August 18, 2020 • 50 mins
Roy Choi talks about his illustrious career as an innovative chef and restaurateur, which began in the kitchen of his parents’ restaurant in multicultural Los Angeles and took him on a journey of discovery, reconnecting him to his Korean roots, and leading him back to the kitchen to create his own unique style that is distinctly representative of the Korean-American West Coast experience.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Korean food is not a linear meal. It's almost like
throwing paint on the wall. It's a splatter thing. As
a chef, I couldn't really figure out how do I
take the essence of Korean food and put it into
a Western format. And what I realized was, let's not
try to fit it into this model of linear or
Western format. Let's just let it feel like cato make
(00:23):
you feel like your life. Hello, Hello, and welcome to
the very first episode of Get Down with Kye Town,
which has been a long time coming. I'm your host,
chef and restaurantur Esther Choi. This podcast was post to
lauge right around the time when the pandemic hit, but
as you know, in the past few months, our entire
world has gone upside down, so we had to postpone
(00:44):
our premiere. I'm super excited that we're finally back on track,
but I do feel like it's important to acknowledge that
all of these episodes for season one we recorded prior
to the pandemic. Just to give you a little context.
This was all before COVID nineteen, the social movements, and
all the other insanity going on in the world, So
there are no references to these events in our conversations.
(01:05):
Everyone has been affected by this, and as a restaurant owner,
I cannot even begin to tell you how difficult this
has been for our industry. For now, this podcast is
purely for our entertainment, cultural acknowledgement, and just positive vibes
all around. So hopefully this series will bring some shining
light to this seemingly dark world. So obviously it's only
appropriate for me to start the very first episode of
(01:25):
this podcast with a chef who personally is one of
my heroes. He truly is a pioneer and a man
of real hospitality. I mean seriously, he brought me cookies
to the recording, like who does that? The only guest
that brought me a gift. He's a man of wisdom
and true influence in Korean culture here in America. The
one and only Chef Boy Toy. This is really a
(01:48):
special movement for me because possibly the most influential Korean
American chef to the Korean food scene here in America
has to be Roy Toy, and he's sitting across from
me right now. Okay, so, Chef, I have to get
this out of the way and just say it because
you've been really a huge inspiration in my life, um
(02:09):
in my career. And I'm sure this goes to say
for a lot of younger Korean American chefs out there,
that's you know, trying to make it. I'm sure you
hear this all the time, but what do you feel
when people say that to you? Well, thank you. This
is the first time I've been above Dave change in
this conversation. So there you go, Dave. Finally it took me.
It took me eleven years. It's definitely humbling, and it
(02:32):
feels great. And I know what it was like to
be a Korean that was outcast and like especially an
Asian kid that didn't have many role models, and like
didn't know who to who to look up to and
what I was supposed to be. So I realized that
it took a while, but I realized that that I
became that person for a lot of other other folks
out there, and so thank you. So it doesn't really
(02:56):
affect me in the sense where I pecked myself out
over it, but I'm aware of it and I do
try to do just like I don't try to be
a role model. I try to do dope shit, you know,
like I try to instead of trying to be like
perfect or too careful about my image or who I
am or I'm going to offend things or anything, I
actually go the opposite direction, and I try to push
even further. And because I realized that maybe I'm hoping
(03:20):
that maybe why people maybe look to me in that way,
or maybe just our influenced because of the stuff that
we already did. And what we did was Kogi was
a group of bandits, you know, that started feeding the
streets and and breaking rules and doing things that weren't customary,
you know, that weren't standard, And that's exactly who we are.
I hate like creative, you know, you know, you have
(03:41):
your bands that you you love when you're young, and
then like they become worse as the years go on,
or you become more vanilla as the years go on.
And I never want to be that, for for myself
or for anyone. So yeah, so I just keep trying
to do dope shit and push the envelope and like
do new creative stuff. And then like I think what
is done is it's given me the freedom and the
trust that whenever an idea comes to me, instead of
(04:04):
over analyzing. I realized that a lot of people got
my back, and I just go for it, you know.
So yeah, and I think that spirit is what makes
you you. Yeah yeah, And that's why every generation people,
even now eleven twelve years later since Kogie happened, I
still get that same energy from folks. Um just got
it from you, And I get it from everyone where
(04:25):
they stopped me on the street and they just tell
me they that I changed their life. You know, that
stuff is like, that stuff is heavy. That's like I
literally I literally changed their life and I've never met
him before, and that that type of stuff is pretty heavy.
So Coogee Barbecue l A's most iconic food truck that
gave birth to the concept of crean Mexican tacos. And
(04:46):
also I feel like Coogie was really well started the
whole fusion food world, right. I mean, it's started a
lot of things, like the food truck movement, the idea
of what fusion food is, the way people eat it
really like in pacted the scene in food so heavily.
I think what we did was we gave a lot
of people a voice because there were movements before us,
(05:08):
but those were very insular in the fact that you
and I are both chefs. They were they related to chefs,
and it was something that we as young cooks looked
up to. But what Kogie did was we broke down
the walls and created a bridge between not just people
that were in the culinary world, but the whole neighborhood.
So the whole block got to participate. You know. So
like even if you were just a backyard cook or
(05:31):
a good barbecue cook, or if you made great cookies
or whatever it is that you did, you felt like
your voice was being heard and that someone was listening
or talking to you. And that was the difference between
Kogee and maybe some of the other casual chef movements
that happened before us. It's almost like a social movement. Yeah,
ours just spoke like we we spoke to everybody. Yeah,
it resonated every industry in the neighborhood everything. How did
(05:55):
this idea come to be? Did you wake up one
day and we're like, oh, I'm going to make this
like crazy the movement, Like how how did this manifest?
It kind of happened like that. It was a it
was a series of perfect storm events. We actually started
right here we're recording right here in Hollywood on Um
right near like Kohanga and Sunset, So like we started
(06:16):
right by Amiba Records, which is the next street down
on Ivar. What happened a few months earlier. We started
in November two thousand and eight, and it was the
opening night at Twilight the movie, and we started. We
started at the same time they were showing the first
screening of Twilight at the Cinerama Dome, and so the
whole street was packed with a bunch of Twilight fans
and then and then a bunch of clubbers. It was
(06:37):
a club night. It was Asian club night. And then
it was us that the people couldn't figure out what
the hell is going off. But this was like like
you knew that, No, we didn't know. No, we got
because we got kicked out of our first spot. We
first went to West Hollywood and got kicked out, came
here and we were just driving and then we saw
the club that it was club night, and our our idea,
(06:58):
because it was only four or five of us on
the truck, were like, listen, let's give the burritos to
the bouncers. They're gonna love it. And they're gonna let
us park right here. And it worked. Yeah, it worked.
But a few months before that, what happened was I
lost my job and I was a chef of I
was like a big hotel chef, corporate chef for about
ten years up until that time, and lost my job
(07:18):
and the economy crashed in two thousand and eight. I
don't know if you'll remember, but there was a huge
real estate crisis and mortgage crisis, and you know, it
was a pretty depressing time in America. But then at
the same time, the technology was just starting to come
up as well, so social media just came out. No
one really had Twitter accounts at that time, you know,
there was none of the other stuff that we have now.
(07:39):
It was only Twitter, Facebook, And then we were on
the back end of my Space. Yeah, we're on the
back end of my Space. And even there was even
a trickle of friends they're still around. And so we
were in the first year of Twitter, and no one
really knew what to do with it outside of the
tech community. So we just took it in our hands
and and he just came up with this idea, let's
(08:02):
use Twitter and have people. Yeah, it wasn't even really
an idea. It was like it was like, let's just
post this stuff on this thing, and let's post our
locations and we're just gonna keep give people updates. And
we treated it like we were kind of texting each
other a group messaging, and we just kept saying, you
know what, we got kicked out here, We're gonna move
over there. And what happened was it created a scavenger
(08:22):
hunt for folks, and a lot of people thought that
it was this huge, major plan, but literally, if you
saw the inside, we were just literally figuring it out.
That's what I was going to ask you. I was like,
was this like a crazy like plan, like all the
stars aligned to perfectly, But really it was born out
of necessity, like you had to keep moving your truck
around because you were parked illegally or or whatnot. And
(08:45):
Twitter was free, and again at that time, no one
really knew, like there was really no like mobile social
media at that time. It's hard to imagine that was
only a decade ago because now you couldn't live life
without it. But at that time, everything it's kind of stationary,
like you weren't like constantly updating your MySpace from your phone,
you know, in oh eight. So this people really couldn't understand,
(09:09):
like this idea of constantly giving people updates of where,
what you're doing, what you're thinking, just random thoughts of
like you know, my eyebrow was sweating, and just saying
those weird things, you know, and just putting them out
there in the universe. That was unheard of, and Kobe
kind of created that kind of template to just be
weird and random in yourself. And then and then there
(09:30):
was a little prize at the end of it, which
was the taco. Well, I don't think that was a
little prize. We I mean, we have to talk about
the food because obviously if that prize isn't like fucking amazing,
it wouldn't have worked. So to going to the food
because obviously for me, I think that was really what
was just so significant. And not only I guess what
(09:54):
you did in terms of like that movement, but in
the Korean scene like two, for this chef to all
of a sudden make this concept which kind of like
already existed in like our own world, like we grew
up eating, like I'm sure you put Kim chiankita. You
were doing this at home eating anyway, but to actually
do that as a concept was a whole different thing.
(10:16):
A lot of it was very personal, even though like
I'm Korean, my blood Korean, I repped Korean, I'm from
Ka Town, obviously, my parents are from Korea. I mean,
like I know I was born, I know what it's
like to be Korean, but I'm not Korean, you know
what I mean? Like I grew up right here in
l A. And it's like I never think Korean. I
never thought Korean. I always had this very difficult relationship
(10:38):
with first generation Koreans because, um, because I don't speak
the language that well and my thought patterns are different,
and it's just like the society is a little too
conservative for who I am as a person, and so
I always had this kind of like push and pull
with it. And then as a chef, I was trying
to figure out, like what is what am I going
to be as a chef? And as I was coming up,
(10:59):
I just decided that I wanted to be a friend chef,
you know. And I didn't even think about cooking with
Asian flavors. I almost like it was you had to do. Yeah,
I wasn't trying to be whitewashed or anything like that.
I was just like, that's not what I that's not
what I want to do. You know, that's my family life,
and this is my professional life. Plus I wasn't trained
in it. I grew up in a Korean restaurant. But
it's like I'm a kid. I never really paid attention.
(11:21):
You know, like when your parents are running a restaurant.
