Archive for the ‘L.A.’ Category
Covert Cocktails:
The Rise of the Speakeasy in the Information Age
October 8, 2009
When you walk into Crif Dogs – an unassuming hot dog venue in New York’s East Village - you might find the phone booth by the entrance to be just a quaint, if oddly placed, remnant of the past.
You should know better.
If you wait around long enough on a weekend night, you might see someone enter the booth, pick up the phone, and suddenly disappear behind a hidden door. Your eyes wouldn’t be deceiving you, you would just be witnessing the theatrics of PDT (it’s short for Please Don’t Tell, but we can’t keep a secret), one of New York’s many speakeasies.
We’ve noted in the past how mystique is at the heart of everything hip, which helps to explain why speakeasies, hidden bars, and secret parties are showing up (or rather, not showing up) around the world. PDT may have one of the more enigmatic entrance protocols, but it’s only the beginning of the story. Read More »
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Follow the Tweeter: Kogi Introduces a New Mobile Restaurant
August 25, 2009
One of the fastest-expanding gourmet food truck empires on L.A.’s blossoming mobile restaurant scene is Kogi (pronounced with a hard “g”). This Twittering L.A. Korean-BBQ-on-wheels was created by media-savvy owner Mark Manguera and chef Roy Choi (formerly of NYC’s Le Bernardin). It’s a concept that’s Web 2.0 to the core: Tweet location changes for your food truck every couple of hours, wait for the lines to form, then serve up creative combinations of spicy Korean BBQ-style chicken, tofu, pork, or ribs on corn tortillas, topped with sesame-chili salsa roja, Korean chili-soy vinaigrette slaw, cilantro-green onion-lime relish, and crushed sesame seeds.
Manguera and Choi have deftly pinpointed a crossroad between modern fusion food culture and the latest in mobile technology, but it’s not just the relative novelty of a Twitter-centric food service that tickles us; it’s the community that the creators are building around their mobile establishment. The lines at Kogi are gaining a reputation as indie meeting grounds where Twitterers engage in a less modern practice known as face-to-face conversation. Check out Kogi’s endearingly enthusiastic blog for a glimpse of the Kogi dining experience.
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Posted in Community, Gourmet food trucks, Innovation, L.A. | No Comments »
