Last week, Roy Choi was looking for telltale signs: a lot of cursing, a lot of eye-rolling with every bite. He was quietly launching a new taco stand, his first restaurant debut in Los Angeles since 2016, and as the crowd began to grow at his unassuming street stand in Palms, he saw every sign that Tacos Por Vida is in the mix. correct road.
“Other chefs look for 'soigné' or 'excellent,' 'delicious,' 'fantastic'… all those words they use,” Choi said. “I'm looking for 'f-' If people say 'f–', it's primitive.”
The Kogi founder and celebrity chef set up blue and red tent stands next to his Kogi truck's Palms location, where he and his team have been serving up Korean-tinged tacos, quesadillas and burgers since 2010.
At Tacos Por Vida, street-style tacos and burritos are simpler. The handmade tortillas, a mixture of corn and flour, blister and then puff up on the griddle and serve as hot vessels for steaks, pork, chicken and mushrooms grilled over charcoal and wood. Choi said he wanted to use real fire and offer something that wasn't necessarily Korean influenced, something that was more like the taco stands he visited as a kid, including his favorite, Tire Shop Taqueria.
Choi's al pastor marinade includes harissa, gochujang, sesame oil, annatto and green onion.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
“I moved around a lot here in Los Angeles and grew up on taco stands, attached markets and backyard tacos,” Choi said. “Those memories and everything related to that is a very specific taco for me. …We're bringing the history of a certain part of Los Angeles to this taco. The taco is not regional for any place in Mexico; It is regional here and it is regional for our history and our life.”
The best way to describe it, he says, is what one might find at a backyard barbecue in La Puente. Freddy González, Kogi's chief financial officer and manager, who is from La Puente, provided his small homemade grill while Choi awaited delivery of his equipment. On March 5, with a little extra space on their rented lot in Kogi, they quietly pitched a tent, lit the coals, and hand-wrote the scaled-down menu of $2 tacos and $10 burritos.
Choi always liked to finish his tacos with a little salt, pepper, and lime in addition to sauces, and at Tacos Por Vida he uses two salt blends to finish and prepare the tacos for guests, rather than allowing customization over the ubiquitous tubs of sauces, chopped cilantro, onion and pickled vegetables.
These recipes are based on watching moms, aunts, and grandmothers cook, in both Mexican and Korean home kitchens. His asada marinade (a blend of lime, salt, garlic, chiles, cilantro, and beer) is the culmination of roughly 20 styles he's witnessed and cooked over the decades. In some ways, she says, it's almost a throwback to the beer can chicken she served at her now-closed Culver City restaurant A-Frame.
The freshly caramelized pork is what Choi calls “a psychedelic al pastor,” marinated in a blend of nearly 30 ingredients, including gochujang, harissa, annatto, garlic, cilantro, green onions, orange, pineapple and sesame oil.
On the second day of service, Choi prepares a taco as the Tacos Por Vida line grows down the block. Guests began lining up an hour and a half before the service began.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
At first he considered using a top but opted for a long charcoal and wood grill.
“As a cook, I don't like to expose things that I don't feel like I have anything to say about or that I haven't been trained in,” he said. “There are people who do it well; I don't feel like I can offer anything to that, but I'm very good at the grill. There are some people who are very good with tongs, very good with emulsions and sauces. In my case, if you put me near the real fire, I can make this happen.”
Two days of service this week saw lines down the block. On Tuesday, Choi told The Times that customers began lining up an hour and a half before service. Tacos Por Vida will return on March 28 and 29, then officially launch on April 2, at which time Choi hopes to operate Tuesday through Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m.
The month of March serves as Tacos Por Vida's soft opening, where recipes, hours and items may change. They are experimenting as they go, testing proportions of sauces and wood; It's currently cherry and mesquite, but maybe with a little more almond wood or charcoal in the coming weeks.
“We're literally putting the pieces together in real time,” Choi said, adding, “For us it's like that old saying of fixing the plane while it's still flying.”
With Kogi operating for nearly two decades, the children of some of Choi's employees are now old enough to work and want to learn the business. According to the chef, up to two-thirds of the employees have been working at Kogi for more than a decade; He hopes to create a branch that can add new members to the family, as well as create new menu items.
“With Kogi, I can't change anything,” he said. “People who love Kogi will get screwed.”
Tacos Por Vida tacos and burritos can be filled with charcoal and wood-grilled chicken, pork, beef, or mushrooms.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
With tacos priced at $2 each, about half the cost of Kogi's, Choi also hopes Tacos Por Vida can offer a less expensive option for customers.
If the Tacos Por Vida stand in Palms proves successful, Choi and his team could expand the operation to other Kogi truck outposts such as Whittier, Long Beach, Temple City and Carson.
“In the early days of Kogi, people thought it was an orchestrated treasure hunt,” he said of its beginnings in 2008. “We were just looking for parking and trying to figure things out on the highway, and posting updates on Twitter, either we got a flat tire, we were late or we ran out of food. But on the other hand, it seemed like it was a clue or a big, mysterious game. Fifteen years later with Tacos Por Vida, nothing has changed for us. “We are still a small, independent, family-run business, and this was just an idea we had a couple of months ago.”
If the Palms outpost is successful, Choi hopes to expand the taco stand to his other Kogi Truck locations.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Of course, things have changed for Choi in the last 16 years.
Choi went from being a local culinary hero to an international celebrity chef. Since helping define food truck culture with Kogi, he's been featured as one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People, written a cookbook, hosted and appeared on multiple TV shows and web series, served as an advisor culinary in Jon Favreau's movie “Chef” and more. He recently expanded to Las Vegas with the acclaimed restaurant Best Friend.
Part of his surprise at the overwhelming response to Tacos Por Vida comes from how much he feels the food world has changed since the last time he and his team introduced a new restaurant to Los Angeles. Locol debuted in 2016 and Chego updated in 2017, TikTok had not yet launched in the US. Food trends, social media, and the landscape have changed dramatically.
“There were no food influencers, there was no Smorgasburg, there were no little pop-ups like you see now, restaurants weren't opening at the rate they are now,” Choi said. “So we didn't know if we were going to matter that much in the whole scene anymore.”
After experiencing the excitement of Tacos Por Vida, he says he now feels a little like beloved former Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela: “No matter how long we've been playing, people still love Kogi.”
Tacos Por Vida reopens at 3434 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, on March 28 and 29, with a grand opening planned for April 2.
Choi prepares a taco, left, while employee Jennifer Lopez flips freshly pressed tortillas on the griddle.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