It's not like this, uh you know Disney movie, where
like you're groomed from the beginning, you know, like to
be honest, you don't really you're just not even paying attention,
you know, but some of your like fondest feud memories
come from the rest. I was a good eater. I
wasn't a good chef, but I eat I eat the
funk out of ship Man, I funk out of Pinet duck.
(11:43):
And I used to eat like you become a chef
because you love eating, right. I used to eat like
four pops at a time, you know. Um so I
love eating, but I didn't. I didn't know. There were
a couple of things. One again, I had this difficult
relationship with being Korean, and then the other thing, as
Korean Korean food is not a linear meal, which what
(12:04):
I mean by that doesn't start with appetizer, entraine and dessert,
and it doesn't go from one place to the other.
It's this It's almost like throwing paint on the wall,
and it's the splatter things. So I was as a chef,
I couldn't really figure out how do I take the
essence of Korean food and put it into a Western format.
And when I saw people do it, when I ate
(12:24):
people food that we're doing it, it was just always
missing something. And so I just always thought that there
was never ever going to be an answer for that,
you know. To be honest, I didn't think that anyone
would figure it out. Then Dave came out with Momofuku
in oh four or oh six or whatever year that was,
and then but that was so far away from me,
you know, and I you know, I appreciated the movement
(12:46):
of what Monfoku was doing, and I was, you know,
he was a hero of mine at that time, and
I really looked up to it. But it was so
far away and I never tasted and it was so
different than l A life. New York life and l
A life are so different. I couldn't relate to it.
On a creative level. So again, I just like this
got you thinking about I forgot. They got me thinking,
But it was never really like something that was consciously
(13:09):
I felt like I had to do. And then when
I lost everything and I lost my job, and my
friend called me and said, listen, man, I got this truck.
Let's put Korean barbecue and its fertilla. Let's go out
in front of the club and we're gonna kill it.
When he said those words, something happened inside of me,
and something opened up. And what I realized was, let's
not try to fit it into this model of linear
(13:30):
or western format. Let's just let it feel like k town.
Make you feel like your life, make you feel like
you want to feel. How you felt on the couch,
how you felt with your mom, how how you felt
in the back of the car, how you felt in
the restaurant doing homework. You know, how how you felt
when your grandma pictures you. All these little things, you know.
And then what happened was I put it all my
(13:51):
heart and soul and everything into that one little bite.
So technically it was like the feeling of the whole
Korean barbecue experience. From the salad you get it in
the beginning, to the to the barbecue, to the soup
at the end. It was all of that in one bite.
And then it was everything you felt growing up like
low riding, eating tacos, making cardone sada, drinking Budweiser, you know,
(14:13):
hanging out, wearing dickies, and just just being l A.
And it was like those two things my whole life together.
I finally found a way to put them all together
into one poem, and that poem was kohe Taco. That
is crazy, like you were. So it's not even Korean
at all. Emotional. Yeah, I'm a Pisces, but it's not
(14:34):
even That's why it resonates, resonated to so many people,
and it still resonates now because it's not Korean. It's
not Korean Mexican fusion, as people wanted to call it.
You know, it's l A, it's you, it's l A,
it's me. It's a lot of us, it's a lot
of it's a lot of us that grew up in
immigrant families. It's um a lot of things that we
(14:55):
couldn't say or express growing up, or a of the
things you feel. And it happens even now, all the
things you feel as an immigrant person in this country.
Sometimes there are moments, and those of you that are
listening that have experiences, you know, what it is is
that there are moments in life or interactions in life
where you can't fully get out what you're feeling because
(15:17):
the circumstances may not allow it. You may be in
a situation where you can't speak up. You may be
getting hit with subversive, passive, aggressive racist situations. You may
not be able to express yourself to your parents. All
these little things, all these little emotions. Sometimes there's no
avenues for that. In media, you don't have a lot
of people that are expressing the same thoughts that you're feeling. Uh,
(15:38):
you don't see the same faces, you don't hear the
same voices that you hear in your head. So Kobe
was like answering all of that into your bike. It's
(16:00):
like an identity. It is. It's an identity, and that's
like a big part of who you are. Like your
upbringing here in l A really influence your food, but
also yourself as a Korean. Do you like went to
Korean and taught English, you were still very close to
your Korean identity. I tried to you know, um I
spent You know, I'm a little bit older, so I
(16:22):
I think I'm sure this generation still deals with it too.
But even though I I butt heads with my Korean heritage,
I always tried to like get them to understand me.
You know, I always like I wanted to argue with
them and be like yo, like like I'm just as
fucking Korean as you were. You ever embarrassed to be Korean?
I was never not Personally I wasn't like I was,
(16:44):
but I felt like Koreans were embarrassed to include me
into the trial. That's a different thing. But I was
never embarrassed, you know, like I roll, I wore my
even in high school. I where my Korean bomber jacket
everywhere I went. This is like really feel similar to
you in this way where I feel very proud of
being kore that always felt like that. I've never was embarrassed.
We're lucky because we lived. We grew up on the coast.
(17:05):
You grew up in New Jersey, Jersey Jersey. I grew
up in l A. But you know, it's hard for
a lot of Asian American kids that grow up in
the middle of the country. You know, you sometimes have
to live these these very stark double lives, you know,
because you maybe one of one. You know, a lot
of people don't understand. But yeah, I mean I tried
to be Korean. UM tried to be I don't know, man,
(17:28):
I just never really connected all the way. But I tried,
you know, I went out to Korea. I tried to
learn the language. Do you speak in understand almost everything
I can. I can read, but I just can't speak.
I don't know why. I think it's the psychological roadblock
that I have, that that all the things that I
just explained growing up with, like something stops me. I
know the words, and I know and I understand everything,
(17:51):
but for some reason I can't speak, you know. And
I think it's something psychological within me. But yeah, I
I went to Yonce, I went to the programs I
I taught at Korea University. I taught English. How old
were you when I was teaching English? I was twenty four. Okay,
was this before you started cooking or after? It was
before you have like a million lives? Yeah, I've been
(18:14):
through a lot of that. There's a lot of this
about how cooking saved your life. Can you talk about
that a little bit. I'm a very addictive person. I
had an addiction to gambling in my twenties, right around
that time in Korea. I actually kind of went to
Korea to kind of reset and escape. You know, I've
been very fortunate and lucky that i have a very
good family. And one thing you've got to know about
a lot of Korean families is even if we ain't
(18:35):
got money, that everyone's always there too to hold you down,
you know what I mean. Like, whether you're rich or poor,
they're always going to find ways to make sure their
food on the table. They're closed on your back, and
um that if you're sucking up, that they're going to
figure out ways to ship you to Korea and try
to get your life together, you know what I mean.
So it's like that. So that was during the time
where like I was really, really I was a very
(18:57):
fragile person. I was out here just drinking, gambling. I
was burning bridges left and right. So I went out
to Korea try to reset that. It really didn't didn't
help because I just started partying out there. But yeah,
really it was just to make money, Like the teaching
part was to make money and I don't think I
was a great teacher, but I think there were moments
where I was great. But I was still too young
(19:18):
and I was partying too much. There sometimes I didn't
show up to class. I think back now, and it's
like I feel bad for some of the It wasn't
like all the time. It was like it was like
all the time. I would say, like the time you
were in your twenties and you're a Korean boy, I know, yeah,
Korean American and like like the student. I don't know.
(19:38):
Ever since I was young, I was always able to
be like be able to attract people, you know, like
I always had this kind of like vibe, this charisma
with people, and so like my classes started getting real big.
It was like fucking Indiana Jones, you know, like like
the classes start getting big, and like I guess the
war got around, like because I make the classes really fun,
you know, I do ship like you know throughout the textbook,
(20:00):
in the trash, let's just talk and all this stuff.
So my classes got real popular and and it was
something really great, you know, especially being that young and
kind of like not fully together, like as far as
like what I wanted to do in life. It was.
It was very like um inspiring but uh and it
gave me a lot of energy. Yeah, like it almost
shaped your sense of leadership. Oh yeah, sense my leadership.
(20:25):
Hell of girls were like all into me, you know,
ship like that. I'm yeah, when you're a teacher in
Korea speaking English, fuck dude, like it's crazy. So that happened.
And then you started cooking because you got into some
some ship. And then you said cooking happened after I
came back from Korea and again just try to try
to figure out life. And you know, it took a while,
(20:45):
but around twenty five or twenty six around there, around
you know, I was continuing to spiral downward and not
in a good place. There was only a few friends
left that we would still return my phone calls and
and and be down for me. And one of them
was my best friend Yogi, and I was sleeping on
his couch and I woke up around this time, maybe
(21:06):
around eleven or twelve in the afternoon, and the Essence
of Emerald Show was on and I had an out
of body experience. I don't know if any of this
is like a very specific moment. It was a moment
I ran out of all my choices at that point.
And I don't know if any of you had out
of body experience, but um, it's kind of real. So
it was like I had this moment where everything just
(21:26):
crystallized and I I felt like he was talking to me.
And I felt like that moment was like, you know,
like you got two doors to choose from. You know,
it was very clear. It was extremely clear, like he
said those words, Yeah, yeah, it was extremely clear, like
what are you doing. You need to get up, get
your ship together, and come with me this way. And
obviously I could have like not listened to it and
(21:47):
continued the path, but um, for some reason, I listened
to it, and I just I got possessed. I started
from that moment, I just started turning everything around. I
started selling mutual funds. I passed my Series six and
Series seven. I started making a lot of money. I
started paying back all my debts. I started taking night
night classes at this culinary school here in West Hollywood,
(22:09):
started stodging at restaurants that would go to bookstores and
just spend like hours and just researching chefs. I knew
nothing about this world, and so I started getting into
like all these old programs of Jacques Papan and and
um Julia Child and just my whole world became completely
engulfed in culinary and then I decided to apply to
culinary school, and then you moved to New York. I
(22:31):
moved to New York. And again those are a lot
of like series of events and special things that allowed
me these situations. Like my cousin was in his residency
in New York, so I applied to the CIA, and
he gave me a futon for two hundred fifty bucks
a month to sleep on. If he wasn't there, I
don't know if I would have been able to go
(22:51):
to New York. So I went out there staged in
a bunch of restaurants in the village until I got
my acceptance and then went up to High Park and
the rest is history. Yeah, hyear, hypart changed my life
even more, Like being at the C I a oh man,
So you recommend culinary school for Yeah, for me, like
it completely saved my life because I was a class
(23:12):
clown up until then, and I really kind of coasted
through school and like it was never interesting to me,
and I was like Spaccoli from Fast Times, like I
show up to school stone every single day, and I
was just not a great students. The only thing you
have to be really smart to be the class clown. Though.
