Category — Street Food

Roy Choi and his Kogi BBQ Korean taco truck have been media darlings for nearly a year now, but it’s only in person that his full passion reveals itself. His voice quavers, he sometimes even sheds a tear as he describes this cuisine that bubbled up from his very soul. “What Kogi is, it’s not a fusion, it’s not a mash up, it’s just a window into my country,” Choi says.

Choi was born in Seoul, raised in Los Angeles, and trained at CIA and Le Bernardin, but his country lies between LA’s downtown Alvarado and the famously diverse Western Avenue. His food is nothing short of indigenous to the region. “I see tamales, al pastor, pupusas, that fills my life,” he says. “The spicy pork, in Korean it’s bulgogi. But every time I made it, it looked like al pastor to me. So I played around with the elements. And it’s so friggin’ delicious.”

If his classical training taught him to measure and chiffonade, Choi’s soul has told him to cook “with the spirit of a grandmother.” Here he is, channeling the grandmother.

Let us consider the pig. Unctuous. Delectable. Possessing an uncanny ability to caramelize on the outside while remaining soft and succulent on the inside. Umami incarnate.

Which is why so many cultures treat swine as comfort food. Americans love bacon. Cubans revere their roast pork. In the Czech Republic, a plate of “vepr-knedlo-zelo” (pork-dumplings-sauerkraut) warms a winter night.

But for me, that warm fuzzy feeling implodes with pig face prosciutto. At the truly fabulous CIA-Greystone conference on street food this weekend we watched Chef Maricel Presill — who recently cooked her signature Latin fare at the White House — help flay a suckling pig head and rub the mask-like remains with a garlic marinade. After pulling the ears through the eye holes and plumping the snout with the tongue, the mask was then rolled up. A little too Hannibal Lecter for me.

And the prosciutto? It was okay. A little salty. Its greatest asset was that it assured no part of the pig would be wasted, which is admirable. But I’m not sure I need to eat it — or see it — again.

One of my favorite Syrian dishes was always lachmaajen, a personal pizza topped with tangy, pomegranate-infused lamb and sprinkled with pine nuts. Hot out of the oven, the bottom just a tiny bit greasy and crunchy…..need I go on? Not surprisingly, a similar dish is street food in Turkey. The Turkish version passes up the meat and pine nuts for tomato and a very spicy pepper. But both use the pomegranate (see the post on pomegranate molasses — i told you, it’s everywhere). But a liver pizza? Don’t knock it. Our Turkish chef made lavosh on site over a wood fire, then filled it with lamb liver kebob and a scallion salad that crackled when he rolled it up. Crunchy on the outside, soft and supple on the inside. This, apparently is what Turkish farmers eat for breakfast during the olive harvest when they need lots of energy in the fields. Move over Wheaties.