It’s a hole-in-the-wall restaurant found in the back alleys of Hongdae,  a district full of vinyl-spinning basement bars, shoe-packed boutiques, cook-at-your-table barbecue and hand-drip coffee. And yes, This is Chicken is definitely worth looking for.

A couple of years ago, you might have seen Ji W. Kim riding around Hongdae on a scooter delivering fried chicken. But he chose to start this place, a restaurant he can call his own, and with a grammatically unwieldy name to boot.

This is Chicken features a short menu, with Woody Chicken and Rude Chicken among its house specialties. There’s also beer on tap, to keep the customers spirited amid scratchy recordings of old reggae and ska music playing in the background. Named after the 2006 British skinhead movie This is England, this restaurant may seem like a Frankenstein of ideas stitched together– a Korean chicken restaurant, reggae, ska and British skinheads.  You might start to question your own sanity. What is going on here? What brings these random things together?

Simply put, Ji loves chicken. He’s fascinated by the culture portrayed in This is England, and he can’t get enough of reggae and ska. Rather than make a restaurant to suit other people’s tastes, he conceptualized one for the person he knows best: himself.

Will This is Chicken be a hit? Will customers connect with the owner’s eclectic and obscure vision? If you navigate through the back alleysof Hongdae and stumble upon this establishment, you’ll find Ji happily frying up chicken in the kitchen, listening to his favorite songs. Then you will realize that Ji has already achieved success in his own right– as he does what he loves best and plays by his own rules.

But you better order your chicken early, because This is Chicken is 86’d on all their stock almost every night.

Def(left) and his partner in front of the breakfast truck

I walked over to Def’s breakfast truck parked near the entrance of Taipei Normal University in the rain. Wearing a red basketball jersey, his chest built and skin sun-tanned, Def was moving quickly up and down in between baskets, plates and loaves of bread.

He has just recruited his new “basketball team”, that is, the five “players” plus a “manager” who will be taking turns serving omelets and sandwiches to students running to classes.  The frank and straightforward sentences like “pour your own drinks,” and “get your own change” written on the signs make it impossible to not start the day with a good laugh.

More than a year ago, Def, 27 now, was a graphic designer at Pixnet, one of Taiwan’s leading lifestyle websites, “just to have a taste of what’s like to have a 9-5 office job,” he said.  True enough, he hated the routine life at the office. Being an ocean lover, he decided to follow the crazy dream he had when he was a student—to sell breakfast in a truck by the beach.

He used his own savings to purchase a truck, hand painted it, and moved to the seaside where he sold breakfast in the morning and surfed in the afternoon for a year. During this time, his mother was so upset that she wouldn’t talk to him, but later on she gave in and even offered help to prepare ingredients.  He took this as a sign of his initial success. Some of his friends also came to the beach every weekend to help him sell breakfast, and he thought that they’ve all gained something in the process.

mexican style omelet on the menu

Though content with his life as a seaside breakfast nomad, he has an ambition for inspiring and influencing more people. “Selling breakfast is just one thing, I’m hoping that my business will become like a brand, and I can form a band, shoot a movie, and do many other things with it.”

His breakfast truck has quickly gained popularity among universities and in the neighborhood, and he is also learning the tricks of survival in the fierce commercial battlefield. Def thinks that his customers come for the truck’s lighthearted atmosphere; they leave with a sense of hope and being motivated, which are exactly the feelings Def has been trying to stir up as he serves his sandwiches and omelets. “What I’m trying to show people is that they can change too– if they take a small leap they can do something different, just like I did.”

Def adds that he really wants to do a documentary on homeless culture. The breakfast truck surely is travelling on the map he has already planned out at the bottom of his heart.

a handmade mascot for the truck

Photos courtesy of Def’s Breakfast Truck

Addressing one of man’s basic necessities, food, has been the source of thousands of business ideas. Young people have been savoring new food (and drink) concepts and giving their own spin to them, and with a generous serving of local flavor too! Whether these Yumventurers ply their trade online or at a familiar street corner, they not only fulfill cravings, but also embody the very vision that had prompted these young entrepreneurs to embark on these enterprises themselves.

