break down a rabbit, I could like my dad would
show me He'll break it up and goes, here are
the joints you need to cut. Here are the four cuts.
And I'm like, oh, cool, you know, and it made
sense to me. I didn't like my parents didn't want
me to cook, because they felt that that was a
very hard job.

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:47:53):
My father said to me, he said, we came to
this country so that you can sit I want you
to sit in a nice office somewhere and signing people's checks. Doctor, lawyer, doctor,
that was your choice. Yeah, doctor, lawyer or some kind
of business person.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
I heard that we had, uh South Vietnamese dude explain that.
He said, you're either a doctor lawyer. You're not my kid.

Speaker 5 (01:48:15):
Yeah, And I remember as a kid growing three choices. Yeah,
And as a kid growing up, I I hated that
and I was like, oh frick, like I'm not smart enough.
And I remember, uh, this this actually hit me probably
about like three or four years ago, and I realized
what my father is saying, because he would always be like,
I don't want your hands and your knees to hurt

(01:48:36):
like mine. Because my dad was a carpenter, he was
a he was a welder, he was a he built homes,
you know, and he goes, I don't want this for you.
He goes, I take the pain so you would never
have to. And as a kid you didn't understand that.
You're like whatever, dad, As an adult like it, like
he always said. My dad always say, I mean, don't

(01:48:56):
be like me. I'm dumb. Yeah, I want you to
be smarter than me. I want you to be better
than me. And I get super emotional about this, but
like I remember I was cooking at this grill out
and it was huge. It was long day, and my
hands were all sooted up from the you know, from
cutting all day and from working the fire, and my
hands are just like tired, and my knees are tired.

(01:49:17):
In that moment, I was like, I feel the closest
to my father, where I'm like I am you and
I want to be you, you know, like like he's
a great man, he's like a hero, and I'm just
and I get what he was saying, Like I get
what he was saying. I don't want you to be
like me because I'm dumb, but I'm like, no, man
like everything that's good about you, integrity, honor, how to

(01:49:40):
be a man like I learned that from you. How
to but your meat. I learned that from you. I
want to be like you. And that's why I love
being a cook because and you're like, how can those
things be bad?

Speaker 1 (01:49:50):
Damn?

Speaker 5 (01:49:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:49:51):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:49:51):
Yeah, But all he wants is like as any refugee
and immigrants, like, I want what's better. Like you guys
are fathers, you get it. You want to set up
a life that's better for your children that you had.
You want you don't want them to go through pain
and struggle. And I get it. And when I was young,
I was dumb. I didn't get that. I was just
like what dad doesn't care? Now it's like, yeah, like

(01:50:12):
I love working the field with him, I love bringing
down animals with him, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
You know, I think the a thing that he's probably
thinking about too, is that like if he knew that
you could do, if he knew that you could work
with your hands and and like be around heat and
struggle but then find some level of security, it would

(01:50:37):
have been different. But he's probably associating him. He's associating
labor and struggle with struggle, yeah, and not labor and
struggle with with some sort of success and security.

Speaker 5 (01:50:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:49):
Because what I'm saying, because you could probably do I
bet you now. Oh like now he probably looks at
you and he's probably proud of shit.

Speaker 5 (01:50:56):
Yeah, you know it was. It was one of these
things where we did this event and the lieutenant governor
came by and gave me this little award and whatever,
and it was like, you know whatever. And I remember
my dad didn't say this, but he said to my mom,
he said, he said something along the lines of like,
I live in a world now where my son can
speak and leaders will listen to him, and like in

(01:51:18):
our culture, that's huge, and I and and it's not
like I don't ever believe that my dad was never
proud of me, But in that moment he said, I
think he even said to me, he goes, I'm sorry,
I just didn't know what you do.

Speaker 1 (01:51:30):
Yeah, you took an unexpected pathway, like you took a
really unexpected pathway to get to somewhere that made sense
to him, because what made sense to him was just
that you that you knew how you were gonna eat,
You knew how you were gonna take care of yourself,
you knew how you were not going to struggle and
not be under someone's thumb, right.

Speaker 5 (01:51:48):
Yeah, And so it's like it's very different now. But man,
like I said, you know, and even with Korean and
we were talking our pre production, we were talking about this,
and I was just like, dude, my life was pretty
so like it. It is what I do is I
get to speak on their legacy. So about five years ago,
my dad had a horrible accident from work, or five
or six years ago, and he was in the ICU

(01:52:11):
and he fell. He shattered his skull and not doctors
like we don't know what's gonna happen. And I remember
I just started his whole food stuff and you know,
we were getting some you know, some push and people
were like really excited. And at that point it was like, hey, man,
like there is this new kid. He's making monk food
blah blah blah blah whatever. And I remember visiting him
in the ICU. It's my dad's my hero man like
he's he's a freaking warrior, right, he fought a war

(01:52:32):
like he like, I thought to myself. I remember holding
his hand at the in the intensive carry unit, and
I just thought to myself, this is not how warriors die.
This is not how heroes die. They either die on
the battlefield in a great fight where they die as
an old man around like all their grandkids and all
the people around them. Like, they don't die by slipping
on a stupid ladder at work, you know, And and
and and fracturing their skull on a job that they

