Welcome back to those amigos. This is part two of this incredible conversation with our brother over here. And we're talking his book, we're talking heritage, we're talking the struggle in the climb up and uh, Freddie, I know that you you.
Have some thoughts on the matter, and you were going to ask something.
Absolutely, I'm just I'm just so happy and grateful to have my boy Roy here.
But that after after you you put out, especially.
With all the intention and the media that we got, because then the media gets involved, right, and then the media wants to understand the craze, right, the craze. They want you to put it in some poetic one liner right right. And for me, in those early days, you know, I was just speaking, spitting my truth, you know, kind of like the hip hop that we love, right Like I was, I was speaking like early Queen's Bridge, you know, I was describing where I'm from, you know whatever, uh
and uh. For us, it was like I was just saying, like, this is our food, this is the way we talk, this is our slang. This is if you eat this taco, it tastes like this block, you know, it tastes like Vermont and eighth Street, you know, and then those things were written by Australian journalists, English, you know, people from
around the world. And then then then what happened was instead of la being this huge thing, it started to get very regional micro right, and then they would say, oh, because of this flavor and this chili and this block that these flavors come out.
So that's so interesting.
I mean, it's such a I think, like the street food is now being celebrated worldwide in a way that's just like, I mean, I I was shooting in Europe or like a year and a half ago, and uh, you know, you go to Rome somewhere and there's a corner with a bunch of food tructions, Like, whoa, what's.
Going on here?
I mean, everyone's like really getting inspired. What what do you think to you what do you think change in the view? What what do you think this brought to people that it became such a worldwide phenomen You know.
We were we were right there in the middle of it all. And again, why was it an Asian fusion Mexican, Korean Korea town tackle truck that ended up being the focus of all this? But you know, I can't speak for that. All I know is to tell you the truth. And we were there, you know, and the time that we started cooking on the streets, there was a lot of racism around street food.
You know, and perception.
You know, they were called roach coaches. You know, the lonchettas and trucks were called roach coaches. The whole negativity and racism around the way that Western culture looked at Latinos. You know, the water in Tijuana diarrhea, If you eat the food, it's dirty, it's roach coaches. These are words that like people were using to describe culture, you know, to describe life. And what happened was we just went
out there with this truck. I think it was the technology and the social media and then the craze of
everyone being able to access it. A lot of racism comes from ignorance and fear right and so finally people that didn't have access to food trucks or street food or vendors, they were finally able to access things in their life because it was this new kind of hip thing and they realized it wasn't what they were led to believe, you know what I mean, It wasn't dirty, it wasn't it wasn't gross, It wasn't a roach coach,
you know, and it was actually delicious. And we're all human and these are this is culture, and so that all led to things moving from roach coach to gourmet and then all of a sudden, you know, and that shows how powerful language is, right, you go from calling something a roach coach to calling it a gourmet food truck. Right, then all of a sudden, that same person that was saying those things is now hiring that same truck for their kids' birthday party. And that's all within one It's
a circle of life. And then that leads to the next thing. Then all of a sudden, corporations and economy gets behind it, and the industry gets behind it. So all these things start to change. We see it in your guys, this world with like storytelling, right and you know, you know, different projects being funded now, and then people like yourselves becoming producers and you know, and investors and you know, bringing in stories that were not brought in before. All of that stuff changes.
It really does change until your point.
It takes individuals like you to say that fusion is not only allowed, right, I mean we always talk about this, you know, they always try to make us you're either Korean or you're American, or you're either Latino or you're American, you know, And we always talk over here about the two hundred percent, Like why can't be two hundred percent?
Yeah, I mean to one hundred percent of that one hundred percent of this and that makes it really special.
I think that the idea that these these collaborations with flavors and culture that happened in the streets now have a moment.
In pop culture worldwide.
You know, these are restaurant ideas that were never allowed to be because they weren't allowed to play nice with each other. You know, they weren't they weren't seen as mainstream. They weren't seen as as crowd pleasers or you know. And so that's what I think, Like what Kogie did in such a you know, in such an iconic way, is that it allowed it for it to be like why not all these fusions were happening in the streets, but they were never allowed to be a real business.
You know.
