story

Hi, my name's Kelly Wong. I lead all restaurant relationships and operations for family style, and today we're dropping off the AJ3's world's best to three of my favorite restaurants in LA. Just like my favorite chefs in LA...

...the AJ3 world's best takes something that's good and pushes it to be great. First drop off of the day is to Chef Fatima at Komal Molina. Hi Chef Fati! Oh my god, thank you.

Of course. When thinking about AJ3's world's best, I picked her because she's really the queen of corn. What got you into masa and corn? The principal ingredient in Mexico for this corn.

Now in Komal, we work around 45 types of corn. Every corn is different flavor, different aloma, and we support the small communities in Mexico. This is very important for us. When we start this project, it's the principle mission for Komal. 

All the chefs that we're dropping in on today inspire me because they're all showcasing their culture through food. I've never seen another restaurant highlight heirloom corn the way that Chef Fatima does. 

When I think of greatness in LA, especially in the food scene, I think of Chef Fatima. Next, we're headed to Wi Jammin in Inglewood to drop in on Chef Courtney. Hi, Chef Courtney! 

I have a special delivery for you. Oh my god, these are beautiful. Thank you so much. Chef Courtney, take me through your amazing creative brain. Well, I tried to bring Caribbean fusion food to the table. 

For instance, I do taco Tuesdays. I try to bring out the Oxdell taco, oxtail burritos. And also we do jerk salmon, garlic butter salmon, jerk fried rice. A lot of stuff I create was stages I didn't have as a kid. So when I became a chef...

I was like, yeah, I'm going to recreate this my way. So I cook with a lot of love and I enjoy what I do. You started in mid-city and then you opened up this Englewood location. Coming to Inglewood was a big step for me and I was excited about it because I got to bring new flavors to Inglewood that...

...wasn't here already. You don't always have to travel for the world's best. Sometimes the world's best is right in your backyard and our backyard for Wi Jammin is Inglewood. What inspires me about Chef Courtney is he's taking...

...traditional Caribbean flavors and re-imagining it. Like for instance, an oxtail burrito. So he started Tacos and Tings for Taco Tuesday. He just inspires me in the way that his brain works. 

Finally, we're headed to the west side to go to Myia Miya and drop off to Chef Yaz. Chef Yaz, surprise delivery! Michael Jordan! What's good? Good to see you. 

It's the AJ3 World's Best for the world's best. Oh what? Oh, these are insane, bro. Can I put them all right now? Yeah, put them on. These are insane. Literally the Miya Miya colorway, man, just crazy. I know. How'd y'all know? 

Chef Yaz, what made you dive headfirst into food and shawarma? It's a campaign. I just feel like shawarma was not getting nearly as much love or attention to detail as it deserved. My father, God rest his soul, him and I would go to Jordan together and just each shawarma all day long. 

So a few months after my dad's passing, I went on a flight to Jordan, learned how to make shawarma with some of the experts, import the best ingredients from there. Obviously this is the result. People now know what shawarma is with. That line is out here every day for two things. shawarma and your tallow fries and always the Yaz way!

Yeah. I want everyone to focus on shawarma for a second. You go to these restaurants, it's like middle of the menu, end of the menu. I'm like, no, this is the star of the show. I know we had someone in line who flew in from D.C. just to try our food and waited two hours on top of that. How do you even say thank you?

But creating one of the most memorable experiences that we can and making it bigger than food is always the goal. Yeah. And I mean, a chef from Jordan wearing Jordan. That's what I was about to say. It's kind of iconic. Shout out Jordan Brand and shout out Jordan as well. You see Petra right here. 

What inspired me about Chef Yaz is he shows the same tenacity that I think MJ had and is why people are so inspired by him. Chef Yaz is putting shawarma on the map in LA. 

Thank you for watching my episode of The Drop Off, signing out from LA.

The Drop-Off

Air Jordan 3 'World's Best' with Kelly Wong