Yeah I was in honors and all that stuff classes,
but I think it was my Asian nous that got
(23:33):
me into like everything. Like I fucking played. I parlaid
that card for so long, like people would look at
me and like junior high high school and be like, oh,
that kid needs to be in the honors program. I
wrote that sire forever. But uh and I just found
like little tweaks and mcgiver ways to figure out, like
how to get some decent street smarts. But when I
(23:56):
stepped on um, I guess the main thing was I
was never interested and anything. And then when I stepped
on the campus at High Park, it blew my mind.
It just like came together everything I was interested. You know,
I actually liked to learn. I want. I woke up early,
I studied. I was like the one in class that
raised his hand. You know, I knew the answer. You know,
(24:16):
like back in my other schooling, I never knew the answer.
It was every time like I had to answer something,
it was always mixed. It was a recipe of like
half bullshit half to half like a little bit of
like I may know some like top line notes, and
the rest was like, you know, just fill it in
with like your charm. And so it's like this three
part recipe of like answering question, but this time with
(24:38):
culinary schools, Like I knew the answers and you wanted
to know the answers. Yeah, and it was great, man,
it was really great. Obviously, since then, you've won like
every fucking award possible Best Chef for Food and Wine. Honestly,
you know everyone knows you want like every award possible.
Since then, what about your restaurants, Like you've opened several restaurants,
(24:59):
because being a chef and being a restaurant tour totally
different thing. Yeah, I mean it's you know that you
run restaurants to run restaurants, And obviously I started out
because I love cooking, but really right now I'm just
like trying to figure out how to run all my restaurants.
So that's a big thing I want to talk to
you about. So you have to have a restaurants right now?
(25:22):
How many do you have? Well, they change every every
few years or so because the tough part of opening
restaurants is that eventually, one day they make clothes and
a lot of people don't talk about So I haven't
closed a restaurant yet, and um, I know it's gonna happen,
sometimes very soon. Sometimes they don't close for the worst reasons,
you know. Sometimes it may be like your lease is up,
(25:45):
you know, and then in that neighborhood, because your restaurant
was popular in that neighborhood for the last ten years,
it raised the rent and the value of that neighbor
has nothing to do with I mean, it's a life cycle, right,
the life cycle, and but no one ever talks about
They only like to talk about either the opening or
the award or the accolades. And it's really hard to
(26:07):
to talk about something that was a baby of yours,
that is a baby of yours, that is a creative child.
That that and there are people within that that creative
child that are real people that you've been with for
the last ten years. It's really hard to wind down
a restaurant. So what I'm leading towards this last year,
actually two thousand eighteen and part of nineteen, I had
(26:29):
a very difficult year as a restaurant tour. I had
to close four different restaurants for different reasons. So I
had the big project, which was the Line Hotel in Creatown,
and I had pot Commissary Cafe, all this stuff. We
had a five year contract with that company and it
ended and they wanted to go a different direction. Um,
(26:50):
But from the outside it looks like it failed, but
it didn't fail. It was just that we as business
people didn't want to continue the relationship. And but it
was tough because you have to you build up all
this energy to make that place amazing and full, and
then you have to like kind of unravel and unwind
(27:10):
all of that back, you know. So there was that
we had to transition Chego out of Chinatown, and then
I just recently reached the end of a tenure lease
for a frame on the West Side, which that one
hurt a lot because again the business partner and I
wanted to go in different directions, and um, the rent
was too much and so he sold the proper. But
(27:31):
on another side, those restaurants also were a life cycle
for me. Um. I feel like as much as I
would still want them to be open, I feel like
I do as a person, but creatively I'm I've kind
of grown past those things and I have other concepts
in my mind. So in a way it's a blessing
(27:53):
because it's opened up my plate to open maybe new
restaurants still hurts. So I was saying, that's really inspired, though,
because you don't have to really think of it as
a failure, because it's not not always. Some some are failures,
but not all closures or failures. So that's very important
to know the difference and to accept the difference between
the two. Sometimes things just and you know, and they've
(28:17):
lived their life, and sometimes you have to be honest
with yourself to like, are you putting as much energy
into a concept as you did from the beginning. Sometimes
I see I see people not being honest with themselves,
you know, like you open up two, three, four different concepts,
um you have to think about, are you like there
may be a concept within your portfolio? Are you giving
(28:39):
it you're all all the time. Because the thing about
restaurants is if you're not giving it you're all all
the time, then they are going to eventually fall off.
It's very apparent when when the owners feel it the
energy is not the same, your staff doesn't is not
inspired as much anymore because you're not there, And um,
(29:01):
how do you find that balanced? Though? Like when you're
opening like so many restaurants and you have like a
million things you want to do and obviously you have
so many projects going on that how do you find that?
For me? And this is just for me. I've decided
from the beginning to take less money and less responsibility
and focus on the things that I really care about,
(29:21):
and so I stay with the project all the way
through until I'm not. But what I mean by that
is like, for example, a Frame was a restaurant where
I didn't technically own it. I was a creative partner.
So I'm not like fully invested where I get the
larger piece of the pie of whatever profit or whatever
it makes. I just get a small percentage that I
(29:43):
get paid out of the revenue. But I don't have
But my business partner runs the whole thing. But I'm
fully invested and involved in running the creative It's my
same thing with this new restaurant I opened last year
called Best Friend where in Vegas, right in Vegas where
our company it is just a creative licensing partner, so
we we manage oversee all of the creative aspects the food,
(30:07):
the service, DNA and the philosophy, but the labor, the budgets,
all that stuff is run by MGM. So to me
is it was because I'm a chef and I don't
really think in terms of money. It wasn't about getting
rich out of each endeavor. It was about creating really
amazing experiences for the people. Right. So I decided early
(30:30):
on it's okay to take less money and less responsibility
as long as I'm in control of the things that
I think are most important for you. Yeah, And that's
that allowed me to open a lot of different concepts
because I was very fluid, you know. It was like
being um, it was like being kind of like a producer,
you know, where I could create concepts, design them, make
(30:53):
the menu, make the flavors, the DNA of the service. Yeah,
things I love doing. So that that's how I was
able to manage doing multiple projects. So in ten years
we opened one, two, three, like seven eight restaurants. Now
I'm down. Now I'm down to. I have a bar
called Albi Room. I have Koge tuck Area and the
Koge trucks Checho and Local are kind of like in
(31:15):
a kind of transitional stage right now and then I
have best friends. But uh, but what happened by by
closing three or four restaurants in the last year and
a half, It's opened up my plate too. I have
three concepts in my mind right now that I want
to put out there. So it opened stores for more creativity,
something that, yeah, you can experiment with, and I guess
(31:37):
you're at a time of your career that you can
really do that. Yeah, And some people, some people run
there there things differently, like some like a Wolfgang Puck
or a like a Jean George or even a Dave Chang.
They have a organization under one umbrella that can they
can deploy their generals and their lieutenants and their green
berets out there and go open restaurants around the world.
(32:01):
For me, I've taken kind of a different strategy where
each project I do is its own separate project. And
again I've decided to take a creative path rather than
an operational path. And so so you like to put
your hands on every project that you do, like your
own hands. And that's why for me, like I'm not
really around the world or even in New York because
everything is just like a direct extension of myself. And
(32:22):
really each team is is like its own family. So
I don't know if I'll ever be a person that
has corporate conglomeration where I have a restaurant in Dubai, Singapore,
New York and Tokyo. I don't know. I don't know
if that's in my future. It's not something I absolutely
(32:43):
you know, like your future can be created by a
lot of what you envision and what you manifest, the
power of thinking and creating something in your mind and
what you want and that you desires. If you if
you believe in it, it will come true in many cases.
And those are things that I don't dream about. It's
just a matter of like what you want to do.
And I feel like that's what makes you so special
(33:03):
because you're like a true creative. You're a true like
chef to me, like I always say, this is too much,
you're so chefy. Like my dream is I just wanted
(33:23):
like a table like the size of this, like an
eight seat horse horseshoe diner where I'm just cooking every
three or four things every day and like you know,
I got the TV on and like I see the
same faces. But that's what Kogi was supposed to be.
It's supposed to be this little thing that I was
able to touch every single taco every day and we
(33:44):
would just close and open the next day that you
got too busy. But even though the forces powerful, I've
I've done things to try to still make it weird
and quirky and and not be too corporate and again
do things that are are just like true creative expressions.
What's happen happening lately though, is I've been getting into
(34:06):
a lot of entertainment. I mean it kind of goes
hand in hand because entertainment, a lot of it is
very creative as well. Right, can you talk a little
bit about that experience for you right now, like doing
all of these shows and your new Netflix show, and
that was something that you have to confront I guess
not only being a chef, but part of it being See,
(34:26):
the one thing about being a chef is like once
you become a chef, we're a profession in many in
many cases where it's almost like unheard of to un
be a chef. And what I mean by that is
like once you get the title of chef, it's like
a lot of it's in your head, but it's still
a lot of amongst your peers as well. It's like
(34:47):
you can't just walk away from it and then all
of a sudden become like a podcast producer, you know
what I mean, Like you can't just like stop being
a chef because like it's just it's one of these
things things that that sticks with you forever, and you
either get ridiculed like oh, that motherfucker sold out or
he um or he or she doesn't you know, doesn't
(35:09):
love it anymore or whatever, or they only use this
as a stepping stone to get to this or whatever.
Sometimes if you're honest with yourself, things change. You evolved.
I'm my biggest goal in the world right now is
not to continue to just open restaurant. I'm in a
different place in my life and uh, I like I
still love cooking more than ever, and all I'm doing
all my shows is cooking. But I like sharing this
(35:30):
knowledge with like a lot of people. You want to
be influential. Yeah, And so you know, we got the
Chef Show and got Broken Bread and got a couple
of other shows that we're we're trying to um finalize
the pipeline finalize and negotiations. I'm like fascinated by this
thing that you just said about chef because I guess
(35:51):
as a young chef or whatever chef means in the
first place, because I get very in my head about
it and it makes me self conscious all the time,
even though I know that that's what I'm good at,
Like that's one thing that I'm very sure about, Like
I know how to fucking cook, right, but I'm very
self conscious about the title or like the image of chef.
(36:12):
I kind of want to do your advice to someone
that is maybe a little confused about what that means. Well,
it comes down to and sometimes maturity obviously comes with
age and experience, but it comes down to what you
want and what you truly when you look in the
mirror and you really think, and you're sitting alone by yourself,
(36:34):
what is it that you want to accomplish with your food?