(01:52:55):
didn't ever need to be in, right, And I was
so pissed at myself, and I'm like, what the frick, dude.
And I remember driving back, it was like three hour driving.
They were in Marshall, Wisconsin at that time, and I
was driving back to Minneapolis, and I just thought to myself,
my life's got a change, man, Like I can't. It
can't be about Oh, we're gonna make this stuff to
be about mung food. No, man, It's gonna be about
their legacy. And because we have to. Why do we

(01:53:15):
always wait for people to pass away to talk about them,
to talk about how great they were? You know, like
why not? Now? Why not when they can see it?
And so, man, life is pretty simple for me. And
we get to travel the country. We get to make
food for thousands of people through our restaurant, through events
we do around the country, where at the end, like
we talk about mung food. But at the end, I
can take that story back and I'm like, I want

(01:53:35):
you to tell you. I want to tell you guys
about this legacy that means so much to me and
and for me, one of the things that I really
love doing. That's why I think that it really shows
in hunting, right, And I think in hunting it's about legacy, right.
It's about like, hey, if there's this piece of land
that belonged to my great great grandfather that was passed down,
passed down, we can hunt in it, we can enjoy it,
our kids kids can enjoy it. And it was one
of those things where it becomes this initiative of mine.

(01:53:56):
You know, my parents have always worked these gardens, and
there was all the properties always rental, and so it's like, yep,
one of my goals, I'm gonna buy them a guarden.
I'm gonna buy them a piece of land that's like
in their name, the LLC is in their name. Yeah,
so that before they passed away, before the Lord takes
them away, like they have a piece of paper that
says this is yours, you know. And so that's kind
of another initiative where I'm really passionate about, you know,

(01:54:19):
because it's cool. Yeah, that's all they want to do.
And so yeah, so we again, I get to do
all that. And that's why I get excited about especially
when we talk about mung food.

Speaker 1 (01:54:36):
When to get into the food businesses, you have to
go cook someone else's food before you could do mung food.
Is just get right into mung food.

Speaker 5 (01:54:43):
Absolutely. I did not want to cook mung food because
I was super embarrassed about it. Because I was super embarrassed.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:54:48):
Yeah, I was just like, oh, you know, what food
did you think you had to make to be legitimate.

Speaker 5 (01:54:53):
I didn't think I either make a certain food. I
just had to be good at cooking. Yeah, you know,
I mean, I mean, like cooking is it's basic, right,
It's like, you know, it's like breaking down an animal.
If it's a four legged creature, it's they're all basically
the same kind of you know, they're breaking down those parts.
So my whole thing was I was decent, Like I
was never I don't think I was ever a good cook.
I was just fast enough to keep up with the

(01:55:14):
tickets that came in. And I was the only one
I remember started cooking. I was the only one that
lived like kind of like a straight life, you know.
So like so my chefs are always like, dude, I
just know that tomorrow you're at seven or at you know,
on Saturday, at ten am, you're gonna come in and
you're not gonna be like in jail or hungover or whatever.
So so they that they're just like And that's what

(01:55:36):
I tell any young kid who wants to get into
food or any kind of work. I'm like, just show up,
bro if you show up like these kids I got today, See,
I don't tell you. I just say show up, just
show up. And you know, my old mentor of mine,
Mark Brockberg, from college, would always say he used the
acronym fat, fat, faithful, available, teachable, show up and be faithful,

(01:55:56):
available and teachable, you know. And that's just what I did.
And I was it was like a strategy. It was
just like all I know how to do, you know?
And and eventually I just learned and learned and and
so what my goal is whatever kitchen you want to
put me in, Like i might not be the best,
but I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna work hard. I'm
gonna outwork everyone here, and even if it means like

(01:56:17):
I'm the last one out, I'll be the last one out.
And that was and again, that was something my father
instilled me, and I just I didn't realize at a
young age. And now it's just like you know, you
get all these young chefs who comes in and they're like, oh,
look at my founder ie. I like, oh yeah, I
want to start my own YouTube channel. And you're just
like okay, dude, like go peel like eight thousand pounds
of potatoes then we'll talk. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:56:35):
It's just like that was that There's that quote that's
attributed to one of the guys from Lynyrd Skinner, which
was learn how to play your guitar and then get sexy.

Speaker 5 (01:56:45):
Yeah yeah, and restaurant, I just go learn how to
use a knife. And I don't know if you'll ever
be sexy, but you know.

Speaker 1 (01:56:53):
So what was the first chance to do? Like how
did it happen that all sudd you got to start
doing your uh you know your you're Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:57:01):
So I was working through all these different restaurants Minieppois.
They're incredible restaurants, The chefs were amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:57:07):
High end places.

Speaker 5 (01:57:08):
Yeah yeah, yep, yep, yep. You know, and and and
I would I had this ability to learn from some
really really great teams, and then I was like, okay,
well let's start out with this little pop up. So
we started like a little pop up and people are
like what's the pop up? And you're like, I don't know.
Just come in on Friday and you were open for
five hours and just eat. So we did that and
then we're like, I don't know, and who was showing up?

