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There was no Koreatown.
Right, but it wasn't called Koreatown yet.
This is Roy Choi, chef and TV personality.
His parents moved to LA with the first wave of Korean immigrants in the 1960s.
Today, LA's Koreatown has the largest population of Koreans outside of Seoul.
But when Roy was a kid, it was very different.
There were no ingredients, you know, because they were the first wave to come in.
There was no kimchi.
There was no Napa cabbage.
You know, there was no gochugaru and all these things.
So you would have to kind of make things on the fly like sauerkraut, klausen sauerkraut with Tabasco sauce.
That was the first kimchi of Koreatown.
Oh, wow. That's like quick and dirty Korean imitation kimchi.
That's the first kimchi of Koreatown.
You heard it here on The Sporkful.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
before we get into this week's show I want to ask for your help we are looking for stories from food obsessives and if you listen to this show I have a feeling that might be you have you ever cooked something over and over again in an attempt to perfect it or like have you ever set out on a mission to rank every taco in your town or try every version of a certain food available we're looking for stories of people who have gone to extreme lengths in pursuit of deliciousness that sounds like you send us an email or voicemail to hello at sporkful .com I want to know your first name, location, and your
story. I can't wait to hear from you.
Alright, let's get into it.
Roy Choi is a legend in LA.
He was one of the first chefs to launch a food truck and one of the first to mash up different cuisines in a way that's become so popular.
His Kogi Korean beef tacos were a sensation in LA when he debuted them in 2008.
In fact, Roy's Korean taco food truck was such a hit that it inspired the movie Chef, starring Jon Favreau, and then a Netflix series that Roy hosted with Favreau and Celebrity Guests.
Roy wrote a bestselling cookbook and memoir, L .A.'s Son, in 2013, and now he has a new cookbook, The Choi of Cooking.
Meanwhile, Kogi trucks are all over L .A., his food is served also at a small bar on the west side, and he's expanded to a restaurant and food truck in Vegas.
When you hear Roy's story today, you know that it ends with all this success.
In fact, as you'll hear, in some ways it seems like his life was preordained.
But for many years, it wasn't clear he was going to survive, let alone thrive.
A lot of his path has been uphill, full of twists and turns and setbacks.
It started near the corner of Vermont and Wilshire in 1970s LA with a Korean community meeting.
I was interested to read about, I'm sorry I'm not going to pronounce the word correctly, but this type of meeting that takes place, the cat meeting?
You pronounced it right, yeah, cat meeting.
So the cat meeting is Is that when you're an immigrant in this country, there's racism.
And you can't get a job or you can't get a loan.
No one's helping you out.
Right. You need a little something to get started.
The group of people that were first tier, they create kind of like a bridge club or like a mahjong club or something.
And you just hang out.
But then everyone in that club donates money every week or every month.
And then one person, kind of like a lottery, gets picked for that month.
And then you get the lump sum of, you know, what's been donated.
And then you can take that money and then go and open your shop.
Was that like the intent of the pot is like we're going to pick out a winner each month and the idea is you're supposed to use this money to start a business?
Absolutely. Eventually, Roy's parents won the pot.
They opened a liquor store, but after a few years that closed.
They tried a jewelry business, which also struggled.
Then in 1978, when Roy was eight, his parents decided to open a restaurant.
They didn't have a grand vision.
It's just something a lot of immigrants do.
And there weren't many other Korean places around yet.
But this business did have one thing going for it.
Roy's mom was a great cook.
There's this Korean tradition of, I want to make sure, seonmash.
Yes. Man, your Korean is superb so far.
What the heck is going on?
I'm going to quit now and go all the way ahead.
Flavor in your fingertips.
That's what it means.
It's flavor in your fingertips in the sense that you have the touch. You have the magic and the pixie dust in your hands and your fingers, and you're a wizard, and you can swirl flavors and elixirs and spices together.
It's like a deep intuition.