I'm a strong believer in like the cream rises to the top, right, Like like good is good, right, Like I have family members in Chicago and Wisconsin who don't know anything about acting, nothing about movies or TV. But they can sit there and they can tell you if an actor is good or not or I or if the thing that they're watching is good or not, because they have this sort of instinct this this this visceral
reaction to it. And I just think that part of what made you successful was that you were telling your truth. This is your truth, right, this food was your truth and good is good. You know, people got over this sort of like, oh, how could you merge sort of Korean and Mexican, And then once they took a bite, they were like, damn, this thing is good.
Yeah, you know, and that truth goes back, It goes back deeper than just the beginning of the truck. You know, like I grew up around Latinos my whole life.
You know.
That's why I really want to do this podcast. It just like it feels comfortable to me. It feels it feels very familiar to me. It's you know, I was low riding when I was sixteen.
It's part of who you are too, who I am.
I was Wittier boulevard. You know, you could you could you could check the receipts, you know, like you know, I was on with your boulevard cruising Pico Rivera back in the day. I was. I was spitting game at you know, you know, trying. I was at the dances. I had the pompador, you know, you know, I was listening to freestyle. I was out there, you know, and I was in kitchens. I was, you know, at the side of teas and moms and you know, helping them cook and watch. And I was a good eater. You know,
growing up, I was real chubby kids. So like the moms used to love me. Man, you know, like all my friends, I go to the houses and again, like I told you, I was alone a lot. So I just rolled to my friends houses and I was a little chubby can they loved me.
Yeah, I had to.
I couldn't leave the table whole they would clean.
And so I think once I started cooking, and once I especially when I went out there to the streets, it just felt natural and people could feel that I wasn't a poser or or my you know, they felt something familiar as well, from from us, I want to believe, you know, and even from the early early nights, we would come back because the just so you all know the trucks here in Los Angeles. We we're like our own subculture. We're like, we're like the kind of like
the gangs of the movie The Warriors. Yeah, like we go back to our own little kind of like compounds at night. So at night we all chuck back to these. There's three three or four big compounds here in Los Angeles, one up here in the valley, there's one on Slawson, and one in downtown LA, and then one in Huntington Park. And basically all the trucks you see out there on the streets, we all go back to one of these
four compounds. And in these four compounds are surrounded by these big cinder block walls, and it's like it's like a big prison yard but in the in the but if a prison yard was like a musical.
You know, it's like colorful truck colorful trucks and a bunch of like uh like ladies teas that are really bossy, really bossy, but in charge and amazing, and they've been working all day.
And then there's so much gossip, street gossip, as.
You all know, like it's the best got each other and everything, everything so much that thing's awfully does so much gossip and then so you think they're not the ladies got egoized. Man, you think they're not gonna notice like a bunch of Asian guys coming in on a truck, you know.
So they spotted us right away. But we were accepted right away and loved and they tasted our food and they're like.
Yeah, what y'all was gonna ask you that? Have you ever had like a straight up like Mexican dia, like taste your food, taste your burritos, taste.
From the early days, they knew, they knew too, you know.
What did they What was their reaction or something like that?
They I got my nickname. They call me Poppychulo from they one they want they want get that level of difficulty eleven eleven, that's it. From day one, they christened me. They christened me like at first they were just like who, you know, who are they? Everyone was on water again, like a prison yard. Everyone truck, So our truck we pulled in, Everyone's you know, whistling, Everyone's like who is this?
You know, they knew everything, They knew everything about us from day one, you know, and then they tasted the food. Then I'll tell you exactly exactly, but they I fed everybody the food. I walked It was almost like I walked out of this pile and I had like lipstick marks all over that I've seriously, it was like a movie. That's what happened on day one, and we haven't looked back since.
You know, you know this is this.
I am so happy that we were able to do this episode of Euroy because what we've been trying to do, and I'm going to use this word that's like so terrible for everybody, but we've been trying to preach for so long, is that we all share the same passions. We our cultures are co existing together for decades and decades and hundreds of years in this country.
And then that allowed us to actually.
Acknowledge that we're not only in the same room together, but we're all winning and losing together, you know. And I think the idea that we can bring all of our cultures in one room, and whether it's an industry, whether it's a project, whether it's a movie, whether it's a business, whatever it is, you know, you have an opportunity to tell everyone, hey, we're not like we've.