You know, cooking chef cookery, like being a chef and
in high level cations is a very very competitive sport,
you know, and there there are folks I thrived in
that environment at one time in my life, and there
are folks that need that. I don't think that that
should be obliterated. I think that there there needs to
(36:56):
be a UFC environment within within the cooking world. If
you go into kitchens in New York, it's extremely competitive.
It's ridiculously competitive. And even when you get to this level,
you know, as chefs, we love each other, but when
we see each other, you're always constantly a little bit
checking yeah, tank chink, checking each other thinking, like you know,
(37:18):
looking for looking for the mistake or the flaw. So competitive,
it's not malicious, it's not malicious. You're not I'm not
hoping for you to fail. It's just I'm in that
competitive mind. I'm just hoping that I'm always better than you,
right right, So it's like that's always always, oh my god,
I get really crazy about competition, and you can never fully,
(37:41):
fully truly appreciate that person's accomplishment because you're just like,
that's not me, you know. So, like you taste their
food and you're like that's good, that's a good, great job,
you know, but but inside it's like it might be
the best thing you ever et, but you can't express that.
So that's one level of being extremely competed editive. But
I've reached the stage in cooking where I already went
(38:03):
through that. I have the skill set, I have the
relationships and the friends, and I didn't want to continue
being on that treadmill because in one sense, maybe I'm
not good enough. In another sense, that wasn't my strong
suit and it wasn't something that I that I truly
am on the inside. I could, I could fake it,
I could live that life for a certain amount of time,
(38:26):
but it wasn't really who I was, And who I
really was was I love to take care of people. So, yeah,
you brought me cookies. None of my guests has ever
brought me anything that I found a different way to cook.
It's kind of like Bruce Lee creating Kikundo, you know,
like you have to learn the fundamentals and you have
to figure out is your path in competitive fighting, is
(38:50):
your path in teaching the tradition and the fundamentals, is
your path in whatever? Maybe, but maybe your path was
to learn that and then create your own different technique,
in your own different philosophy, and and mine after I
came out of all that, was I just want to
make people happy and take care and cook the most
(39:11):
delicious food at the most affordable price. When you decide
to go a path like that. What happens is you
start to remove yourself from that circuit. And I was
completely okay with it. I mean, you're sure of who
you are as a person and with your career. So
I don't really get a lot of young cooks in
my kitchens that are out of culinary school because I
(39:32):
don't have an environment in my kitchens that fosters or
nurtures this competitive growth, which is very important if you're
working in a kitchen like Michelin Noma, you know, any
of any of these kitchens. You need that environment, and
a lot of young cooks need that. They come to
my kitchens and they see a very kind of like free,
(39:53):
grandmotherly hippie style kitchen, you know, yeah, where everyone is
just like helping each other. So U, my kitchen is
a bunch of Actually, my kitchen is like women. You
know me too, yeah, my my, my cook's my chef.
They're all female. Yeah, and it's all people I grew
up with here, friends mothers. I have probably fifty six
(40:18):
fifty fifty six of Kogee our mothers. They cook like
they're cooking at home. And that's why Cookee is so good.
Because yes, home cooking, they took what what we created,
but then they became our family and we became their family,
and then they just added there their philosophy to it.
So it's still the same recipe, but they cook it
(40:40):
again like they're cooking soup for their kids. And that's
what Kogi has become. And that's the style of food
that we cook. You know, we use dull knives, plastic calanders,
wooden spoons and and and it's just like the style
of who we are. And again, as a young cook
coming out of Colindary School, if you if you work
through like three or four really top not rications, maybe
(41:02):
you heard about me and you come and work in
my kitchen. They're like, chef, this wasn't for me. And
I get it. But that's fine. But we're we're we're
putting our own imprint on on what it means to
be a chef. And so on the positive end of that,
I feel like there is that world of competitiveness, but
what we're doing is we're we're opening it up for
(41:23):
a new interpretation of understanding of what it means to
be a top level American chef. And that means it
includes people that aren't just young male culinary school graduated
top not rications in New York City. It opens up
the door for everybody, all races, all ages, all ethnicities,
(41:45):
someone like you, so that you can find your place
within this world and have your voice within the culinary world.
Because the culinary world we're just talking about, this insular
culinary world of being a chef is a very young
Caucasian mail driven identity for sure, and it's intimidating and
(42:07):
sometimes very hard for someone that doesn't kind of like
living within that ideology to get into this world. So
we've created a whole another angle and now now people
can walk out of their office make blueberry pies and
then become the best chef that bon appetite of two
thousand five, you know. So we're just broadening, helping to
(42:29):
broaden the idea of what means to cook for each other. Well, Chef,
thank you for all you do for the industry and
being at the forefront of that and being so inspirational
for me. I do this thing where I love to
cook for my guests because in the end, I am
a cook and this is the first time that you're
having my food. So I'm a little nervous. Okay, so snogo,
of course it's your favorite Korean foom. You know what,
(42:52):
I'm actually surprised because I feel like a lot of
men like meat dishes and you're like I like suo
bo and like kaibuku, which is like a very like
it's homi. Yeah, thank you. This is awesome. Was one
of my favorite dishes. I grew up on it. And
can you kind of explain what I'm looking at yours?
This looks fantastic. So this is a seafood and uh
(43:15):
sunoobu is um soft silken tofu mix into like this
boiling cauldron, almost volcanic cauldron of spicy soup and then
it comes out to your table like bubbling like lava,
and you crack an egg and it mix it and
then sorry, I couldn't do that experience. Um. But what
I what I've noticed is that, especially since I've been
(43:37):
here in l A for so long, I think that
this understanding of I've explained this to other older Koreans
and they argue with me, but I think that this
understand interpretation of sundoo boo is something that's really Korean
American versus Korean because when you go to Korea. The
maybe now it's changed because the cultures are crossed, but
(43:57):
it's like white. It was different. This I think came
out of the necessity here in Los Angeles of the
lack of ingredients in the seventies. It became like its own,
like Patroon hybrid stew of what we now understand as
sund But I took Anthi boor Dame to a sinnooba restaurant,
which one Beverly sud Bo. Okay, is that the one
that you recommend in l A. Yeah, yeah, it's really
(44:18):
delicious there. Monica is amazing. But I can't wait to
try this, So right now I'm like so intimidated. Okay,
I'm eating that's delicious, great job. I mean, it's what
your grandma would make your Oh this is very homy,
very delicious, lots of flavor. It's it's got the sundo
(44:41):
bo soul. You know where sundoboo is spicy, but it's
not icy where you can't eat. It's like this very
rounded spice and sundo bo and it tastes very Korean
and extremely authentic, and it doesn't taste like you're trying
to make a fancy version of sundo boo. No, I
don't do that could open the spot with yeah, yeah,
I don't do like fancified Koream food. I do like
(45:04):
what my grandma made me Koream food. Um, that is
really good, thank you. I can't cook because I was
never trained in it and I didn't really pay attention
what I but I grew up. I know the flavors,
so the food that if I was to cook this,
what it happens is it ends up being again like
this remixed. It's like Korean American. Yeah, and it's like this.
It's not even fusion. It's like just complete extension of
(45:27):
who I am. The ingredients are the same, but it
tastes I could never make something that tastes as authentic
as this. I love that, I mean just because so
like I grew up cooking with my grandma and my
harmony is legit the best fucking cook in the world,
Like she is amazing and a big part of like
what I do for me as my identity, it's my
(45:48):
grandma's food that I want to put out in the
world to what I grew up with is what I know.
It's what I love the most. Like I eat like
a freaking or like that's how I like. I like that,
Like what you're doing right now? Can you describe it?
I'm mixing. It's so Korea. This is very just she
very taxi driver ish. I'm basically mixing her soup into
(46:12):
my rice and making like a hoary cha out of it.
That's so yeah that you only see that Koreans eat
it like that too. Write it's very My dad like
does this with everything. Yeah, just so good. I'm gonna
finish the whole thing. He's gonna eat it up. I'm
gonna eat the whole thing, right. I love that. So
you I know that you love food because you're just
gonna eat it all. The important part of sundo when
you make it like very authentic. How do you make it?
(46:35):
I could never make this the most important thing about
this is kutchug So is the pepper oil that you make.
So you have to heat up regular canola oil and
you add the couch to it pepper flake, and then
you kind of have to like let it steep in
that hot oil. It's almost like Chinese the method if
(46:56):
you think about it, and then you add your other
like spices. But the kutchugiam is like the soul of
what sundaboo, and then you add everything else to that
make you so, and the broth and everything. So you
make that like paste, which is kind of like your
flavorings or the heart of syndable, and then you add
that to like your seafood, broth, whatever, and then the
(47:16):
tofu goes in the end and etcetera. Yeah, but Syndaboo,
obviously it's about the tofu, but it's really about that
culture you So, are you impressed by my sundb I
think it's really delicious. I think you should stop doing
whatever you're doing and open the Sundb spot. I wouldn't
make a lot of money, more money than what I'm
making now. Again, we were talking about your evolution. This
(47:38):
I can feel, even though we've just met, I can
feel a lot of who you are in this soup.
There's a lot of what it seems like this is,
this is truly you, and there seems like there's something
deeper in this. I feel like I'm gonna cry right now.
As you grow as a cook and as a chef,
it's really special if you can get to a place
(47:58):
where you're even if you're just cooking one thing that
that thing is something that people really really resonate with.
So if this is I haven't tasted any of your
other cooking, but this really feels like something that is you,
generationally you and spiritually you. So like if you had
a shop that just served like four versions of a
(48:20):
meat version of pork version and seafood version and a
vegetable version of this and it was Esther Sundbot, that
would be I think that would be like, Oh my god,
I'm like you who you evolve as a dying you
mean my day. Thank you chefs so much. Thank you.
But I appreciate that because I feel like the food
that I cook is very traditional, it's very emotional for
(48:43):
me um with my family, and I feel like not
a lot of Korean American chefs are doing all that
in Korean food, or not even cream chefs, and I
feel like a lot of that culture is disappearing in
terms of like very traditional Korean food, which is why
I love the food in l a Like so much.
It's like, so I get very emotional when I think
about it because a lot of that is disappearing, and
(49:05):
the food and queens is like that too. It seems
like you're on your path cooking what you really who
you really are. I'd like to see the esther that
cooks this in three years and um, not that milk
barrow was bad, but that that that was the growth
path to who you truly are going to become as
a chef. You're you're on your way than Thank you,
(49:28):
m chef. So where can our listeners find you? I
mean just google Kogi ko g I. That's how you
find me, of course, and then everything will come out. Chef,
thank you so much for being here. God further inspiring
me and now I like love you even more. And
that's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what
you heard, please subscribe and leave us a five star review.
