Hey guys, nice and quiet please. We are rolling. Thank you.
I'm Norma. I moved from Hong Kong to the US when I was 12. I was pretty good with numbers. I don't know, it just came natural to me and I had a great career in finance. But I had this strong calling inside. Cooking for someone is like my love language. After banking hours, I would buy groceries, design everything I want to cook for the weekend, creating content, and just sharing on social media. Quickly I got about 100,000 followers. That's when I realized this may be going somewhere. I really wanted to create a platform that can influence future generations to enjoy cooking. And that's when I decided to go all in. My company Day Cook, which started as a passion project, found its way all the way to Wall Street. My true passion in life was stock market and cooking. So now I'm bringing it all together: food, finance, and Bitcoin, and talking about it with all of my good friends. Welcome to Dishing Up Bitcoin.
Phong Le was born in Saigon in 1976, the year after the currency was erased overnight, and his family lost everything. They escaped by boat. He grew up in Syracuse, went to Johns Hopkins, and is now the CEO of Strategy, the company that has put more Bitcoin on its balance sheet than any corporation in history. From a refugee boat to one of the most consequential capital allocators in the world. Make some room at the table, 'cause Phong's here.
Hi. Hi, Phong. Good to see you.
Good to see you. Thank you so much for having me. This looks amazing.
Well, I am truly honored to have you as my guest today. I am very nervous.
Uh-oh. Why are you nervous?
I'm nervous because we're actually cooking a Vietnamese dish today.
Wow. Have you ever cooked Vietnamese before?
I have, but not this particular recipe. I feel like I'm gonna learn from you.
I'm wondering if this is something I've made before. I love cooking Vietnamese food. It's my favorite thing to make.
Perfect. So, this one I'm going to butcher the name, so I'm going to say the English version name, which is Vietnamese crispy pancakes.
Banh xeo. Yes. There you go. Yeah. Okay. So, do you make that at home?
It's very difficult to make. It's one of the harder things, but my mom made it. And banh xeo is actually from an area of Vietnam north in Saigon called Phan Thiet.
And so I've eaten banh xeo from where it originally came from.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, hopefully we can, you know, make it and live up to your standard.
Just in case you get thirsty, we'll prepare a little drinks for you.
Awesome. And it's an IPA, which you must have known those are my favorite beers. I actually have a brewery.
I do have a brewery. I should have brought some of my beer next time.
There you go. Oops. Yeah, there you go.
Well, thanks for choosing something Vietnamese. I'm very excited about this.
Me, too. Well, before we jump in, I feel like we should cheers to a very successful recipe today.
Yes. And to Bitcoin, of course.
Have you made this at home before?
I have not made this at home. I have watched my mom make it.
But I have not done it myself.
Well, we'll be our first together.
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So, we start with making the batter. These are some rice flour. And why don't you help me mix all these ingredients together? Rice flour, cornstarch, a pinch of salt, and turmeric.
Great. So you also have a lot of experience cooking at home growing up in Syracuse.
Yeah. So I grew up in Syracuse and actually my parents, both my mom and my dad... Oh, just a pinch of salt. It's so good that didn't go in.
You didn't let me put the whole thing in there.
All right. And then this... this one actually goes into the water. So I'll do this.
And that's just regular water.
And you know, we're just going to eyeball this a little bit. That's soda water.
We're going to eyeball like a cup and a half.
Cup and a half. So we're at two and a half. You want to go all the way up to four? Not quite.
Well, that salt thing would have been a disaster. Like I'm glad you stopped me.
You know, there's no disaster in this kitchen. That's why the salt... the salt won't even allow it to happen.
Yeah. We would just eat it and pretend we really liked it even though it was super salty.
So we mix that a little bit first.
So growing up at home, who cooked in the kitchen in Syracuse?
So it was primarily my mom. But my dad, you know, as couples do, he always thought his cooking was better, but he wouldn't do it as frequently. But they were both very involved in cooking and every meal that we had was essentially a home-cooked meal, right? Which was amazing and it was almost always Vietnamese. My mom learned some American dishes, especially Italian, from friends and such over time. And the kids actually didn't... we didn't cook much, but we observed and we saw. But I learned to love cooking and making food because that's what I saw growing up. And we passed that on... my wife and I passed that on to our kids where, you know, they're in college now and they're cooking the same things we made for them, which were in some cases the same things my parents made for me. So, it was sort of fun.
And then did your parents already speak English when they arrived?
No, not a lick of it. And you know, we were refugees from Vietnam. We had escaped the country. We were boat people, but there was no English. I think my dad learned French growing up in high school, but no, they had to learn English coming here. And even to this day, their English is not great, right? My dad worked as a machinist most of the time so he didn't need to learn a lot of English. My mom worked as a drafts person and so her English was a little bit better, but we spoke Vietnamese at home.
It was required. In fact, when we didn't speak Vietnamese we would get in trouble.
Tell me more about Vietnamese boat people.
My parents in 1975 were already married and they were what you would consider middle to upper middle class in Vietnam. And the great thing, if you've ever been to South Vietnam especially, everybody's an entrepreneur. Everybody owns a business, even if it's just selling goods out of the back of your house or something. My mom's family was primarily in textiles. They made shoes. My dad's family was in agriculture. They had farms. They had quite a bit of land along the Mekong. And you know, when a communist government at that point in time... you know, there's more progressive communist governments now, but at that point in time when they take over another country and people... the first thing they do, one of the first things they do is they seize your money, right? And they seize your property. And so anyone who had South Vietnamese dong had to convert it to North Vietnamese dong. And what you did is basically they opened up the banks and said bring in all your South Vietnamese dollars, in return you get 200 North Vietnamese dong... $10, doesn't matter how much you had, in return you get $10. And then of course they seize all the property. So my parents... my dad's farming and villages, and my mom's businesses and their family's business, all seized. And then you can't hold gold anymore, and so all the gold had to be turned in. And what people did is they sewed gold into their... into the mattresses. And I talked to my dad about this. It's a hard thing just to sort of put yourself in that place to comprehend. They said, you know, this is not a place to raise your family. And they had a 2-year-old, myself, my sister who was 4 years old. And they said, you know, the best thing to do is to escape.