The term specifically means the deep intuition, but it also specifically means it directly comes out of your fingers like sweat or like a wizard's raise or like a wizard's raise yes and it comes out and it affects the food and it changes the flavor that's what makes you so special and it was said in the community that your mother had this your mother had son mash yes my mother had it um but not only her but my my grandmother had it my great -grandmother had it my family lineage going back 2000 years had it i was being told these stories as a kid.
I was sat down and told that for thousands and thousands of years, our family had so much in their fingertips, and we were all cooks and great chefs and flavor generators.
Roy's parents' restaurant was called Silver Garden.
They had hot plates of barbecue, banchan, and all kinds of soups and stews that his mom made.
As a kid, Roy spent a lot of time at the restaurant.
My role was, I call it maitre d'.
It was during my elementary elementary school years I would just greet people at the door and then walk them to their table ask them if they wanted water or this or that and I would never bring it to them you know why not I forgot I was fucking 10 years old man so you were you were helpful -ish helpful -ish yes usually most people just saw me under the soda machine.
Drinking under the soda machine with no cup.
So you just had your head under the spout.
Yeah, that's what people would see when they come into the restaurant.
The restaurant had a good run, but after a few years of success, the business dropped sharply.
Kind of like what restaurants go through all the time.
You never know. You're just living your life.
You're just waking up, prepping every day, serving 200, 300 people, and then all of a sudden there are 12 people.
After the restaurant closed, the Troy family went through some hard years.
Eventually, though, they found themselves back in the jewelry business, and this time it went well.
Roy's parents saved up enough to move from the busy streets of L .A.
to the wealthier suburbs of Orange County.
Roy was 13 at the time, and he struggled with the transition.
At first, it was pretty typical teenage rebellion stuff.
He started doing poorly in school, got into a couple of fights.
But then it got more serious.
He started dabbling with hard drugs, taking LSD and mushrooms. rooms. He and his friends collected weapons, sawed off shotguns, butterfly knives, brass knuckles.
His parents didn't know what to do.
I asked him to read an excerpt from his memoir about that time in his life.
I never met their high expectations, and with the drugs, my long hair, and my sneaking around, I justified their shame.
When their friends visited with their Harvard -bound sons and daughters, my parents sent their Quasimodo of a son to his room.
Out of sight, out of mind.
In my bell tower I felt like I was in the wrong body The wrong time The wrong era Suffocating in a prison of structure I had to get out I had to disappear I thought about ending it all Knife, wrist, gun, trigger But no, that good Asian Sun heritage pulled me back I couldn't do it So instead I took off for nights at a time To a place where nobody knew my name Where I could escape the expectations The disappointments the failures even the successes it was a place i knew as a kid hollywood roy spent many days wandering hollywood with his friends sometimes breaking into restaurants to steal food then
sleeping on the streets for nights at a time i asked him what he thought pushed him past the typical teenage angst to such self -destructive behavior you know maybe i was just you know meant to to do something with my life you know i just couldn't figure it out you know and there was this There's this push and pull of a few things, which was one, my Asian heritage and culture.
It's a very specific experience growing up in an Asian household.
There is the pressure of not only your parents and the expectations and the education barometer that you have to meet.
That barometer is damn high, man.
But then it's not only that, it's the guilt and the passive -aggressive pressure of thousands of years of ancestors that are being pushed on you all the time, you know, and the power of embarrassment that is constantly fed to you like cough syrup, you know, throughout your life.
life for me personally with that you know I was dealing with this push and pull of like knowing that I had something to say or this thing that I was meant to be here for but then I couldn't deal with not being able to express it that was that was it for me you know and also I mean shoot me down if this is wrong but I would imagine that like some of it is also like this feeling that whatever this special thing that you're meant to do is even if you're not quite quite sure what it is.
On some level, you understand that it's not the thing that your parents want.
Absolutely. You put it better than I just said.
That's exactly what the push and pull was.
Roy graduated high school, barely, and enrolled at Cal State Fullerton, but he was still getting into a lot of trouble and on the verge of flunking out.
When he was 20, his parents decided to send him to Korea on a summer program for college students.
They hoped it would help straighten him out, and connect him with his heritage.
