12236 Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90066
Web: Kogi BBQ
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Buffalo California Korean Mexican Seafood
"Kogi's following demonstrates that even the most unlikely set of choices can lead to success if you're in the right place; here's hoping that someone in WNY creates a dining experience that's equally novel and fun."
A funny thing happened on our way back to Buffalo from testing Apple's new iPad in San Francisco this week: a snowstorm. Given the choice of being stranded in Las Vegas overnight or staying with family in Southern California, we gladly picked the latter, and unexpectedly spent a few days catching up on some places that we think you might enjoy reading about. The first of our two articles looks at Los Angeles's increasingly famous Kogi's BBQ, then shifts over to Rancho Cucamonga's Bass Pro Store, the latter a name that Buffalonians have been hearing about - but not seeing - since November of 2004. Our second article discusses California pizza and the growing California Pizza Kitchen chain, as well as the famous steak and rib house Claim Jumper.
Kogi BBQ. Some people believe that success in business is simply a matter of following specific rules. For a restaurant, those rules are supposedly simple: choose the right location(s), serve familiar foods, and be consistent. But in November 2008, a small business called Kogi BBQ decided to break the rules, and in so doing, became both a phenomenon and an inspiration to other restauranteurs in Southern California. Kogi started by operating a truck that moved from place to place offering a seemingly bizarre fusion of Mexican tacos with Korean-flavored meats. Today, there are four separate Kogi trucks roaming the streets of L.A. and Orange Counties, using both Twitter and a web site to telegraph their temporary, three-hour locations in advance to over 55,000 followers, who show up and form lines for food wherever they go. The bigger "wow" business idea: the Kogi trucks get permission from other stores to set up shop outside, and generate such crowds that both the trucks and the stores benefit from the attention. Thus, Kogi shatters the conception that location is critically important; in this case, with smart word-of-mouth marketing, the Kogi trucks become destinations of their own.
What about serving familiar foods? Nope: Kogi's mix of Mexican and Korean foods is at least untraditional, and at most, the sort of "could that possibly work?" fusion that excites people into telling friends when it does. For $2 each, Kogi serves double-tortilla Tacos loaded with Korean short ribs, spicy chicken, spicy pork, or tofu, and tops them with lettuce and cabbage. Burritos and Quesadillas add either rice and beans or cheese to the same meats for $5 each, and Kogi Sliders place short rib meat, lettuce, and cheese onto small hamburger buns. Thanks to their Mexican bases, these items are sort of familiar, but they sure weren't common - or crowd-drawing options - when Kogi BBQ started.
Then there's the issue of consistency. Rather than resting on a menu that's only a little more than a year old at this point, Kogi is constantly testing new specials - for instance, calamari as a meat choice, Korean-influenced meat and corn tortillas, and interesting desserts like ChocoLate Tres Leches - spiced peanut brittle with toffee, cinnamon toast crunch, cocoa pebbles, cayenne pepper and cinnamon. The specials, as we found, may or may not be available on a given truck on a given day, even if they're advertised on the web site. You need to be prepared with other choices if they're sold out or just not available. So is Kogi consistent? Nope; only the core of tacos, burritos, and quesadillas are guaranteed to be there, so long as supplies last, and the trucks actually Twitter when they're out of certain items. Sometimes.
This weekend, we arrived at one of Kogi's truck stops just a little before its noon arrival, and stood at the head of a 20-person-deep line that formed the moment it pulled up. Many of the people behind us were obviously already familiar with its menu, and gossiping about its plans to open an actual storefront this year. "Half of the fun is finding the truck," said someone behind us in line, "but it'd be great to be able to sit down in a real restaurant." How many restaurants could consider a grand opening with a built-in fan base of 55,000 people?
The other half of the fun, obviously, was in the eating: we strongly believe that Korean food is underappreciated, particularly in Western New York, and both of us found the unusual juxtaposition of Korean meats and Mexican wrappings to work wonderfully. Our truck was out of the calamari, but was offering a chef's special called the Chili Chicken Quesadilla, a traditional cheese-filled quesadilla with marinated chicken bulgogi inside and a generous topping of Thai-Korean chili-lime sauce and sesame seeds. Kogi's sliders weren't quite as impressive - here, the shredded cheese and bun just got in the way of enjoying the meat - but the cheese-less tacos, with Korean-flavored red salsa and the meats, were all hits. We tried the short rib, pork, and chicken versions, and the only question left at the end was which we liked the most. It would have been easy to buy more tacos, but for the line, which continued to grow as we ate on a bench outside.