Get Down with kay Town is a production of I
(49:49):
Heart Radio and was created by our executive producer, Christopher
Hassiotis and me as the Troy. Follow me on all
social media at toy Bites, and I'd also like to
thank our producer, editor and mixer Marcie to Peina. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Korean food is not a linear meal. It's almost like
throwing paint on the wall. It's a splatter thing. As
a chef, I couldn't really figure out how do I
take the essence of Korean food and put it into
a Western format. And what I realized was, let's not
try to fit it into this model of linear or
Western format. Let's just let it feel like cato make
(00:23):
you feel like your life. Hello, Hello, and welcome to
the very first episode of Get Down with Kye Town,
which has been a long time coming. I'm your host,
chef and restaurantur Esther Choi. This podcast was post to
lauge right around the time when the pandemic hit, but
as you know, in the past few months, our entire
world has gone upside down, so we had to postpone
(00:44):
our premiere. I'm super excited that we're finally back on track,
but I do feel like it's important to acknowledge that
all of these episodes for season one we recorded prior
to the pandemic. Just to give you a little context.
This was all before COVID nineteen, the social movements, and
all the other insanity going on in the world, So
there are no references to these events in our conversations.
(01:05):
Everyone has been affected by this, and as a restaurant owner,
I cannot even begin to tell you how difficult this
has been for our industry. For now, this podcast is
purely for our entertainment, cultural acknowledgement, and just positive vibes
all around. So hopefully this series will bring some shining
light to this seemingly dark world. So obviously it's only
appropriate for me to start the very first episode of
(01:25):
this podcast with a chef who personally is one of
my heroes. He truly is a pioneer and a man
of real hospitality. I mean seriously, he brought me cookies
to the recording, like who does that? The only guest
that brought me a gift. He's a man of wisdom
and true influence in Korean culture here in America. The
one and only Chef Boy Toy. This is really a
(01:48):
special movement for me because possibly the most influential Korean
American chef to the Korean food scene here in America
has to be Roy Toy, and he's sitting across from
me right now. Okay, so, Chef, I have to get
this out of the way and just say it because
you've been really a huge inspiration in my life, um
(02:09):
in my career. And I'm sure this goes to say
for a lot of younger Korean American chefs out there,
that's you know, trying to make it. I'm sure you
hear this all the time, but what do you feel
when people say that to you? Well, thank you. This
is the first time I've been above Dave change in
this conversation. So there you go, Dave. Finally it took me.
It took me eleven years. It's definitely humbling, and it
(02:32):
feels great. And I know what it was like to
be a Korean that was outcast and like especially an
Asian kid that didn't have many role models, and like
didn't know who to who to look up to and
what I was supposed to be. So I realized that
it took a while, but I realized that that I
became that person for a lot of other other folks
out there, and so thank you. So it doesn't really
(02:56):
affect me in the sense where I pecked myself out
over it, but I'm aware of it and I do
try to do just like I don't try to be
a role model. I try to do dope shit, you know,
like I try to instead of trying to be like
perfect or too careful about my image or who I
am or I'm going to offend things or anything, I
actually go the opposite direction, and I try to push
even further. And because I realized that maybe I'm hoping
(03:20):
that maybe why people maybe look to me in that way,
or maybe just our influenced because of the stuff that
we already did. And what we did was Kogi was
a group of bandits, you know, that started feeding the
streets and and breaking rules and doing things that weren't customary,
you know, that weren't standard, And that's exactly who we are.
I hate like creative, you know, you know, you have
(03:41):
your bands that you you love when you're young, and
then like they become worse as the years go on,
or you become more vanilla as the years go on.
And I never want to be that, for for myself
or for anyone. So yeah, so I just keep trying
to do dope shit and push the envelope and like
do new creative stuff. And then like I think what
is done is it's given me the freedom and the
trust that whenever an idea comes to me, instead of
(04:04):
over analyzing. I realized that a lot of people got
my back, and I just go for it, you know.
So yeah, and I think that spirit is what makes
you you. Yeah yeah, And that's why every generation people,
even now eleven twelve years later since Kogie happened, I
still get that same energy from folks. Um just got
it from you, And I get it from everyone where
(04:25):
they stopped me on the street and they just tell
me they that I changed their life. You know, that
stuff is like, that stuff is heavy. That's like I
literally I literally changed their life and I've never met
him before, and that that type of stuff is pretty heavy.
So Coogee Barbecue l A's most iconic food truck that
gave birth to the concept of crean Mexican tacos. And
(04:46):
also I feel like Coogie was really well started the
whole fusion food world, right. I mean, it's started a
lot of things, like the food truck movement, the idea
of what fusion food is, the way people eat it
really like in pacted the scene in food so heavily.
I think what we did was we gave a lot
of people a voice because there were movements before us,
(05:08):
but those were very insular in the fact that you
and I are both chefs. They were they related to chefs,
and it was something that we as young cooks looked
up to. But what Kogie did was we broke down
the walls and created a bridge between not just people
that were in the culinary world, but the whole neighborhood.
So the whole block got to participate. You know. So
like even if you were just a backyard cook or
(05:31):
a good barbecue cook, or if you made great cookies
or whatever it is that you did, you felt like
your voice was being heard and that someone was listening
or talking to you. And that was the difference between
Kogee and maybe some of the other casual chef movements
that happened before us. It's almost like a social movement. Yeah,
ours just spoke like we we spoke to everybody. Yeah,
it resonated every industry in the neighborhood everything. How did
(05:55):
this idea come to be? Did you wake up one
day and we're like, oh, I'm going to make this
like crazy the movement, Like how how did this manifest?
It kind of happened like that. It was a it
was a series of perfect storm events. We actually started
right here we're recording right here in Hollywood on Um
right near like Kohanga and Sunset, So like we started
(06:16):
right by Amiba Records, which is the next street down
on Ivar. What happened a few months earlier. We started
in November two thousand and eight, and it was the
opening night at Twilight the movie, and we started. We
started at the same time they were showing the first
screening of Twilight at the Cinerama Dome, and so the
whole street was packed with a bunch of Twilight fans
and then and then a bunch of clubbers. It was
(06:37):
a club night. It was Asian club night. And then
it was us that the people couldn't figure out what
the hell is going off. But this was like like
you knew that, No, we didn't know. No, we got
because we got kicked out of our first spot. We
first went to West Hollywood and got kicked out, came
here and we were just driving and then we saw
the club that it was club night, and our our idea,
(06:58):
because it was only four or five of us on
the truck, were like, listen, let's give the burritos to
the bouncers. They're gonna love it. And they're gonna let
us park right here. And it worked. Yeah, it worked.
But a few months before that, what happened was I
lost my job and I was a chef of I
was like a big hotel chef, corporate chef for about
ten years up until that time, and lost my job
(07:18):
and the economy crashed in two thousand and eight. I
don't know if you'll remember, but there was a huge
real estate crisis and mortgage crisis, and you know, it
was a pretty depressing time in America. But then at
the same time, the technology was just starting to come
up as well, so social media just came out. No
one really had Twitter accounts at that time, you know,
there was none of the other stuff that we have now.
(07:39):
It was only Twitter, Facebook, And then we were on
the back end of my Space. Yeah, we're on the
back end of my Space. And even there was even
a trickle of friends they're still around. And so we
were in the first year of Twitter, and no one
really knew what to do with it outside of the
tech community. So we just took it in our hands
and and he just came up with this idea, let's
(08:02):
use Twitter and have people. Yeah, it wasn't even really
an idea. It was like it was like, let's just
post this stuff on this thing, and let's post our
locations and we're just gonna keep give people updates. And
we treated it like we were kind of texting each
other a group messaging, and we just kept saying, you
know what, we got kicked out here, We're gonna move
over there. And what happened was it created a scavenger
(08:22):
hunt for folks, and a lot of people thought that
it was this huge, major plan, but literally, if you
saw the inside, we were just literally figuring it out.
That's what I was going to ask you. I was like,
was this like a crazy like plan, like all the
stars aligned to perfectly, But really it was born out
of necessity, like you had to keep moving your truck
around because you were parked illegally or or whatnot. And
(08:45):
Twitter was free, and again at that time, no one
really knew, like there was really no like mobile social
media at that time. It's hard to imagine that was
only a decade ago because now you couldn't live life
without it. But at that time, everything it's kind of stationary,
like you weren't like constantly updating your MySpace from your phone,
you know, in oh eight. So this people really couldn't understand,
(09:09):
like this idea of constantly giving people updates of where,
what you're doing, what you're thinking, just random thoughts of
like you know, my eyebrow was sweating, and just saying
those weird things, you know, and just putting them out
there in the universe. That was unheard of, and Kobe
kind of created that kind of template to just be
weird and random in yourself. And then and then there
(09:30):
was a little prize at the end of it, which
was the taco. Well, I don't think that was a
little prize. We I mean, we have to talk about
the food because obviously if that prize isn't like fucking amazing,
it wouldn't have worked. So to going to the food
because obviously for me, I think that was really what
was just so significant. And not only I guess what
(09:54):
you did in terms of like that movement, but in
the Korean scene like two, for this chef to all
of a sudden make this concept which kind of like
already existed in like our own world, like we grew
up eating, like I'm sure you put Kim chiankita. You
were doing this at home eating anyway, but to actually
do that as a concept was a whole different thing.
(10:16):
A lot of it was very personal, even though like
I'm Korean, my blood Korean, I repped Korean, I'm from
Ka Town, obviously, my parents are from Korea. I mean,
like I know I was born, I know what it's
like to be Korean, but I'm not Korean, you know
what I mean? Like I grew up right here in
l A. And it's like I never think Korean. I
never thought Korean. I always had this very difficult relationship
(10:38):
with first generation Koreans because, um, because I don't speak
the language that well and my thought patterns are different,
and it's just like the society is a little too
conservative for who I am as a person, and so
I always had this kind of like push and pull
with it. And then as a chef, I was trying
to figure out, like what is what am I going
to be as a chef? And as I was coming up,
(10:59):
I just decided that I wanted to be a friend chef,
you know. And I didn't even think about cooking with
Asian flavors. I almost like it was you had to do. Yeah,
I wasn't trying to be whitewashed or anything like that.
I was just like, that's not what I that's not
what I want to do. You know, that's my family life,
and this is my professional life. Plus I wasn't trained
in it. I grew up in a Korean restaurant. But
it's like I'm a kid. I never really paid attention.
(11:21):
You know, like when your parents are running a restaurant.
It's not like this, uh you know Disney movie, where
like you're groomed from the beginning, you know, like to
be honest, you don't really you're just not even paying attention,
you know, but some of your like fondest feud memories
come from the rest. I was a good eater. I
wasn't a good chef, but I eat I eat the
funk out of ship Man, I funk out of Pinet duck.
