I'm here at South Bites and who better to be at South Bites with than Paul Kie, the curator of this fantastic extravaganza here at South by Southwest. Hi. I'm first going to point out, I know you're a James Beard winner. I know you're a top chef winner, but I'm giving you the award for most fit chef. Cheers. Cheers to that. How do you stay looking fantastic? Let's just let's just show those show that body off. There we go. Am I embarrassing you? Am I totally embarrassing you? How do you stay in shape being a chef and eating all the time?

No, no, don't. Yes, that's it. Uh, I mean, I mean Austin, so I like to ride my bike around town. That's like my favorite thing to do.

So let's talk a little bit about sort of your curating, you know, all the food trucks here. It's such a big thing, food trucks in Austin.

Yep.

So give me sort of like a little bit of background of like how you got involved and sort of like what sort of style and flavor you put into it this year?

Uh, I I work from I have like a pretty I guess fine dining Japanese formal kitchen background, but like I wanted to play a little bit and the food truck is a perfect outlet.

So you have your own truck though. You have

Yeah, I do have my own truck, uh, East Side King.

Yeah. Yes. Well, a lot of people have been tweeting and talking about it as being sort of the best truck here.

Uh, it's it's one of many really good trucks in the city.

So, where are you going to take me around here? Which food truck are we hitting? Have you tried them all?

I've tried most of them.

Okay. Almost all of them. Okay. So, take me to the good one.

Let's start with ice cream. I know desserts should be last, right? So, we have Jenni's Ice Cream Truck. They're from uh, Columbus, Ohio. They they always have like really, really cool flavors and they use really, really good ingredients.

Okay. Lemon and dark chocolate together is amazing. Okay, let's go try it. That is a fantastic combination. Okay, tell me etiquette-wise, was that rude of me to start my ice cream before waiting for you?

No, not at all. I think that's that's proper etiquette.

Thanks guys. Cheers. We should we should head over to the the coffee shop. This is so cute. Can we point out how cute this is? Did you design it?

This is actually an Australian architect design. It was designed to be used as disaster relief housing and then I had an idea to use it to work with different brands and pop up in different locations.

So tell us about Australian coffee.

Uh, our favorite is probably the flat white, which is a more smooth, creamy version of a latte, a little bit stronger.

Flat white coffee. With a heart in it.

Tim Tam Slam is basically where you get the Tim Tam, which has a chocolate cream center, dunk it in the flat white, let it melt a little bit, swirl it around. Take a bite and then suck out the chocolate cream. Suck it like a straw.

She's got it. She's got it. That was a dunk. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was a slam dunk. Where are you taking me next?

I guess cupcakes.

Oh, there's a Michael Jackson. I have to have the Michael Jackson.

You got to have the Michael Jackson. Go for it.

You want to see my moonwalk? Go for it. It's gonna be hard with the rocks. Ow. There you go. There you go. Thank you. Go for it. So I'd like you to try it first. Do you have the wrapper around it?

Don't need the paper. I'll I'm gonna take a bite.

Yeah. Good. Where are we going now?

So since we're still on this backwards kick.

Yeah.

We're going to get chicken and waffles. We'll take it with spicy mayo and ancho chili.

Okay. Now, why do you recommend that one?

'Cause uh, you get a little bit of the spicy. Well, I'll I'll let the man describe.

Well, uh, we've got an ancho chili honey butter, so it's kind of sweet and then you got the spicy mayo. So you got like a sweet, savory, spicy thing going on all at the same time.

So, how do you feel about having Paul here, such a celebrity chef sort of curating this whole event?

It's awesome. I think he knows what he's doing. I mean, they picked him anyway. So, he must know what he's doing.

chicken and waffle sandwich. Chicken and waffle sandwich. Sandwich. Very standing friendly. I'll let you take the first bite. You took the first bite last time. Such a gentleman. I have to tell you this is my favorite food in the world. Chicken and waffles. What do you think? Honestly, honest reaction.

All right. The combination of what's happening in my mouth right now. What's not going on?

I know. That's my third one today.

We wanted a diverse selection of food. So here we have Vietnamese food. It's a butt truck from Houston. Here they have like great pho, spring rolls, like uh, bun me. Vietnamese food is being is kind of on the rise. It's like getting really, really popular.

Absolutely. Vietnamese Vietnamese food I think is one of my favorite comfort foods. What is this now? What do we have here?

This is pho tai. This is a beef noodle soup with eye of round, have onions, green onions, and cilantro in it.

Thank you. Oh my God. I think that's my favorite so far. Thank you so much. Thank you guys.

Over here we got the Butcher's Son. They do a lot of sandwiches and sliders. And then next to him is the Seedling Truck and they do like a like a different daily menu. And of course, here's East Side King. Uh, we have five locations right now for South by. And uh, in each truck has a different style of food. So this one we specialize in basically like a slider sandwich and Yakisoba, which is like a Japanese stir-fried noodle. So we'll do we'll do the uh, sliders. Yep. And then we'll Yep, and the karage the karage kimchi.

Okay. So number one is the slider. Yep. Yep, there you go. So what's in each of those?

So the Yakisoba, it's just it's basically like uh, like egg noodles. Second guest: Hey, you can just put it on her pa.

Yeah. Cheers. Wait. Did that just really happen? She doesn't know who you are? Huh? She doesn't know who you are?

I don't think so. I don't know. She just asked his name. It happens.

Should I tell her? No, don't tell her. But that was pretty funny. So what am I about to taste here?

So that is our Yakisoba. It's it's like a Japanese like lo mein stir-fry thing. We were serving it with some of our fried chicken and uh kimchi. Oh. It's good. So this is our sou vide pork belly. We cook it for like uh, 12 hours. It's got uh, some cilantro, some pickles, and some some like fried onions and stuff on top. It's the pork belly's almost like it's cande. Good stuff. Eat your face off.