And Roy did find that connection through the food.
Growing up in America, you hear so much about the distinction between regions throughout Europe, especially Italy and France and Spain.
When you hear about Asia, it's just called Chinese food.
It's just called Korean food.
It's just called Vietnamese food.
For me, going over there, it just opened my eyes and brought a lot of depth to my understanding of like it's not just it's not called Korean food it's it's specific to each region I started to understand why it's not so spicy on the southeast and why it's so spicy in the southwest um why the things that I love the most the funkiest dirtiest like smelliest stuff comes from the southwest and why the cold brisk kind of refreshing things come from the southeast and then why those foods in the Southeast have kind of a Japanese tinge to it.
You know, I understand all those things.
While the trip to Korea did make a real impact on how Roy thought about his culture, it didn't slow his downward trajectory.
When he got back to the U .S., a bad breakup sent him into a tailspin.
He spent a week smoking crack.
His parents didn't know where he was.
Finally, when he returned home, his mother did what she always did.
She cooked for him.
That was 35 years years ago but roy remembers it vividly she made salted broiled fish uh she made kimchi jjigae she made galbitang which is like a like a slow cooked uh clear soup she made all different types of banchan and kimchis she made mung bean pancakes um and she also made juk which a lot of mothers feed their kids when they want to restore their their energy and juk is a porridge abalone own new porch. As I read Roy's memoir, I kept thinking, this has to be his rock bottom.
Now he's going to turn it around.
But he kept falling further and further.
After barely graduating from college, he got addicted to gambling, hanging out at a seedy club where he says a guy was murdered with an axe, like literally axe murdered.
Roy picked fights. He got beat up.
He was held at gunpoint.
He says his friends were getting tired of his behavior.
And finally, when he was 24, before he got tired of it too.
One day he was sleeping on his friend's couch and when he opened his eyes the TV was on.
I was on that couch and the Essence of Emeril show was on there.
Hey hey Emeril Lagasse here welcome to the Essence of Emeril.
Classic iconic Emeril Lagasse cooking show.
It was just on and I was half awake on a couch and it's just there in the ether in in the background.
And then I had this out -of -body experience.
Why don't you come join me in the kitchen today?
He came out of the TV, grabbed me and pulled me off the couch and slapped me around and rubbed rosemary and thyme and tarragon and smell this, taste this.
I'm going to show you how herbs and spices can make the whole difference.
These are all things happening, whether they're happening for real or in my mind, who knows?
We only know this third dimension, but But there are other dimensions, so, you know.
I know, you can't believe it.
But, like, were you high at this moment?
No, I wasn't high. Okay.
I wasn't high. You're lying on the couch, and so you have this vision, this out -of -body experience, but it's food -specific, you know.
So it's not only is it a famous chef doing this in your mind, but he's literally rubbing herbs in your face saying, get your shit together.
This is what I was waiting for back as a kid when I was trying to explain I was meant to do something.
This was that moment.
I'm here to do something.
I know I can do this.
There's something coming out of my hands.
I just didn't know what it was.
And it was Emeril that showed me what it was.
I asked Roy to read another excerpt from his memoir about that experience.
experience. Up until that moment, I just didn't see it.
I didn't realize how much food was a part of my family, a part of me.
I was almost too close to it all, too close to the screen to really see the big picture.
But the moment Emeril waved those herbs at me, my whole world clicked into place, and I saw what had been in front of my face this whole time.
Food, flavors, sonmash.
I saw myself myself in the kitchen.
I saw myself at home.
That was it. I made up my mind.
I was done with the anger, the shame, the mistakes, the self -pity, the pain.
For real this time, I was done.
I peeled myself off the couch, got up, went to the bathroom, and took a hard look at myself.
You fucking low life son of a bitch. Get your shit together.
Get your shit together.
And just like that, you did.
Just like that I did.
Coming up, Roy turns his life around and his career takes off.
But when he gets fired from a prestigious job, he has to make a very tough decision.
