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.