Anthony Myint : Our book is split into roughly two parts, a narrative and a food section with recipes.
Anthony Myint : Sorry.
Anthony Myint : And so.
Anthony Myint : So the first menu that we served had one of the
Anthony Myint : "I spent a month eating my way around China, but my favorite Peking duck is in an old strip mall in the suburbs of Washington D.C. at Peking Gourmet Inn.
Anthony Myint : But she likes cheeseburgers I think the best.
Anthony Myint : So my cronies at that time were Danny Bowien, who is now the chef of
Anthony Myint : One of the biggest advantages of the homage series was giving us something to blog about.
Anthony Myint : "While the restaurant industry has been pretty slow to adapt to the reality of the internet age, Mission Street Food was an early and enthusiastic adopter of new media.
Anthony Myint : I think for us one of the things that was pretty surprising was how like just how pervasive and just how intense kind of press coverage by way of the blogosphere
Anthony Myint : Right, in the food industry, sorry.
Anthony Myint : So I guess we initially started Mission Street Food just by going door to door and kind of asking places if they would let us use their dining room or kitchen or
Anthony Myint : Ok.
Anthony Myint : Well, it's also worth noting that there's some kind of silly, silliness to start the book in the form of kind of a fake business plan.
Anthony Myint : So Danny is the chef at Mission Chinese Food, so at the very beginning he and I worked like pretty closely on the menu.
Anthony Myint : Actually just really quick on the note of Hai nam Chicken Rice, that was funny because there was a website called Chow Hound and there were like, there was
Anthony Myint : So we went to China where the owners live, it's actually in a small town called Lung Shan and them.
Anthony Myint : Well so I guess charitable restaurants is sort of what got me into the
Anthony Myint : I guess I probably first sort of learned how to cook growing up just 'cause both my parents worked and my grandmother lived with us.
Anthony Myint : To me also I feel like I've read a lot of cookbooks and the part that's
Anthony Myint : Well, we have a lot of like budget favorites, but I think currently my
Anthony Myint : I guess also Vietnamese food.
Anthony Myint : And I eat the food at Mission Chinese Food far too often, so my favorites vary from day to day.
Anthony Myint : Thanks.
This is Anthony Myint .
I'm really excited to welcome Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz here to talk about their new book, Mission Street Food: Ideas and Recipes from an Improbable Restaurant.
Anthony Myint : So I guess maybe it's worth noting that we, we started in a taco truck
Anthony Myint : "Unfortunately, this was not even remotely possible in the small refrigerators and half-broken oven at Mission Street Food.
Welcome, Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz, who are husband and wife co-founders of the Perennial.
Anthony Myint : So I guess maybe now we'll just pass out some food and things before we move on.
Anthony Myint : I don't know.
Anthony Myint : "In our defense, we behaved no worse than a chef pandering to local food
So the nonprofit I started with a couple of friends, one of which is the chef Anthony Myint who