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Welcome back to The Sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman. And I want to shout out an event happening in Boston in a few weeks that my friend David Lewis and a few other folks are putting on.
It's called the Big Queer Food Fest. It was founded to celebrate LGBTQ chefs, bartenders, authors, and purveyors.
And from April 28th through May 4th, the Big Queer Food Fest is taking over Boston with the first ever multi -day celebration of queer food.
There's going to be dinners, cocktail parties, chef panels, and so much more.
It sounds incredible.
I'm so bummed that I can't be there.
But if you're in the area, you should definitely be there.
It's in just a couple weeks.
Check out the whole schedule and grab your tickets now at BigQueerFoodFest .com.
Now back to my conversation with Roy Choi, whose new cookbook is The Choi of Cooking.
Shortly after Emeril came to him in a vision, Roy moved to New York and enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America.
He did well, and after several semesters, he and his classmates had to find externships.
They fanned out across the streets of the city, dropping off resumes in kitchens, trying to find positions in the best restaurants.
One by one, Roy's friends got gigs, but nothing for him.
Late in the afternoon, after another day of rejection, Roy had one resume left in his hand.
He was just about ready to give up.
With that last resume, I know it sounds so poetic, but it really was.
It really was. um with that last resume i was walking down 51st street back to the um six train and i just happened to look left and right at that moment eric repair was in the window looking out eric repair like a very famous chef from lebernadine and so but like did you know who he was no but i had recognized his face because i had seen a magazine where he was holding a knife okay so you were kind of like i'm not i'm not positive who that is but i'm pretty sure he's a famous chef and and so you So I look at him and he looks like a big deal.
I'm picturing him in a perfectly pressed white chef's coat.
Like a serious contemplative expression on his face.
Like this is a guy who means business.
You were there. That's exactly what it was.
And then I look over and just crisp and clean this beautiful specimen of a human being.
And I look around holding the resume and I just look at him through the glass.
and I pointed at my resume and I pointed at him and I pointed at me.
And then, and again, if I knew who he was, you know, us as young culinary students, I would have never done that because we have so much reverence and respect, you know, yes, chef, right?
Yes, chef, head down, yes, chef.
Right, it's probably better that you didn't quite realize exactly who he was.
But I was just like, yo, motherfucker, like, you know, here, you, me, you.
You, me, resume, let's do this.
You, me, let's do this, yeah.
Yeah. And then I guess he, you know, like he felt something too.
And then he said, come around back.
And then I came out and then by the time I had walked in, services started.
And it was like walking onto a Broadway show just as the curtains opened.
And then you just, and you're somehow like on the stage, you know, it was like a trip.
He took me outside outside and put me on the pass right the pass is the place where the the finished dishes right come out come from the the chefs in the kitchen because it comes to the counter for a final inspection before it goes to the table so i get brought back to that area you know just 30 minutes before i was like going to the six train you know and then i'll all of a sudden by 5 15 i'm like you're at the pass at la bernardin and and he just had me sit stand there for like 30 40 minutes watching service where the chef stands and expedites and calls out the tickets.
And then the cooks are in a brigade behind the chef yelling back, We, you know, Yes, yes, chef, we chef.
And then the food gets brought up and then it gets finished at the pass and the servers take it out on silver trays.
And then at the end of that, he pulled me back around and then back to the office and said, So do you find our kitchen worthy of your externship?
Would you like to work here?
And I was like, yes?
Yes, chef. Yeah, we chef.
Roy completed his externship at Le Bernardin, then began climbing the ladder in the world of professional cooking.
He started off in country clubs, small hotels and resorts, and eventually made his way to bigger places.
He wasn't necessarily at major culinary hotspots, but he says the experience was invaluable.
You learn how to cook American food.
You learn how to cook meatloaf, pot roast, corn on the cob, club sandwich. Maybe these things may sound a little pedestrian, but there's an essence and a beauty to them if you pay attention to them.
There's a reason why they exist and are timeless.
And a bad or mediocre club sandwich is the worst thing in the world, but a really, really great club sandwich is the best thing in the world.
