Asian Farm to Table

Andy Ricker, a carpenter-turned-chef from Portland, Oreg., is known for bringing "authentic" Thai food to America. At a food festival in Las Vegas, Ricker prepares a welcome dinner for the participating chefs at the much-loved Lotus of Siam, with chef/owner Saipin Chutima at the helm. The duo create their collective version of a spicy Issan dish. At the table, Jet Tila rhapsodizes about the days when his family opened America's first Thai grocery store in Hollywood, Calif., and introduced lemograss, kaffir lime leaves and other ingredients to the American palate.

Filipinos comprise the second-largest Asian-American population nationwide, yet their cuisine is relatively unknown. PJ Quesada, founder of the Filipino Food Movement, explains Filipino cuisine while feasting at his friend Tim Luym's global-Filipino restaurant in San Mateo, Calif. Meet restaurateur Nicole Ponseca, who left her life as a advertising executive in New York to give voice to her culture through food. And finally, the two friends behind Bling Bling Dumplings manufacture thousands of dumplings - from scratch, at home - to serve at Coachella and other festivals.

This episode introduces Olivia Wu, designer of the original Asian restaurant concepts on Google's "campus." Go behind-the-scenes at Google's first sit-down restaurant, as the assembly line churns out 2, 000 servings of the Indian fried rice dish, biryani. A visit to Google's purveyors showcases the ethos of the Bay Area food culture - local, seasonable and sustainable. After a career in Silicon Valley, two retired Japanese executives returned to their ancestral farming roots and constructed an indoor vertical farm which services some of the top restaurants in the Bay Area.

Track the evolution of Chinese food in America through the lens of two third-generation Chinese-American restaurateurs. Wilson Tang preserves the legacy of his family's dim sum parlor (America's oldest) while opening a fine-dining Chinese restaurant on Chinatown's expanding Lower East Side. Ed Schoenfeld, a self-proclaimed Chinese food expert and owner of one of the most critically acclaimed Chinese restaurants in New York, provides a tutorial on Peking duck preparation.

Japan has mesmerized American foodies for generations and a new wave of Japanese culinary culture continues to intoxicate us. Exploring American manifestations of otaku, the Japanese trope that combines cutting-edge pop culture with fetishistic obsession, Danielle visits New York's first cat cafe; a Brooklyn izakaya run by a Frenchman in thrall to Japanese anime and manga; and a California suburban mom who's a star on the international bento-box circuit.