Never been different.
We all want the same thing, right, especially when we're in America.
Man, I love what you're saying, because it's going to be even more difficult as we move forward with the algorithms and technology and AI and all.
That they're gonna make us categories.
Everything is so categorized, everything is so binary. It's either your this or that. I think that's why it's even more important for us that are still are the the last legs of these legacies to continue to speak our truth, share our truth, and try to shape culture moving forward. You know, we can't stop it, but we can at least continue to water the garden because there was a very special time. I mean the times that we talk
about at dinner. You know, I come we come from an era of hip hop where it didn't really matter race. You were a part of cruise, right, Like if you could, if you could be boy, it didn't matter what color res you were. You're nice. You just had to be nice. And there's something about that that I want to translate in the right words, in the right expression for for the future. You know, I want to still make it.
I want to make it relatable and use the language that you know, the algorithm can pick up on or whatever. But there's something about that that I want to continue and you're just talking about that, is that you know, we're all here together. You know, we spend so much energy separating each other. What if we spent that energy like really, you know, investing in each other. Like, imagine where we could be.
I mean, you did, right.
Nobody everybody really frown on cross pollinating. Right, They're like, Okay, you know, you stay your lane. You're living this block, they live in that block. But look at what happened when you cross polanated. Look at what happened when you took what you knew when you grew up with and embraced the culture.
That you were being raised around.
Right, all of a sudden magic happened, and you are not only feeding that community, we're feeding others and welcoming other communities to discover the fusion and the gift of two cultures coming together in one.
Truck picking up on that and we're just food. We're like the lowest not the lowest thing, but we're like.
But it's the most powerful cultures.
Have fusion happened in politics, in storytelling, in business, in the wealth gap, you know, in education, in access to UH to opportunities. You know, you know you asked me earlier about why do I do these things? You know the reason I do them because I'm still out there on the streets every day feeding. And when you're out there, you're still plugged in and connected. And no matter how much we want to believe that the world has changed,
it hasn't. We could go right now, I could take you block by block, city by city for miles and miles neighborhoods and schools that don't have Wi Fi, you know, that don't have access to nutritional food or fruits or vegetables. They can't they can't even get a job, you know, because there's no industry around where they're living. You know, that don't even have like sports programs or arts program that they can funnel their energy into because all those
things are cut, you know what I mean. And so like we got we got to start investing in each other in some way, because, as you say, look at the magic that happens when we strip away like all of the barriers and we just let who we naturally are grow and we we have no idea like how much magic there is out there in the world, And I hate to be so passionate about you guys, but like, you know, like we don't even know the potential of where we could be as humans.
You know, are people ever surprised that that you're you're still that plugged in, that you're still in the trucks, that you're still I'm sure the perception is like, well, why are you still on these trucks, Like why aren't you and like why haven't you started your gigantic restaurant chain?
Why aren't you there? Why aren't you?
But like every time I see you, I've been with you on your you know, I've seen You've gotten me burritos from your truck before, and I found that really like.
Oh yeah, you saw me when I did the pop up last day, right Tacos Vida you saw it was just like oh.
Yeah, that one man.
You should have seen him.
He was like out there, you were, you were in it.
But like like why, like like for the people who wonder like why, and I know you just sort of answered it, But like I find that incredibly humbling that you're still that you're still like in the trenches where where you you clearly could be somewhere else doing other stuff.
Thank you. I I don't know. I think on one end, I don't know if people are too surprised, because I think once they meet me, they know like, yeah, you know, like I haven't gone anywhere. But I think a part of it is, you know, it's what I love to do.
You know.
It's like and I feel tapping into your two hundred percent idea. I feel like I can do two hundred percent of things, Like I can still use my brain for things and think think about you know, other things, or you know, manage projects or be a CEO of something. But I could still do that one hundred percent. But I could still be on the ground one hundred percent. You know, this doesn't take away from that, so that that's partly probably why.
But that's authenticity.
Yeah, you know, that's authenticity speaking at the loudest form. H you know, in the speaking of authenticity, I wanted to pay it because.
It's so important. It's very hard.
