Food Truck Legend Goes Off

Food truck legend reveals the real secrets of new movie Chef and how Gwyneth Paltrow made it possible

In the new movie Chef, writer/director Jon Favreau steps in front of the camera to play Carl Casper, a once well-regarded chef who's fallen into serving boring, predictable food at a successful Los Angeles restaurant. Just as James Woods replaced Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart to prepare for an upcoming role, Favreau knew he would need to enlist the help of a professional chef to make the cooking scenes look right.

Someone who could teach him to chop, sear and swear like an actual chef. Someone who understands that corn starch can substitute for Gold Bond when things get really hot in the kitchen.

Favreau sought the expert advice of Roy Choi, the Los Angeles chef whose Kogi food truck blended Choi's Korean heritage with Mexican street tacos. Kogi's success propelled Choi to a Food & Wine Best New Chef win in 2010 and spawned a host of imitators, many of whom can be found in Houston. As the movie's culinary consultant, Choi helped develop the cliched menu Casper serves to food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), as well as the dishes Casper creates in his own kitchen and the Cuban sandwich that (spoiler alert) ultimately paves the way to his redemption.

"For me, I never abandoned the truck. Even though I’ve opened other things, the truck is still the lifeblood of who I am."

Choi tells CultureMap that Favreau has been a Kogi fan for years. "He had had it before. Gwyneth Paltrow, in the early Kogi days, was up on the truck," Choi tells CultureMap. "They had it on the Iron Man 2 set as a thank you to the staff. That was in our early days. It was a big deal for us.

"Jon called me out of the blue. They were looking for a culinary consultant, and my name came up. He called me and said 'Can you meet me for a day? I have a project I want to talk to you about.' He met me. We jumped into a car and hung out for six hours. The rest, as they say, is history."

One of the movie's signature scenes occurs when Castle serves a series of cliched dishes to Michel: Caviar egg, frisee salad, filet mignon and, worst of all, chocolate lava cake. "The lava cake was a series of events. He had something like that in there when I first saw the script," Choi says. "We had done Top Chef together. He had Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons there from Top Chef.

"We were still in the research phase . . . He asked them what is the thing that would make any chef gag. Or any person just drop their heart. They said chocolate lava cake."

The rest of the menu followed a similar path. "It wasn’t all just tongue and cheek and a joke. It was being really sympathetic to real restaurants out there that have to go through this. I know hundreds of restaurants that have seared scallops in beurre blanc, hundreds that have French onion soup, hundreds that have frisee salad," Choi says.

Fleeing Food Trucks

Turning to the current state of food trucks, Choi admits he doesn't know much about the Houston food truck scene, but the chef has strong opinions about the trend of truck owners getting off the street by opening brick and mortar locations.

"That’s a bit of a cultural thing. It’s good that the truck is a platform for a lot of people . . . . It was a bridge for them to move on and create something else in their lives. That’s great that they’re able to move on and make something," Choi says.

He notes that's not the only path though. And it's certainly not his path.

"There’s also the Latino culture in America where the truck is a huge deal. I think it comes down to where you come from in life. For me, I never abandoned the truck. Even though I’ve opened other things, the truck is still the lifeblood of who I am. That’s because I enjoy it. I believe in it. It’s everything that I am.

"The truck is fun. I don’t understand why you would leave the truck. It’s so much fun."

Generally, Chef, which has garnered good reviews, accurately depicts the bawdy banter of a professional kitchen, but one moment in the film struck me as false. Castle and two chefs drink a shot of a name brand vodka at a bar. Vodka? It must have been a paid placement.

"Maybe it would have been tequila more than vodka, but if that was all that was false to you, I feel very good about the film, then," Choi says.

"If we fucked up on the alcohol choice, we’ll take that."

Chef is playing in theaters across Houston.

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Movie Review

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck square off in Netflix crime thriller The Rip

Photo by Claire Folger/Netflix

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in The Rip.

For as closely tied together as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are, it might come as a surprise how few times they’ve led a movie together. They’ve appeared alongside each other in Good Will Hunting, The Last Duel, and Air, but the only time they were on equal footing in a story was Kevin Smith’s Dogma. So the fact that they are the two true stars of the new Netflix movie The Rip makes it a rare opportunity for the longtime friends to square off against each other.

Damon and Affleck play Lt. Dane Dumars and Detective Sgt. J.D Byrne, respectively, the two highest ranking members of a Miami police department squad that specializes in drug and drug money raids. A tragedy to begin the film already has the team — which includes Detectives Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandina Moreno) — on edge, with the FBI and DEA breathing down their neck.

Going off a tip, Dumars gathers the team to raid a house in nearby Hialeah that is supposed to have a stash of a relatively small amount of money. But when they get to the house occupied only by Desiree Molina (Sasha Calle), they discover close to $20 million. The team, required by law to count the money on site, must not only fight the urge to skim a little off the top for themselves, but also worry about the Cartel and other agencies that might want a slice of the pie.

Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, the film is a surprisingly effective crime thriller made even better by its high-quality cast, which also includes Kyle Chandler as a DEA agent. The story is designed for the audience to not know who’s trustworthy until the last possible second, and the various twists and turns it takes are well done, with barely a hint of narrative cheating.

Taking place entirely at night, the mood is set right from the start, with the only surprise being that Carnahan didn’t add in rain for extra effect. He keeps things tense with a number of subtle elements, including having the house located in a seemingly deserted cul-de-sac. This allows for the characters to remain on high alert at all times, with anything out of the ordinary — an unexpected noise, a flashing light, etc. — adding to the stress of the situation.

The only element that could have used a bit more of a punch-up is the characterization. The story is set up to cast suspicion on almost everybody, making it tougher to understand exactly what type of person each of them is. As the two leads, more time is spent with Dumars and Byrne, leaving everyone else with slightly underwhelming arcs. It’s to the credit of the actors that everyone else below Damon and Affleck is still compelling.

Damon and Affleck play their sometimes friendly, sometimes adversarial roles well, showing an ease together that’s a result of their friendship and the acting skills they’ve honed over 30+ years. Taylor, an Oscar hopeful for One Battle After Another, and Oscar nominee/Emmy winner Yeun have a pedigree that elevates their supporting roles. Chandler, Moreno, and Calle each get just enough to demonstrate why they were cast in their respective roles.

Damon and Affleck have had their individual ups and downs throughout their careers, but when they choose to work together, the results are usually good-to-great, as they are in The Rip. It’s a different take on a crime thriller that features a story that will keep viewers guessing until the very end.

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The Rip is now streaming on Netflix.

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