Today’s Yumventurers are among the 14 kinds of youth entrepreneurs featured in Culture Vulture, our new quarterly trends series that offers a global snapshot of current and emerging cultural trends, bringing fresh insights from around the world to inspire and ignite new strategies for brands.

The first edition of Culture Vulture seeks to explore and understand the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Gen Y and how the youth’s innovative ideas can help stimulate game-changing strategies for brands that aspire to become more enterprising in their outlook.

Download our FREE Culture Vulture iPad app from iTunes for an overview on the global growth of entrepreneurship as well as the different behaviors that embody youth entrepreneurs worldwide, along with tips for nurturing “entrepreneurial” attitudes for brands.

Don’t have an iPad? Then download the interactive PDF . Also check out all of our 14 videos showcasing the different types of youth entrepreneurs around the world.

Interested to know more? Visit the Culture Vulture page or email culturevulture@mindshareworld.com.

image via sousvidesupreme.com

My current favorite piece of technology isn’t a new gadget for the sake of being a gadget, but rather one with practical applications in the kitchen! It’s the Sous Vide Supreme, the first appliance meant for the mas market that brings the technology of vacuum-sealed, immersion circulator cooking to the home. Okay, so with a price tag of about $500 — which includes the required additional vacuum sealer and plastic bags — it’s not quite mass market yet. But for a cooking technique rooted in experimental, fine-dining kitchens, this machine itself is actually a great time-saver for busy people and offers lots of practical applications.

Sous vide is French for “in” (or really “under”) “a vacuum,” and sous vide cooking starts exactly with that. You take your food item of choice — usually a protein, or a sturdy vegetable or fruit, and vacuum seal it. Then, usually, you set a precise temperature on a water bath, and immerse the bag in the bath. The time used depends on the desired effect you want and the thickness of the food, but the important thing to note is that all temperatures are below boiling, and thus the cooking process takes a while. That’s an hour at the shortest for, say, a one-inch-thick steak.

The upside, though, is that though I can’t fully explain the science off the top of my head, as I understand it, because the food never reaches the boiling point, it never overcooks. The precise calibration of the water oven’s temperature, plus the vacuum sealing, also means the food will be exactly, evenly cooked all the way through. In other words, set the right time and temperature for a steak to be done medium rare, set it in, and it’ll cook perfectly on its own.

What’s more, once a food is cooked, if you use proper food handling techniques to cool it and refrigerate it, you can then bring it gently back up to temperature with no change in texture. This means, for instance, if you’re giving a dinner party, you can cook some things far in advance and bring them up to temperature the day of the part, meaning everything will be done perfectly right at the moment you need. If your guests are late, no problem — the food can also sit for a while, held at temperature in the machine, without cooking further.

This was formerly the preserve of haute cuisine, molecular gastronomy types, but in everyday use you can make the process as complicated or as easy as you want. On the fancier end of the spectrum, you could cook different elements of a dish separately, and then finish them together, or later add a sauce or perform other steps. At the easiest end, you could season and seal some chicken breasts, dump them in the water bath, and then go run errands before coming home to most of your dinner already cooked.

I actually received this as a present this past Christmas, but months later, I’m still playing with it several times a week. My only regret is that I opted for the Sous Vide Supreme-branded vacuum sealer to go with it, which has proved to not be somewhat temperamental and not as powerful as other home vacuum sealers. (I will probably upgrade to a nice FoodSaver model soon).

I’m interested in cooking and new kitchen technology, but don’t love to collect gadgets with only a few applications. The Sous Vide Supreme is quite the opposite. I look forward to future products from its manufacturer, Eades Appliance Technologies (fun fact, the owners wrote the Protein Power diet books), as well as new consumer-friendly adaptations of molecular gastronomy tools.

The continued growth of Main street remains a topic of discussion and will continue to now the Electric Owl has come to roost.