(01:57:31):
Mong people? Yeah, so long people. Here here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:57:34):
There's a you know how, there's like they don't mind
throwing down some box on food.

Speaker 5 (01:57:37):
Well, here's the deal. Here's the deal. You know how,
there's black Twitter. There's munk Facebook. Okay, I didn't know.
I don't know about Okay, Well yeah there's black Twitter
and there's munk Facebook. And let me tell you the
thing with our community, it's a big community, but it's
a small community. Yeah. Know's what I'm talking about. If
some if one of the if one of your sons

(01:57:57):
went and wronged like some other girl from another clan,
like trust me, his picture will be up. Everybody's gonna know.
You know, they're like, oh we know what clan he's
come from. Oh we know what village he lives in,
or what town he's from. Oh yeah, we know his
cousins like you will be ratted out so fast in there.
So there's munk Facebook. Now as much as.

Speaker 1 (01:58:16):
Apparently it works for you and against you.

Speaker 5 (01:58:18):
Absolutely. So somehow on Munk Facebook said hey, there's this
new kid that's doing like mungk food in East Ie,
Saint Paul in this little place called cook Saint Paul.
My buddy owned this place. It was as a diner,
so it was opened in the you know, breakfast and lunch,
and it was evening was closed and then.

Speaker 1 (01:58:31):
Friday he took over the evenings.

Speaker 5 (01:58:33):
Yeah, once a month, that was it. And I still
and then at that time, I was still from Mon Monday,
you know, from Sunday to Thursday, I was working at
Coastal Seafoods. I was a fishmonger, you know, because like
I did the birchery stuff and I'm like I want
to learn more about fish. So like I would do fish.
I smell like fish all day. And then Friday Saturday,
once once a month, we would do these little pop ups.
And I never wanted to be the kid who said,

(01:58:55):
oh yeah, I want to go to our own business
like people like, you know right now you have all
these like how to be an entrepreneur, Like that's not
man Like this is so dumb, you know. And then
eventually we were very blessed to have a few media
people pick up on it and said, hey, let's talk
about this, you know, and and and then yeah, that
was like seven years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:59:13):
But when you first did the pop up you had,
it was Mung coming. Yes, we had at some point,
but it's so just organically caught out with people who
just wanted to try new things.

Speaker 5 (01:59:24):
Well, in the Twin Cities, Mung are really well known,
you know, so we have a few big shops in there,
so people they are likely to know. Oh yeah, I mean,
you know, seventy five thousand in the metro we are
the you know, largest uh bipod group you know in
the Twin City. So like there, I mean it's Mung
and Somalians, you know, and so it's it's huge. Uh

(01:59:44):
So what happened was, you know, we had some Mong
people came. But then like and this was a while back,
and this was the beginning. How do I see this?
I have this like love hate with quote unquote food influencers,
you know. Yeah, and and so this this was the
beginning of like Instagram food influencing or like quote unquote foodie.

(02:00:05):
When people say foodie, I'm just like everyone's a foodie.
You eat food right there, your foodie just chill.

Speaker 10 (02:00:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:00:12):
It's a concept that's kind of dying. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but you know, real excited about it for a while though,
absolutely right.

Speaker 5 (02:00:18):
And so we had a few who were just really
gracious and they were like, hey, we really love what
you're doing. So we're just like so they just kept
following us around, they just kept putting social media is like, hey,
like Union Munk Kitchen's here, Union Mounkitchen. I was so
embarrassed of being mung in the beginning too, bro, Like,
I'll be honest here with you guys. Is it was
called Union Kitchen. I didn't want to put the word
mung in there because I didn't want white people to

(02:00:38):
be deterred, right. And I had a buddy who was
a PR guy who works for a big PR firm,
and he goes, dude, don't be a chicken man. He's
a white dude, r white Jewish dude. He goes, put
the word mung on it. I'm like, really, like, is
do you think he's like do it? And so for
the first like year, was just Union Kitchen, Union kitchen,
you know, And and and I we changed it to
Union Munk Kitchen and people were like, yeah, like this
is amazing, you know, and so like I I still

(02:01:00):
went on my own little journey of like I don't
know if people are gonna like this. And again we
were very blessed. And then after a while there was
like different you know, stuff came in and you know,
we were just like hopping. We eventually got this little
food trailer at a brewery that we did food out of.
But what really helped us was no joke the catering world,

(02:01:21):
like catering weddings we killed. We catered by mitzvahs and
bar mitzvahs. That was so awesome, Like this is what
I talk about. We always say about food is a
universal language we can use to speak to each other. Right,
it's amazing. I mean I think it's what I love
what you guys do where it's like we're not just
only hunting animal, but but we we cook it together.
And it's just just like, oh, I might not be
like into the hunting scene, but the cooking things, like dude,

(02:01:43):
that's really cool. Like food has this ability to bring
everybody together. And so we got a call in this
uh this person was like you know, the Saint Paul
Mayer like the I think they were like they knew
the mayor of Saint Paul or something. Then they're like, hey,
my I have a bum mitzvah coming up. And we
were like we can't do pork obviously, but we'll do
everything else. So we're like okay, and so we catered

(02:02:04):
like abuvements and then then through the like the Jewish community,
they heard about it, and then another Jewish family's like, yeah,
can we do a barmitzvah for us? I'm like sure,
you know, and we were in a synagogue.

