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For someone who’s never been to Sydney before – and had only been in town for two days when Broadsheet spoke to him – Roy Choi sure knows where to find good eating on the Harbour City streets.
“I did a lot of research on Youtube and I have a lot of tentacles in the food world,” Choi tells Broadsheet. “I’ve been as far as Qudos arena, and I’ve been as close as here [The Rocks]. I just came from Surry Hills for breakfast, been in Chinatown, been in Darlinghurst, I’ve been to the zoo. It’s a beautiful zoo.”
Choi was instrumental in LA’s food truck revolution of the mid-2000s – his Kogi BBQ Taco Truck menu fused Korean barbeque-style meats and tacos, gaining recognition from street food fans and the city’s top food critics alike. He tweeted out the truck’s location and time of arrival to a legion of followers, helping forge a path for scores of chefs and wannabe restaurateurs with a dream and not much cash. Kogi now has several food trucks, and Choi has his finger in a number of different pies – he consulted on Jon Favreau’s Chef, now a cult-favourite food flick, and appeared alongside Favreau in the spinoff Netflix show The Chef Show.
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He’s in Sydney for the Don Julio Food Truck Fiesta, a three-day taco truck and Margarita party in The Rocks that’s part of the World Class Cocktail Festival. He’s collaborated with Melbourne’s Raph Rashid (Beatbox Kitchen, Taco Truck, Juanita Peaches) on a chicken taco, a fried fish taco and a sweet potato taco for the fiesta.
And while he’s in Sydney for work purposes, he’s squeezing in as much as possible – and true to his reputation, he’s keeping it casual.
“I haven’t been doing any full-blown restaurants, I’ve been doing street food, food courts,” he says. “I’ve done Happy Chef [at Sussex Centre food court in Chinatown], Chaco Ramen. There are some other ones at Marrickville, Newtown, and even further out at Rhodes Central – but those are a little far, so I’m not sure if I’ll make them. But I’m trying to.”
He digs the Gateway food court (home to Chat Thai, Hawker Star Malaysian Kitchen and Workshop Espresso, among others). “I know it’s kind of a touristy area, but I really liked [it]. It was really cool.
“The way you guys set things up is so different than the way we do them in the States. It’s been such a pleasure – almost a guilty pleasure – for me, just my research nerdy stuff.”
He’s also been digging into Aussie snacks, ice-creams and chips, including that servo classic the Maxibon. “That was so good,” he says. On Thursday he enjoyed breakfast and coffee at AP Bakery’s rooftop cafe at Paramount House.
“The way you guys do breakfast here in Australia is like no other,” he says. “You treat it with such care and detail.”
The Don Julio Food Truck Fiesta runs until September 17, with multiple sitting times. Tickets here.
@chefroychoi
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