And the only way to escape Vietnam at that point in time was to just sail into the South China Sea. And so you had to accumulate a bunch of goods. Yeah. All right. The boat was about 40 ft long. And I think they had about 100 friends, family, etc. that got together. And about a million people tried to escape.
And about 500,000 survived.
And so, you know, and it gets even more interesting. So, we're here, my dad, you know, is captaining this boat, which is funny in of itself, right? Like, you know, him being a boat captain, never had done that before. So, we go out. Your first step is you have to get past the Viet Cong. So, we made it past the Viet Cong. The boat springs a leak and once it springs a leak, you know, you can't stay out there. So, they actually had to turn around and go back.
Oh my god.
And I feel like this is like a sign from like whatever higher being, like God saying, 'Bad idea.'
Yeah.
You know, of course, my dad, who's a pretty stubborn guy, that's probably where I get it from. A month later, he's like, 'Let's do this again.' So, they're like, 'Let's get all the provisions back. Let's fix the boat.' We go back out in a month. And so, we actually go out this time. We make it the second time past the Viet Cong and we're out at sea for about 3 days. After about 3 days is when, you know, things start getting really bad. Your provisions run out. Your food runs out, your water runs out. But we were lucky enough to be picked up by a shipping boat coming from Germany down to Singapore and literally, you know, rescued us at sea and we went down to Singapore and we were refugees.
Extremely fortunate. Yeah. That we survived, extremely fortunate that our family had the wherewithal and the courage to escape twice. Yeah. We were picked up by a boat, we survived, and we ended up in really the US, which is the best country.
Absolutely.
A remarkable story. Talk about, you know, greater forces at work there.
The batter that you helped me make is fairly watery, very light because the pancake that we're going to have is very crispy, right? It's not the thick and fluffy type.
The last ingredient in there is just some green onions. You want me to do a little bit of chopping for the recipe?
I would love to do some chopping.
When we were growing up, Syracuse actually has a lot of good produce. The seasons are short, but you have great apples from upstate New York. So, pick your own apples was a big thing. There was a farm that we would go to and we would actually pick blueberries and they would pay you like a migrant worker to pick blueberries and this would be something we would do for fun on the weekends. We would be like... I thought this was totally normal. We were migrant workers and they would give us cash to pick the blueberries and it was our fun thing to do.
This is awesome. And I look back and I'm like, well no, that was just child labor, I'm pretty sure.
So besides the blueberries, I hear there's also something more challenging like livestock.
So it's hard to get good duck even now. You go to a grocery store, most of the duck you get is... it's like frozen.
It's a little bit fatty. And so my dad's solution to that obviously was to make friends with a duck farmer. And here we are living in, you know, suburban Syracuse essentially. And my dad picks up three ducks, sticks them in the garage, and he butchers them. And you drain all the blood.
And then you have to boil the duck, and then you have to defeather it and all this kind of stuff. It's delicious.
You probably got the true experience of farm-to-table food before it's like a thing now.
Yes. Yeah. Well, and I think that was the original thing before. Now it's the cool thing. It was the way to eat. It was actually the less expensive way to eat, right? Absolutely. They would buy a duck at like $5.
Yes. And we usually eat everything of the whole... of the whole...
Yes. There was no duck left over, just a few bones.
Great. Well, this is the first part of the pancake. I think we did really well.
And we move on to the fillings.
Cheers through the first segment.
Awesome.
Well, now we move on to preparing the filling that goes into the pancakes.
Me, too. I love pork belly. Yes.
I love everything about it. All the fat. And the skin. I think this one is skinless, though.
Yes.
And then today we prepare some shrimp as well. Soaked mung beans and sliced the onions. So, why don't you help me put the pork belly in and just blanch this.
Okay. And how long do you blanch it for?
We want to cook it all the way through, so it's going to take some time.
A man in the kitchen using the hands.
Oh, you didn't even use the tongs.
Most of our guests will be like, whatever.
Most of our guests will be like, 'Okay, great. Perfect.'
And then we add some warm water here to the beans. Just let that soak while we do the rest of the recipe.
And then maybe you can help me slice the onion.
I feel like I don't even need to show you or like say how we should be doing it.
What is your like earliest memory of money and what were you thinking at that time?
Well, you know, so we didn't have money. You know, my parents were going to school, learning English, sent to vocational school by the church that sponsored them. And so money wasn't even something we even thought of. There was never this sort of, oh, we're poor.
Because we always had good food. We always had food on the table. You go to a grocery store and you're using food stamps. Other people are using, you know, checks back then or cash. Why is that happening? And that was my sort of first realization that we didn't have a lot of money. It was third grade that my parents actually saved away enough money that they were able to get a mortgage and buy a house.
Yeah, it was a big moment. My dad, you know, was working two, three jobs at that point. So I didn't see him much. It was non-traditional, but I felt a very wholesome childhood.
That is incredible. That sounds very, very sweet. By the way, amazing job here. I don't even think I could have cut them that thin and so consistent.
Seriously, I tell you, I love chopping.
All right. And while you were doing that, I was blanching the shrimps.
Yeah. Well, I think sometimes you can also use raw shrimps and just cook it with the pancake, but today I just wanted to blanch it.
All right. So, now we can...
We didn't get to peel the shrimp, though, which is fun, too. Next time.