I'm so happy to hear you say that because when I go to a diner, and I'm from New Jersey, so I have great reverence for diners, and if I go to a diner, I either get an omelet or a club sandwich. What do you think, what is the secret to a great club sandwich, Roy?
Well, one, it's paying attention to it.
You know, it's paying attention to the layers.
You've got to remember that it's an architectural masterpiece.
Yes, yes. So you can't just put together a house of cards, you know.
It needs to have structural integrity.
Structural integrity.
you have to look at it like Frank Gehry.
And then you have to, you can't use wilted lettuce.
You can't use cheap turkey, cheap bread.
You got to pay attention to these things.
You have to toast it correctly.
And then the bacon should be cooked correctly.
And it shouldn't just be haphazardly thrown together.
It's a very powerful sandwich because it has three pieces of bread sometimes times in it and so you have to be very uh very specific with your intent on how you how you construct that what are your feelings about condiments on the club sandwich because this is something as an avid club sandwich eater i still struggle with knowing what what the right condiment is and how to how to add it to me it's just mayonnaise yeah it's mayonnaise and then tabasco sauce on the side oh okay you know yeah you could do cracked pepper and stuff in between layers.
But to me, my club sandwich is a turkey cheese sandwich on the bottom and a BLT on top.
And that's the way I make my club sandwich and how I learned it.
That's interesting because I think a lot of people put the bacon with the turkey.
Yeah, nah. Y 'all wrong for that.
You make a BLT. You make a BLT and then a turkey sandwich. And then the two together are separated by the third slice.
The middle slice, right.
The middle slice. And that becomes the club sandwich. sandwich. No, man.
Someday Roy, I want to come to LA and I want us to do a club sandwich pop -up.
I'm in. Let's do it.
All right, let's do it.
Like, there could be a couple of different versions.
Like maybe one is like a, you know, put a Roy choice spin on it, whatever.
You know, I don't want to get in the way of your artistic sensibilities cause you obviously know what you're doing, but like, I just love the club sandwich. And I think, I think it might be prime.
It might be like due for a reappraisal.
Well, everyone's into retro now, you know?
So even beyond cultural trends, I think just think a club sandwich pop -up is amazing.
All right. All right.
All right. We'll talk.
We'll talk. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Clearly, Roy's passion is infectious.
I mean, I can see how he could get a restaurant kitchen full of people instantly excited about a new project, ready to follow him wherever it leads.
And that bond that people who work in a restaurant share, it's sacred to him.
The kitchen is such a powerful place.
You know, it is a refuge and like a breathing ground for us misfits.
You know, it saves so many souls.
I became the person I was meant to be through a kitchen.
Are you able to put your finger on what it is about cooking and working in a restaurant and being in a kitchen that did that?
Definitely. There's so many things.
There's a level of connectedness that you need each other, you know, for a lot of people that never felt needed in their whole life.
A lot of us that end up in kitchens are usually people that ended up on the fray, that ended up getting spit out by our families, by life, everything, where no one said we were worthy or needed for anything.
And all of a sudden, you're in the center.
You're completely needed, you know, and that instills a lot of confidence and power and trust and love in that person.
Roy continues climbing the career ladder.
At age 37, he becomes head chef at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Now, this is not just a fancy hotel.
It's also where the Golden Globes are held every year.
After a few years there, Roy is lured to a splashy new restaurant called Rock Sugar.
He helps build the menu, and when it opens, it becomes one of the hottest spots in L .A.
Halle Berry and the Beckhams are a few of the celebrity diners.
But it's all too much. There are too many dishes, too many customers, and a wildly fluctuating pace.
It all moves too fast for Roy.
He struggles to keep up, and after a series of mistakes, he gets fired.
A major setback. Now, it's 2008.
The Great Recession is starting, and Roy's struggling to find any work.
He even gets rejected by a small local country club.
He's starting to feel desperate.
And that's when he gets a call from Mark Mangara, a friend and former co -worker from the Beverly Hilton.
Mark's got a big idea that he wants to pitch to Roy.
