Korean tacos get T.G.I.F'ed

Remember back in the day, when the phrase "Korean taco" was a naughty euphemism for the land down under?

That was back before the Kogi Taco Truck graced the Big Orange, before the words "Korean" and "fusion" were ever uttered in the same sentence, other than references to Pyongyang's nuclear program.

But with success comes imitative flattery, and eventually things that are hip and cool (and delicious) go mainstream.

For the Korean taco, that day has arrived: T.G.I. Friday's has announced that Korean steak tacos are being added to their fare of flare:

Whether looking for fresh, seasonal dishes, like the Strawberry Fields Salad or Caribbean Spiced Rum Ribs, or to indulge in dishes that follow current flavor trends, like the Korean Steak Tacos or Salted Carmel Cake, T.G.I. Friday's® guests now have 17 more reasons to come in to Friday's and celebrate. The 17 new dishes and mouthwatering menu favorites add value and variety for Friday's guests, including new vegetarian options and more shareable appetizers.

Frankly, I'm shocked. First, I had no idea that T.G.I. Friday's still exists outside of South Korea and Guam (I guess their business model is that if they just stick around long enough, 1990s nostalgia will eventually be all the rage). Second, Korean food really seems to be going mainstream on the Mainland.

Ahh, I don't know why I'm bashing them. In fact, back in Seoul I've long enjoyed going out to the various "family restaurants" with friends and family: T.G.I.F.'s, Outback, Bennigan's, etc. I haven't been to Hooter's, but I did hit the Hard Rock once or twice and even the thankfully defunct Planet Hollywood. Heck, I actually remember when Coco's was the one and only option available (now that is 1990s nostalgia).

So does this mean that Korean food has "arrived" in America? Here in Hawaii, "Korean ribs," "bulgogi" (or some variation of the spelling), etc., are household terms, but the Aloha State is the crossroads of the Pacific, so that doesn't count (the Hallyu trend here predates the Hallyu trend from Korea).

If I end up in a T.G.I.F's anytime soon (my mom likes to go there for the lunch specials when I'm on the Mainland and since she's paying, I'm not complaining), I might try one of the Korean appetizers, but I think I'll stick with chasing around Kogi's naranja truck (naranja means orange, for you Spanish-impaired readers, a nod to the O in OC).

UPDATE:
Writing for NorthJersey.com, Elisa Ung gives a tentative thumbs up to TGIF'd Korean tacos, I think:

The tacos were served nestled in foil, in a wire rack. The chunks of steak were tender; the dominant taste was soy sauce, but it was fairly mild. The meat also had a faintly sweet undertone, and bore some tinges of caramelization.

And that was basically the good news. Everything was wrapped in taut, sandpaper-like corn tortillas. I didn't taste ginger – though that may have been drowned out by the liberal globs of sriracha – and I saw no cilantro or basil, but my tacos were topped with a lettuce mix that included plenty of arugula.

Arugula! On a Korean taco! I could hear grandmothers from many different cultures howling as I ate.

I later tweeted Roy Choi, the acclaimed chef behind the Kogi truck. Was he going to try the T.G.I. Friday's tacos? "Wasn't planning on it," he tweeted back.

Does this dish show that Korean food is so common it now has the honor of being watered down into mediocre fare acceptable to the masses? That's nothing to celebrate. But the general prospect of more people discovering flavors? I'll raise a real bulgogi taco to that.

Yup. For you food purists who think Korean tacos shouldn't be served anywhere except from a truck, this is the price you pay for trying to popularize something you love, enough that it pops up in a neighborhood eatery so you don't have to drive twenty miles to get it: eventually someone tries to make it accessible to the hoi polloi in ways you might not approve. But isn't that phenomenon where Korean tacos come from in the first place?

...

Do you know taco?

I've written a few posts (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) about the Korean taco craze that started in Los Angeles and rode the Korean Wave across the United States.

But Korean tacos are to Urinara cuisine what Domino's is to Italian. And by that I mean a blasphemous bastardization that would be wholly unfamiliar to locals back in the motherland who would scoff at accepting such food as "theirs."

And it is against such a backdrop that the Korean taco has finally made its way "home" to Korea.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In an alley just off Garosoo-gil, the tree-lined street in Gangnam that has taken over from Apgujeong as the coolest place to be seen on weekends, is the three-month-old Grill5taco restaurant that has created its own version of Kogi’s fusion of Korean and Mexican foods.

Grill5taco was started by Ban Joo-hyung and Kim Hyun-chul and their original thought was to sell their tacos from trucks just like Kogi does. So they brought one over from the U.S. and hit the streets for a short time last year.

