Kogi BBQ kept out of Orange County

The celebrated Kogi meat truck, which specializes in Korean barbecue and has twitterers all aflutter when it rolls into their neighborhood, is being kept on the Los Angeles side of the Orange Curtain.

While Roy Choi's short-rib Korean tacos have ventured a few times into the land of Tricky Dicky and Mickey, the Orange County Health Care Agency says Choi, who is from OC, does not have a permit to run a "mobile food facility" and had better stay out until he gets one.

Choi is taking it in stride:

We have nothing but love for Orange County. We’d be out there every single day, but we got kicked out. We came here for the people, not the county. If we are going to be treated like outcasts, so be it. We’ll just come to the county line.

This reminds me a bit of the plight of the p'ojangmacha (포장마차), the popular food carts serving topokki ddŏkpokki (떡볶기), often in a tent with heating during the rain or cold. Most lack permits to be where they are, and various municipal governments vacillate between cracking down on them as a health hazard, or letting them be, as a cultural icon and contributor to a lively street scene.