Located just blocks south of the Sky Train in what used to be the infamous American hotel, the Electric Owl looks to be the latest home for those who know that don’t want to go all the way into the downtown core.

Designed as the all purpose live music, comedy, theater, restaurant and cabaret venue that the area needs, it looks and feels like a keeper. A recent trip there to see Bristol house maven Julio Bashmore provided serious hijinks in a venue that looks good (love me some wood grain), sounds good (what the city forgets) and serves Kirin, which is an easy way to my hear right there.

With woman about town Dani Vachon on the show booking, a serious menu on every table and owners with hearts and pockets in the right place, post riot Vancouver just got a little more fun to hang out in.

A scene from food trucks parked at Bird Road (SW 40th St.) and SW 65th Ave.

Last month, I posted a bit here about the food trucks circulating Miami streets. Yes, the city is a little late to this culinary trend, but the upside is that people are fiercely supportive of every new enterprise. The proprietors of the trucks usually answer about 9 out of 10 tweets, and they draw ever more sizable crowds that are friendly rather than snobby.

The scene is changing quickly. When I wrote that last post, it seemed like most of the trucks were circulating around the more aggressively artsy/gentrifying areas of northeast/central Miami, with only a couple in the vast southwest/central area of town where more people live.

I am happy to report that is changing quickly — especially since I just moved back to the area after several years in the trendier, so-called “Upper Eastside.” It may be optimistic that I’m sensing a reverse migration back to the more Latin, real neighborhoods where a lot of us natives grew up, because I seem to be discovering more old and new friends around here.

Also, it’s the new hood for food trucks! Just a few blocks down from where I live, near the intersection of Bird Road and SW 65th Avenue, is an empty lot, next to a small strip mall housing an unglamorous laundromats barbershop, and a neighborhood Spanish restaurant. While a few trucks, like Grillmaster Cafe and Latin House Grill, were already circulating in the area, the lot is becoming a new hotspot for trucks that usually stop elsewhere.

In recent weeks, “Bird and 65th” has seen stops from the Asian-fusion truck Sakaya Kitchen, the Mexican-themed Nacho Mama’s Grill (which usually is found in the Keys!), and others. It’s a fun place to get dinner with a little bit of everything and hang out in a bit in an unpretentious setting, and it’s looking like the multi-truck mini fair will become a regular, weekly gathering.

Yes, I tweeted this photo while eating at @oneburger.

I recently blogged here about food trucks in Miami, and when I recently went to a small mini-truck meet up, I realized that virtually every single person waiting for food was on his or her phone. People were tweeting about eating at a largely Twitter-fueled phenomenon isn’t that surprising, but it was still noticeable that pretty much everyone was involved. I’ve noticed it a lot at brick-and-mortar restaurants too.

A large number of people I follow seem to tweet photos of nearly every meal they eat out, and many they cook themselves. Now, I’m guilty of this too. Rather, I wouldn’t say “guilty,” because I don’t find it embarrassing. I love when other people tweet photos of interesting meals, especially when they’ve made them. Thanks to Twitter, I’ve gotten some cool cooking ideas and struck up little friendships with the proprietors at some of the places I go to.

Recently, like an idiot, I dropped an entire plate of food at a burger place I visit regularly (@oneburger, in Coral Gables), and since we had become friends through Twitter, they graciously replaced my meal. That’s pretty good customer service, fueled by social media, and it’ll make me go back again.

The outside of Voodoo,  on SW 2nd and Ash.The maple bacon bar! A salty-sweet combination for those with a discerning palate and a lack of fear!

Adorable, hand picked vintage refrigerators, umbrella stands, locally designed cards and jewelry, glasses, dishes, trays, wall hangings and other fabulous finds fill the place. But, the most exciting of all is the cupcake bar in the back! Filled with an array of daily delectable cupcakes, you may choose your size and flavor!! YAY!! Adorable and delicious in every way. For more of a virtual experience, take the tour.