For Roy Choi, the word kaput is about as welcome as a piece of gristle. As in media reports that describe a closed restaurant as kaput.
“I hate kaput,” the celebrated chef, restaurateur, TV show creator and cookbook author said Wednesday. “No one opens a restaurant to close it two years later.”
Choi smiled as he put the kibosh on kaput, but there was no mistaking the passion that lay behind his distaste for the word: People put their whole selves into running a restaurant, and when it closes, kaput seems too flip a way to describe the death of dreams.
The 56-year-old Choi made the remark during his keynote session at the annual Bar & Restaurant Expo, the industry’s leading trade show, that ran Monday through Wednesday at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Aisha Tyler, the actress, talk show host and beverage brand founder, moderated the session.
In a frank and freewheeling talk before several hundred hospitality professionals — and in a later later chat with Neon — Choi discussed early struggles, his pioneering Kogi BBQ food truck, how it feels to become an icon, his take on the state of the hospitality business and why he might be opening a third restaurant in Vegas.
‘From roach coach to gourmet’
Kogi launched in November 2008 in Choi’s native Los Angeles, parking outside of nightclubs to feed hungry patrons with Korean barbecue tacos and burritos. Choi opened Kogi with $1,500; initially, the truck rental was free.
“My crew was really young,” the chef said. “We just wanted to make 800 bucks a night and get phone numbers. Kogi still means something to people 18 years later.”
Why did Kogi roll up so successfully, becoming a leader in the modern food truck movement? “There was a hunger for culture, for connection, for flavor,” he said. “It changed the language from roach coach to gourmet. Kogi broke through.”
Then and now, Choi said Kogi was fueled by his love for “giving food away, hanging out in parking lots, watching the sun go down and the streetlights come up and driving around the city.”
More than a chef
The decade between the chef’s graduation from the Culinary Institute of America in 1998 and the debut of Kogi in 2008 saw some career high points for Choi, including an internship at Michelin-starred Le Bernardin in New York City and positions with Hilton Hotels, but some personal low points, too.
“I was a former gambling addict,” Choi said. “I was down to the last couch I could surf on. I thought I was just going to be a chef. Kogi helped me realize I could be whoever I wanted to be.”
He offered that realization as advice to other hospitality professionals: “Don’t let anything stop you.”
The years since the opening of Kogi have seen abundant achievement and accolades for Choi: multiple restaurants, Best New Chefs recognition from Food & Wine magazine, a James Beard Award, two television shows, two cookbooks and a signature commitment to improving restaurant culture and the lives of people who work in them. Choi is now an icon.
“I hope I’m accepting the role with gratitude and grace,” he said. Choi laughed as he added: “Like an athlete, the knees are starting to give out. I’m moving into the coach’s role. I’ve become the OG — that stands for Old Guy.”
Another Vegas restaurant
Later this year marks the eighth anniversary of Choi’s Best Friend and the third anniversary of his and Jon Favreau’s The Chef Truck, both restaurants in Park MGM on the Strip. Choi said he was very involved in the restaurants, coming to Vegas three to four times a month.
“Locals and visitors, seeing so many new faces, people experiencing it for the first time — they are transferring that energy to the restaurants, so it still feels fresh for me, it still feels new,” he said.
“I would love to open more things in Vegas. It has been a wonderful experience, more than I could imagine. Best Friend is a multisensory experience, so I would love to open something more streamlined. I’m actually talking with MGM about doing something else with them.”
Choi added that because of his teams at the restaurant, “I’ve experienced this town as a local.”
More than money
The restaurant business is always tough, but these are uniquely challenging times, Choi said, not least because of rising costs and prices that cannot be sustained.
“We’re still running off of old models. Everything we’re doing is barely getting us to the finish line,” he said.
“Getting into this field, we already accepted the difficulties, already accepted the margins, already accepted the bumps and bruises. We’re not doing this just for the money. We’re doing this because we don’t know anything else, because we’re meant for this. It fills a part of our souls, fills other people’s souls. These are all values and currency that aren’t money.
“Do we reshape the way the industry is formed? We’re going to end up in this corporate system that only has corporate restaurants. Everything manufactured and processed and corporatized.”
But Choi said he was determined not to see that happen.
“I don’t know how to do anything else. This industry deserves all of us doing this again. It’s not unfathomable that in 20 to 30 years, people won’t have the opportunity to enter this industry. That can’t be something that we all accept.”
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at [email protected]. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.