If LA had a song, one of those songs just might be the knocking sound of a Kogi truck engine whistling through the streets, on its way to feed. If LA had an anthem, you’d find it in our collective appetite for deliciousness.
Kogi unknowingly set off a flavor bomb that would shift the foundations of the food industry forever and make waiting in line a natural occurrence.
Kogi started at midnight in November of 2008 when we hit the streets of LA with our Korean BBQ tacos that merged Twitter with smart phones in a tortilla in the middle of the night in front of a nightclub in Hollywood. We were just an anonymous group of rascals cooking what spoke to us. But crowds and cravings soon followed as our flavors began to connect people together and love spread through the streets and neighborhoods. Over the years, we’ve gone on to feed almost every street from LA to OC to the South Bay to the Valley to the IE to Ventura and Santa Barbara counties to major music festivals, even worldwide.
Our operation has grown to include several trucks, a full catering operation, a bar, Alibi Room, a live fire street taco stand, Tacos Por Vida and a rice bowl counter shop, Chego! (which is looking to return soon!). Our Kogi team is extremely dedicated to our communities and customers who have supported us over the years. We feed everyone and try to bring smiles each day, every taco, everywhere. We mobilize in times of crisis and show up wherever we’re needed. We remain true to our roots while always pushing forward. As we say, Kogi Por Vida. For Life.
If you know Kogi you may know our Papi, our chef, our spiritual leader and resident space cadet.
Roy Choi was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Los Angeles, California. Choi is known as one of the architects of the modern food truck movement through Kogi BBQ by merging food and social media with community and honoring the street food culture that laid the path before him, and for his civic minded TV show ‘Broken Bread’ on KCET/Tastemade, which in 2020 won him a James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Host in a television series.
On a global scale, Roy is co-host in the full blown Netflix cooking series ‘The Chef Show’ with Jon Favreau. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. In 2010, Food and Wine magazine named him Best New Chef. His cookbook/memoir L.A. Son was a NY Times Bestseller in 2013. In 2016 he was named TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World. And in 2017, LocoL in Watts, received the first ever LA Times Restaurant of the Year award.
Roy resides in Los Angeles where he is a voice and advocate for street food culture past, present, and future, and the co-owner, co-founder, and chef of Kogi BBQ, Chego!, Best Friend at Park MGM Las Vegas, and LocoL.