Chef and author Roy Choi took to the keynote stage for a very candid conversation at the 2026 Bar & Restaurant Expo. Choi is a voice and advocate for street food culture past, present, and future. He is the co-owner, co-founder, and chef of Kogi BBQ, Tacos Por Vida in LA, and The Chef Truck and Best Friend at Park MGM in Las Vegas. His newest cookbook, The Choi of Cooking: Flavor-Packed, Rule-Breaking Recipes for a Delicious Life, was published in April 2025.
Choi was interviewed by Aisha Tyler, an actor, director, comedian, entrepreneur, Emmy-winning television host, and New York Times best-selling author. The conversation covered creativity, failure, and what it means to build something that lasts.
Making People Feel Seen
Partway through the conversation, Tyler said to Choi, “I think what's great about what you do is that you're a purveyor of joy. You're creating a joyful experience and a connection for someone,” she said. “It’s not just about the plate; it becomes about the experience and putting a smile on somebody's face.”
Choi attributes this “joy” as the reason for his success. His concepts are places where people can show up as their whole selves and feel seen. They hear music they grew up with, taste flavors that feel familiar but surprising, and sense that the place was built for someone like them.
That genuine experience is also why Choi’s Korean BBQ taco truck, Kogi, drew lines of hundreds of people. He was feeding an altogether different hunger—one for connection, culture, and a shared experience that felt genuinely alive.
“The curated experience of Kogi was we're having a collective moment," said Choi. "Everybody in this line feels the same way. We're all feeling the same excitement, and this is ephemeral because this truck is not going to be here tomorrow or even in a couple of hours. We're never gonna have this exact experience again.”
It’s a concept that operators should lean into, especially as more and more consumers view experiences as a form of currency. It’s all but impossible to replicate the feeling that a specific room, team, and brand story creates for people, and it’s the thing that sets you apart from the competition. The question worth asking of your own space: Do guests leave feeling seen, or just served?
Go All the Way In
Choi also discussed the constant competition and the one-upping of even yourself that the hospitality industry can engender. For him, “food is not to compete, it is to nourish.” The pressure to make every next thing "better than the last" is what burns operators out and shuts restaurants down.
“It's a weird thing that we have as a society, that we judge each other, that the next thing has to be better,” said Choi. “What if your next thing isn't technically supposed to be better? What if it's supposed to just be what it is?”
Choi’s answer to the never-ending race was to just stop running it. Rather than chasing a version of success that was never built around you, Choi recommends operators find the lane that is actually theirs and go all the way into it. For him, depth beats breadth almost every time.
“If you go all the way in, you can create your own lane,” he said. And he’s living proof of it because the things people dismissed in Choi — his generosity, his love of street culture, his desire to feed everyone regardless of status — became the entire foundation of everything he's built.
"Going all in" refers to not only building a brand or concept, but a team as well. And when it comes to motivating that team, Choi believes in going all the way into the trenches with them. “I've always found that action is the best way of teaching. That’s carried me through and built an organization and a team that hopefully believes in what I represent,” he said. “No matter how big you get and how important you are, how successful you are, the only way to do it is to be in the trenches with them and to hold their hand. Show that what you're teaching them is what you believe in as well.”
He gave a small but memorable example of how he reframes mindset for his team: Instead of telling someone to pick something up off the floor, he teaches them to think of it as meant for them. This reframe turns a chore into a sense of ownership and purpose.
Final Takeaway
You can’t manufacture genuine community, a room where people feel at home, or an owner who shows up every day because they actually believe in what they're building. And those are the things that separate lasting concepts from ones that burn out in a few years.
Choi started Kogi with $1,500, a borrowed truck, and a philosophy that people told him would never work. Eighteen years later, it's still going — not because the tacos are perfect, but because the people who love Kogi feel like it belongs to them too. And that’s something worth building.
Are you registered for our newsletter? Sign up today!
Plan to Attend or Participate in the 2027 Bar & Restaurant Expo, March 22-24, 2027, Las Vegas, Nevada. Sign up for updates now!
To book your sponsorship or exhibit space at our events, fill out our form.
Also, be sure to follow Bar & Restaurant on Facebook and Instagram for all the latest industry news and trends.