The Slapdash Cook

As a rule, I am not as excited about writing restaurant reviews as I am about writing recipes. However, I am pleased to say that I am making an exception for the Kogi truck. What is Kogi, people outside LA and NYC might ask? It is, and I am not making this up, a food truck that serves Mexican-Korean hybrid food. For that reason alone, it is very LA.

For reasons too boring to go into, I ended up invited to a summer afternoon picnic involving free food from this truck! While I have reservations about Mexican-Korean food — neither individual cuisine is particularly vegetarian-friendly, at least in un-Americanized form — I am a big fan of free foodie stuff. And Kogi caters to the drunk twentysomething hipster crowd, which is sprinkled throughout with vegetarians. So off I trundled to the park!

Before leaving, I did some googling to see if any other vegetarians had reviewed the food, and discovered that their corn tortillas use lard. (I am a bit confused by this — as I understand it, corn tortillas don’t need any fat except whatver you use to cook them, and flour is where you have to watch for the manteca.) So I arrived determined to skip the corn-tortilla tacos in favor of the flour-tortilla burritos. They also offered a kimchi quesadilla.

Burrito Verdict: Okay!

The tofu is soft, not baked or fried. This works out surprisingly well with the kimchi, cheddar cheese and… something starchy… that was also in there. The blandness of the tofu works well with the kimchi in particular. It was a bit boring, but that’s tofu for ya.

Quesadilla Verdict: Oy!

I have a tragic weakness for things involving large amounts of cheese. Also spicy things. So on the surface, this seemed great. It’s also much prettier to look out. In practice, however, kimchi and cheddar didn’t really work for me in such large amounts. (Maybe they needed tofu for a mediator.) Also, big pieces of kimchi slop out of the tortilla, which can be messy and socially awkward. However, I could envision the appeal of this food going up substantially if I were drunk.

J. heartily recommends the short rib tacos, by the way.

Finally, along with normal American sodas, they also offered something called milk soda. They ran out before I got there, so it can’t be that bad, but I’m afraid I have no firsthand report. New feeling of soda beverage!