To publish a book, Yes, it's very hard. And you have absolutely immortalized, you know, your legacy in this cookbook, right, and you have a lot of really great dishes here and I wanted to give you. I don't know if you knew this, but our two producers Leo and and and Social Death Sophie, they took up on themselves to pay a little tribute to you, and they took this and they cooked something or they made something from this cookbook. Leo, do you mind? Do you want to explain what you guys did here?
Good? Yeah, that's a great recipe. Let's see if Leo, yes, let's see if my recipes work.
Before we do the test.
Looking forward to the test, tell us a little bit about this book and how this came about.
So it's called The Choy of Cooking. It's a play on the joy of cooking. If any of you had ever grown up with that book, I was made my name rhymes Roy Troy, so as a kid, you can imagine all the shit I had to deal with. But I finally took that and put power into it. And the first cookbook that entered my family life was The
Joy of Cooking. And as I was, as me and my team were writing this book trying to find the title, like I did a deep dive into who I am and what legacy I want to leave on this planet, Like I don't think it's the end of my physical life,
right now. But I thought of, like, what if this book was still around one hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, and someone found it, like at the Pasadena flea market or something, and they found it digging in a bin, Like I want to have this like long life, and it could mark like a timestamp of who this person was.
Impression.
Yeah, and I think that person who I am is I just want to bring joy to people's lives. Man. You know, I've I've been around on this planet enough to where I've lived through so many different life cycles. You know, I had my you know, I was you know, I've been angry. You know I've been mad, I've been uh, down and out. You know, I've been a piece of shit. You know, I've been all the things that you go
through in life. And and I think where I finally have landed is uh you know, I just want to bring happiness.
You know.
That's that's like where I want to do. And that's what this book's about. Man. It's this books about like recipes and stories that bring happiness to someone's life, you know. And yeah, you know, cookbooks hard to write, because any books hard to write, because like there there's editors, man, those editors, you.
Know, Construgress like this word better.
Yeah, I like freestyle man.
So but I'll tell you this though. You what you did in the cover. I mean I see, I see all the influences that we just talked about here, yeah you so all the little pictures here, who's this right here?
That's me?
That's it's me, So that's you.
And then uh and then I see the palm trees and is that is that an impollo?
Yeah?
Is that actually your Paula?
It wasn't mine, but you know, my friends have all had one.
Yeah.
I had a Chevy Blazer that was Chevy.
Yeah, twelves in the back, speakers in the bag, I have fifteen fifteen yeah, Alpine pulled out which yeah, I had a pioneer, Yeah, I had I was a pioneer, sir, and vega.
Yeah.
And in the back inkis rooms lowered all the way to you.
You have you have children?
Oh yeah, one want children.
Think about what you're leaving to your kids, right, I mean your kid is gonna look at this. Yeah, it's gonna pass it on. It's gonna pass it on. And this is now two versions of your family going down down the road. You know, eventually this is who Grandpa was, you know what I mean?
And books still books still a big deal. It's not as a big deal is maybe it used to be, you know, like growing up in America, like there used to be a dream for all creatives of like if I could just write a book. Right, it's not the same anymore, but still it's still pretty important.
No, but you're more immortalizing your legacy, motalizing your heritage. And you know, you're letting them know that while you.
Were here you did something.
Man.
Yeah, and that and that's beautiful. So congratulations.
Make you think about it that way.
We're we're trying to are gonna try.
We're gonna we're gonna either leave on a high or leave on a low.
We're eating with peed chips.
Yeah, I mean it's is I guess it's speaking of two hundred percent?
Is this too? You should.
Mm hmm?
Yeah? Oh, Leo, it was good?
Great?
Did you you worked on this as well? Yeah?
How was the recipe pretty easy to follow? I was very easy to just stick everything in a blender. Yeah, right, all the herbs were it was very interesting and you mentioned the.
Smell there.
Oh yeah, yeah, I smelled it.
And in Venezuela there is a similar sauce like that cold and please don't judge in their name. It's it comes from indigenous sounds or whatever, but it's called Guasa Kaka's CoA.
Did you ever hear of us of an isueling kind of sauce.
It's a dipping sauce, could be addressing, could be anything that you can put it on steak and chickens, or you.
Can put it on yuka and you can dip the yuka.
That yeah, especially with the ya. Yes, it's just this consistency.
