Roy Choi

In 2019, Choi produced and hosted a TV series, Broken Bread on Tastemade and KCET in Los Angeles.

The Jon Favreau movie Chef (2014) was loosely inspired by Choi and the food truck movement. Choi worked as a technical advisor to Favreau on cooking and restaurant scenes and appears in the end credits. In addition to touring all of Choi's restaurants, Favreau attended a French culinary school and trained in several of Choi's kitchens. In 2019, Favreau and Choi collaborated on a cooking show on Netflix: The Chef Show.

In June 2013, Choi along with fellow chefs Wolfgang Puck and David Chang, convened at the Hotel Bel-Air to fuse different styles such as ggaejjang style and kochujang onto the Hotel Bel-Air menu.

In November 2013, Choi released his autobiography that is part memoir part cookbook called L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food.

Time had included Choi in their TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world for 2011 and 2016. Fellow chef and author Anthony Bourdain wrote that "Roy Choi first changed the world when he elevated the food-truck concept from "roach coach" to highly sought-after, ultra-hot-yet-democratic rolling restaurant." In 2015, Choi and chef Daniel Patterson opened a restaurant called LocoL in Watts, Los Angeles, with the goal of bringing quality, healthy, and inspired fast-food to inner-city neighborhoods.

He was named one of the top ten "Best New Chefs" of 2010 by Food and Wine magazine, and is the first food truck operator to win that distinction. Choi currently runs Sunny Spot, in Venice, CA, which is Caribbean-inspired. He ran the Los Angeles-area restaurant Chego! which featured rice bowls, , and A-Frame which conveyed the Hawaiian idea of aloha and was built in a former IHOP, in addition to Pot at the Line Hotel in Koreatown. In December, 2018, Choi opened a restaurant named Best Friend in Las Vegas, NV. His cooking style fuses Mexican and Korean flavors and dishes.

After this classical training and years of background in four and five star cooking, Choi said that the shift to the food trucks, initially based on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice was great. Choi's company, Kogi, was founded in 2008 with partners Mark Manguera and his wife, Caroline Shin-Manguera.

In 1996, Choi began studying at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He enjoyed the highly structured block programs, where there was no "wiggle room." He worked during this period as an intern at Le Bernardin in New York City.

After high school, Choi went to Korea and taught English there. He then attended California State University, Fullerton, graduating with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. Choi attended Western State University law school, but dropped out after one semester. At 24, confused about his life, and in a dark period around 1994 or 1995, Choi said he became obsessed with Emeril Lagasse's "Essence of Emeril" show. The show inspired him to enroll in culinary school. "Emeril saved my life," Choi said.

Choi gained experience as a journeyman hotel chef since the mid-1990s. In 2001, he started working for Hilton Hotels. After being promoted within the company, in 2007, Choi became chef de cuisine at the Beverly Hilton. It was there that Choi met his future business partner, Mark Manguera.

Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, to South Korean father Soo Myung Choi and North Korean mother Jai Nam Choi. Choi's parents met in the US but after marrying moved back to Korea. The family ended up emigrating from South Korea permanently in 1972.

Roy Choi (born February 24, 1970) is a Korean American chef who gained prominence as the creator of the gourmet Korean-Mexican taco truck Kogi. Choi is a chef who is celebrated for "food that isn't fancy" and is known as one of the founders of the gourmet food truck movement.

Choi said he didn't start out to write a book, but that he kept getting asked the same questions about his food, its flavors, and how it is prepared. While Choi doesn't see the book as social commentary, he felt it was important to show the "real deal" of the duality he felt growing up as an immigrant in the 1970s; the foods served in the restaurant were quite different from what the family ate at home. The book also talks about the culture of Los Angeles and how it has changed since the 1970s.