Chef Roy Choi and The Street Food Remix

Chef Roy Choi calls himself a “street cook.” He wants outsiders, low-riders, kids, teens, shufflers and skateboarders, to have food cooked with care, with love, with sohn maash.

“Sohn maash” is the flavors in our fingertips. It is the love and cooking talent that Korean mothers and grandmothers mix into their handmade foods. For Chef Roy Choi, food means love. It also means culture, not only of Korea where he was born, but the many cultures that make up the streets of Los Angeles, where he was raised. So remixing food from the streets, just like good music—and serving it up from a truck—is true to L.A. food culture. People smiled and talked as they waited in line. Won’t you join him as he makes good food smiles?

Praise for Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix

 

“In clipped verse that draws on the rhythms of hip hop the authors follow Choi from the launch of his Kogi food trucks to his efforts to “’feed good food create worthy jobs and bring smiles’ to ‘hungry’ parts of the city. Man One’s layered graffiti-style artwork mimics the narrative’s energy and Choi’s commitment to ‘cooking for everyone.’” 
–Publishers Weekly

 “Spicy, sweet colorful tangy—all the words that authors Martin and Lee use to describe Roy Choi’s Korean Mexican cuisine apply just as accurately to the book they’ve created along with L.A. street artist Man One… Choi’s dedication to bringing wholesome flavorful fast food to low-income neighborhoods is reflected in every word and stroke of this colorful book… If you’re not hungry already this savory array of sizzling words and art will make your mouth water. VERDICT: This excellent picture book biography about an inventive chef doing good belongs on all shelves.”
–School Library Journal   

About the Authors

Jacqueline Briggs Martin, author of the Caldecott Medal winner, Snowflake Bentley as well as Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table, and Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious continues her “Food Heroes” series with Chef Roy Choi on people who change what and how we eat.See co-author Jacqueline Briggs Martin’s other “Food Heroes” books: Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table and Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious

Together with food ethnographer June Jo Lee and graffiti art pioneer Man One, they bring an exuberant celebration of street food and street art.

 

June Jo Lee is a Food Ethnographer working to nourish MODERN HUNGERS of disconnection and dislocation through the design principle of FOODCARE — care for those we feed and those feeding us. She is the Resident Food Ethnographer for Google Food and Perkins School for the Blind, providing user insights, subject matter expertise and strategic visioning. She also creates consumer insights for the food industry (most recently, Walmart Labs, goodDog, BrightFarms, UMass Amherst).  Previously, she was VP of Strategic Insights at The Hartman Group, leading projects for Whole Foods Market, Starbucks, Kraft, Nestle, PepsiCo, General Mills, and others.  

June Jo is co-founder of Readers to Eaters, an independent book publisher with a mission to promote literacy about our food system and literacy through stories about food. She is co-author of Chef Roy Choi and The Street Food Remix, a 2018 Siebert Award Honoree for most distinguished informational book for children and named “Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2018” from the Nat’l Council for the Social Studies. She shares the essential approach to cook food flavored by relationships AND to eat with friends and family to kids through author talks in classrooms and conferences.

June Jo studied anthropology of food at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and started her career in food as a produce team member at the original Whole Foods Market in Austin. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the United States, where she grew up eating her mom’s kimchi.

Header photo by The Daily Beast