Kogi BBQ

Yes you read my title right, Kogi BBQ stole their Korean taco idea from me. Really! It was a cold Fri­day night and I had just fin­ished K-clubbing at Vel­vet Room. My party found its way over to El Tau­rino on the south­ern bor­der of Kore­atown. The late night line was extra long with the usual mix­ture of drunk Kore­ans and Mex­i­can cow­boys, and I found myself talk­ing to the guy behind me. He intro­duced him­self as Mark and we started talk­ing about the menu. “No, I’ve never had the brain taco”, I told him. Then in a moment of bril­liance, I pro­claimed, “But what I could REALLY go for is a Kalbi taco …with like Kim Chi.” BAM and there you have it.

No, not really. Mark Manguera founder of Kogi BBQ didn’t steal the idea from me, but I’m pretty sure a scene like this has played out hun­dreds of times over at El Tau­rino. You get a bunch of drunk Kore­ans eat­ing tacos on a nightly basis and it was inevitable for one entre­pre­neur­ial chef to put 2 and 2 together. In fact, this seems to be the story that Kogi alludes to on their web­site:

…Kogi may never have become more than a ran­dom idea after a late night out on the town.

El Tau­rino or Kogi? Can you tell the difference?

After all, the Los Ange­les Kore­atown has the largest pop­u­la­tion of Kore­ans out­side of Seoul. Seoul! That’s more Kore­ans than any other city in Korea except Seoul. So as Kore­atown expands, it was inevitable for Kore­ans to start infring­ing on other eth­nic neigh­bor­hoods. There’s cur­rently some increased ten­sion in Lit­tle Tokyo where the num­ber of Korean owned busi­nesses and res­i­dents are start­ing to rival the num­ber of Japan­ese. For­tu­nately, Kore­ans and their His­panic neigh­bors to the south of K-town have found a way to har­mo­niously coex­ist.  On any given night, it is pos­si­ble to find a 50/50 mix of Kore­ans and Mex­i­cans stand­ing in line at El Tau­rino and a hand­ful of Mex­i­cans shop­ping at Korean gro­cery stores. Kogi BBQ is the inevitable child of this  cul­tural inter­min­gling. But inevitabil­ity aside, the inter­est­ing cul­tural mash-up that is the Korean taco is not wholly orig­i­nal. After all, Nobu Mat­suhisa made his name by mix­ing Japan­ese tech­niques with South Amer­i­can ingre­di­ents. But lets not take any­thing away from Mark. It took a true entre­pre­neur to do what he’s done because even a great idea is noth­ing with­out the right vehi­cle; and his vehi­cle of choice was a taco truck.

The Lord of the Rings loves Kogi

On another note, Kogi BBQ is the next in a line of food crazes fol­low­ing Pinkberry and Sprin­kles to hit Los Ange­les. Remem­ber them? Two hour waits for a $4 cup­cake? It’s as if LA has an addic­tion to wait­ing inor­di­nate amounts of time in line for good, but not great, food. As if track­ing down a taco truck and wait­ing an hour in a park­ing lot before the truck even arrives cements their sta­tus as true food­ies and ver­i­fies their devo­tion to great cui­sine. As if such an act was on par with trav­el­ing halfway around the world for the per­fect cup of joe or going to Paris for a baguette. I think the Kogi craze just proves  LA’s lemming-like devo­tion to trends. Hell, if movie stars are going then it must be good. I mean, THEY really CAN go to Paris for bread. Add on top of our desire for foodie sta­tus our obses­sion with star stalk­ing and how can Kogi not be a win­ner. We order over-priced drinks at the bars of celebrity restau­rants we can’t afford to eat at on a weekly basis hop­ing to be there on the same night that Paris Hilton shows up drunk. Why? So that we can say we’re liv­ing the Hol­ly­wood dream. “What did you do last night?” “Oh, I went to the same restau­rant as Paris Hilton.” Well with $2 tacos, Kogi makes that din­ing expe­ri­ence acces­si­ble to the masses. I have to admit, I got caught up in the hype. I was curi­ous what I was miss­ing out on. I mean seri­ously, a 600 per­son line for tacos? It can’t be that good.