(11:43):
And I used to eat like you become a chef
because you love eating, right. I used to eat like
four pops at a time, you know. Um so I
love eating, but I didn't. I didn't know. There were
a couple of things. One again, I had this difficult
relationship with being Korean, and then the other thing, as
Korean Korean food is not a linear meal, which what
(12:04):
I mean by that doesn't start with appetizer, entraine and dessert,
and it doesn't go from one place to the other.
It's this It's almost like throwing paint on the wall,
and it's the splatter things. So I was as a chef,
I couldn't really figure out how do I take the
essence of Korean food and put it into a Western format.
And when I saw people do it, when I ate
(12:24):
people food that we're doing it, it was just always
missing something. And so I just always thought that there
was never ever going to be an answer for that,
you know. To be honest, I didn't think that anyone
would figure it out. Then Dave came out with Momofuku
in oh four or oh six or whatever year that was,
and then but that was so far away from me,
you know, and I you know, I appreciated the movement
(12:46):
of what Monfoku was doing, and I was, you know,
he was a hero of mine at that time, and
I really looked up to it. But it was so
far away and I never tasted and it was so
different than l A life. New York life and l
A life are so different. I couldn't relate to it.
On a creative level. So again, I just like this
got you thinking about I forgot. They got me thinking,
But it was never really like something that was consciously
(13:09):
I felt like I had to do. And then when
I lost everything and I lost my job, and my
friend called me and said, listen, man, I got this truck.
Let's put Korean barbecue and its fertilla. Let's go out
in front of the club and we're gonna kill it.
When he said those words, something happened inside of me,
and something opened up. And what I realized was, let's
not try to fit it into this model of linear
(13:30):
or western format. Let's just let it feel like k town.
Make you feel like your life, make you feel like
you want to feel. How you felt on the couch,
how you felt with your mom, how how you felt
in the back of the car, how you felt in
the restaurant doing homework. You know, how how you felt
when your grandma pictures you. All these little things, you know.
And then what happened was I put it all my
(13:51):
heart and soul and everything into that one little bite.
So technically it was like the feeling of the whole
Korean barbecue experience. From the salad you get it in
the beginning, to the to the barbecue, to the soup
at the end. It was all of that in one bite.
And then it was everything you felt growing up like
low riding, eating tacos, making cardone sada, drinking Budweiser, you know,
(14:13):
hanging out, wearing dickies, and just just being l A.
And it was like those two things my whole life together.
I finally found a way to put them all together
into one poem, and that poem was kohe Taco. That
is crazy, like you were. So it's not even Korean
at all. Emotional. Yeah, I'm a Pisces, but it's not
(14:34):
even That's why it resonates, resonated to so many people,
and it still resonates now because it's not Korean. It's
not Korean Mexican fusion, as people wanted to call it.
You know, it's l A, it's you, it's l A,
it's me. It's a lot of us, it's a lot
of it's a lot of us that grew up in
immigrant families. It's um a lot of things that we
(14:55):
couldn't say or express growing up, or a of the
things you feel. And it happens even now, all the
things you feel as an immigrant person in this country.
Sometimes there are moments, and those of you that are
listening that have experiences, you know, what it is is
that there are moments in life or interactions in life
where you can't fully get out what you're feeling because
(15:17):
the circumstances may not allow it. You may be in
a situation where you can't speak up. You may be
getting hit with subversive, passive, aggressive racist situations. You may
not be able to express yourself to your parents. All
these little things, all these little emotions. Sometimes there's no
avenues for that. In media, you don't have a lot
of people that are expressing the same thoughts that you're feeling. Uh,
(15:38):
you don't see the same faces, you don't hear the
same voices that you hear in your head. So Kobe
was like answering all of that into your bike. It's
(16:00):
like an identity. It is. It's an identity, and that's
like a big part of who you are. Like your
upbringing here in l A really influence your food, but
also yourself as a Korean. Do you like went to
Korean and taught English, you were still very close to
your Korean identity. I tried to you know, um I
spent You know, I'm a little bit older, so I
(16:22):
I think I'm sure this generation still deals with it too.
But even though I I butt heads with my Korean heritage,
I always tried to like get them to understand me.
You know, I always like I wanted to argue with
them and be like yo, like like I'm just as
fucking Korean as you were. You ever embarrassed to be Korean?
I was never not Personally I wasn't like I was,
(16:44):
but I felt like Koreans were embarrassed to include me
into the trial. That's a different thing. But I was
never embarrassed, you know, like I roll, I wore my
even in high school. I where my Korean bomber jacket
everywhere I went. This is like really feel similar to
you in this way where I feel very proud of
being kore that always felt like that. I've never was embarrassed.
We're lucky because we lived. We grew up on the coast.
(17:05):
You grew up in New Jersey, Jersey Jersey. I grew
up in l A. But you know, it's hard for
a lot of Asian American kids that grow up in
the middle of the country. You know, you sometimes have
to live these these very stark double lives, you know,
because you maybe one of one. You know, a lot
of people don't understand. But yeah, I mean I tried
to be Korean. UM tried to be I don't know, man,
(17:28):
I just never really connected all the way. But I tried,
you know, I went out to Korea. I tried to
learn the language. Do you speak in understand almost everything
I can. I can read, but I just can't speak.
I don't know why. I think it's the psychological roadblock
that I have, that that all the things that I
just explained growing up with, like something stops me. I
know the words, and I know and I understand everything,
(17:51):
but for some reason I can't speak, you know. And
I think it's something psychological within me. But yeah, I
I went to Yonce, I went to the programs I
I taught at Korea University. I taught English. How old
were you when I was teaching English? I was twenty four. Okay,
was this before you started cooking or after? It was
before you have like a million lives? Yeah, I've been
(18:14):
through a lot of that. There's a lot of this
about how cooking saved your life. Can you talk about
that a little bit. I'm a very addictive person. I
had an addiction to gambling in my twenties, right around
that time in Korea. I actually kind of went to
Korea to kind of reset and escape. You know, I've
been very fortunate and lucky that i have a very
good family. And one thing you've got to know about
a lot of Korean families is even if we ain't
(18:35):
got money, that everyone's always there too to hold you down,
you know what I mean. Like, whether you're rich or poor,
they're always going to find ways to make sure their
food on the table. They're closed on your back, and
um that if you're sucking up, that they're going to
figure out ways to ship you to Korea and try
to get your life together, you know what I mean.
So it's like that. So that was during the time
where like I was really, really I was a very
(18:57):
fragile person. I was out here just drinking, gambling. I
was burning bridges left and right. So I went out
to Korea try to reset that. It really didn't didn't
help because I just started partying out there. But yeah,
really it was just to make money, Like the teaching
part was to make money and I don't think I
was a great teacher, but I think there were moments
where I was great. But I was still too young
(19:18):
and I was partying too much. There sometimes I didn't
show up to class. I think back now, and it's
like I feel bad for some of the It wasn't
like all the time. It was like it was like
all the time. I would say, like the time you
were in your twenties and you're a Korean boy, I know, yeah,
Korean American and like like the student. I don't know.
(19:38):
Ever since I was young, I was always able to
be like be able to attract people, you know, like
I always had this kind of like vibe, this charisma
with people, and so like my classes started getting real big.
It was like fucking Indiana Jones, you know, like like
the classes start getting big, and like I guess the
war got around, like because I make the classes really fun,
you know, I do ship like you know throughout the textbook,
(20:00):
in the trash, let's just talk and all this stuff.
So my classes got real popular and and it was
something really great, you know, especially being that young and
kind of like not fully together, like as far as
like what I wanted to do in life. It was.
It was very like um inspiring but uh and it
gave me a lot of energy. Yeah, like it almost
shaped your sense of leadership. Oh yeah, sense my leadership.
(20:25):
Hell of girls were like all into me, you know,
ship like that. I'm yeah, when you're a teacher in
Korea speaking English, fuck dude, like it's crazy. So that happened.
And then you started cooking because you got into some
some ship. And then you said cooking happened after I
came back from Korea and again just try to try
to figure out life. And you know, it took a while,
(20:45):
but around twenty five or twenty six around there, around
you know, I was continuing to spiral downward and not
in a good place. There was only a few friends
left that we would still return my phone calls and
and and be down for me. And one of them
was my best friend Yogi, and I was sleeping on
his couch and I woke up around this time, maybe
(21:06):
around eleven or twelve in the afternoon, and the Essence
of Emerald Show was on and I had an out
of body experience. I don't know if any of this
is like a very specific moment. It was a moment
I ran out of all my choices at that point.
And I don't know if any of you had out
of body experience, but um, it's kind of real. So
it was like I had this moment where everything just
(21:26):
crystallized and I I felt like he was talking to me.
And I felt like that moment was like, you know,
like you got two doors to choose from. You know,
it was very clear. It was extremely clear, like he
said those words, Yeah, yeah, it was extremely clear, like
what are you doing. You need to get up, get
your ship together, and come with me this way. And
obviously I could have like not listened to it and
(21:47):
continued the path, but um, for some reason, I listened
to it, and I just I got possessed. I started
from that moment, I just started turning everything around. I
started selling mutual funds. I passed my Series six and
Series seven. I started making a lot of money. I
started paying back all my debts. I started taking night
night classes at this culinary school here in West Hollywood,
(22:09):
started stodging at restaurants that would go to bookstores and
just spend like hours and just researching chefs. I knew
nothing about this world, and so I started getting into
like all these old programs of Jacques Papan and and
um Julia Child and just my whole world became completely
engulfed in culinary and then I decided to apply to
culinary school, and then you moved to New York. I
(22:31):
moved to New York. And again those are a lot
of like series of events and special things that allowed
me these situations. Like my cousin was in his residency
in New York, so I applied to the CIA, and
he gave me a futon for two hundred fifty bucks
a month to sleep on. If he wasn't there, I
don't know if I would have been able to go
(22:51):
to New York. So I went out there staged in
a bunch of restaurants in the village until I got
my acceptance and then went up to High Park and
the rest is history. Yeah, hyear, hypart changed my life
even more, Like being at the C I a oh man,
So you recommend culinary school for Yeah, for me, like
it completely saved my life because I was a class
(23:12):
clown up until then, and I really kind of coasted
through school and like it was never interesting to me,
and I was like Spaccoli from Fast Times, like I
show up to school stone every single day, and I
was just not a great students. The only thing you
have to be really smart to be the class clown. Though.
