{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Savor with Tiffany Pham","title":"Hand-Pulled Noodles with Jason Wang, CEO of Xi'an Famous Foods","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2283,"description":"Jason Wang was supposed to go corporate. Instead he drove back from the Midwest, moved his things out of the car in a day, and started working in his father's noodle stall the next morning.\nTwenty years on, Xi'an Famous Foods is a New York institution, and the spicy cumin lamb noodles are one of the city's signature dishes. But it began as a bubble tea shop in Flushing, because his father wasn't sure New Yorkers would want food this spicy and this heavy on cumin, and wanted a hedge. Within six months the food was outselling the tea.\nTiffany Pham sits down with Jason over the dish that made him famous. They talk about his father, still the keeper of the recipe and the only person who makes the chili oil. About the thirty proprietary spices, some so obscure they don't have names. About the nights he drove his staff home to Flushing after thirteen-hour days, and the one where an employee started crying in his car and he realised he was just as tired. And about a young woman from Xi'an who came to New York alone at nineteen and ate the same bowl of beef noodle soup at his East Village store because it tasted like her parents' house.\nAsked whether he feels like he belongs here now, he says no, not entirely, and probably not for another ten or twenty years. Then he explains why that isn't a sad answer.\nSavor with Tiffany Pham, a Representation podcast production, is a companion to the television docuseries Savor with Tiffany Pham premiering in 2027. Cinematography by: Kym Pham.\nCHAPTERS\n00:00 Meeting Jason, and the dish that made them famous\n02:14 Inside the bowl: the noodles, the lamb, 30 spices\n04:01 The scar from a lamb skewer\n05:35 Why it went viral\n07:23 His father, keeper of the recipe\n09:21 \"I always feel a bit of an imposter\"\n10:21 Every complaint still goes to his phone\n13:23 A bubble tea shop in Flushing\n16:12 The Golden Shopping Mall stall\n17:27 Bourdain, 2007\n17:42 Leaving corporate, driving back from the Midwest\n21:01 On belonging\n22:42 Legacy, 20 years in...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/IxuWnflAOf8GdA8Vg9De5VVZjd23x5Il6_3nWxFdE0c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hNTM4/MmQ5MGMzZjMzMTAy/N2U4Y2NmMGI2MGI0/OTJlYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}