My Kogi cherry got popped when I spot­ted the truck in Sil­ver Lake. Just by luck, I was dri­ving when I spot­ted a hip­ster crowd con­gre­gat­ing in a park­ing lot. Notic­ing a yet to be opened taco truck, I knew what I had for­tu­itously stum­bled upon. With only about 20 hip­sters in line, I knew I couldn’t pass this up. Skinny jeans, fedo­ras, scarves, and Amer­i­can Apparel were all in atten­dance. The talk of the line was micro-blogging and it seemed like every­one had their cam­eras out, myself included. I ended up wait­ing in line for roughly 30 mins, which now after try­ing them is the max that I’d be will­ing to wait.  But before I had left, the line had dou­bled. As I got to the front of the line, I looked up into the truck to see if I could rec­og­nize any of the taco magi­cians from their press blitz. Roy? Roy? There were four peo­ple cramped into the rolling sar­dine can. The guy tak­ing the orders was Korean but not Roy. The rest were …Mexican?

Some things stay the same.

I guess some things stay the same. Either way, I was not deterred. I ordered 1 Tofu, 1 Kalbi, and 1 Spicy Pork taco. After hav­ing my name called, I found a spot behind the truck to gob­ble down my treats. I put on my Iron Chef face and took my first bite. To my dis­ap­point­ment, my kalbi and spicy pork meat were over­cooked. After fin­ish­ing my order, I came to this sad con­clu­sion …they all tasted the same. If I took a blind taste test, the only one I could pick out would be the tofu because of the tex­ture. Over­all, on a scale of 1–5, I would give it a 3. If I had a taco crav­ing, this wouldn’t sat­isfy it. If I had a kalbi crav­ing, this wouldn’t sat­isfy it either. It’s some­thing all its own. I guess the real judg­ment is that, yes, I would eat it again. I wouldn’t drive across Los Ange­les for it like Father’s Office, but if I was drunk and they were parked out­side a club, it’d be worth wait­ing in line for 30 minutes.

So if the tacos weren’t that great, then who are the real stars? I’d have to say Twit­ter, the inter­net, blog­ging, and those damn Asians with their damn cam­eras.  That’s an even more annoy­ing trend that I’ve noticed hap­pen­ing around Los Ange­les — Asians show­ing up at five star restau­rants and whip­ping their cam­eras out to take pic­tures of their food. Talk about rein­forc­ing a stereo­type. Sadly, I’m one of these Asians. I was at the Gor­don Ram­say restau­rant last month and was unabashedly orga­niz­ing a pho­to­shoot with my salt and pep­per shaker when i noticed I wasn’t the only one. There were three other tables doing the same thing! Flash. Flash. Flash. The reg­u­lars must think we’re crazy …or never get out. “These Asians. They’re not used to see­ing food with­out dog in it.” Any­way, this whole Kogi craze wouldn’t be pos­si­ble with­out our obses­sion with cam­era phones, an addic­tion to post­ing all of our pho­tos on Face­book, and the on-demand updates that Twit­ter makes possible.

I can’t say that I was dis­ap­pointed. Over­all, I got what I expected. Pinkberry was good but not 2 hours in line good.  It’s the same with Kogi. If you’re up for some­thing unique and if the line is not too long or you don’t have to drive around like you’re look­ing for a secret rave, Kogi is worth the $2. I guess I went look­ing for an epiphany and I shouldn’t have. A new way to expe­ri­ence Korean food, a rab­bit hole through which I once entered, I would never return. But what I got instead was a slightly salty per­spec­tive on the chang­ing cul­tural demo­graph­ics of Los Ange­les. But take this from me, if you don’t want to brave the lines, give it some time. I’m sure it’s just a mat­ter of time before the idea is copied across Kore­atown and you’ll be able to order kalbi tacos every­where. Because after all, that’s what we Asians do best, copy a good idea. But if you want to do what Los Ange­leans do best, suf­fer through a line so that you can say you were one of the orig­i­nal devo­tees, go here.