Speaker 1 (02:02:15):
We were like a nationless nationless people bring them up.

Speaker 5 (02:02:18):
Yeah, Like I'm like, we are kind of weird cousins.
Let's do this. You know, you lost bought you guys.
Don't do pork, we do beef. What's yeah. Yeah. We
even had the inquiries for kinsias too, and like, I
kid you not. And that's kind of where we were.
And it was we went from like like women's prayer group,
brunches from Lutheran churches, I kid you not, gentlemen making

(02:02:42):
Kish and French toast. I'm like, okay, I'm down. You know,
this was like a wild back where it's like four
hundred bucks. Yes, that's gold. Let's do it.

Speaker 10 (02:02:49):
You know.

Speaker 5 (02:02:50):
We went from that bum mitswell barments for us, and
then we had big events and then Melvin Carter, who
is the first African American mayor in UH Saint Paul
when he won and he had his big bash party,
they called us and say, hey, we love you, come
and do the food. And so we like the catering
and the private catering scene where you know where y'all
I was talking about, like that's kind of where we started,

(02:03:12):
you know, and that's kind of it wasn't because people
always asking me like who's your marketing person? Like where
did you guys go to do? I'm like, bro, Like
I went from door to door catering events. I would
go all the time, and I felt like a what's
you know? My joke was, I felt like a like
a lady of the night, you know, like you would
go in and do something special for the client and

(02:03:35):
they tell their friends and then I get a call
next time, goes, hey, the Johnson's call, So you did
that special thing for them? Like can you do that?
I'm like, well, what's the budget? And they'll give me
the budget. I'm like, well, the Johnson's gave me a
little more like I will take care of you. And
then you go in and you carry like a few suitcases.
You come and where do I set up? And you know,
you do your thing, and then you leave and you
pay it and you shower and you feel better the
next day. It kind of you, you know. That's how

(02:03:57):
we started. And I even went I did like a
bachelortte parties too, Like that was one of the weirdest
one where I did like a private dining cooking scene
for for but I did know what it was a
bachelrett party. I walked in like literally I had like
a few boxes of like the food and stuff. I
walked in and it's just all women. I'm like, what's
going on. They're like, oh, yeah, I didn't tell you.
This is my sister's batchelete party and we wanted you

(02:04:17):
to do like a private dinner. And I'm like, oh
my gosh, Like you guys know, I'm like a cook
right in the cloth, yeah, the aprons covering everything. Okay,
I could do the shirt off, but that's gonna be
a little extra, you know. So that's how we hustled,
and then we were very blessed. The restaurant grew. Uh
you know, we we we brought in more people. We
have incredible operators, we have you know, our you know,

(02:04:40):
we had, we grew an executive team. And then when
it came time to saying, hey, how do we grow?
I think one of the next growth path was how
do we expand and build our own restaurant, you know,
going our own brick and mortar restaurant that is, and
you know, we have two little guys, but get our
big guy. We you know, I had to go do
the song song and pony dance and go to banks
and find investors. And then that's when it's a gut

(02:05:02):
check at you know, of like do you really believe
in what you're doing? Since when you stand in front,
like when you go sit with some of these investors
or potential investors who like write like one hundred fifty
thousand dollars checks, like you know, they're giving them out
five bucks for you know, Starbucks or something. You gotta
like they look at you're like woomy, and you end's
a gut check of like do you believe in this?

Speaker 1 (02:05:22):
Do you like?

Speaker 5 (02:05:22):
It's like yeah, you know, and I said I said
to uh, I get to talk to a lot among
high school kids, and I said, in life, you're gonna
go around in life and there's gonna be these people
in your life and they're gonna believe in you. They're
gonna tell you incredible things about yourself. And I'm like,
think of that as equity, and you put in a
little piggy bank in your heart and one day there's
gonna come a moment in your life you gotta break
that piggy bank and take all that equity and you

(02:05:43):
gotta go betting on yourself. Yeah, And that I mean
that was was like the herd. Like the hardest thing
was to go and say, oh, this building project is
a million dollar project and so okay, okay, we gotta go.
We gotta talk. And when you get in these rooms
or these guys who are making million dollar deals for
them or like nothing.

Speaker 1 (02:05:58):
You'll find out if you're weak or not.

Speaker 5 (02:06:00):
Yes, And that's when you go, do I believe? And
that's you know what I draw from. I don't draw
from yea as confident. I draw from Mom and Dad,
Like I remember, I think about them, I think about
all the hard work they put in, Like I think
about the war. My dad fought. I think about my
mom being in that war prison camp for a year
and where she told me that she would pray every

(02:06:22):
morning that God would allow her to die because it
was so horrible in that camp that they had to
live in. And she said that one day, she said
that one day I was praying in the morning, she
said she was this younger. I was praying and I said, God,
will you let me die today because I can't take
life here anymore. And she said there was a voice
inside my heart that says, I can't let you die

(02:06:43):
because your children is going to change the world. I
need you to hold on a little longer because your
children that you've never met, they're going to change word.
In the day that I was announced as a folence
for the James Beard, she called me and told me
that story. Oh man, I'm crying, you know, on.

