In Chef, director Jon Favreau tells the story of an embattled chef (played by Favreau) who quits his job a prominent LA restaurant after feuding with the owner. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck.
To ensure that his character’s immersion into food truck culture felt authentic, Favreau turned to the king of Los Angeles’ street food scene, Roy Choi. Choi pioneered the concept of gourmet fast food by embracing social media to promote local appearances of his Kogi BBQ Taco Truck.
“To really represent a chef on the movie screen, you’ve got to know what it feels like to be a cook,” says Choi. “You’ve got to know how it feels to stand on your feet and work and sit down on a milk crate and eat and drink out of a deli cup.”
Preparing himself for his fictional gig as boss of the “El Jefe” food truck, Favreau went to work incognito at Kogi BBQ. “The first time on the truck, it was small and hot and I felt like I was in the way,” he says. “By the end, I was in there yelling out orders and helping out.”
Dressed in the Kogi cook uniform, complete with bandana headband, Favreau managed to avoid recognition by the hundreds of patrons he served. “This one guy was like ‘Do I know you?’ And I’m like ‘Usually I work on the Philly Cheese Steak Truck.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, okay’.”
Choi offered Favreau expert advice on everything from knife selection to tattoo design. “I fed Jon all those little nuances,” he says, “Down to the girls we hang out with, the way we tie our aprons, the way we wear our jeans, the cigarettes we smoke, the language we use, the food we serve.”
And if “Chef Carl” tried to get fancy, Choi reined him in. “Every time Jon made things too pretty, I’d tell him to let me know when to come in and dirty it up and make it real,” Choi recalls.
If Choi worried that the genuine food truck grit might get watered down by Hollywood-style glitz, Favreau quickly won him over. “We got in my car together and drove around L.A. for six hours that first night,” Choi recalls. “Jon started talking about Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Babette’s Feast and Big Night, all these films that took the beauty of food and really translated it for the audience. He wanted to do the same with Chef.”
Chef is available starting Sept. 30 on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.