There’s a new trend: Broad­cast my life! I am so interesting!

Now that every­one has the abil­ity to, every­one feels the need  …no, the oblig­a­tion to tell the world about every lit­tle thought they have and every bowel move­ment they make. No seri­ously, search for poo or bath­room on twit­ter, you’d be sur­prised. As I was telling my online neme­sis @violetmae (who by the way doesn’t know is my neme­sis yet), I don’t think there is enough inter­est­ing content/people to sup­port a site like Twit­ter for much longer. And now, with the main­stream­ing of Twit­ter, it will be over­loaded with com­plete drib­ble. Every­one from McCain, who doesn’t know how to email, to your mom (…lit­er­ally, your mom. I’m not try­ing to insult you) will be tweet­ing. It’s going to be a com­plete clusterf##k. Imag­ine if you got everybody’s Face­book sta­tus update in your news­feed. That’s going to be Twit­ter. It’d be the same as Youtube tak­ing over DirecTV …but worse! It’s 24/7 lol­cats, old man rants, and fat peo­ple dancing!

Then the next step in the Twit­ter move­ment would have to be a Hulu equiv­a­lent, a more focused site that only has qual­ity con­tent on it. But we already got that; that’s fmylife. But now fmylife has got­ten so pop­u­lar, it has con­se­quently gone to crap. Every­one with a key­board thinks they’re funny and they’ve started gam­ing fmylife with fake posts, fake posts that aren’t even good! I tried to show my friend fmylife the other day and told him how funny it was. We went through two pages before we found some­thing even mildly amus­ing. I was embar­rased. Worse thing was, the post was obvi­ously a fake. You’d need a whole cot­tage indus­try just to shift through the mess and aggre­gate what was worth­while. And the sad truth would be, most of it wouldn’t be worth my pre­cious time. Money, friends, online accounts …my time is the only thing I can’t make more of.

Here’s an even sad­der truth: If you’re bor­ing in real life, you’re prob­a­bly more so on Twit­ter. If you’re an idiot in real life and have idi­otic thoughts, Face­book sta­tus and Twit­ter just makes it eas­ier for the rest of the world to real­ize this …which I guess in it of itself isn’t a bad thing. Then I can weed the idiots out of my life a lot faster. It use to take a while to fig­ure out if a girl was a snotty clingy psy­cho. Now I can just look at her sta­tus his­tory and I’ll know in moments she’s psy­cho when she has post like, “What is love? Will I ever know it? Why are all the guys I date 8554o735?” or “I was out­side his apart­ment again last­night. He says she’s his sis­ter but I know he’s lying.”

But despite hav­ing it’s upshots, like the exam­ple men­tioned above, as well as hav­ing a few inno­v­a­tive and pro­duc­tive ways to use Twit­ter, most won’t know how to use it prop­erly and they will unfor­tu­nately over­whelm those who do. The mes­sages of busi­nesses like Dell and Kogi BBQ will only be a whis­per on the Twit­ter­scape drowned out by the noise of the illit­er­ate masses vying for our atten­tion. In fact, it would serve a busi­ness like Kogi bet­ter to have an API on their web­site that updated their cur­rent loca­tion than risk get­ting lost in #Kogi hell on Twit­ter with a bunch of crap reviews and unin­tended com­ments. Actu­ally, they should already be doing that right now. For proof, just search #sxsw and you’ll get more  “No, I’m not wear­ing green and no, you may not pinch me” than any sub­stan­tial news. And these are sup­pose to be the pros!