To the extent that it sneaks up on you by using the trappings of a plain white lunch truck to disguise a surprisingly creative and successful culinary pairing, any first meal at Kogi BBQ is going to be a pleasant surprise: it disproves the notion that a prime piece of real estate or a predictable, everyman menu is the only way to build a loyal following. Yet imitators have discovered that it's hard to duplicate the buzz that continues to surround the Kogi trucks - this success story depends on customers to recognize just how special and unique of an experience they're having, which might or might not work in other places and with other culinary formulas. Kogi's following demonstrates that even the most unlikely set of choices can lead to success if you're in the right place; here's hoping that someone in Western New York rises to the challenge of making a dining experience that's equally novel and fun.
Bass Pro Shops. There are hundreds of wonderful things about Western New York, and unpredictable weather aside, only one thing we'd call seriously "bad:" the reflexive griping and stalling that follows virtually every proposal for change or development. It sometimes feels as if some Buffalonians would prefer to live in 1983 than in a modern, healthy, and growing city. Worse yet, some people actively try to impede progress in the pursuit of some minor, short-sighted gain, and wind up destroying their neighbors' livelihoods - quite possibly their own, as well - in the process.
The Bass Pro Store is just one example of a situation where Buffalo has somehow taken a huge wrong turn, and we'll be totally honest about this up front: we had no idea until this week just what we were missing. For years, we've been hearing about some supposedly glorified fishing shop that was supposed to be built in Buffalo, as the anchor tenant of a plan to develop the waterfront. Waterfront? A fishing shop? Who cares, or is going to care, we thought. The fact that the project has only barely moved forward since the Pataki Administration didn't bother us. Sure, a great waterfront would be nice, but did we need this place in order to do it?
Then we actually visited a Bass Pro Shop this week, and we were shocked; not only did we understand what all the fuss had been about, but we realized just how much of an opportunity the community has been missing during the years this project has sat in limbo. Put aside, temporarily, the seemingly never-ending discussion over how many millions of its own dollars Bass Pro is going to invest in this venture - a discussion that has gone on long enough to discourage virtually any business, and took the proposed shop from a 250,000-square foot initial size down to something at or below 150,000-square feet today. Just look at those numbers: Bass Pro Shops aren't some rinky dink tackle shops. They're three or five times the size of a football field, with separate departments that sell boats - yes, full boats - every type of hunting and fishing gear imaginable, clothing, and even jewelry. The location we visited in Rancho Cucamonga, California this week has nearly 180,000 square feet of space, enough that it's located across the street from a massive, impressive shopping mall rather than just another store within it.
Seeing a Bass Pro Shop in person, at least for us, made us believers. Calling it a Wegmans-like sporting goods store would be somewhat inaccurate because of its narrow focus - it lacks football, baseball, tennis and similar gear - but for fishers, hunters, and outdoor sporting fans in general, it's incredible. If you're looking for a crossbow, a fishing rod, a full camouflage outfit or even a rifle, Bass Pro surely has it, along with bow and gun ranges, live fish in tanks and simulated streams, and much, much more. Even with a wide-angle lens, pictures do not do justice to the size and scope of the store we visited; we've posted a gallery of shots on Flickr for those who want to see more.
So what's the foodie angle here? In addition to everything else, the Bass Pro Store had a full-sized restaurant inside called the Islamorada Fish Company, serving everything from burgers to alligator, venison-stuffed mushrooms to seafood dishes, with a heavy emphasis on grilling. There's a 13,000 gallon salt water fish tank to greet patrons, and 11,000 square feet of space - a larger restaurant than most in Western New York. Completely separate were a department full of portable smokers and grills, another devoted to outdoor-friendly packaged foods, and a staffed counter filled with fresh fudge and spiced Bavarian nuts. We could have eaten a meal and taken home plenty of snacks there - the only reason we didn't was that we were pressed for time.
We can't erase history, but it needs to be said that ignoring or delaying the opening of a Bass Pro Store wasn't just a bad idea in the abstract - the sheer size of the place means that the number of people it will need to employ for everything from door greeters to counter personnel is pretty staggering. And despite what you might have read, it's obvious that this isn't some Walmart-class, cut-every-corner retailer, but rather a really nice shop that shows way more pride of ownership than you'd ever expect from the name, or even the outer decor. Even if you don't appreciate the sorts of sports it caters to, there's little doubt that Buffalo needs these sorts of jobs and this sort of destination - a store that legitimately has the potential to bring people from neighboring areas in to spend money on recreational activities. If and when it opens, we'll be amongst the first to cheer it on; if it doesn't, we'll know exactly who to blame.
