Original subtitles

ROY CHOI (VOICEOVER): Warning, this class

contains some bad language.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi.

I'm Roy Choi.

You might know me as a spark to the modern food

truck revolution.

Or for one of my restaurants, Best Friend, Locol, A Frame,

Chego.

Or as Korea Town's very own.

But at the end of the day, I'm just

an LA kid who really loves tacos, and dumplings,

and kimchi, and pickles, and pancakes.

To me, food is all about connections.

And I'm so excited to cook for you.

Look at that.

And we ain't even done yet.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I don't know why I'm out of breath.

I guess because I'm so excited.

I'm so excited.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm an LA kid, a Korean kid, an immigrant kid.

My family had a restaurant called Silver Garden.

The kitchen I grew up in came from the whole other side

of the world.

So I grew up around plastic colanders like this,

long chopsticks to cook.

My mom cooked almost everything like this.

I think she even was so magical, she picked up liquid with this.

There was food everywhere.

There was always stuff bubbling and boiling and fermenting,

and kimchi stains on everything.

When I went to culinary school, those things

that I grew up with weren't necessarily frowned upon,

but people didn't get it.

They didn't get that it was a part of cooking.

I learned all the basics around the "Escoffier" cookbook.

All the mother sauces, how to braise, saute, poach.

I went on to work in New York City and fine dining

French restaurants.

Then I went into hotels and resorts,

where I was still cooking mostly food that I really

didn't grow up around.

And it took me a long time to understand

how to merge the two worlds together,

between my formal training and what I was brought up with.

NEWSCASTER 1: This might look like your average taco truck,

but it's really anything but.

I had a life changing experience with the Kogi truck.

And it was just an opportunity to cook the food

that we wanted to cook.

We had no idea it would start a revolution.

NEWSCASTER 2: Kogi is so popular that most nights, the truck

runs out of food.

The food is a mix of Korean and Mexican cuisine,

which is a hit with both food snobs and late night partiers.

It's not Mexican.

It's not Korean.

It's not even Korean-American.

It's just American food.

You know, I was raised here.

And just because I cook a certain way,

it doesn't make my food any less American.

It actually makes it more American.

I'm just trying to show you through the food

and through the lessons that the world doesn't always have

to be perfectly wrapped up.

In this class, I'm going to show you more than just how

to make food.

I'm going to teach you how to live food.

And it starts with what I call cultural shit.

I was raised to take your shoes off, put your feet

on the chair, double dip, triple dip,

quadruple dip, quintuple dip, eat with your mouth full, talk

shit while you're eating.

You should reach across the table.

Yeah, that's right.

You should reach across the table.

Make grunting sounds.

Slurp your noodles.

Wipe your sweat off your forehead.

The whole idea of leaving one piece on your plate

because everyone's afraid to eat that last piece?

Fuck that.

Eat the last piece.

And order another one, shit.

So there are a lot of things that I won't teach you

in this class, exact measurements, exact volume,

precise cuts.

I really believe in wiggle room.

I like to wiggle.

I wiggle everywhere.

I want to teach you a lot about instinct, about feel,

about seeing things, hearing things, smelling things.

I don't know if what temperature that's supposed to be,

but it looks like it's too fucking hot.

To me, that's really cooking.

If you didn't learn how to make a recipe,

you learned how to cook.

I'm teaching you my mother sauces,

which are completely different than "Escoffier's" mother

sauces.

You don't have to be a trained chef to cook.

You don't have to be even somewhat of a good cook

to cook.

You got to cook the food that comes from within you.

I'm giving away a lot of secrets,

but I'm not giving away all the secrets.

I'm Roy Choi, and this is my MasterClass.

Chef's kiss.