Quotes from Roy Choi

I know what it's like to be a teenager in Orange County. I know what it's like to be a kid in L.A. I know what it's like to not have any money and have your lights turned off. I know what it's like to live in a house with five rooms.

A lot of times in television, you don't get the opportunity to show real life because we're brainwashed to believe the propaganda that these things aren't marketable, that these things don't sell.

I want to reshape fast food in America.

Everything I do is like tough love; everything I put out there in the universe is me trying to feed you. I really care.

I know a lot of artists and chefs don't talk about this, but sometimes you just don't get to the finish line. That honesty and tenderness is something we're kind of not supposed to express.

I don't have a boss. I don't answer to anybody. I do everything that I want to do out of the purity of making people happy.

I knew of the 'Gilmore Girls' - I wasn't a rabid fan, but I watched it sporadically when it was first on.

Even as a kid I wasn't, like, a natural entertainer, where I would gather everyone around me and then sing or something at family parties.

I'm just trying to cook good food, and I'm not afraid to do whatever I need to do to keep the food evolving.

American barbecue is all slow and low, you know, or low and slow, as they say down in the South, in Texas. But Korean barbecue is thinner cuts of meat.

Chefs don't have a union. We don't have a Screen Actor's Guild.

I'm a little old-school in that I think there's some value in the classics and the steps of achieving a certain profession. If we start slanging the word 'chef' on anybody and everybody who cooks, it takes away a lot.

Yes, a business should thrive, but it shouldn't thrive at the expense of everyone else losing.

TV is a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to get a show.

There is something timeless and beautiful about cooking straight to camera.

When Kogi started, I was dead broke, selling tacos on the street just to survive.

I want to pay homage to Los Angeles.

Public television is a very important thing for our human race, and it allows us the ability to discuss the elephants in the room and understand stories beyond the headlines.

Time is an illusion anyway. You can create as much time as you want.

I typically like Sicilian pizza.

I have a tendency to trail off in conversations. I don't look up at people sometimes when I talk or cook, and those are all pretty bad no-no's being in front of the camera.

I translate Hawaii as a place where people make sure I'm having a great time, eating terrific food, without any expectation of anything in return. It's a place for people to be happy. It sounds corny, but in Hawaii, it's not; it's uncorny.

I don't really care about job security.

I was watching TV and saw the 'Emeril' show, and it spoke to me. I went out and started researching the culinary world and chefs that I knew nothing about. Then I moved to New York and went to culinary school, and everything just fit like a glove. It's been on ever since.