Korean American chefs have been walking all over the gourmand’s map as of late, and it seems they’ve really, finally arrived. There’s hardly a more tangible affirmation of that than winning Food & Wine’s Best New Chef Award—it’s one that L.A.’s Roy Choi can now call his own.
The man behind Kogi BBQ and Chego! topped the list of this year’s 10 honorees thanks to a luck of the last-names-in-alpha-order draw, but we’ll take the #1 of the country’s #1′s however it comes.
“This year we have one of the most exciting rosters of Best New Chefs ever,” said the magazine’s editor-in-chief Dana Cowin in a press release. “They represent every frontier of cooking in America today, from an avant-garde chef in a remote area of Virginia to the mastermind behind the Korean taco-truck boom in Los Angeles. The future of cooking in this country is in excellent hands.” And at least two of them are Korean.
As a bonus, Food & Wine’s May issue features a Kogi recipe in its cover feature, but it’s not the only Korean-inflected taco recipe to be found. Tomas Lee, from Atlanta’s Hankook, and Joe Kim, from L.A.’s Flying Pig also get to shine.
Photo via LAist
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One of the the biggest Asian cinema events to hit Southern California opens on May 10. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, features the latest works by established and emerging filmmakers, along with seminars, panel discussions and symposiums on topics relevant to Asian Pacific cinema.
Opening Night features “Shanghai Calling,” directed by Daniel Hsia and starring Korean American Daniel Henney, who plays a Chinese American expat lawyer navigating his way through the mean streets of Shanghai (the picture above also indicates he is a raisin smuggler). But does he take off his shirt? Go watch the movie to find out! read more
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This is not related to the story of this article but I got to this article on my iPhone and clicked on KoreAm newsfeed link within the Facebook app. I get to read the article just fine but the picture is always cut off and there’s no way for me to zoom out to see the picture. Any help on this? Thanks!
I’m glad to see the praise given to Koreans and Korean-Americans; it was long overdue. Korean people are a hard-working bunch by persevering, toiling for years, and eventually overcoming the odds. Look at K-pop; Korean dramas; Forever 21; Pinkberry; Samsung and LG’s dominance in consumer electronics by outnumbering/outselling the “once traditional” Japanese brands at Best Buy; Hyundai’s recent coming-of-age by shedding its “cheapy-car” image with the Genesis and now Equus (watch out BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus–laugh now but cry later); and now, Roy Choi and the other Korean culinary trailblazers who are penetrating major metropolitans across the U.S.
The only problem I see with Roy Choi’s fusion Korean-Mexican food is that there are too many copycats already. These plagiarists sell essentially the same food, yet they try in vain to use a different name/identity in order to give the false impression of originality. Please Korean people, stop pouncing on other Koreans’ original ideas for the sake of making a quick-buck. This will kill novelty and saturate the market with imitatators.
I’m need of a kimchi quesadilla stat. Excited to try his new place!