Speaker 1 (02:07:00):
A frying panel.

Speaker 5 (02:07:01):
Yeah, yeah, gift from God. She kind of just said today,
when I heard that you were nominated is one of
the best chefs in the country, I knew why, like
I needed to keep moving on. So I think about
I can't wait to see what your brother does. Yeah,
you could contest this man. You can be the most

(02:07:21):
successful whatever in your family. But when you're around your
uncle's man, they remind you you're ten years old. When
I freaking when we have like big parties and grills
and I'm standing by my uncles and they're grilling, They're like,
let me tell you, kid, how you would do this,
and I'm like, you know what I end up doing.
I end up being coming to the dude who holds
the plate for all them to put the me on.
And they're all like, let me tell you if you
want more people in your restaurant, this is what you do.

(02:07:43):
And I'm like, I'm I just want to be like, uncle,
you're here's the deal man you work at like Anderson Windows. Okay,
I know where you work at. The plant You've don't
really cooked, but apparently the country has said, I'm pretty
decent in what I do. But sure, I'm pretty sure
you have a secret, you know, so you know?

Speaker 2 (02:08:00):
So, yeah, we can't really overcome the age and the wisdom.

Speaker 1 (02:08:05):
High prior.

Speaker 5 (02:08:06):
They make sure they remind you who you are. You
get reminded, yeah, oh remember when you were five, And
I'm like, you guys are gonna do that to your nephews. No,
I will not do you know what well I I
do because.

Speaker 1 (02:08:18):
Maybe don't make the mistake of I see people this
is not this is not like cultural, that's just human human.
I see people all the time throw out because because
of not liking something about their parents or how they
were brought up. They throw the whole thing out.

Speaker 5 (02:08:37):
I completely understand.

Speaker 1 (02:08:39):
Instead of just doing a slight tweak.

Speaker 5 (02:08:41):
Yep, No, I do the same thing. Like my niece
and nephew. They work out the stay Fair. We have
a stall to stay Fair in this year. They work
there and they're from Wisconsin. So they come up and
they stay up with grandma and grandpa for a week
and they worked there for two weeks and they work there.
And I remember I was like harsher on them than
the other kids, you know, because I was like, dude,
you guys need a double time, like let's go. And
I realized I'm like, oh, dude, I sound like my father,

(02:09:01):
like like when we're working, you know, he's just like, hey,
like I need you to, you know, keep working at it.
And I believe in allowing kids to struggle a little bit,
you know when they're working, you know, because I really
want to be like, where's the creativity to you know,
figure things out. And I think we worked out with
our chefs too, you know, like allow them a little
a little line to struggle.

Speaker 1 (02:09:20):
You know. Yeah, I'm way more like, I'm way more
financially comfortable than I ever thought I would be. And
I worry constantly about my kids being too soft all
the time.

Speaker 2 (02:09:31):
Man.

Speaker 1 (02:09:31):
You know it's like, yeah, you wound up over not
overdoing it, but you just worry about them being like
do you have the ger?

Speaker 5 (02:09:38):
You know?

Speaker 1 (02:09:38):
Am I like depriving you of the ger?

Speaker 5 (02:09:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:09:41):
It's a weird thing that it's like this first world
problem that you had to think about because when you're
you know, your dad, he didn't think any other way
other than like, I don't want my kid to struggle
the way I did. I need to find him a
better place. We grew up in a place where life
was pretty darn easy in our circumstances, I believe, you know,

(02:10:01):
speaking from you know, most of.

Speaker 1 (02:10:03):
Us relative from a global perspective exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:10:07):
So you have to then think about how are you
going to instill that to your kid because they're not
seeing a struggle like the way you saw your dad struggle.

Speaker 5 (02:10:16):
You know. Yeah, but I also think too that one
of the things that I love, like one of the
things I get to do I love to do is
there's a lot of high schools up in the Twin
Cities area that are, like, you know, they have a
higher population of monk kids. And so I get asked
to come in as a speaker, and I and I
the thing that I love doing is like I love

(02:10:36):
looking them in the eyes. Where it's like a big auditorums,
like three hundred kids and you see the group of
like fifty monk kids, and I look them in the
eyes and I said, hey, guys, like I'm like to
all my like white brothers and sisters and friends out there,
like I'm gonna put you guys on pause. So I'm
just talking directly to among brothers and sisters, and I say,
here's the deal. Your your grandfather and your father's they

(02:10:57):
fought a war, and they they they fought a war
that wasn't their war, but they fought it with honor.
And then when a promise was made that they would
have free passage to America for fighting for America, it
was denying for them. They still got to America and
they worked here and they worked for years and years
and years to get you where you are. And so
anytime you feel like you can't do something, or anytime

(02:11:18):
you feel like, oh, I don't think I'm like strong enough,
you remember that the blood that pumps through their vein
is the same blood that pumps through your heart, you know,
And to remember, I mean, I think that that's one
of the biggest thing is like remember where you come from.
And for me, that was a big big part of Look, man,
the restaurant industry isn't easy. It sucks, you know. And
I was explaining to one of our one of our

(02:11:40):
workers or you know, one of the kids that work
with us, about how for the restaurant the profit margin
is like eight percent and if you're a really good year,
you get ten, you know, and that's like a really
good year. And she was like, what what do you
mean by that. I'm like, so, imagine if you did
something and you got one hundred dollars and all I
said is you can only keep eight dollars. And she's
like that sucks. I'm like, yeah, that's the restaurant. And

(02:12:01):
it hit her. She was like a younger college kid
and she's like, oh my gosh, really I'm like, yeah,
you know, and.