Yeah I was in honors and all that stuff classes,
but I think it was my Asian nous that got
(23:33):
me into like everything. Like I fucking played. I parlaid
that card for so long, like people would look at
me and like junior high high school and be like, oh,
that kid needs to be in the honors program. I
wrote that sire forever. But uh and I just found
like little tweaks and mcgiver ways to figure out, like
how to get some decent street smarts. But when I
(23:56):
stepped on um, I guess the main thing was I
was never interested and anything. And then when I stepped
on the campus at High Park, it blew my mind.
It just like came together everything I was interested. You know,
I actually liked to learn. I want. I woke up early,
I studied. I was like the one in class that
raised his hand. You know, I knew the answer. You know,
(24:16):
like back in my other schooling, I never knew the answer.
It was every time like I had to answer something,
it was always mixed. It was a recipe of like
half bullshit half to half like a little bit of
like I may know some like top line notes, and
the rest was like, you know, just fill it in
with like your charm. And so it's like this three
part recipe of like answering question, but this time with
(24:38):
culinary schools, Like I knew the answers and you wanted
to know the answers. Yeah, and it was great, man,
it was really great. Obviously, since then, you've won like
every fucking award possible Best Chef for Food and Wine. Honestly,
you know everyone knows you want like every award possible.
Since then, what about your restaurants, Like you've opened several restaurants,
(24:59):
because being a chef and being a restaurant tour totally
different thing. Yeah, I mean it's you know that you
run restaurants to run restaurants, And obviously I started out
because I love cooking, but really right now I'm just
like trying to figure out how to run all my restaurants.
So that's a big thing I want to talk to
you about. So you have to have a restaurants right now?
(25:22):
How many do you have? Well, they change every every
few years or so because the tough part of opening
restaurants is that eventually, one day they make clothes and
a lot of people don't talk about So I haven't
closed a restaurant yet, and um, I know it's gonna happen,
sometimes very soon. Sometimes they don't close for the worst reasons,
you know. Sometimes it may be like your lease is up,
(25:45):
you know, and then in that neighborhood, because your restaurant
was popular in that neighborhood for the last ten years,
it raised the rent and the value of that neighbor
has nothing to do with I mean, it's a life cycle, right,
the life cycle, and but no one ever talks about
They only like to talk about either the opening or
the award or the accolades. And it's really hard to
(26:07):
to talk about something that was a baby of yours,
that is a baby of yours, that is a creative child.
That that and there are people within that that creative
child that are real people that you've been with for
the last ten years. It's really hard to wind down
a restaurant. So what I'm leading towards this last year,
actually two thousand eighteen and part of nineteen, I had
(26:29):
a very difficult year as a restaurant tour. I had
to close four different restaurants for different reasons. So I
had the big project, which was the Line Hotel in Creatown,
and I had pot Commissary Cafe, all this stuff. We
had a five year contract with that company and it
ended and they wanted to go a different direction. Um,
(26:50):
But from the outside it looks like it failed, but
it didn't fail. It was just that we as business
people didn't want to continue the relationship. And but it
was tough because you have to you build up all
this energy to make that place amazing and full, and
then you have to like kind of unravel and unwind
(27:10):
all of that back, you know. So there was that
we had to transition Chego out of Chinatown, and then
I just recently reached the end of a tenure lease
for a frame on the West Side, which that one
hurt a lot because again the business partner and I
wanted to go in different directions, and um, the rent
was too much and so he sold the proper. But
(27:31):
on another side, those restaurants also were a life cycle
for me. Um. I feel like as much as I
would still want them to be open, I feel like
I do as a person, but creatively I'm I've kind
of grown past those things and I have other concepts
in my mind. So in a way it's a blessing
(27:53):
because it's opened up my plate to open maybe new
restaurants still hurts. So I was saying, that's really inspired, though,
because you don't have to really think of it as
a failure, because it's not not always. Some some are failures,
but not all closures or failures. So that's very important
to know the difference and to accept the difference between
the two. Sometimes things just and you know, and they've
(28:17):
lived their life, and sometimes you have to be honest
with yourself to like, are you putting as much energy
into a concept as you did from the beginning. Sometimes
I see I see people not being honest with themselves,
you know, like you open up two, three, four different concepts,
um you have to think about, are you like there
may be a concept within your portfolio? Are you giving
(28:39):
it you're all all the time. Because the thing about
restaurants is if you're not giving it you're all all
the time, then they are going to eventually fall off.
It's very apparent when when the owners feel it the
energy is not the same, your staff doesn't is not
inspired as much anymore because you're not there, And um,
(29:01):
how do you find that balanced? Though? Like when you're
opening like so many restaurants and you have like a
million things you want to do and obviously you have
so many projects going on that how do you find that?
For me? And this is just for me. I've decided
from the beginning to take less money and less responsibility
and focus on the things that I really care about,
(29:21):
and so I stay with the project all the way
through until I'm not. But what I mean by that
is like, for example, a Frame was a restaurant where
I didn't technically own it. I was a creative partner.
So I'm not like fully invested where I get the
larger piece of the pie of whatever profit or whatever
it makes. I just get a small percentage that I
(29:43):
get paid out of the revenue. But I don't have
But my business partner runs the whole thing. But I'm
fully invested and involved in running the creative It's my
same thing with this new restaurant I opened last year
called Best Friend where in Vegas, right in Vegas where
our company it is just a creative licensing partner, so
we we manage oversee all of the creative aspects the food,
(30:07):
the service, DNA and the philosophy, but the labor, the budgets,
all that stuff is run by MGM. So to me
is it was because I'm a chef and I don't
really think in terms of money. It wasn't about getting
rich out of each endeavor. It was about creating really
amazing experiences for the people. Right. So I decided early
(30:30):
on it's okay to take less money and less responsibility
as long as I'm in control of the things that
I think are most important for you. Yeah, And that's
that allowed me to open a lot of different concepts
because I was very fluid, you know. It was like
being um, it was like being kind of like a producer,
you know, where I could create concepts, design them, make
(30:53):
the menu, make the flavors, the DNA of the service. Yeah,
things I love doing. So that that's how I was
able to manage doing multiple projects. So in ten years
we opened one, two, three, like seven eight restaurants. Now
I'm down. Now I'm down to. I have a bar
called Albi Room. I have Koge tuck Area and the
Koge trucks Checho and Local are kind of like in
(31:15):
a kind of transitional stage right now and then I
have best friends. But uh, but what happened by by
closing three or four restaurants in the last year and
a half, It's opened up my plate too. I have
three concepts in my mind right now that I want
to put out there. So it opened stores for more creativity,
something that, yeah, you can experiment with, and I guess
(31:37):
you're at a time of your career that you can
really do that. Yeah, And some people, some people run
there there things differently, like some like a Wolfgang Puck
or a like a Jean George or even a Dave Chang.
They have a organization under one umbrella that can they
can deploy their generals and their lieutenants and their green
berets out there and go open restaurants around the world.
(32:01):
For me, I've taken kind of a different strategy where
each project I do is its own separate project. And
again I've decided to take a creative path rather than
an operational path. And so so you like to put
your hands on every project that you do, like your
own hands. And that's why for me, like I'm not
really around the world or even in New York because
everything is just like a direct extension of myself. And
(32:22):
really each team is is like its own family. So
I don't know if I'll ever be a person that
has corporate conglomeration where I have a restaurant in Dubai, Singapore,
New York and Tokyo. I don't know. I don't know
if that's in my future. It's not something I absolutely
(32:43):
you know, like your future can be created by a
lot of what you envision and what you manifest, the
power of thinking and creating something in your mind and
what you want and that you desires. If you if
you believe in it, it will come true in many cases.
And those are things that I don't dream about. It's
just a matter of like what you want to do.
And I feel like that's what makes you so special
(33:03):
because you're like a true creative. You're a true like
chef to me, like I always say, this is too much,
you're so chefy. Like my dream is I just wanted
(33:23):
like a table like the size of this, like an
eight seat horse horseshoe diner where I'm just cooking every
three or four things every day and like you know,
I got the TV on and like I see the
same faces. But that's what Kogi was supposed to be.
It's supposed to be this little thing that I was
able to touch every single taco every day and we
(33:44):
would just close and open the next day that you
got too busy. But even though the forces powerful, I've
I've done things to try to still make it weird
and quirky and and not be too corporate and again
do things that are are just like true creative expressions.
What's happen happening lately though, is I've been getting into
(34:06):
a lot of entertainment. I mean it kind of goes
hand in hand because entertainment, a lot of it is
very creative as well. Right, can you talk a little
bit about that experience for you right now, like doing
all of these shows and your new Netflix show, and
that was something that you have to confront I guess
not only being a chef, but part of it being See,
(34:26):
the one thing about being a chef is like once
you become a chef, we're a profession in many in
many cases where it's almost like unheard of to un
be a chef. And what I mean by that is
like once you get the title of chef, it's like
a lot of it's in your head, but it's still
a lot of amongst your peers as well. It's like
(34:47):
you can't just walk away from it and then all
of a sudden become like a podcast producer, you know
what I mean, Like you can't just like stop being
a chef because like it's just it's one of these
things things that that sticks with you forever, and you
either get ridiculed like oh, that motherfucker sold out or
he um or he or she doesn't you know, doesn't
(35:09):
love it anymore or whatever, or they only use this
as a stepping stone to get to this or whatever.
Sometimes if you're honest with yourself, things change. You evolved.
I'm my biggest goal in the world right now is
not to continue to just open restaurant. I'm in a
different place in my life and uh, I like I
still love cooking more than ever, and all I'm doing
all my shows is cooking. But I like sharing this
(35:30):
knowledge with like a lot of people. You want to
be influential. Yeah, And so you know, we got the
Chef Show and got Broken Bread and got a couple
of other shows that we're we're trying to um finalize
the pipeline finalize and negotiations. I'm like fascinated by this
thing that you just said about chef because I guess
(35:51):
as a young chef or whatever chef means in the
first place, because I get very in my head about
it and it makes me self conscious all the time,
even though I know that that's what I'm good at,
Like that's one thing that I'm very sure about, Like
I know how to fucking cook, right, but I'm very
self conscious about the title or like the image of chef.
(36:12):
I kind of want to do your advice to someone
that is maybe a little confused about what that means. Well,
it comes down to and sometimes maturity obviously comes with
age and experience, but it comes down to what you
want and what you truly when you look in the
mirror and you really think, and you're sitting alone by yourself,
(36:34):
what is it that you want to accomplish with your food?
You know, cooking chef cookery, like being a chef and
in high level cations is a very very competitive sport,
you know, and there there are folks I thrived in
that environment at one time in my life, and there
are folks that need that. I don't think that that
should be obliterated. I think that there there needs to
(36:56):
be a UFC environment within within the cooking world. If
you go into kitchens in New York, it's extremely competitive.
