Roy Choi
Roy Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Los Angeles, California. Choi is known as one of the architects of the modern food truck movement through Kogi BBQ. He is author of the New York Times bestselling LA Son: My Life, My City, My Food and co-host of the Netflix cooking series The Chef Show with Jon Favreau. Choi is a voice and advocate for street food culture past, present, and future, and he is the co-owner, co-founder, and chef of Kogi BBQ, and Tacos Por Vida in LA, and The Chef Truck and Best Friend at Park MGM in Las Vegas. Choi was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People and received a James Beard Award and multiple Emmys for Broken Bread. He lives in Los Angeles.
Beef Cheek Tacos
Cabeza—or beef cheek—tacos are some of the best things this planet has to offer as food. I ate so many of these and other tacos growing up in both L.A. and Orange County that it became part of me and, in a way, prepared me to cook my own tacos. Splash some salsa verde on there, and that's it: SoCal, and especially L.A., on a plate.
Pillsbury Biscuit Dough Fried Doughnuts
I love doughnuts, but I really love malasadas. And ever since I visited Hawaii, I got up on this game. One day, a friend of mine showed me how he did it growing up in Oahu: take a pack of the Pillsbury biscuits and fry them, then toss them in sugar. "DUDE!!!!!!" I said. Try it and you'll see. You too will say, "DUDE!!!!!!!!!" and deplete your local grocery store of Pillsbury biscuit dough just to make these.
Perfect Instant Ramen
You can have almost no money and still have enough to live off this stuff for weeks, months, years. Eat enough and you'll start to look for ways to make it different: add a little more sauce, a little less sauce, cook the noodles less, cook them more, add more water, less water, add an egg, scramble the egg, etc. Me, I've become a freak when it comes to my instant ramen. Don't fuck wit it, don't fuck wit me, let me do my thing. This is how I do my own thing.