"fusion food" news and stories

Devoted Kogi fans. Photo: Alexa Weibel.

As street cart fare becomes increasingly sophisticated, heralded Los Angeles street cart Kogi BBQ is being commended across the nation for its brilliant adaptation of local cuisine and its reinvention of advertising concepts. Serving succulent Korean BBQ wrapped in freshly made tacos, the truck's empire has successfully spawned a proper fleet of three carts, spanning the vast Los Angeles vicinity in just one year.

The idea dawned upon founder Mark Manguera, 30, in the midst of a boozy, late-night taco snack: Why not transform the Mexican staple by filling it with a distinctly Korean stuffing? It made sense, Kogi creative director Alice Chin told Slashfood: "For some reason, Korean and Mexican chiles play well together with sesame oil, lime and cilantro." So Manguera partnered with RockSugar chef Roy Choi, procured a truck and took to Twitter – and the streets, in November 2008.

Armed with three trucks, sans fancy PR company or organized advertising, Chin humbly notes, "We are but your local L.A. taco truck... times three!" But it works: The trucks thrive strictly on their masterful Internet usage and -- most importantly -- word of mouth. With a Web site promoting the specials and Twitter updates indicating the weekly locations, the Kogi trucks inevitably attract more people than they can even serve, and specials are usually sold out well before the end of each shift, which serves anywhere from 300 to 800 people in a matter of hours.

More on Kogi -- and a photo of their fare -- after the jump.

After a trying experience last week with microwaved food, the Top Chef chefs again found themselves preparing food outside of their element - both literally and figuratively. Instead of working in the kitchen, plating and serving, the chefs were sent out to San Francisco's Mission District to peddle their wares as street food. In addition to mingling with the people, the chefs had to focus on ethnic flavors throughout both tasks in the episode and in doing so, found that they were further from their comfort zone than they realized.

The quickfire challenge was designed to test the chefs' ability to recognize ingredients without seeing them. I agree with the comments that Tom Colicchio, one of the judges, made on his blog - namely, that the challenge was not really representational of their ability to recognize ingredients because the ingredients chosen were very exotic. Guest chef and judge Mike Yakura, head chef at Le Colonial, a French-Vietnamese restaurant, choose ingredients to taste that some of the chefs had never before worked with. Expecting that all chefs should know all possible ingredients is unrealistic, if not impossible, and the competitors did not do terribly well. Out of the 20 ingredients - which included longan, tamarind, hibiscus extract, chili paste, nopal, konnyaku, durian and nato - the chefs tasted, Tiffani and Miguel only identified 1, LeeAnne, Harold, Lisa and Stephen identified 3, and Andrea identified 4. Andrea, winning the challenge, received immunity.