Chef Roy Choi and friends launch a fast-food revolution

Top chefs take on fast food

Roy Choi demonstrates his cooking "moves" to John Favreau.

DID YOU watch the movie Chef? During the cooking closeups, did you notice the tattoos on the hands and forearms of the chef? The audience thought they were the arms and hands of actor John Favreau's character, they were - in actuality - the hands and arms of Roy Choi, celebrity chef and food truck owner extraordinaire. (He combined the taco with Korean BBQ - voila - fusion cuisine.)

Choi and a few of his celebrity chef buddies are fomenting a revolution in fast food. It began a couple of years ago at a symposium for chefs from around the world meeting in Copenhagen. Choi stood in front of the some of the best chefs in the world and talked about hunger.

“We have a hunger crisis in Los Angeles,” Choi told the Copenhagen audience. “In many parts of our city, this is how we supply our neighborhoods: liquor store, liquor store, liquor store.”

Choi suggested that to combat hunger and access to good food, his peers in the room should leverage their investors so that “for every fancy restaurant that we build, it would be a requirement to build a restaurant in the hood too.”

After that talk, he was contacted by Daniel Patterson, chef-owner of Coi, one of the high-end restaurants in San Francisco. No, I haven't eaten there yet, but professional restaurant reviewers place Coi as one of the best in the foodie-haven city.

Together, the chefs formed Loco'l and started a fundraising campaign through Crowd-Funding to raise $150,000 to build Loco'l first-ever location in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, where the homeless intermingle with tourists and strip joints are next door to pizza joints.

Choi and Patterson test and taste for their Loco'l venture.

“The core of Loco’l has to strike the same nerve that Burger King, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and KFC strike, which is affordability, youthfulness, addictiveness, cultural relevance,” he told TakePart's food editor Willie Blackmore, “because the only people talking smack about fast food, a lot of times, is the people who have the privilege to not have to eat it every day.”

Soon, other top chefs wanted to partner with them.

After the Tenderloin, there are already plans for expansion to cities such as Richmond, Anaheim and across the Bay in East Oakland.

The online fundraiser campaign was started because so many people wanted to get involved. "And it was a way to start building a community; a way for people to participate on a very low level but feel like they are a part of it and it's their thing."

If you want to join the revolution, click here. The deadline is March 19 so there is only a few days to go and they are not even half-way there. Pick what level you want to contribute so you can be eligible for a lot of perks from t-shirts to cooking lessons to an invitation to the grand opening. The revolution is on!

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