Chef Roy Choi talks struggles, successes and living in O.C.
When people line up for Roy Choi, it’s usually for the chance to order his tacos. On July 13, hungry fans instead queued up for copies of his New York Times best-selling cookbook and memoir, “L.A. Son,” at the Rancho Santa Margarita Library.
Seventy-five complimentary copies of the book were available on a first-come first-serve basis during Choi’s Author Talk with OC Public Libraries on Saturday, funded in part by a grant from the California Department of Aging and administered locally by the Orange County Office on Aging.
Local Orange County journalist Jenn Tanaka led the moderated conversation in which Choi spoke candidly about his struggles and his successes.
“I always say I am not much of ‘The Bear,’ I am more Winnie the Pooh,” Choi said, referencing the FX original series about food and family.
Choi also shared about his experiences in Orange County, including being nursed back to health by his mother in Ranch Santa Margarita after he suffered poor health while struggling with a gambling addiction.
“I lived in Orange County for a long time, we moved out here in high school,” said Choi. “ You will read in the book in the chapter about my downfall into gambling and reaching rock bottom ... in that recovery phase my parents were living out here in Ranch Santa Margarita.”
Choi came to the United States from Seoul, South Korea, in 1972 and lived in Los Angeles with his family and later Villa Park. His family owned Silver Garden, an Anaheim Korean restaurant for three years, and Choi graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1994. (In May, CSUF awarded Choi an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree during the university’s College of Business and Economics Commencement ceremony at Titan Stadium.) But an obsession with Emeril Lagasse’s “Essence of Emeril,” which he writes about in “L.A. Son,” inspired him to pursue the culinary arts. After working in some of New York’s best kitchens, Choi launched gourmet Korean Mexican taco truck, Kogi BBQ, in 2008, which changed the narrative around food trucks.
“Although maybe a larger society wasn’t eating at food trucks the same way they do now, it is a cultural thing. It comes from neighborhoods, it comes from immigrants and it comes from people that I grew up around. It is a very important resource and a way to become an American,” Choi said of the food truck movement during his talk. “Unfortunately food trucks were looked down upon through many racist lenses and different narratives. If you remember, in the old days they were called ‘roach coaches.’”
Choi capitalized on social media, in its infancy at the time, to usher in a new era for mobile kitchens and taco trucks. Kogi trucks used to have regular stops in Orange County on their routes, but the trucks have yet to return since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Audience members pressed Choi about Kogi BBQ coming back to O.C.
“The Kogi Truck had a really great history here in Orange County for almost 10 years. We stopped right at COVID, but we are hopefully looking to come back for sure,” Choi said to resounding applause.
He also talked about his “bromance” with actor and director Jon Favreau, who he met when he was hired to consult on Favreau’s 2014 film, “Chef.”
“The moment we met it was like a rom-com, the moment we locked eyes it was over. That two-week job turned into a 12-year friendship,” Choi joked. “It was fate that Jon and I met, we are kind of two sides of the same coin as people. We both believe in bringing joy and happiness to this world,”
Since the movie, Choi and Favreau have worked together on the Netflix series “The Chef Show” and opened a “Chef Food Truck” parked at the Park MGM in Las Vegas.
Additionally, Choi is the host of “Broken Bread,” an Emmy Award-winning PBS SoCal series co-produced by KCET and Tastemade.
Tanaka prompted Choi to share about fellow food truck owner and local Orange County chef Bill Bracken of Bracken’s Kitchen. Bracken’s nonprofit repurposes food waste into meals that get taken to food insecure communities, and Choi highlighted his work in the series.
“We wanted to find the people that inspire us and not what is big and popular in the world,” Choi said. “With Bill, it was really important for me to include Orange County … and he fit everything that we wanted to say.”
Choi also discussed a new book due out in spring 2025, titled “The Choi of Cooking,” which will highlight healthy recipes for those prone to late-night cravings, like himself.
“We have recipes in it like smash burgers and milkshakes and all the things that you crave after midnight,” said Choi.
After the discussion, Choi signed copies of his book, and the first 75 to receive a copy lined up for his tacos after all, when a surprise Kogi BBQ truck arrived at the end of the event to serve them.
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