But the police kept slapping them with fines. Apparently, it’s OK to sell food from tents and from trucks that have permission to work in certain spots. But it’s against the law to just drive around wherever you want and sell food.

Mr. Kim said that’s when they decided to open the restaurant. “Garosoo-gil was the only neighborhood we considered,” he said.

Karosu-gil (Garosoo-gil) is a trendy little district not far from Shinsa-dong Station and Apkujŏng that is meant to be a harbinger of taste and style, so if it works there, it may work anywhere.

But will it work there? I think kalbi or pulgogi tacos are not a tough sell (the complementary starch from rice is replaced by a fried tortilla) as long as they make the cilantro optional, but kimchi quesadillas?! KoKos love themselves some cheese, but it's not something usually eaten with the spicy and pungent pickled veggies of Korea's national dish.

But who am I to talk? I like potato on my pizza.

...

Will greedy competition kill the Korean taco craze?

The Los Angeles Times thinks that just might happen:

Josh Hiller is fed up. As a partner in RoadStoves, the food truck outfitter that helped launch Kogi into the stratosphere, he thinks L.A.'s rapidly expanding new-wave food truck scene is getting out of hand.

"We tried to be very specific about the trucks we launched; we were looking for good business models and good food," says Hiller of the months that followed Kogi's launch 21/2 years ago and its unexpected success. At the time, Angelenos, united by Twitter, lined up for two hours or more to taste the truck's signature Korean barbecue tacos.

"We got hundreds of calls, but we rejected 95% of the requests. The problem came when the other commissaries and truck owners saw money and basically just prostituted the whole culture. So what you ended up with was 15 so-so trucks parked on Mid-Wilshire, the city unhappy, a mediocre food product and all the truck owners cannibalizing each other's business."

Actually, a bunch of copycat competitors jumping on the bandwagon — literally — sounds exactly like the mom-and-pop Korean business model. It has worked in Korea for lots of small-time entrepreneurs, so maybe it will work among fans of Korean food as well.

Nappŭn Nom-nom?

On the other hand, if they really are putting out an inferior product, that might poison the popular trend. On the other other hand, however, this social media-fed craze is the perfect venue for spreading the word that, say, Kogi-on-Wheels* or What The Truck?* just plain suck in terms of taste and/or authenticity, which will lead fans back to the original. I myself, when I'm back in the OC, will go in for the "real" thing.

How did I miss this?

When I spent the better part of the summer on the US Mainland, mostly in California, how did I miss Pyongyang Express, the North Korean food truck piggybacking the Korean taco truck made popular by the Kogi Truck?

It was apparently a very, very involved viral marketing ploy of the folks trying to sell this video game so lovingly reviewed by The Marmot, in which North Korea, through a series of unlikely but not implausible events, takes over East Asia and then the US.

Grading the food trucks

Though it doesn't mention the Kogi Taco Truck specifically, the Los Angeles Times has an article talking about how the food truck trend has led to a push in Los Angeles County to have these mobile eateries graded the same way brick-and-mortar restaurants are:

Los Angeles County public health officials are asking the Board of Supervisors to expand to food trucks the county’s popular letter grading system that evaluates safe food handling practices. The vote, originally scheduled for Tuesday, has been pushed back a week.

If approved, 6,000 full-service catering trucks and 3,500 hot dog, churro and other limited food service carts would be covered by the ordinance. If the supervisors approve it, enforcement would first begin in unincorporated areas of the county.

County health officials said they anticipate that cities will adopt the county ordinance as well, which would permit the county public health department to enforce the rule within city boundaries.

The move to grade trucks, just as restaurants have been for more than a decade, is another sign that the burgeoning food truck movement has taken a prominent place in L.A.'s dining world.

For non-SoCalers or the geographically impaired, this law would not directly affect Orange County, which borders Los Angeles County to the south but is not part of it. The OC, with three million residents, is a distinct municipality that has its own laws and regulations.

[source]

At any rate, this issue seems reminiscent of the battle between SoKo municipalities and p'ojangmach'a [포잔마차] over the issue of food safety. These sidewalk food stalls have very little regulation, even though they are usually parked in the same spot day after day. I guess food safety may be self-regulating, to some degree, as local residents or workers will eschew a place where they got sick in the past, forcing cart owners to clean up or clean out. The city of Seoul, however, thought that wasn't enough, and at various times has forced them all off the streets.