Mark says, You want to start a Korean taco truck and park in front of the clubs late night?
We're going to kill it.
Those were his exact words.
Immediate reaction.
What are you thinking when he says that?
I was just, like, I was just out of respect giving him my attention.
But in my mind, I was like, this dude's crazy.
We ain't going to do this.
Like, I'm not going to do this.
You know, I have to get a job.
I just didn't know how to say yes because I was a career chef at that time.
You know, I didn't know how to be an entrepreneur.
But Roy did know he had to do something.
I had gotten fired from my job.
The economy had just crashed.
I was out of work. So his timing and just the way the stars aligned were perfect.
Just like that emerald moment.
I was there ready to accept and listen and hear the words that Mark was saying.
And I just needed a night to sleep on it.
So you sleep on it and the next day...
I was like, let's do this.
Let's do it. Just like the club sandwich pop -up.
Let's do this. So everything happened instantaneously.
Once he heard, let's do this, he picked me up.
We went to the store, got ingredients.
I started opening up my third eye.
And I just started like, okay, what is this Korean barbecue taco?
Then I started all these memories and energies of growing up started to flow through me, started to feel all the tacos I've eaten throughout my life, all the family homes that I had been welcomed into, all the lowrider clubs that I had been a part of, all the Korean restaurants that I had eaten at, all the food from my mother and my family and my aunties.
You know, all these things just started flowing into this tornado.
And then I went to the market, and it just kind of started picking ingredients, you know, without even thinking.
It was out of my brain.
It was all coming, like, through my spirit.
Started filling up the basket, and we went back to his—we didn't go to a professional kitchen.
We went back to his apartment.
And then I just started prepping these things.
Within an hour or two, the Korean beef taco was in Roy's hand.
So it was two griddled corn tortillas, marinated, galbi, double caramelized, cilantro onion with lime, salt, pepper.
And it had this Korean gochujang salsa, which was emulsified like the chili de arbol street taco salsas.
And then it had a salsa verde as well, roasted salsa verde with roasted garlic and tons of cilantro and lime.
and then it had sesame seeds on top.
We ate it and there was a couple of other people there as well.
And we all looked at each other and we're just like, fuck.
We talked about this idea of son mash, flavor in the fingertips that you talked about and sort of this idea that it's been passed down through generations of your family.
Was there a moment that you realized that you have it?
Because your description of you in the supermarket the day you made that taco, So it sounds like something was flowing through you.
That was definitely the stamp.
That was the final stamp.
And so that's kind of when I knew I had it in my fingertips.
Roy felt immediately that he was onto something with his taco.
Now all he needed was a truck.
The first truck was an old white catering truck that was loaned to us.
It was like the last truck on the lot that the truck owner was like, just take this one.
you know and then we just put this like vinyl like makeshift logo on the side and then we went out there and then uh we went in front of the club and uh i don't know man it just the first people to really start to eat it were just like people at night that happened upon it they were a little you know semi drunk coming out of the club and they would eat it not expecting anything just looking for something like a pizza slice to fill their stomach and uh and they would take a bite and the eyes would go back in their head i was just like man we got something here the problem with that audience is that they
didn't remember who we were the next day so that that's the downside of feeding drunken people in the morning you know who we were well but um but eventually Actually, social media kicked in and Twitter kicked in and things started to change.
Roy named his truck Kogi, the Korean word for meat.
It launched and quickly became a sensation.
And, you know, you got to realize these days food trucks have become a low cost way for chefs to get discovered, build a following before opening a restaurant.
But back then, chefs from the Beverly Hilton and buzzy restaurants like Rock Sugar were not interested in food trucks.
Nobody could imagine that you could win Food & Wine's Best New Chef Award running a food truck.
And yet, in 2010, Roy won it.
Kogi was listed in the LA Times 101 Best Restaurants in 2013.
On Masterclass, they call Roy the godfather of the gourmet food truck movement.
And may I remind you there's a whole movie inspired by his story?
In 2016, Roy made Time Magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People.
