My Life, My City, My Food
Starred review from November 4, 2013
With driving metaphors coming fast and furious throughout this memoir cum cookbook, there is no doubting and no pulling away from Choi’s gritty embrace of L.A.’s mean streets. Starting with his childhood immigration from Korea and his family’s constant upheaval and relocation across South Central, through West Hollywood, and into a house once owned by baseball great Nolan Ryan in Orange County, Choi learns the restaurant business, as well as the jewelry business, at his parents’ apron strings, before falling in with a rough crowd as a teen. Typical of Choi’s 90 m.p.h. stream-of-consciousness, he recalls, “Step up in a fight, drop three hits of acid... go eat, rob a store, babysit your kid? Sure. Let’s go.” His taste for kimchi and dumplings give way to a taste for crack and gambling, but a happy ending is served up as Choi emerges relatively unscathed by his vices, lucks into an education at New York’s Culinary School of America, and finally finds his groove back in Los Angeles as the kingpin of Kogi BBQ Taco Trucks. A total of 60 recipes are included, dropped in like mile markers across his life’s story. There are the twice-cooked duck fat fries he loved as a kid, the kung pao chicken he ate with his crew, and the dishes, such as broiled halibut with soy glaze, that came with maturity. Doe Coover, Doe Coover Agency.
Starred review from August 1, 2023
For foodies and celebrity-chef watchers, Roy Choi is a name that is hard to miss. A classically trained entrepreneur whose Korean-Mexican taco truck helped usher in the gourmet food truck revolution of the early 2010s and loosely inspired the 2014 film Chef, Choi's impact on the last decade of American culinary culture is considerable. In this book, originally published in 2013 in the early stages of his rise to fame, Choi shares the story of his origins, inspirations, mistakes, and lucky breaks as a frequently wayward Korean American youth growing up in greater Los Angeles. In a uniquely informal voice marked with gratitude and profanity, Choi vividly narrates the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of L.A's sprawling neighborhoods and the complex, resourceful people with whom he often found deepest community. Even as Choi's story moves to his more formal period of culinary development, his emphasis never strays from the importance of other people, without whom one cannot hope to survive, let alone succeed. Recipes interspersed throughout (but thankfully not read aloud in full) underscore Choi's journey and broad cultural influences. VERDICT A deep and delightful chef memoir full of true love for L.A. and its food, charismatically narrated by the author.--Robin Chin Roemer
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