It's ridiculously competitive. And even when you get to this level,
you know, as chefs, we love each other, but when
we see each other, you're always constantly a little bit
checking yeah, tank chink, checking each other thinking, like you know,
(37:18):
looking for looking for the mistake or the flaw. So competitive,
it's not malicious, it's not malicious. You're not I'm not
hoping for you to fail. It's just I'm in that
competitive mind. I'm just hoping that I'm always better than you,
right right, So it's like that's always always, oh my god,
I get really crazy about competition, and you can never fully,
(37:41):
fully truly appreciate that person's accomplishment because you're just like,
that's not me, you know. So, like you taste their
food and you're like that's good, that's a good, great job,
you know, but but inside it's like it might be
the best thing you ever et, but you can't express that.
So that's one level of being extremely competed editive. But
I've reached the stage in cooking where I already went
(38:03):
through that. I have the skill set, I have the
relationships and the friends, and I didn't want to continue
being on that treadmill because in one sense, maybe I'm
not good enough. In another sense, that wasn't my strong
suit and it wasn't something that I that I truly
am on the inside. I could, I could fake it,
I could live that life for a certain amount of time,
(38:26):
but it wasn't really who I was, And who I
really was was I love to take care of people. So, yeah,
you brought me cookies. None of my guests has ever
brought me anything that I found a different way to cook.
It's kind of like Bruce Lee creating Kikundo, you know,
like you have to learn the fundamentals and you have
to figure out is your path in competitive fighting, is
(38:50):
your path in teaching the tradition and the fundamentals, is
your path in whatever? Maybe, but maybe your path was
to learn that and then create your own different technique,
in your own different philosophy, and and mine after I
came out of all that, was I just want to
make people happy and take care and cook the most
(39:11):
delicious food at the most affordable price. When you decide
to go a path like that. What happens is you
start to remove yourself from that circuit. And I was
completely okay with it. I mean, you're sure of who
you are as a person and with your career. So
I don't really get a lot of young cooks in
my kitchens that are out of culinary school because I
(39:32):
don't have an environment in my kitchens that fosters or
nurtures this competitive growth, which is very important if you're
working in a kitchen like Michelin Noma, you know, any
of any of these kitchens. You need that environment, and
a lot of young cooks need that. They come to
my kitchens and they see a very kind of like free,
(39:53):
grandmotherly hippie style kitchen, you know, yeah, where everyone is
just like helping each other. So U, my kitchen is
a bunch of Actually, my kitchen is like women. You
know me too, yeah, my my, my cook's my chef.
They're all female. Yeah, and it's all people I grew
up with here, friends mothers. I have probably fifty six
(40:18):
fifty fifty six of Kogee our mothers. They cook like
they're cooking at home. And that's why Cookee is so good.
Because yes, home cooking, they took what what we created,
but then they became our family and we became their family,
and then they just added there their philosophy to it.
So it's still the same recipe, but they cook it
(40:40):
again like they're cooking soup for their kids. And that's
what Kogi has become. And that's the style of food
that we cook. You know, we use dull knives, plastic calanders,
wooden spoons and and and it's just like the style
of who we are. And again, as a young cook
coming out of Colindary School, if you if you work
through like three or four really top not rications, maybe
(41:02):
you heard about me and you come and work in
my kitchen. They're like, chef, this wasn't for me. And
I get it. But that's fine. But we're we're we're
putting our own imprint on on what it means to
be a chef. And so on the positive end of that,
I feel like there is that world of competitiveness, but
what we're doing is we're we're opening it up for
(41:23):
a new interpretation of understanding of what it means to
be a top level American chef. And that means it
includes people that aren't just young male culinary school graduated
top not rications in New York City. It opens up
the door for everybody, all races, all ages, all ethnicities,
(41:45):
someone like you, so that you can find your place
within this world and have your voice within the culinary world.
Because the culinary world we're just talking about, this insular
culinary world of being a chef is a very young
Caucasian mail driven identity for sure, and it's intimidating and
(42:07):
sometimes very hard for someone that doesn't kind of like
living within that ideology to get into this world. So
we've created a whole another angle and now now people
can walk out of their office make blueberry pies and
then become the best chef that bon appetite of two
thousand five, you know. So we're just broadening, helping to
(42:29):
broaden the idea of what means to cook for each other. Well, Chef,
thank you for all you do for the industry and
being at the forefront of that and being so inspirational
for me. I do this thing where I love to
cook for my guests because in the end, I am
a cook and this is the first time that you're
having my food. So I'm a little nervous. Okay, so snogo,
of course it's your favorite Korean foom. You know what,
(42:52):
I'm actually surprised because I feel like a lot of
men like meat dishes and you're like I like suo
bo and like kaibuku, which is like a very like
it's homi. Yeah, thank you. This is awesome. Was one
of my favorite dishes. I grew up on it. And
can you kind of explain what I'm looking at yours?
This looks fantastic. So this is a seafood and uh
(43:15):
sunoobu is um soft silken tofu mix into like this
boiling cauldron, almost volcanic cauldron of spicy soup and then
it comes out to your table like bubbling like lava,
and you crack an egg and it mix it and
then sorry, I couldn't do that experience. Um. But what
I what I've noticed is that, especially since I've been
(43:37):
here in l A for so long, I think that
this understanding of I've explained this to other older Koreans
and they argue with me, but I think that this
understand interpretation of sundoo boo is something that's really Korean
American versus Korean because when you go to Korea. The
maybe now it's changed because the cultures are crossed, but
(43:57):
it's like white. It was different. This I think came
out of the necessity here in Los Angeles of the
lack of ingredients in the seventies. It became like its own,
like Patroon hybrid stew of what we now understand as
sund But I took Anthi boor Dame to a sinnooba restaurant,
which one Beverly sud Bo. Okay, is that the one
that you recommend in l A. Yeah, yeah, it's really
(44:18):
delicious there. Monica is amazing. But I can't wait to
try this, So right now I'm like so intimidated. Okay,
I'm eating that's delicious, great job. I mean, it's what
your grandma would make your Oh this is very homy,
very delicious, lots of flavor. It's it's got the sundo
(44:41):
bo soul. You know where sundoboo is spicy, but it's
not icy where you can't eat. It's like this very
rounded spice and sundo bo and it tastes very Korean
and extremely authentic, and it doesn't taste like you're trying
to make a fancy version of sundo boo. No, I
don't do that could open the spot with yeah, yeah,
I don't do like fancified Koream food. I do like
(45:04):
what my grandma made me Koream food. Um, that is
really good, thank you. I can't cook because I was
never trained in it and I didn't really pay attention
what I but I grew up. I know the flavors,
so the food that if I was to cook this,
what it happens is it ends up being again like
this remixed. It's like Korean American. Yeah, and it's like this.
It's not even fusion. It's like just complete extension of
(45:27):
who I am. The ingredients are the same, but it
tastes I could never make something that tastes as authentic
as this. I love that, I mean just because so
like I grew up cooking with my grandma and my
harmony is legit the best fucking cook in the world,
Like she is amazing and a big part of like
what I do for me as my identity, it's my
(45:48):
grandma's food that I want to put out in the
world to what I grew up with is what I know.
It's what I love the most. Like I eat like
a freaking or like that's how I like. I like that,
Like what you're doing right now? Can you describe it?
I'm mixing. It's so Korea. This is very just she
very taxi driver ish. I'm basically mixing her soup into
(46:12):
my rice and making like a hoary cha out of it.
That's so yeah that you only see that Koreans eat
it like that too. Write it's very My dad like
does this with everything. Yeah, just so good. I'm gonna
finish the whole thing. He's gonna eat it up. I'm
gonna eat the whole thing, right. I love that. So
you I know that you love food because you're just
gonna eat it all. The important part of sundo when
you make it like very authentic. How do you make it?
(46:35):
I could never make this the most important thing about
this is kutchug So is the pepper oil that you make.
So you have to heat up regular canola oil and
you add the couch to it pepper flake, and then
you kind of have to like let it steep in
that hot oil. It's almost like Chinese the method if
(46:56):
you think about it, and then you add your other
like spices. But the kutchugiam is like the soul of
what sundaboo, and then you add everything else to that
make you so, and the broth and everything. So you
make that like paste, which is kind of like your
flavorings or the heart of syndable, and then you add
that to like your seafood, broth, whatever, and then the
(47:16):
tofu goes in the end and etcetera. Yeah, but Syndaboo,
obviously it's about the tofu, but it's really about that
culture you So, are you impressed by my sundb I
think it's really delicious. I think you should stop doing
whatever you're doing and open the Sundb spot. I wouldn't
make a lot of money, more money than what I'm
making now. Again, we were talking about your evolution. This
(47:38):
I can feel, even though we've just met, I can
feel a lot of who you are in this soup.
There's a lot of what it seems like this is,
this is truly you, and there seems like there's something
deeper in this. I feel like I'm gonna cry right now.
As you grow as a cook and as a chef,
it's really special if you can get to a place
(47:58):
where you're even if you're just cooking one thing that
that thing is something that people really really resonate with.
So if this is I haven't tasted any of your
other cooking, but this really feels like something that is you,
generationally you and spiritually you. So like if you had
a shop that just served like four versions of a
(48:20):
meat version of pork version and seafood version and a
vegetable version of this and it was Esther Sundbot, that
would be I think that would be like, Oh my god,
I'm like you who you evolve as a dying you
mean my day. Thank you chefs so much. Thank you.
But I appreciate that because I feel like the food
that I cook is very traditional, it's very emotional for
(48:43):
me um with my family, and I feel like not
a lot of Korean American chefs are doing all that
in Korean food, or not even cream chefs, and I
feel like a lot of that culture is disappearing in
terms of like very traditional Korean food, which is why
I love the food in l a Like so much.
It's like, so I get very emotional when I think
about it because a lot of that is disappearing, and
(49:05):
the food and queens is like that too. It seems
like you're on your path cooking what you really who
you really are. I'd like to see the esther that
cooks this in three years and um, not that milk
barrow was bad, but that that that was the growth
path to who you truly are going to become as
a chef. You're you're on your way than Thank you,
(49:28):
m chef. So where can our listeners find you? I
mean just google Kogi ko g I. That's how you
find me, of course, and then everything will come out. Chef,
thank you so much for being here. God further inspiring
me and now I like love you even more. And
that's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what
you heard, please subscribe and leave us a five star review.
Get Down with kay Town is a production of I
(49:49):
Heart Radio and was created by our executive producer, Christopher
Hassiotis and me as the Troy. Follow me on all
social media at toy Bites, and I'd also like to
thank our producer, editor and mixer Marcie to Peina. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart
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