To me, the only ray of hope is Face­book. The new Face­book UI is meant to be more like Twit­ter, and that’s smart. Because a site ded­i­cated to tweet­ing alone isn’t inter­est­ing enough to keep my atten­tion. Look at Friend­ster, it was about degrees of seper­a­tion. If it just stayed as that, no one would go there any­more. It had to evolve and that’s what Face­book is doing with its new fron­tend.  And as soon as Face­book offers the best fea­tures of Twit­ter, there will be no real use to tweet. Not only does Face­book offers so much more fun­tion­al­ity than Twit­ter, Face­book has way too big a lead on users for Twit­ter to make a dent. I already intro­duced peo­ple to Twit­ter by telling them it was like a stream of Face­book sta­tuses, it just makes sense for Face­book to take over the Twit­ter world. Do I sense another buy out attempt? Prob­a­bly not, Twit­ter should have seen this com­ing when Face­book tried to buy them out the first time. Either way, it is Facebook’s will­ing­ness to evolve and it’s abil­ity to stay on the fore­front of trends that will keep Face­book at the top of our browser history. A rev­o­lu­tion is at hand, one that started with the Guten­berg Press and that is now cul­mi­nat­ing with sites like Twitter.  Mass pub­lish­ing has been brought to the masses and just like any war, there will be col­lat­eral dam­age. It might serve us all to find a safe place to take cover until the whole thing blows over …oh who am I kid­ding, look to the right of your screen at the blue box and click the icon that says “Follow”.

I’ve already lived through the 80s once; and with all the neon col­ors design­ers are inte­grat­ing into clothes this year, I’m hav­ing flash­backs every time I walk through a mall. It pains me, lit­er­ally, to see a new gen­er­a­tion mak­ing the same fash­ion mis­takes we made in the 80s. Along with Flock of Seag­ull hair­cuts, neon col­ors should have been left in the last cen­tury. I have pic­tures of myself from the 80s and I cringe every­time I even think about my skate-or-die hair­cut with my bangs hang­ing down in front of my eyes and a gawdy neon print t-shirt bright enough to flag down an air­plane if I ever got lost in the wilder­ness.  Now these poor kids are going through it again. They’re gonna regret their fash­ion choices in a few years when they look back  and say, “What the hell was I think­ing?”  Now with the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of face­book, their pic­tures won’t just dis­ap­pear into a box under their bed, they’ll be for­ever imor­tal­ized on the every present world wide web. Now it looks like their gonna make the mis­takes of the 90s as well.

I caught this can­did pic­ture of a col­lege girl at Office Depot in the San Gabriel Val­ley. (Please, no com­ments on me tak­ing can­did pics of young girls in pub­lic places) Any­way, notice the tell­tale red and black lum­ber­jack plaid. Grunge was an anti-fashion move­ment that orig­i­nated in the 90s Seat­tle music scene, that was pop­u­lar­ized by bands like Nir­vana and Pearl Jam, and char­ac­ter­ized by its com­bi­na­tion of plaid but­ton downs with shorts or ripped jeans. Now it looks like this anti-fashion is becom­ing the lat­est trend for the uber-fashionable. Accord­ing to this arti­cle from late last year ‘90s Grunge Is Mak­ing a Come­back.

Despite attempts to be new and orig­i­nal, I think fash­ion is cir­cu­lar because when it gets too avant garde it becomes com­pletely unrec­og­niz­able and then it’s just mis­taken as hav­ing no taste at all. The way I see it, the trend­set­ters try to set them­selves apart from the rest of the masses by wear­ing items that are on the edge of good taste. Then every­body else picks up on this, and want­ing to be trendy but not too dif­fer­ent, adopts items and trends that are rec­og­niz­able with them, like trends from the past.  And every time a fash­ion era is recy­cled, it gets a slight update in some way, like with a more cur­rent cut or get­ting paired with more cur­rent acce­sories like the black tights and over­sized purse of the chick in the pic­ture above. In my com­pletely unfash­ion­able opin­ion, some­times it works and some­times you end up with the eye scorch­ing color palette of the eight­ies. Next thing you know, we’ll be wear­ing Birken­stocks and Doc Martens again.

Amer­i­can Ninja

Nin­jas and Pirates are played out. As an Asian, I’ve been obsessed with Nin­jas since a kid. I even use to have a pair of throw­ing stars that I lost in my front yard and that sub­se­quently destroyed the gardener’s lawn mower. I must have watched Amer­i­can Ninja like 300 times. And I’ve got to say, a white Ninja was really con­fus­ing to as an Asian child. But now I think our pop cul­ture is get­ting over sat­u­rated with Nin­jas and Pirates. There’s Ask a Ninja, Ninja this, and Ninja that. There’s even Ninja War­rior Chal­lenge which in my opin­ion is really a game show based on Gymkata.

