LA: Kogi at the Alibi Room

When it was finally confirmed that I would be going to Los Angeles for winter break, two words immediately formed in my finals-addled brain: Korean tacos. Or more specifically, the Kogi truck, the culinary brainchild of Chef Roy Choi that swept Southern California into a truck-chasing frenzy in 2008 and has since spawned dozens of copycat operations across the US (including one of the most recent pop-ups, the Korilla BBQ truck in New York). I'm not a proponent for imitation anything, so I semi-consciously made the decision not to try any iteration of a Kogi taco until I could taste the real thing for myself, in California. With this trip, I saw my chance. However, I'm still a New Yorker, and there was no way I was going to chase a truck down an unfamiliar California highway in a car only to wait two hours for my fix. With my original four days in LA slashed to two and a half due to an East Coast blizzard, I was on a strict schedule. Thankfully, a friend directed me to the Alibi Room, a bar that partnered with Kogi soon after it took off, and offers the same menu out of their kitchen.

Short rib tacos with slaw, cilantro, onions and salsa roja

Spicy pork tacos with slaw, cilantro, onions and salsa roja

The Alibi Room isn't much more than a large square bar plopped in the middle of a dark room, with a row of seating near the entrance. A couple we later met at the bar told us that prior to its partnership with Kogi, the Alibi Room wasn't exactly the most happening spot. The proprietors of the Alibi Room may not be very successful bar owners but they do know how to strike a deal. That Tuesday night, the place was packed with young locals, their chatter reverberating off the bare walls. It's a rather daunting scene for the average tourist so here's a crash course for the uninitiated: Go to the bar. Try to find some empty bar space. Place your food order with the bartender. Throw back a couple of drinks while you wait.

Kimchi sesame quesadilla: flour tortilla, cheese, kimchi, red pepper sour cream, salsa roja

Blackjack quesadilla: flour tortilla, cheese, spicy pork, onion, salsa verde

The tacos arrived first, sporting mounds of slaw and the traditional lime and radish. Both the pork and the short rib were grilled well, with the short rib exhibiting the toothsome, slightly resistant texture particular to traditional galbi. However, I found the slightly cloying sweet-sour sauce coating the meat to be better suited to the pork than the beef; the short rib taco would have been preferable had the natural beef flavor been allowed to break through the confines of its marinade. I wouldn’t call the overall effect harmonious – maybe they aren’t supposed to be. After all, the tacos are a mishmash of Korean and Mexican cuisine – they are meant to be an intriguing yet tasty juxtaposition of the textures and flavors of each, and this is certainly accomplished. How then, does one explain the almost preternatural flawlessness of the kimchi quesadilla? I’m not going to pretend I’ve never thrown a slice of cheese into a bubbling pot of kimchi chigae, but those were sly maneuvers to add some salty richness to the fermented tang of the kimchi – moves I sort of kept to myself because they seemed a little pedestrian, and well, inauthentic. But it seems that many Koreans often have the same idea, and Mr. Choi apparently decided to come clean with this guilty pleasure head-on with his kimchi quesadilla. The thing is bursting with copious amounts of melted cheese and kimchi, the oozing cheese the perfect foil for the sharpness of the cabbage. It’s all encased in an impeccably crisp flour tortilla and dressed with a smooth salsa roja for an extra blast of heat. There are few things I will risk third-degree burns for, but I palmed this quesadilla with gusto, scalded fingers be damned, lobbing it back and forth between both hands all the while trying to steer it into my mouth. (Eating with me is not humiliating at all.) The blackjack version is equally sumptuous, although less obviously a product of ‘fusion’ cuisine - with its spicy pork and cheese filling, it's just a really, really good quesadilla.

Driving around LA later that evening, it wasn't difficult to see how the phenomenon of Korean tacos took hold. The city has a huge Mexican population, and a formidable Koreatown to match. Weaving in and out of the streets of K-town, and along its outskirts, we whizzed past innumerable taco trucks, stands (including a lone man tending to an extremely makeshift grill in a parking lot - something I regret not stopping for to this day), and Spanish-only storefronts. The confluence of the two is probably something that should have happened earlier. But when it's this good, it is not ours to question when or why or how - just find that truck (or not) and go with it.

Kogi at the Alibi Room

12236 Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90066

Phone: (310) 390-9300

Best dishes: Kimchi quesadilla, blackjack quesadilla

Kogi Korean BBQ hours at the Alibi Room: 6 pm-12 am, Monday - Saturday

Kogi Truck website (with schedule): www.kogibbq.com

Mike's Halal Cart

Halal carts are ubiquitous in New York, particularly in neighborhoods like Midtown and the Financial District, where a halal cart might be found on all four corners of a single intersection. That's a lot of street meat. How is one supposed to distinguish between the good and the bad? There are, of course, those that have achieved widespread fame (Chicken and Rice at 53rd and 6th, Kwik Meal), and others get by on a combination of word-of-mouth, loyal cult following and food bloggery. I found Mike's thanks to the latter, and was sufficiently intrigued by the promises of real grilled lamb (not a Kronos gyro cone) to pay them a visit.

Mike's is the little halal cart that could. Simple and nondescript (I wasn't even sure I was at the right cart until I saw a small stack of business cards perched on the ledge of the cart emblazoned with "Mike's"), this cart dishes out one of the best halal platters in the city.