Exactly right, exactly. My mom makes it, and uh, you know, I'm.
Obsessed with with food I launched multiple restaurants in my life too, so I you know, I went in La. We had adults, we had Getesha House, we had the lotch, we had all kinds of different stuff in La. So I was really obsessed with food. My mom was a great cook too. So there was a cuta. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, that looks like what's a cutga? And it smell and actually has an interesting same consistency. This has a little bit of a sweet finish.
Rights a little.
Sweet from the rice vinegar, I believe.
And then yeah, and then the man, yeah, great job, and you yeah, you got the emotion correct.
So so Roy you we have these recipes, you have the book, like you have the trucks, you have all that, but you're you're also expanding. I mean, you know, we obviously saw you in Chef, which was awesome.
Yeah. I try to do what you all do.
Man, let's go.
The only problem is I can't remember shit, you know when I'm the worst at auditions too. I'm great at playing myself, but every time they asked me to play someone else, Oh no.
No, How did it finally start to transition into into movies into television? Was was Chef the first sort of foray into into uh into movies and just the.
First big one. But I think you know, on one level, like as creatives, it's really easy when you see another creative or when you connect you know, across the table, doesn't matter whether it's music or food or or acting or whatever. Like you you share something and you can like get to shorthand right away. Right. So there's that one thing. But the true bridge was that kogie from the from the early days after the whole kind of
first initial phenomenon took off. We started really getting hired a lot to feed film sets because the creatives picked up on it first, and so within our first year at the end of us so the first year was really just pounding the pavement, being on the streets, going neighborhood and the neighborhood blocked the box. But then as as that year started to come to an end, then people started to understand like who we really were, and then we got our shit together a little bit and
we had we put up an email. We had no email like that email like, you know, to contact us. We were just out there, man, we didn't have no plan, you know. And then finally we got an email up. As soon as we put the email up, you know, people from Radford Studios, from Paramount, from Warner Brothers, from everywhere being like, oh dude, like, you know, can we hire you for a rap party? Can we hire you to feed our crew? You know, we wanted to do a surprise, So we started showing up to film sets,
the movie sets really really early. And then there were a lot of people within the industry that were really early on Koge too, and one was Gwyneth Paltrow. So Gwyneth hired us for Iron Man two's rap party. So that was like the first one of the first big ones that we did. So this is the story. So what happened was this was one of our like this is in the second year, early part of the second year coche. We didn't know anything. We know our head from our asshole. And then we went to the rap party.
But it was in Malibu, up on this hill, and our truck is an old ass truck. And then we went up this driveway but we got stuck there. So we served the whole party and everyone loved it, licking their fingers everything. But then as we said bye, you know, and we were backing up, the truck didn't move. So we're there all night. And then so we got to
know everybody and everything. Everyone remember Kogie. And then later when John was in final kind of like pre production for his film Chef, he remembered our truck, he remembered us, and he found me. He reached out to my team and found me and uh hired me to come in to you know, see if I could just be a consultant. So I was supposed to be initially kind of like if you were doing a boxing movie. I was just supposed to come in for like two weeks and just teach him, you know, like just to.
Like as a tech.
I was just a technical consultant. But from day one, John and I just hit it off. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, shout out to John, that's my brother. You know, like we just we just hit it off from day one, and then we forgot about just being like the dudes that we are, Like, we just forgot about why the hell we even were supposed to be together. We just started spending every day together, you know, we were dose
of eagles, you know. And uh, and then that just that just naturally moved into I brought him into because he was studying to be a chef. So I was, yeah, because the movie he was playing a chef he was.
I know that, but I'm in real life he was studying No.
No, he was studying so the movie. So what I did was, because we hit it off from day one, I pulled him into my world. I just like started bringing him to the inside inside world of being a chef running a kitchen, and he brought me into his world. And it just felt so natural for the both of us. You know, like I had never been that close to a camera before. I'd never.
You know, you've never seeing the same thing and you know, laid out twenty five times.
But you know, your guys' world is very similar to the cooking world in the sense that there is a level of brigade, you know, to start from pa to crib, you know, and you go up and you don't necessarily you know, you have to pay your dues to get all the way up to the camera, you know, or get up to give direction to something. You know, same thing in the kitchen you're starting peeling potatoes and cutting chives. You're not saucing until you know, a few years in.