Gymkata

So lets try and change it up. My first thought was for Zom­bies but they’re start­ing to get played out too. They’ve got that app on Face­book and every­thing. Even more impor­tant, they just don’t have enough mythol­ogy behind them. Here are some other pos­si­bil­i­ties I mulled over: Witches and Wiz­ards, Aliens, Legionar­ies, Mercenaries

Amer­i­can Gladiator

But of all the pos­si­ble sug­ges­tions, I think Glad­i­a­tors should be the next big thing. And I’m not talk­ing about the Amer­i­can Glad­i­a­tors dressed in tights kind. I’m talk­ing about the hard­core kill or be killed, mixed mar­tial arts mas­ters from the past, brought in from around the world to train, fight, and kill each other. They’re steeped in a great mythol­ogy. They have a movie by the same name. And best of all, there’s enough vari­ety in weapons so that fan­boys won’t get bored and can have their own iden­tity; if you’re black, your Glad­i­a­tor could be from Africa, Asian from China, etc. Gla­tia­tors are the per­fect next obses­sion. I there­fore declare today to be National Glad­i­a­tor day.

Leave a com­ment with addi­tional suggestions!

sECret idEN­ti­ties Cover

In honor of the new Asian Amer­i­can super­hero comic sECret idEN­tites, I have decided to reveal my 5 quick and easy steps to becom­ing a real life Asian-American Super­hero. As a child, I always wanted to be a super­hero. And to a cer­tain extent even right now with Bat­man Returns being such a hit, I get the crav­ing to put on some tights, build a secret Lair, and yell at some­one “We’re pro­fes­sion­ally through!” Any­way, I remem­ber after watch­ing the orig­i­nal Super­man imme­di­ately climb­ing up on my roof with a trash bag, hold­ing it like a cape, and jump­ing off. Spi­der­man on PBS inspired me to climb up the tallest jun­gle gym and jump to a lower rung like a spi­der. Indi­ana Jones had me grab­bing a rope and jump­ing from tree to tree as I swung it like a whip.

…I did a lot of jump­ing off things as a kid. I guess what I’m say­ing is that maybe if I had an Asian super­hero to idol­ize, I wouldn’t have gone to the emer­gency room as much. So for that rea­son alone, let me tell you a lit­tle bit about sECret idENtites.

This ground­break­ing graphic anthol­ogy brings together lead­ing Asian Amer­i­can cre­ators in the comics industry—including Gene Yang (National Book Award final­ist for Amer­i­can Born Chi­nese), Bernard Chang (Won­der Woman), Greg Pak (The Hulk), and Chris­tine Nor­rie (Black Canary Wed­ding Spe­cial )—to craft orig­i­nal graph­i­cal short sto­ries set in a com­pelling “shadow his­tory” of our coun­try: from the build­ing of the rail­roads to the Japan­ese Amer­i­can intern­ment, the Viet­nam air­lift, the mur­der of Vin­cent Chin, and the incar­cer­a­tion of Dr. Wen Ho Lee.Appeal­ing to both comics fans and Asian Amer­i­cans seek­ing to claim their place in Amer­i­can cul­ture, Secret Iden­ti­ties makes bril­liant use of the con­ven­tions of the super­hero comic book to expose the real face of the Asian Amer­i­can experience.

Enter­tain­ing and enlight­en­ing, Secret Iden­ti­ties offers whiz-bang action, sear­ing satire, and thought­ful com­men­tary from a com­mu­nity too often over­looked by the cul­tural main­stream, while show­cas­ing a vivid cross-section of the tal­ents whose imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­ity is dri­ving the con­tem­po­rary comics renaissance.

