Rage, race and recipes

Oliver Wang on L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food by Roy Choi: LARB

The idea of chef as both aesthete and rock star enjoyed a boost in 2000, when chef-turned-author Anthony Bourdain wrote his gritty, engaging exposé, Kitchen Confidential. The book became a bestseller and launched a whole new industry for Bourdain as well as a new age of visibility for the men and women who wear the white toque. A pair of notable recent memoirs, one of them published by Bourdain’s imprint at Ecco Press, trace the rise of two stars in both the kitchen and without: Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang and L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food by Roy Choi. Huang runs BaoHaus on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, dishing out Taiwanese-inspired meat buns, while Choi achieved fame in Southern California, via the short-rib Korean taco served up by his Kogi BBQ truck empire.