Speaker 8 (02:12:07):
So so You're like, so, now let's circle back to
the fact that you threw that shanks and trash.

Speaker 4 (02:12:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:12:12):
It's like it's like or I get people there like, oh,
it's it's so amazing what you do. I get young
monk kids that come up bless their heart, like I
want to be a chef, and I'm like, and I
do the Billy Madison scene, you know, where you like
you squeeze your face, you know, talking about where you're like,
don't say that, stay where you are. Never grow up, Billy.
I want to go to high school too, you know.
And and that's how I feel. But then again, there

(02:12:35):
is this thing of like, man, there's just something about
the grind and the grit that happens in my heart
and especially and that's what one of the things I
love about being Mung and being able to talk to
younger monk kids where it's like you're gonna struggle, it's
gonna sock your mate.

Speaker 1 (02:12:47):
Yeah, it's American elbow grease, dude, but yeah it's mung
elbow grease.

Speaker 5 (02:12:50):
Yeah. And I don't And that's my big thing. Man.
I love talking to people about it where I'm like,
this isn't among thing only, this is a human thing.
This is a human thing. Like yeah, you're parents did
great things, universal human thing. Yeah, but yeah, but it's
select few. Yeah, but you know, but even what was saying,
how like how you guys are just like, hey, you
you guys, you know your parents set you up for

(02:13:11):
a little bit better, you know, but you guys still
worked hard where you are. It wasn't like Okay, now
I'm just gonna play with all this like no, like
you guys worked and then being able to pass that
down too, you know, and I think that man, like
we got a little more like yeah, and I we
got a little bit more you know, heads up and
more step up, you know from where our parents are.
And you know, I don't have any kids, but one day,
you know, when I do, like my kids will have

(02:13:33):
a little bit thirty nine married.

Speaker 1 (02:13:36):
Now what's going on there?

Speaker 5 (02:13:38):
Man?

Speaker 1 (02:13:38):
Is that? Like is your mom and dad bummed about that?

Speaker 5 (02:13:40):
Bro'? That's a whole new surely one. I'm the only
one in my family that's not married. Everyone's married and
has kids. My parents have twenty one grandkids. So they
love it, you know. They they love being grandparents.

Speaker 1 (02:13:54):
Tell tell them I'm too busy making you proud.

Speaker 2 (02:13:56):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:13:57):
But in our culture, though, what what makes family, probably
the culture is raising a family, having a family, having lineage,
having you know.

Speaker 2 (02:14:03):
So.

Speaker 5 (02:14:04):
So that's that every three to four weeks, my mom
gives me the talk. I get it, and I don't.
I don't push it away. I know that she gets
to this point where she's a little older now, so
she's nervous, like I want to instill everything I have
to you if something was to happen when she had
some health scare, you know. And so I get it.
I listen to it. It's about a twenty minute speech.
It's the same it's usually on a phone call. I'm

(02:14:24):
driving into work. It's the same one she gives every
three to four weeks. And I listen and I say, yes, mom,
mm hmm, yep, yep, great. And then sometimes she'll be like, wait,
we have some cousins, we have some daughters that are
coming to visit from Michigan. They're at the house, like
your dad and I would love some fish. She'll bring
some fish over and I'm like, I know what you're doing,
you know, and stuff like that. But I mean, I
get it. It comes from a good heart, you know,

(02:14:45):
both of them. It comes to your good heart, and
so I totally get it.

Speaker 1 (02:14:48):
Oh, tell us before we wrap up, tell us about
your show.

Speaker 5 (02:14:53):
Yeah, you know, we got this show called Farah. It's
an outdoor you guys might have heard that channel.

Speaker 1 (02:14:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:15:00):
And you know, one of the craziest things was about
two and a half years ago, Patrick, one of the producers,
came up and goes, hey, I have an idea, bro.
And he calls me up and we've been doing a
few TV stuff for like Food Network, and then we
were very blessed to be able to do this thing
with Netflix with Iron Chef, and so he's like, I
have an idea. It's kind of crazy, but let me
pitch it to you. And he's like, this idea is
that you're going to travel the country. You're the host

(02:15:21):
of the show. You travel the country and we find
either invasive animals, animals that are destroying their ecosystem, or
animals that most people just won't eat. And we're gonna
go out with the guide. We're gonna hunt them, and
I will go outside and well, you know, in the
area where we hunt them, we set up a grill
and we set a little mini kitchen and you cook
out there, and I'm like, the first thing I said
to him was like, Dude, this show is so mung
it's not even funny. The idea that we're just growing

(02:15:43):
on the wild to find some kind of creature, hunt
them down and cook it. I'm like, are you freaking
kidding me? I'm like, what if this show, Like you know,
at that point, we didn't know if the show is
will be picked up or not. I'm like, if this
show gets picked up, every Mung uncle and cousin will
be like, dude, like that's the show. And so they
said yeah, So we ran like a testing and Outdoor

(02:16:05):
came back. God. We won eight episodes as Rocket and
then in one calendar year they Greenly had three three seasons.
So we just got done filming season three. Season one
was released last fall, and then season two will be
released in December.