The first story 9066 “cen­ters around a Japan­ese Amer­i­can super­hero who is sent into an intern­ment camp after Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt signs Exec­u­tive Order 9066 on Feb­ru­ary 19, 1942 in response to the attack on Pearl Har­bor”. You can find out more about them on their web­site or you can drop them a com­ment at their MySpace page. They even have a pre­view on their web­site (PDF, 5.5 mb). And just like any other grass­roots move­ment, they’ve made a YouTube video to get the word out to the masses. Check it out and pass it on. The book will be avail­able in April 2009 — or you can pre-order your copy today on Amazon.com.

Now what you’ve all been wait­ing for, my 5 easy steps to becom­ing and Asian Amer­i­can Super­hero:

1. Pick a power

No, being good at math is not a super power. I’m talk­ing about get­ting a hold of some rare earth metal or meteor and get­ting some radi­a­tion poi­son­ing. If I’ve learned any­thing from comics, get­ting radi­a­tion poi­son­ing leads to super­pow­ers. If for some rea­son, beyond my imag­i­na­tion, you can’t get your hands on radioac­tive mate­ri­als, start think­ing out­side of the box. Maybe some­thing closer to home that you have access to. …a tal­ent or char­ac­ter trait that you can exploit …one that you can hone to a razor sharp edge. For instance, one year dur­ing col­lege I was called Gas Man for my power to clear a room with my gas. I have also gone by Cap­tain Save-a-Ho and Cap­tain Cock-Block. Maybe you have heard of my good deeds.

2. Make a costume

When pick­ing a cos­tume, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that this will become your iden­tity. It will become the most rec­og­niz­able aspect of your pub­lic pro­file. Your col­ors, they logo on your chest, they all come together to cre­ate your pub­lic image. Tights with your under­wear on the out­side is not only clas­sic super­hero but prac­ti­cal as well. With all the ass kick­ing and hair-raising expe­ri­ences going on, you can be secure in the fact that you will never shit your under­wear. But remem­ber, you not only rep­re­sent super­heroes but Asians as well. So try to stay away from stereo­types such as a bowl hair cut. And if that bulge in your tights …is not so much a bulge but a lump, think of wear­ing a cod­piece. Bat­man does it. Let’s try to not rein­force neg­a­tive stereotypes.

Not X-Men but Y-Men

3. Get a Secret Identity

Luck­ily for us, a secret iden­tity is not some­thing we have to worry about. As we all know, all of us Asians look alike.

4. Get a secret Lair

This is an impor­tant but often over­looked step to becom­ing a super­hero. Your lair is where you train. It’s where you do your research and more impor­tantly do your much needed heal­ing after long bat­tles with your enemy who we define in step 5. You want it to be safe and for the most part impos­si­ble to find. For that rea­son, I have cho­sen a pho shop. Have you seen how many Pho restau­rants there are in the San Gabriel Val­ley? Good luck find­ing that! And even if you do, open the secret door you have to sit at the right table with pull out the clean chop­stick. Do you know how hard it is to find a clean chop­stick in a Viet­namese restau­rant? Hey, I’ve heard of more imprac­ti­cal things in comic books. “Look at me! I’m Super­man. Now with my glasses on, look at me I’m Clark Kent. What a great disguise!”

5. Find an Arch Neme­sis to fight, an injus­tice to right,  or a cause to champion

Finally, maybe the most impor­tant step to becom­ing a super­hero, find­ing a great enemy. Your arch neme­sis needs to be imme­di­ately revolt­ing, an enemy that we can all despise and hate. Now this doesn’t have to be a real per­son. It’s actu­ally eas­ier to find weekly adven­tures if it’s not. It could be cor­rup­tion, face­less cor­po­rate bul­lies, or some other sort of hor­ren­dous but relat­able injus­tice. For instance, some of the per­sonal adver­saries that I have fought in the past have been: bad dri­ving, eyes that don’t open all the way, and poor engr­ish. My cur­rent arch neme­sis is tak­ing a shot of alco­hol with­out turn­ing red.

So I say to you out there, good luck future Asian-American super­heros of the future. The only caveat that is give is with great power comes great respon­si­b­lity. Please use this infor­ma­tion only for good and not for evil.