What's up, guys? Young Hollywood here in Palm Beach, Florida taking you behind the scenes of a restaurant that delivers small plates with big, delicious flavors. The restaurant is called Bukhon. To my right, the co-owner and executive chef, Mr. Clay Conley. You have another title, four-time James Beard Award nominee. Any other titles you'd like to tell me besides maker of delicious, deliciousness?

No, that's it.

You have about what, 47 miles of Palm Beach out here. It's one of the most stunning places in Florida. How does your restaurant reflect that beauty and that type of environment?

We cook with a lot of open fire and kind of an authentic, genuine kind of restaurant. Get our hands dirty.

I wanna I wanna see this in action. Let's do it. Okay, great. Okay, chef, this is where the magic happens and you talk about the fresh ingredients. Look at this gorgeous stuff right here.

Sure, yeah. This is actually for the Moqueca we're gonna make today. Uh, all these peppers we actually grew on our farm down the street. So, this is yeah, this is our kitchen. Show you the wood fire down here.

It looks antique but I think that's probably the

Yeah, it's well used. Yeah.

Of what you're making.

Yeah, exactly. Wood-fired grill. That's a brick oven there. Wood-fired as well.

Now, the food here, you call it American fare but you've traveled all around the world. You have Asian, South American, Caribbean influences in so many of your dishes. What do you call it?

I call it New American. You know, there's so many different cultures in America. You know, there's so many different styles of food. You know, we do a lot of different stuff. New American is a great term for a chef because you do whatever you want. So, we're making an uh, octopus tabbouleh. This octopus has been braised for a couple of hours in red wine, so it's nice and tender. So, we take the octopus and we just dip it in egg white. And then we sprinkle on sesame.

It smells good already and I'm not just saying that.

You know, I like it because, you know, I really like like bright, acidic food. It's got a lot of lemon juice in it. It's got some heat in it. Uh, we deep fry this.

Don't you love it when it sings?

Yeah. So you want it to get nice and crispy on the outside. That's the idea. And then the inside's you know, soft and tender, so it's like crispy, you know, almost creamy texture on the inside. Um, so this is bulgur wheat. Just uh, Jasper tomatoes. Red onion. This is mint. These are fresh garbanzo beans, fava beans. Pickled Fresnos. Basically red jalapeños. So they give it a little bit of heat. And then this is lemon vinaigrette. Very simple lemon juice, uh, olive oil, mustard, some herbs. This is blanched mint and parsley. And I'm just and I puréed it in the blender. We if you can uh, chop this octopus up. I would cut like you know, one-inch sections. Just like that. Yep. So delicate. You know, it's got that nice crispy texture on the outside and then nice and tender. This is the tahini. So this is olive oil, lemon, the herb purée. And then we just kind of make a little circle of that.

A lot of veg for this amount of octopus. You know I'm going to eat this, right?

Yeah, I hope. I hope so. Oh yeah. Definitely edible. Perfect.

Dish number two.

Cool. So this is uh, this is a dish called Moqueca. We're gonna start by making the stock. So this is dendê oil. This is an oil from that region of Brazil. We're using the bones from the snapper. Okay. We're just gonna We're gonna put a little color on them.

I like how you're using every part of the fish.

Yeah. Yeah. I just I find the flavor of the seared fish. It gives it some a little more depth to the broth. These are some uh, shrimp shells. Just let that sear. So we've taken the peppers, just rough chop them. Garlic. Tomato. Okay. Ginger.

It smells incredible already.

It does, isn't it? Wow. If you could throw in a couple sprigs of that thyme and maybe a few of that cilantro too.

Like this? Just throw 'em right in.

We're gonna strain all this. So we're gonna put some chicken stock. You could use water at home, you could use clam stock. This is a little bit of champagne vinegar. Again, there's that acid. So you've got heat, acid, kind of like hit all the different parts of the mouth. You know, that's that's the goal when I cook.

This is bathing now.

Yeah, so this is gonna roll for an hour. So this is uh, this has been about an hour. You can see everything's starting to come together. It's breaking down. So we've got snapper. These are big U-8 shrimp. Uh, this is a piece of halibut. Just kind of put whatever you want in here. Clams, mussels, octopus. So, hot pan. A little bit of dendê oil. Sear this. Make it sing. Yep. All right. So now we're gonna put in uh, some more of these tomatoes. Just kind of blistered these in the pan. The peppers. Onion. Garlic. Ginger. I'll sear one side and then I'll flip 'em over and then kind of hit it with this sauce and let 'em kind of all stew together.

It's almost as if you can't place what the smell is but you know there's just everything in there and it's gonna taste delicious.

Just kind of spoon this in. Put that in there.

This looks fun but it looks elegant and delicious.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay, here we go again. Bye-bye. Cool. Chef, the food looks beautiful. The restaurant's beautiful. I don't even know what to do first. Let me dig in. Let me dig in. Yeah, please. I had octopus once before, this it took me about ten minutes to get through it. Wow. This is soft and tender. Melts in your mouth. Yeah. How did you create this? It's based on tradition. How do you make it like bring it up to that experience where you're like, wow, this is amazing. Yeah, I'd start there and Chef, this is unlike anything I've ever had before. Yeah. Layers. It's layers and layers and layers and layers. Yeah. I put a lot of that in. Mm. It's good, huh? Cheers to this. I will be back before you know it. Cheers. Cheers. It's amazing.