That was partly because food trucks took off after Roy did it, but also because when he put Korean beef in a taco, he helped start a huge trend of culinary mashups.
When Kogi first opened, the late, great L .A.
food critic Jonathan Gold wrote, quote, Kogi's taco is a new paradigm of a restaurant, an art -directed take on Korean street food previously unimaginable in both California and Seoul.
Cheap, unbelievably delicious, and unmistakably from Los Angeles, food that makes you feel plugged into the rhythms of the city just by eating it.
All that said, as we've seen since this became a trend, not everyone is able to fuse cuisine so seamlessly.
Roy obviously knew Korean food, and he grew up in L .A., where Mexican culture is woven into the fabric of the city.
For him, it was organic.
But not every fusion cuisine or culinary mashup that's come along since has worked as well.
Still, overall, Roy likes the trend he helped launch. It allows people to, especially cooks or maybe folks who run small restaurants, to find new ways to attract people into their place or make flavors.
I'm not a big authenticity guy where, oh, this white guy can't cook ramen or the Japanese guy can't cook pizza, you know, all these things.
Like, I don't believe in discrimination of what people should cook.
Maybe they're just throwing it together because it's trendy at first, but I hope if it does bring them some success, it allows them to go down the path to learn about it, you know, to learn about where this food comes from or how they could make it better, even if they don't learn about culturally, of how they could refine it.
Because we all have to start somewhere, you know.
And it's okay if people start with just a glop or a train wreck, but then if it allows them to get to a better place, then that's a good thing, you know.
Roy's open -hearted approach has led to more success in the years since the launch of Kogi.
He opened the restaurant Best Friend in the Park MGM in Las Vegas, which he describes as a mashup of bodega, bar, and restaurant.
He recently opened The Chef Truck in Vegas, too, serving the food depicted in the movie.
In LA, you can still see Kogi trucks driving all over town.
And if you don't want to use social media to track their location, there's one permanently parked on the west side.
Or check out The Alibi Room, a bar in Culver City that serves Roy's Kogi menu.
Now, his latest project is The Choi of Cooking.
It's more than a cookbook.
It's an expression of Roy's personal philosophy and love of food.
I really wanted to share the trail and the path to where you could get there too and how great it is over here.
Getting into cooking, personal transformation of loving and giving and caring and nourishing, flavor, how to maximize flavor, how to be one with ingredients, how to cook instinctually, make adjustments on the fly.
you know, all of these things are the joy of cooking.
The joy of cooking is a philosophy.
Yeah. And you talk in the book kind of about wrestling with your own food demons over the course of your life.
Yeah. Eating your feelings and eating a lot of junk.
So how is that sort of part of the inspiration of the book?
I come from an era and a life and a friendship group and neighborhoods of we don't sometimes times know how to eat healthy there's a polarity to it of like we have to either eat healthy or we have to give up on the things we want and i just try to write a book that spoke to a lot of people that are similar to you know myself or whoever they don't want to give up on the things they love but at the same time they don't want to die you know and they don't also don't want to wear yoga pants.
And, and the thing is, is like, how do we make a healthy book, but still allow you to enjoy the things that you want to enjoy in life?
And so it's like taking gut bombs and like club sandwiches or like hamburgers or tuna melts, taking noodle dishes and steamed pork, you know, know, just taking all these things, you know, that you want to eat, but finding ways to manipulate them without them losing their sensation, but making them healthier.
But it not being like you're just eating salads.
Like even the salads in the books eat like a meal.
Right, right. Yeah.
Some of those salads look insane.
Yeah, yeah. Tuna niçoise bibimbap.
You got the cacio e pepe Caesar.
I mean, like, I can't wait to make that for my family.
Thank you. you. And a big part of my philosophy, I always believe you have to start somewhere.
So, this book is really about starting somewhere, wherever you are.
If you aren't eating healthy right now, this book can help you start without you feeling like you're giving up who you are.
And then if you're already advanced and wearing yoga pants and drinking green juice, that this book has recipes already there to meet you.
And so, that's what The Troy of Cooking is all about.