Speaker 1 (02:16:18):
How many episodes are you make in per release?

Speaker 5 (02:16:21):
See eight? And Man, I had this I'm a small
Wisconsin boy, right, I'm just from Wisconsin. I had this
moment where I had this like come to Jesus moment
where I'm like I'm like literally chest deep in chocolate
milk water in Oklahoma City area, noodling for catfish. And

(02:16:42):
I just thought to myself, Man, if you would have
told me this twenty years ago, eighteen year old kid
going off to college going, hey, one day, You're like,
you're gonna be doing this cameras around and I was
just like, college leads to this, Yeah, stay in school kids,
But it was like you know what I'm saying, Like,
I was like, I don't know if you if you
guys ever had that like surreal moment like whoa what

(02:17:02):
am I doing here? Like this is so amazing and
and yeah, and then you know, and the guy, you know, Nate,
was like, oh right, I'll get your hand in there
and let's go looking for fish. I'm like, okay, you know, yeah,
but man, it's such a should you should talk about
some of the critters that are on Oh season one. Yeah,
season one we did we went that's all that whole
season's out. Yeah yeah, yeah, season one we went all out.
So we uh first, uh we went wild hogs. You

(02:17:25):
know that. That was really really fun. A Burmese python
with a guy named Dusty Crumb. Dusty Crumb you can
find him on the History Channel and you know, he's
got a few other little shows down there. And then
we had iguanas, which was the iguana was really special
for me because I showed my dad and say, hey, Dad,
we're gonna go hunt iguanas. And he goes, oh, we
just hunt those as boys, really yeah, and so I'm like,

(02:17:46):
really yeah, on the trees, we see them all the time,
we hunt them, we shoot him and he said that
they had these like little twenty two guns, like like
they're like they're like a one loader type thing, and
it's like basically it's like a stick, you know. And
he's like, and I was thinking to myself, how did
you guys, aim Do you know what I'm saying, because
it's like it's barely a gun, right, It's a stick
with the little like firing pin that you just hit,
you know. And he goes, yeah, that's what we used

(02:18:08):
to do. And then he told me the recipe they used,
and it was awesome to be down in southern Florida
hunting iguana. After we killed the iguanas to cook it
the same way my father cooked it in the mountains
of Laos like seventy years ago. Where I'm like, dude,
this is so amazing. It was so special for me
and be on national TV and being able to say yep,
dad did this seventy years ago. In Mountains of Laus,

(02:18:28):
we did a carp with bow lionfish, lion fish school.
Oh man, yeah, lionfish. That was all. I didn't do
the scuba diving because I'm not screw scuba servitified. But
they thought it'd be fun to put It's always a
thing I found out. Producers think it's fun to put
a big guy in a wetsuit and just do like
a fifteen minute segment of like funny goofy movie. I

(02:18:48):
mean trying to squeeze into a wetsuit. Sure, so I
squeezed into wetsuit, got into the water, and we were
in Destined, Florida, and they were like our captain that
was taking us. He's like, I don't know why you
put the wetsuit on his Like we tried agrees in.
I looked at our producer. I thought it was funny,
and I'm like, screw you, dude, are you seriously I like,
I'm sweating into this wet suit, right, I'm a big dude.

(02:19:09):
He's like, yeah, I just thought it would be funny.
I mean, I know you didn't need it, and I
was like, oh, trusting your producers, that's what happens. Uh.
They learned that in producers school. Yeah, it's like we're
what what kind of positions? We put him over the
brim python I went to catch and it bit me,
you know, and so I guess that I guess are
one of our producers says like after the outdoor guys
saw that, they're like, dude, that got a season two,

(02:19:31):
get bit more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now now that's like
the funny thing, you know where I'm like, oh, that's
just trying not to get bitten, you know, Like we
did one up one season we did Alligator Guard and
it wasn't dead yet when we pulled it on you know,
the shot in the head. But we pulled it on
the boat. It wasn't dead yet. So I'm like, you know,
the camera guys and want our camera guys like getting
near it like kind of you know. I'm like yeah,

(02:19:51):
and then they're like snap back, and I'm like, screw
your guys, you know. So that's kind of the fun
thing where it's like, how can we make a scream? Yeah?
And the and what else we have, we have, yeah,
we had. That was really fun. And then season two
was you know, really fun. And that one we did,
uh we did white tail because up in kind of

(02:20:12):
northern outside a little bit half an hour north of Minneapolis,
this you know, just the population of dough control with
a white tail. So that was a suburban environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And so uh, you know, I I grew up in Lacrosse,
Wisconsin college there, and so I got to know the
matt McPherson, the Matthews family, you know, Matthews bo. So

