Food
Meet Your Instructor
Lesson time 05:25 min
Get to know award-winning chef Roy Choi, widely considered an architect of the food truck revolution.
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Topics include: Meet Your Instructor: Roy Choi
Preview
ROY CHOI (VOICEOVER): Warning, this class contains some bad language. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi. I'm Roy Choi. You might know me as a spark to the modern food truck revolution. Or for one of my restaurants, Best Friend, Locol, A Frame, Chego. Or as Korea Town's very own. But at the end of the day, I'm just an LA kid who really loves tacos, and dumplings, and kimchi, and pickles, and pancakes. To me, food is all about connections. And I'm so excited to cook for you. Look at that. And we ain't even done yet. [MUSIC PLAYING] I don't know why I'm out of breath. I guess because I'm so excited. I'm so excited. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm an LA kid, a Korean kid, an immigrant kid. My family had a restaurant called Silver Garden. The kitchen I grew up in came from the whole other side of the world. So I grew up around plastic colanders like this, long chopsticks to cook. My mom cooked almost everything like this. I think she even was so magical, she picked up liquid with this. There was food everywhere. There was always stuff bubbling and boiling and fermenting, and kimchi stains on everything. When I went to culinary school, those things that I grew up with weren't necessarily frowned upon, but people didn't get it. They didn't get that it was a part of cooking. I learned all the basics around the "Escoffier" cookbook. All the mother sauces, how to braise, saute, poach. I went on to work in New York City and fine dining French restaurants. Then I went into hotels and resorts, where I was still cooking mostly food that I really didn't grow up around. And it took me a long time to understand how to merge the two worlds together, between my formal training and what I was brought up with. NEWSCASTER 1: This might look like your average taco truck, but it's really anything but. - I had a life changing experience with the Kogi truck. And it was just an opportunity to cook the food that we wanted to cook. We had no idea it would start a revolution. NEWSCASTER 2: Kogi is so popular that most nights, the truck runs out of food. The food is a mix of Korean and Mexican cuisine, which is a hit with both food snobs and late night partiers. - It's not Mexican. It's not Korean. It's not even Korean-American. It's just American food. You know, I was raised here. And just because I cook a certain way, it doesn't make my food any less American. It actually makes it more American. I'm just trying to show you through the food and through the lessons that the world doesn't always have to be perfectly wrapped up. In this class, I'm going to show you more than just how to make food. I'm going to teach you how to live food. And it starts with what I call cultural shit. I was raised to take your shoes off, put your feet on the chair, double dip, triple dip, quadruple dip, quintuple dip, eat with your mouth full, talk shit while you're eating. You should reach across the table. Yeah, that's right. ...
About the Instructor
Roy Choi wasn’t trying to start a revolution when he took tacos, kimchi, and more to the Los Angeles streets with the Kogi BBQ taco truck. He just wanted to make what he loved and knew by heart: immigrant-influenced all-American food. Now he’s teaching you his recipes, sauces, and techniques. Learn how to cook with your instincts using equipment you already have—and start adding your own twist to tried-and-true favorites.
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Food truck “godfather” Roy Choi teaches you his signature recipes and mother sauces—then empowers you to make them your own.
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