RANDY HOBSON
Owner, Pangea Kitchen
In the United States, one of my favorite places to travel to is New York City. The real lifeblood of the food culture is in places like Flushing or Queens. Brooklyn also has some amazing pizza driven dishes that have really inspired us. Every city has its own unique flavor going on. Chinatown in Chicago is awesome, with a wide variety of dumplings. I also just recently traveled to Texas and visited my first ever Laotian restaurant, which is Laos food.
Lao Sausage - Dallas, Texas
Tapioca Dumplings - Dallas, Texas
Laos food is very similar to Thai food but it is also different in a lot of ways. There are more small plates and a lot more sauces. The flavor profile of those dishes were phenomenal. Our destinations to explore food culture are always evolving and emerging. We are always looking for something fresh and unique that catches our eye. Once we find something we’re always excited to go check it out. That’s really what we’re about.
While in New York, we visited Supermoon Bakehouse, which is a young and hip bakery with a very open kitchen. It was very inspiring to see everything being made from scratch and to be able to watch people working on multiple products that ultimately became fabulous desserts. Their presentation was incredibly simple. When you walked in, there was a long table with each item displayed in a line. It didn’t need any explanation, you just admired the beauty of it.
Supermoon Display - NYC
Supermoon - NYC
Food experiences like Supermoon are what inspired a lot of what we want to do in downtown Evansville with our bakery. Our bakery will be very different than any bakery in this city. We will be making things from scratch and using a lot of techniques that are not very common in Evansville.
Food travel is a great way to get really inspired about new dishes, but you also have to get creative. We don’t want to go somewhere, eat something, and then make that exact dish for Evansville. Our approach is more about getting inspired and adding our own twist to create a dish that is totally unique to Pangea.
When we get inspiration, it’s not typically the total dish. It’s something about the dish or the way it’s presented or the way the server describes the dish to us. We just keep finding things to bring back and tuck into Pangea that we can execute. We want to be extremely authentic about what we do. It’s real, it’s house-made, it’s imported. If we can make it in house, we will. If we can’t find an ingredient in America, we will find it somewhere else in the world. It’s not cheap, but it’s what’s important to us.