Wow. So, Roy, last year you were awarded an honorary doctorate from your alma mater, Cal State Fullerton.
You even delivered the commencement address to the university's College of Business and Economics.
Crazy. That must have been a trip thinking about what kind of shape you were in when you were actually a student there to the point you're at now.
That's crazy. I don't even remember graduating to beyond.
I don't even I was a D student.
student right but it's interesting to me that you delivered the commencement address at the business school because like in business school i would imagine that they teach you sort of like to be very analytical very strategic there's a lot of data there's a lot that was crazy yeah that was crazy too thanks for bringing that you keep reminding me of how of the specific reasons why things are so crazy so you know go on like why is it so crazy because you're somebody seems like like you have so much been guided by intuition i don't even know how much is in our corporate bank account.
I'm serious. I don't run the businesses with ROI in mind.
I have great partners and people on my team that do that.
But me as the leader and the CEO of the companies, those aren't the things that I speak about every day in our pre -shifts or in our meetings or or in our mission statements.
You know, I run our businesses, you know, out of heart and soul.
And for me to speak at the business school and then give the speech about those things of like running the business from a mystical metaphysical standpoint, I don't know how many of them really took it to heart, but that was the speech I gave. Roy encouraged the business school students to lead with kindness, love, and generosity.
He said, quote, I know businesses are about scale and growth and domination, but we can be rich without others having to be poor.
There's a world where that can exist, and you can lead that change.
Roy keeps doing his part to lead that change.
His James Beard award -winning TV series Broken Bread featured people using restaurants and food to highlight social justice issues.
In 2016, he opened Local, a restaurant bringing quality fast food to the struggling neighborhood of Watts.
And recently, in the aftermath of the LA wildfires, Roy's used his Kogi trucks to deliver meals to people who've been displaced.
It was a tough three months.
My company kind of pivoted January, February, and even until today, feeding the relief efforts.
So our business model changed over the first three months.
And it takes a different, like, energy and a different heart.
How is it different doing that kind of like feeding relief workers, people, as opposed to running restaurants?
You got to dig deeper.
You have to get the equation of money out of your head in many ways.
you know, you have to be ready to absorb the despair and the grief.
You have to be strong enough to go through that storm with others.
It's not transactional.
And you're going through that with someone and food is a very powerful bridge.
It doesn't solve anything.
It doesn't solve their house being rebuilt.
It doesn't solve, you know, the fire stopping.
It doesn't solve their pain, but it's a very powerful mechanism that helps them in that moment.
So that's where it becomes more than a business.
Congrats on the book, Roy.
I'm really happy to finally get a chance to meet in person.
And hey, if you want to do a club sandwich pop -up, I'll come to L .A.
for it. You just say the word. You know, we'll make it happen.
I think L .A. and New York.
I think that we would be the hottest thing in each town.
And we might have to pull out the third slice for efficiency.
Okay. Because it will leave that busy.
But then is it separately a BLT and a turkey sandwich?
Is it a club sandwich if it's not a double decker?
We'll have to have long nights of discussion about that.
That's Roy Choi. His new book is called The Choi of Cooking.
It's out this week.
Next week on the show, I talk to three men in different stages of their lives about what it's like managing eating disorders.
Boys and men are one third of the population diagnosed with an eating disorder.
So this affects millions of men in the US, but they're less likely to be diagnosed and less likely to seek treatment.
We find out what that looks like for three men.
That's next week. While we wait for that one, check out my conversation from last week with comedian Matteo Lane.
He talks about how Italian machismo is tied up with cooking, why dried pasta is sometimes better than fresh, and offers some very pointed advice to a Sporkful listener.
That one's up now. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad -free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
Then there's interviews with A -list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get Get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM .com slash Sporkful.
This episode was produced by me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O 'Hara and producer Kimmy Gregory.
Our engineer is Jared O 'Connell and our intern is Julia Liu.
Music helped from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Alex Fall calling from San Diego, California.
Just got done eating a burger with a fried egg and some pickled onions on top, reminding everyone to eat more, eat better and eat more better.
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