But John let me see every level of the of the industry, and I felt very natural with every every layer of it, and and that just led to you know, then then it was like the people I would meet along the way, you know, within your guys on set, they're all like, yeah, you know your kogie, I have kogi yesterday, this is that, and so everyone was very familiar. So that world was very natural for me. And then and then from that, you know, like people just asked me to be in stuff, so then I got asked
to be in Gilmore Girls. Right, I did Gilmore Girls. I got my SAG card because.
They always.
Yeah, because of the Gilmore Girls, you got me as an actor. Uh. And then uh I did some other cameos here and there. You know, It's always been fun.
But but but even but even on like behind it, like like even this book right like that that that obviously was sort of the the doorway for the more commercial version of of Roy Troy right like and and and you haven't you started like restaurants and do you have other stuff?
And yeah, I have a restaurant in Las Vegas. I always try to bounce. I think we touched on it earlier. It's like every time I get into an endeavor that maybe feels bigger or mainstream or whatever, I always try to balance it maybe with something that is like involved in like the social justice of something. So like even even in entertainment, I do the same. You know, if I have a Netflix show, you know I've been involved. I cooked on you know, uh, you know Megan the
Duchess of you know, where is she the Duchess of Sussex? Yeah? Sorry man, but yeah, the you know, I'm on a Netflix show. But then I do public television, you know, and try to do a show based around, uh, the inequities of access to food. So every time I'm doing something maybe mainstream entertainment, I try to balance it with underground you know. I just kind of you know, it's like open mic. And then you know, doing like a
big comedy special. Like it's like, you know, comedians do it all the time too, right, It's kind of like how you stay sharp and connected, you know, like all the comedians you see doing arenas are you know, popping up at the comedy store late night on Thursday, you know, And it's just like, I don't know, it's just the way that I do things.
So so, so tell us about the restaurants in Vegas. Uh.
Yeah, I have two restaurants in Vegas. One that's called Best Friend, you know, and that restaurant is kind of like it's kind of like me bringing Los Angeles to Vegas. So it's like pulling people into like that specific part of Korea Town and South Central and East LA that we've been talking about, and we created kind of like a world like in Vegas with that and you walk through this portal and it takes you into Los Angeles through the fields, the sounds, the music, the design, and
the food, and then the show and the movie. Chef we built the truck, so that movie is built around a food truck that serves kubanos. So you know we turned that truck. Yeah, is the chef of that truck and we turned that truck into a restaurant in Vegas.
So cool.
Yeah, that's incredible, man. We look, we are so incredibly grateful to you know, to call you an ally, to call your friend, and it's incredibly inspiring for all of us to continue to hear these Brazilian stories that you know, define who we are, not only as immigrants, spread the humanity that we actually experienced with one another. I know that the whole season we'll be talking about you coming on, so we we definitely you know, you've been in like the top of the.
Superstars in this.
But really, really he's another one who we.
Got to get John. Where are you at? Come on, John, let's go we do a partner piece.
But John John winsa a moment from being available, and then all of a sudden, Christopher Nolan called him and he's like.
Hey, you know, there's this little movie co.
Yeah no, but but you know, John's heart is here.
But that's the most important. But we're so excited. Thank you. I appreciate it so much.
And everybody get get his book and watch his movies and and the Gilmore Girls spot too, because that's gonna be a really.
Great mom is crazy the fan base. I love you all, crazy, dude.
Hey, this is Freddie Rodriguez and I'm Wilmaldama and I think you were watching or listening Amigos. Uh everywhere you got your podcasts.
Is a production from WV Sound and iHeartMedia's Michael through That podcast Network. Hosted by Me, Freddie Rodriguez.
And Wilma of Aaldorama, Amigos is produced by Aaron Burleson and Sophie Spencer Zabos.
Our executive producers are wilmri vald Rama, Freddie Rodriguez, Aaron Burlson, and Leo Clem at WV Sound.
This episode was shot and edited by Ryan Posts and mixed by Sean Tracy and features original music by Madison Devenport and Halo Boy.
Our cover art photography is by David Avalos and designed by Deny Holtz.
Clau and Thank you for being at third Amigo today. I appreciate you guys always listening to those amigos.
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