(02:20:34):
we were able to use one of their bows and
it is like the first time I've ever you know,
and I had a crash course in bow, and I
was just like, after you get done shooting a Matthew,
I'm like, I don't know if I want to go
back to anything else, you know. And so it was
like really fun just to go and learn the whole
system with bow. And you know, I grew up hunting
and fishing, but by no means an expert. And that's
what makes the show really fun. Is like the first

(02:20:56):
half of the show is like I'm fish out of water,
you know, a guy takes me in, I'm going and
then what I've been told is what the producers really
love is the fact that the second end of the show,
it's a reversal. So the guide he you know, they
cooked what you know, they do, you know, and then
I get to, you know, show them like, you know,
what I would do with you know, with the meat
or with the animal. And I think one of the

(02:21:18):
funnest ones was a central Wisconsin area kind of near
my hometown. We we went beaver trapping, never done it before,
and man, like, beaver's are just just a big old
freaking yellow teeth looking back at you, and you're like,
oh my gosh, you know, and they're like, oh, go
pull that out. And I'm like pulling this thing out.

(02:21:38):
It's just like thick fur.

Speaker 1 (02:21:40):
And I was like, oh yeah, nothing better.

Speaker 5 (02:21:43):
And then we broke it down and like we ate it.
I'm like, this is delicious, but I love it, you know,
but it's just I mean, it's a big rodent, you know,
and you're just like, Okay, here we go, you know.
But yeah, I mean we have some We shot season
three and then hopefully we'll hear back about season four.
But it's a really really fun show. We just came
out on they have it streaming now on my outdoor TV.

Speaker 4 (02:22:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (02:22:05):
There's like this other show I see on there too,
call me Eater something like that. Every time I go
on there, you know, there's a picture of some.

Speaker 8 (02:22:13):
Guys the hotel room, uh, driving into a town a
couple of weeks ago, and she's liked, well, what email?
And I gave her the email, which is at the
Meat Eater, and she immediately started laughing.

Speaker 5 (02:22:32):
And I was like, Nope, that's what it is. She okay.
It's like it's like, why is it? Seymour butts at me?
Wait are you serious, sir?

Speaker 1 (02:22:45):
You know, so tell people how to find you. Yeah,
we have the restaurant.

Speaker 5 (02:22:51):
Yea restaurant is at Union Munk Kitchen. It's a Union
Munk Kitchen yep. So uh you know, uh, you know,
on Instagram all those other platforms. And then me is
for me, it's at yea Vang seven.

Speaker 1 (02:23:03):
Zero, got it? And then outdoor Channel, Oh yeah, outdoor
Channel my outdoor TV app.

Speaker 5 (02:23:10):
Yep, my outdoor TV app. It's like great man first,
was it first thirty days or free or something? There?

Speaker 1 (02:23:15):
Yeah, I don't know, you're coming over for dinner night,
you know, about that.

Speaker 5 (02:23:18):
Well, Karan said something about it. Well, I was just
trying to be cool about it. You know. Do you
know how many friends text me goes, dude, what are
you doing in Bozman? And I'm like, ah, stuff, And
then and then somebody goes, is it you're going to
go with me? And you were Stephen in the Boys
And I'm like, oh, maybe, and then they're all like
freaking out a little bit. So I'm like, dude, just
be cool. Man.

Speaker 1 (02:23:36):
Well, hope you did a good enough job.

Speaker 5 (02:23:37):
You'll have to just hold the plate as Steve Grill and.

Speaker 1 (02:23:42):
I got grill. It's home cooking right now. Yeah, it's
already cooking.

Speaker 5 (02:23:47):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:23:47):
Yeah, so we're gonna have some chips, potato chips. Oh yeah, is.

Speaker 5 (02:23:55):
This Montana culture you're teaching me?

Speaker 1 (02:23:58):
Well, thanks for coming out, man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (02:24:00):
Yeah, thanks for having me man. It's awesome. It's awesome
to be here man. And it's my first time Bozman,
so Jordan and I first time Bozeman. We got a
chance to well welcome, enjoy the.

Speaker 1 (02:24:07):
Mountains and yeah, Yang, thanks for coming out man. Of course, Boner,
I'll see you. I'll see you at Youth turk.

Speaker 5 (02:24:14):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:24:15):
You know where I'll be. Am.

Speaker 5 (02:24:16):
I invited to dinner too, You.

Speaker 1 (02:24:18):
Are inviting dinner.

Speaker 2 (02:24:20):
Oh yeah, they're looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (02:24:22):
I get that high, feel that youth turkey again.

Speaker 4 (02:24:25):
All right, Well, dog said, if I came for the
first time of my girls, he give me that spot.

Speaker 5 (02:24:32):
No, no, no, he did.

Speaker 1 (02:24:33):
I'll call, I'll take care of it.

Speaker 5 (02:24:35):
I'll let you know.

Speaker 1 (02:24:36):
I know what he says. All right, thanks, guys, Thanks.

Speaker 5 (02:24:41):
Oh see you Gray shine like silver in the sun.

(02:25:03):
Ride ride, ride on alone of Sweetheart. We're done beat
this damp horse to death, so taking a new one
and ride away.

Speaker 1 (02:25:21):
We're done beat this damn horse today, so take a
new one and ride on.

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Host

Steven Rinella

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