Not Your Father's Rice Bowl: Roy Choi Is Back, With Chego

A A A Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Thursday, Apr 15 2010

Roy Choi may be the Led Zeppelin of street food: the father of a truck-based restaurant industry that hadn't existed just 18 months ago; the chef who draws huge numbers of people to deserted parking lots; the architect of a new, popular cuisine. He was the only Los Angeles chef to be named one of Food + Wine's best new chefs this year, and at food-industry events, CEOs of multinational corporations hang on him like custom Loro Piana worsted.

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Chego

3300 Overland Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

Category: Restaurant > Korean

Region: West L.A.

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So what is Choi's second act? Rice bowls! And not the skanky, stringy underseasoned rice bowls you may remember from hundreds of now-dead Yoshinoya restaurants, but multifaceted, soulful things, utterly un-Korean in concept but Korean to their core, things like ultrafunky kimchi bowls tossed with buttered rice; chile-rubbed prime rib rice bowls with horseradish, and a rice bowl highlighted by a slab of pork belly that has been burnished as lovingly with Korean chile paste as a '64 Impala show car has been rubbed with lacquer. At Chego, you can start with charred asparagus, fluffy Korean meatballs or a "$12 salad'' if you like, but the only dessert is a deconstructed Rocky Road sundae with caramel, brownies and marshmallow fluff.

The restaurant proper is a tiny place in an obscure Westside mini-mall, personalized with small collections of books and toys — it looks like the kind of hidden Tokyo jazz bar that can take three sets of cabbies to find.

CHEGO: 3300 Overland Ave., Palms, (310) 287-0337, eatchego.com. Open Tues.-Sat., 6 p.m.-mid. MC, V. No alcohol. Lot parking. Takeout. Appetizers, $4-$7; rice bowls $7-$9; dessert $5.