The King of LA Cooking

One man is deciding how Los Angeles eats and that is restaurant maven Roy Choi.He is responsible now for how the West coast metropolis eats.His ideas are a combination of both traditional and stoner new wave.It's down home and hipster all rolled into lists of tasty menus. It won't be long before he hit here,in the New York metro area. Chef Choi's story was a front page one on today's New York Times Dining section"Dining regular contributor ,Jeff Gordonier, wrote about this unique and truly only in America story.Only a few years ago Chef Choi wwas selling tacos out of a typical LA food chef.The service called Kogi featured tacos stuffed with Korean barbecue.This is pretty common fare however ,in like other food trucks.Kogi had a huge following onTwitter.Fans raved and promoted this fusion quick food on almost an epic scale.This led to his second venture,Chego,a fast food stand located in LA's Chinatown.Here Chef Choi sells rice bowls,comfort food from his Korean American childhood.He has also embraced truly American classics such as beer can chicken, cheeseburgers, mashed potatoes and cornbread at another of his restaurants, The A Frame, a former refurbished IHOP.He then went into Caribbean cooking with the shack called Sunny Side, a homage to those Jamaican and Bahamian beachfront eateries.He serves rum drinks that go well with the mofango and oxtail stew along with blueberry pancakes.To top that off this food mogul also supplies the joshed at at bar called The Alibi.His versatility comes from his background,a family of restaurant owners, an education at the Culinary Institute of America and a stint at Le Bernardin You would think Chef Choi would be busy enough with all these eateries, but he still has the energy to run his own trendy hotel in downtown LA?The Sydell Group backed him up and he created.It's trendy but thankfully not pretensious (unlike some Greenwich Village ones)People can walk in, and feel welcomed no matter how they're dressed.The hotel is home to yet another of Chef Choi's list called Pot and features the food of his childhood.It's combined with a bakery to produce Asiansweet buns amd hipster baked Mac and cheese.The hotel also houses a vegetable driven restaurant called Commissary.Not only that he tailored room service not to those traditional room service dishes but to what. People would actually eat such as Spam and eggs and a twist on Ramen soup.This last can easily be copied at home.It's just the famed Ramen soup pack that has a poached egg, butter and a slice of American cheese to it(this will be attempted later but with Parmesan cheese instead of the American).The refurbished soup is popular with Korean American kids, a sort of comfort food like baked Mac and cheese. Roy Choi is one of the newer wave of chefs.They mix their culinary heritage with hipster influence and American culture.The result is what American wants to eat.