Meanwhile, back in L.A. County, some truck owners and their customers are worried that the new regulations, which include providing locations in advance, will mean less spontaneity (tracking down Naranja on Twitter is half the fun!) and more cost. Restaurant owners, on the other hand, complain that it is unfair that they are competing with trucker-foodies who don't have to play by the same rules.

I'd just like to note that no matter what profession one chooses to go into, Koreans can't escape the importance of grades.

I gave this an A.

Kogi truck

It was a spur of the moment thing (sorry, Wangkon), but my best friend's wife ("M3") said the Kogi Taco Truck was in the next town — we being in Anaheim and the Kogi Taco Truck being in Fullerton — so with their kid and dog in tow, we were going to get in the Expedition and track it down. Of course, from their part of Anaheim, "Fullerton" could mean it's 200 yards away, but it could also mean ten miles away, and it was closer to the latter.

As promised by their Twitter feed, they were at 303 N. Placenta Placentia Avenue in Fullerton, which is just on the other side of the Orange Freeway (the 57) from Cal State Fullerton. READ MORE...

WangKon936 also sent me an NYT article on taquerias in Korea

Which should be called Taquoreas.

The NYT article's photographer should be warned he will be arrested for taking down-shirt pictures as soon as he lands at Incheon International.

UPDATE:
And a partial HT goes to cmm, who is more m than cm ever will be.

Who owns the Korean Taco™?

Well, Kushibo does. Because I bothered to put the little ™ trademark thingee next to it. Duh. Next topic.

Seriously, though, this is a serious question, discussed by serious professors, like UCLA Law School's Kal Raustiala and the University of Virginia Law School's Chris Sprigman, who talk about it in the NYT's Freakanomics blog.

I know this is a serious discussion because Wangkon himself (HT!) emailed me a link of the OC Weekly blog article (blargicle™... er, barticle™) that highlighted this burning legal issue. And I'm glad he did, because I missed the NYT blarticle™ (that looks better) and I don't read the OC Weekly. Back in Hawaii, I pick up the Honolulu Weekly only to read this week's "Tom Tomorrow" (which they've stopped printing in color... the economy is that bad).

Anyhoo, this is has all got me to thinking that I now want a Korean taco. Ever since last year, I have been toying with the idea that when I'm in SoCal again (which I presently am), I would get myself on the Kogi Truck Twitter feed and find where they are that day. This could be exciting.

I may have to call Wangkon himself and suggest he join me when they next swing through OC. Usually I go on my food adventures with my Mom, because she pays, but this is what she'll say: "Why would we drive halfway across the OC and then wait in line like we're getting an iPhone for something we could put together ourselves by hitting two different restaurants at the same strip mall down on the corner?"

I then correct her, telling her it's a unique cross-cultural experience, and the synergy of mixing the two with intent is probably a better outcome than what we'd end up with by combining La Casa de Chang and El Coyote Naranjo. Also, don't use the definite article with "OC" unless you're doing so ironically, and please be reminded that since January 1, "strip malls" in Orange County are to be called "Lite Shopping Experience Centers." You're paying the fine next time, Mom.

So how 'bout it, WK? You pick me up at the Coffee Bean and we'll be on our way (unless you want to ride bikes).

In the meantime, there's a serious discussion for you, dear readers: Not unlike the notion of whether Korea "owns" kimchi, who gets to lay claim to the Korean taco. And since I withheld any adolescent to urge to make double entendres about Korean tacos, I expect you to do the same.

Roy Choi, the Korean taco truck guy, named hottest young US chef

Okay, now I really need to make a point of trying this out the next time I'm in The OC*, although the hype and anticipation could leave me disappointed.

From Reuters:

Food & Wine magazine cited Roy Choi and nine other cooks in their 20s to 30s in its annual list of best up-and-coming chefs.

Choi, who was born in Seoul, has built a loyal following in Los Angeles with his mash-up of Mexican and American street food with Korean flavors.

Food lovers can find his Kogi BBQ trucks via Twitter, the social networking tool that other food trucks rely on.

"Roy is bringing food to the street with real passion," Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin told Reuters.

The 39-year-old Choi rolled out his food truck in late 2008 targeting young club-goers. His business has blossomed with his debut restaurant slated to open this week.

Before his food trucks, the classically-trained Choi had worked at Michelin-star Le Bernardin in New York.

The other nine chefs named by the magazine work in more traditional settings across the United States.

Well, that's cool. I like stories like this because it's an inspiration to a new generation of kyopo parents that their kids can be something other than doctors, engineers, and lawyers.

* Again, native OCers only say "The OC" ironically.