These are all...
reverberations and effects of stripping people of opportunity and jobs.
Then we go back and say well, we have these food deserts,
and why are they just eating these things.
well look at yourself in the fucking mirror you know?
That's like, how I look at it.
Roy Choi is known to many as the man who started the food truck movement with Kogi Barbecue,
a delicious mashup of Korean and Mexican food.
What made Kogi a hit was Choi's ability to blend different flavors,
a talent he credits to his upbringing on the streets of LA.
Well I'm an immigrant here in this country you know I'm American,
but you know my parents came over here with not much, and we had the hustle,
and we moved a lot we did a lot of different things to survive.
It gave me an understanding of how not to be racist.
Whether you do to the do haves or don't haves, you know,
like it taught me to figure out my situation and be connected with with all people.
Choi now has over half a dozen restaurants, a New York Times best-selling memoir,
and is considered one of the top chefs in the world.
He now wants to take the ideals of street food
and use them to bring healthier food to low-income neighborhoods.
He's partnered with Michelin star chef Daniel Patterson to create Locol,
a new restaurant in the heart of South Central Los Angeles.
Well we're in Watts. We're right in the heart of the Jordan downs projects the best picture
I could paint is a place filled with history love
smiling faces beautiful beautiful beautiful people
The 1965 Watts Riots left the neighborhood in ruins and over 50 years later
economic hardship continues to define the area
today 40% of residents live below the poverty line and suffer from high rates of obesity and other health ailments Los
Angeles's health atlas showed that people who live in watts have the lowest life expectancy rates in the entire state
Joy hopes that local can begin to reverse this trend by serving residents
healthier fast food with a menu that includes old classics like burgers and tacos and
lighter options including tofu bowls and fresh juice what you see is fast food so that way any
Anybody who walks through these screen doors when they look at the you. I want them to
have
Almost like an instinctual reaction to it like oh look at that look at that
Let me have that that's the taco that's a fold eat
That's a bird, and as they eat them when they're done eating and they're walking away like 15 minutes. They're like
I don't feel like a horrible. I feel good. You know I feel like jumping over that fence right now. You know like that
That's what I hold
Joy is motivation for opening local is to combat food deserts, which are areas that lack access to fresh produce and grocery stores
But several studies have questioned the existence of these food deserts, and they're linked to poor nutrition
Researchers say that it's not that people don't have access to fresh fruits and veggies
It's just that they don't want to eat it
Do you see it that way is it a question of access?
Or is it a question of cultural preference, and if so like how do you approach?
Trying to change that half of it
Daniel myself felt like food was the fastest thing that we could affect and that we in it was the it was the one
Area and loophole that we could like slide into
Because everyone has to eat
But really it's a typical iceberg of a larger discussion
Choi's argument is that it's more of a mental hurdle whether youngsters or adults to make their decisions
You know and lead themselves in devices or addictions or whatever it is out there. That's not what I'm trying to really talk about
What I'm talking about is it's the fundamental belief that we all believe that we have these choices these equal choices
What local is about is about looking our selves in the mirror and saying listen? It doesn't have to always be a fight, okay?
Yes, we all messed up, but listen. That's the past
Are we going to continue this for the next 50 years or are we gonna start some sort of change where everyone has an opportunity?
And it's not just because of your cultural background or the color of your skin
While policy makers have taken a mandate approach to putting healthier food in low-income areas choices
He doesn't have time for macro level forces to make change he's looking to community solutions to fix the problem
Before local he worked with students at Jefferson High School in South Central, Los Angeles
To develop a menu of healthy drinks and snacks teens would wanna buy and then gave them jobs in the new cafe
How did that work out do the kids want to eat those type of foods when they had more?
Control over. Yeah of course. I mean it's about your choices again. It's about what you offer
It's about your intent if you're lazy as a leader or a parent or whatever on an organization
And if you just say like your only choices in life are macaroni and cheese and frozen
burritos and pepperoni pizza
And those who only think kids are gonna like or those only things that I as a parent is gonna are gonna provide
then of course
The people around you are only going to want those things
But if you break that and say and just start from the premise of cooking delicious food or making delicious smoothies
And you just go from there, then whatever's in front of them
They will like you know because it's delicious
And so what we do here is we lay a lot of groundwork, and we ask everyone like we listen you know
What do you weak? What do you want to eat?
What do you crave D?
What do you what haven't you ever had that you want to eat you know like that you wish you could eat
and we started talking about the menu we start talking about the food start showing pictures of who we are and our food and
And we start asking real real questions. I think the difference is a lot of times we end up in this
situation where
When you say the word like food deserts and things like that where we feel like it's a privilege that we as a as
A privileged society can go and help people that need more
Our approach is the complete opposite is we ask the communities what they want
And if it's okay if we come in you know because once they give us the okay that is
That they want us, then we work from the ground up together
Collaboration is important to Joy the last couple of years
he's traveled to Copenhagen to speak to fellow chefs about the
Stereotypes of street food and the need to appeal to a younger and more diverse generation even now in this modern day
What's being written about Korean food or Chinese food or Taiwanese food is being called ethnic because?
The person who's writing it is
Is not from those countries so then anything outside of that is considered ethnic or foreign to me?
It's not ethnic you know that's who I am that's what I grew up with so it's like
I just think it's
It's really it's about
Changing the dialogue and that's exactly what the food truck revolution
Achieved it democratized the dining experience
By giving chefs a low-cost business model to serve up dishes to customers that pushed cultural and culinary boundaries
I'm really proud of what we did it took the narrative out of one voice and in it and it shared it with
Many voices you know and then so we got to tell our own stories
And then those became things that everyone was attracted to for their own reasons
Yeah, I mean definitely more choices for consumers out there
for sure and again it
You've got to experience something on its own terms even though
It's a very small thing it allowed us to kind of see what our possibilities are
When we don't like put race and culture and and and labeling in front of us
It's weird like this country like we want our we still think we have these Puritan ideals
You know like we think we're supposed to be this one thing and we will never admit that we're just like this crazy like psychedelic
Like gumbo pot there is no central point there is no like home base like what we're just fucking all over the place
Touched upon about the race thing, but do you see that getting worked out or is it still something that is being avoided?
You mean as a as a dialogue as a larger as a larger country?
We're far ways away, but maybe through food the dialogue can begin I'm doing this interview with you now
You know the reason no pun intended I'm doing this is because you know I felt like you guys
Want to have these discussions you know?
It's gonna take some time, but again the way we look at it is we're not expecting local to change
What's going on in this country
All the way like within the next month what we're hoping to do is just start the discussion and show some tangible like change
Troy hooks that has experienced mixing it up with street food will help local uh sure and and new kind of fast food
Revolution I already lived through the food truck revolution in my lifetime in the last seven years
I've seen before me
People's whole whole lives change whole neighborhoods whole industries whole stereotypes about how people used to talk about
By us brown people you know I mean like about our food about what was considered dirty, and what was considered clean?
you know horrible racist nicknames and jokes and
I've seen all of that change into a huge industry that has affected
This whole world the way I see this is if this is successful then what happens is
It's not just us. Then you have real estate developers, then you have
investors then you have
Politicians all looking at these communities that they've completely abandoned and coming back and saying hey
Wait a second I can invest in there I can build a mall right here. Can't build a movie theater right there
I can build a pizzeria in a baseball field right there, and we can't bring in all these things in and start
and then we can bring in these jobs and then
corporations and and
Startups can say okay
I can I can invest in two warehouses and distribution facilities and offices over here and that can give jobs out to the community
And then all of a sudden we create a whole other economy within the economy