The first thing you'll notice is the white sauce. Unlike the white sauce at most other halal carts, which often look either like runny mayo or ranch dressing, Mike's white sauce sits majestically on top of the platter in snowy, stiff peaks, the key indicator of the thick tangy yogurt that comprises it. It tastes different too, like a beautiful, rich tzatziki, with an underlying grassiness reminiscent of goat cheese. The second thing you'll notice? The tender chunks of grilled lamb, boasting veins of unctuous fat interspersed throughout the meat that bombard your taste buds with a fierce, lamb flavor. At one point, I actually began to wonder if Mike had run out of lamb that day and substituted a particularly delicious cut of pork. There was little gaminess to the meat, which only intensified my confusion. It didn't help that I was in the throes of street meat ecstasy at the same time*.

The chicken at Mike's exhibits similar tenderness and flavor, but the star here is the lamb. Both rest on a bed of exceptionally fluffy rice, infused with hints of curry and coriander. Everything tastes fresh, and the quality is on par with what you would get at a fine Greek or Middle Eastern restaurant. Indeed, your senses may be fooled into thinking you are dining at such a restaurant, until you see the white expanse of your now empty Styrofoam container, and you realize, with a slight jolt of disbelief, that your supreme contentment can be attributed to two ordinary men, doggedly grilling meat, trying to earn a living out of a little cart on the corner of South and Wall.

*After my initial post, I was informed by several law school classmates that in places devoid of food carts (a.k.a. uncivilized America), the term "street meat" is used to refer to prostitutes. Let me just clarify that I was not in that kind of ecstasy during my lunch. But hey, you learn something new every day.

Mike's Halal Cart

Corner of South St. and Wall St.

New York, NY 10038

Veronica's Kitchen

In the urban culinary wasteland we call the Financial District, there are few options for an affordable, tasty, non-cliche, non-chain restaurant lunch. What is a corporate peon to do at mid-day? You could head to Chipotle or Europa Cafe, get some variation of an overpriced soup/salad/sandwich, eat it and be utterly dissatisfied with life. Or you could head over to Veronica's.

In a rickety stainless steel contraption that is almost hidden behind a decorative waterfall/fountain thingamajig on Front St., Veronica and her sons dish out an impressive number of soul food and Jamaican specialties. If you're not sure which cart is Veronica's, just look for the line of customers 10+ people deep, rain or shine. (Yes, I did once stand in line, in a downpour, to get my fix.)

Stewed oxtail with rice and peas and green beans: The oxtail is undoubtedly one of the best dishes at Veronica's. Stewed to a meaty tenderness in a rich, faintly sweet sauce, it is the ideal companion for the rice and peas, which are moist and wonderfully flavorful, especially when steeped in the oxtail sauce. The green beans are rather mushy, but in that so-overcooked-it's-kinda-good way. They elicited memories of my grade school cafeteria.

Jerk chicken with rice and peas and stewed cabbage: This is not a dish for the faint of heart. The chicken is encrusted with chili peppers, including Scotch bonnets (one of the hottest peppers in the world), which give jerk chicken its signature smoky and slightly numbing heat. Halfway through this lunch, I closed the door to my office so that I could gasp and emit groans of pain without alarming passerby. In vain, I tried to temper the five-alarm blaze in my mouth with rice. Unfortunately for me, the spicy juices from the chicken had seeped into the rice as well, thus prolonging my suffering. The esophageal damage that I will surely have in a few years will be directly attributable to this chicken. The stewed cabbage proved to be my only relief. It had been cooked down to a comforting softness, and the sulfuric sweetness of the cabbage was evident. The chicken could have been a tiny bit moister, but this is still one of the better selections from Veronica's cart - it just hurts so good.

Curried goat with rice and peas and stewed cabbage: This ranks with the oxtail as one of the top dishes from Veronica's. The meat was fall-off-the-bone tender, with no overwhelming gaminess. My only complaint is that the potatoes in the curry were a bit watery.

BBQ Boneless beef rib with macaroni and cheese and stewed cabbage: This was the one big miss from Veronica's cart. (Sadly, this was also the lunch I stood in the rain for). The beef rib was disappointingly dry. I was even forced to leave one sizeable piece of it uneaten, as it had been cooked to the consistency of beef jerky. The macaroni and cheese was no better. The macaroni was mushy, with no discernible cheese flavor or creaminess. The impenetrable, overly-caramelized cheese crust only made matters worse.

Curried chicken with rice and peas and collard greens: This was another winner. The chicken was so tender that when I speared it with a fork and attempted to move it to another part of the container, the meat fell apart in transport. The curry flavor could have been a bit stronger, but it was an overall good dish.

Veronica's may not be the best soul food in New York, but it offers some standout dishes that are done extremely well. It is also a good value - a small container of food (like those pictured above) is anywhere from $5-7 and a large container is $9-10.

Veronica's Kitchen

Front St. (between Wall St. and Maiden Lane)

New York, NY 10005

Hours: Monday-Friday, 11:30am-2pm. Arrive early and expect a wait. Popular items begin to run out around 1:30pm.

Best dishes: Rice and peas, oxtail, curried goat, stewed cabbage, collard greens, jerk chicken, curried chicken.