Hello my blossoms! Between launching a podcast and 420 next week, I’m in the weeds — that’s restaurant-speak for crazy busy and behind. Rather than a recipe today, I’m giving you the inside scoop on the Roy Choi x TSUMo Snacks collab.
How to your hands on a bag
How to get FREE Kogi tacos and meet Roy Choi
Read my article for EMBER: “Does Chef Roy Choi’s First Cannabis Edible Live Up to His Legendary Culinary Reputation?”
Chef Roy Choi, the self-proclaimed stoner chef who revolutionized street food culture with his Korean short rib tacos, launched his first cannabis edibles in Spaghetti & Meatball and Spicy Cheesy Ramen flavors.
I got accidentally too high after a few too many handfuls while taste-testing to write an article for MedMen. Oopsies! I could start feeling the effects within 10-15 minutes after eating four puffs. For reference, my edibles tolerance is around 10mg THC. I ate ~20 puffs and knew from experience that it was going to be too much for my tolerance. Before it escalated too far, I had a CBD joint to come down and mellow out the effects, and was felt fine afterwards.
I love cheeseballs, and these crunchy balls of joy are dangerously DELICIOUS.
How to Get Your Hands on the Roy Choi x TSUMo Snacks Spicy Cheesy Ramen and Spaghetti & Meatball savory puffs
Exclusively available at all MedMen California locations from April 15 to May 1. They’ll be available at other retailers carrying TSUMo products starting in May.
Meet Roy Choi and get FREE Kogi tacos
Meet the chef and sample new flavors on May 12 from 12 noon to 2 p.m. at MedMen’s Venice location. The first 100 people to purchase from the store that day will get free Kogi tacos.
ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR EMBER:
Does Chef Roy Choi’s First Cannabis Edible Live Up to His Legendary Culinary Reputation?
BY CHRISTINA WONG OF FRUIT + FLOWER CO. | Images courtesy of TSUMo Snacks
“The Kogi taco truck is down the street on Sunset and Myra,” I shouted at my then-boyfriend, clutching my glowing phone in my hands. “Let’s go! We gotta get there before the line gets crazy.”
This was 2009 in Los Angeles. I’d been tracking @kogibbq on Twitter for weeks in search of the holy grail—a mouthwatering taste of their infamous short rib taco. I hurriedly half-ran down the street and there it was: a white food truck with the Kogi fire logo. Smoke wafted through the air while the tantalizing smell of sizzling Korean BBQ and Mexican street tacos lingered and drew us closer. Huddled next to strangers with bits of salsa dripping down their chins, I took the first bites of a taco that would revolutionize street food culture.
Soft, melt-in-your-mouth hunks of double-caramelized Korean BBQ short ribs tucked into griddled corn tortillas with salsa roja, salsa verde, cilantro-onion-lime relish, and chili soy cabbage slaw. This taco was unlike anything I had ever tasted; gloriously rich, savory flavors of Korean BBQ met with the fresh, bright flavors of a Mexican street taco. Inside the truck slanging tacos and giving out fist-bumps was Chef Roy Choi, the godfather of the modern food truck movement.
L.A. Son: A chef raised in the multicultural culinary patchwork of Los Angeles
Roy Choi's approach to food as a chef is often described as innovative, eclectic, and boundary-breaking, blending diverse culinary traditions and techniques to create dishes that are both comforting and unexpected—just like the multicultural patchwork of the city that raised him. On his distinct culinary style, The New York Times food editor Sam Sifton wrote, "Choi cooks poems, and they taste of Los Angeles.”
In his 2009 review of Kogi, the legendary late LA Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold described Choi's food truck as “a new paradigm of a restaurant, an art-directed take on Korean street food previously unimaginable in both California and Seoul: cheap, unbelievably delicious and unmistakably from Los Angeles, food that makes you feel plugged into the rhythms of the city just by eating it.”
"Choi cooks poems, and they taste of Los Angeles.” -Sam Sifton, food editor at The New York Times
Since Kogi, the influential chef has expanded his culinary empire to include a handful of highly praised restaurants like Chego!, Sunny Side, A-Frame, and more recently Best Friend in Las Vegas. He’s since become a prominent advocate for healthy and sustainable food, illuminating social issues of food insecurity and L.A.'s hunger crisis, and founding the healthy-fast-food concept restaurant LocoL.
Choi has since served as a judge on iconic cooking shows, like Top Chef and The Taste, and wrote a memoir, L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food. In addition, he produced the film Chef and the Netflix television series The Chef Show with Jon Favreau, and hosts Broken Bread, a documentary series that takes a deeper look at the ways food can be an agent of change. "Our mission statement [with Broken Bread] is looking at broken food systems and finding good people doing great things against all odds,” said Choi in an interview with the Washington Post.
Roy Choi: Street food king, old school smoker, and stoner chef
The self-proclaimed stoner chef and old school smoker—who smokes Purple Kush from his dealer so crystallized that it shimmers like Liberace—is an outspoken advocate and voice of cannabis culture. In his Reddit AMA, when asked if he smoked out Anthony Bourdain, Roy Choi answered: "they don't call me papi thc for nothing." When asked what his favorite board game is, he responded, "i roll weed on board games."
In Season 1 Episode 4 of Broken Bread he visits MedMen in downtown Los Angeles and explores the gentrification of legal cannabis. He walks out visibly shook, holding two signature red bags, saying “It still doesn’t feel real, you know? Did I just walk out with two bags full of cannabis, I’m standing here on Broadway and 7th Street. Like, no one is following me?”
"I think more people should smoke or eat weed... it takes you away from your frontal mind, and allows you to tap into other dimensions and other feelings." -Roy Choi
In an interview with Esquire, he said the cannabis episode of Broken Bread pushed him to “confront [his] own demons” about the new legal cannabis industry and how people consume it. “Because sometimes those things are really within yourself that you hold onto, your perception of things, your stereotype of things, what you've decided is the truth of something. I wanted to go and explore this world. I came out the other end really loving it.”
“I think more people should smoke or eat weed. It’s like dreaming,” Choi said in an interview with Tokewell. “It takes you away from your frontal mind, and allows you to tap into other dimensions and other feelings. There’s other information out there in this universe. Whether through weed, yoga, or meditation you can tap into information beyond the cerebral. Through your spirit. Weed is one way to get there. It’s a beautiful way to get there.”
Roy Choi x TSUMo Snacks: Spicy Cheesy Ramen and Spaghetti & Meatball puffs
That dreamy, otherworldly dimension is where Roy Choi tapped into for his first cannabis-infused edible in partnership with fellow Los Angeles brand TSUMo Snacks.
Born out of this L.A. chef’s munchie-fueled food memories, Spicy Cheesy Ramen and Spaghetti & Meatball are savory cannabis-infused snacks that taste and feel as mind-blowing as that first bite of Kogi KBBQ short rib taco. And the furikake popcorn dusted with pineapple powder and seaweed furikake seasoning at A-Frame. And the forkful of Chubby Pork Belly Bowl with gochujang-lacquered Kurobuta pork and a fried egg on top of rice with salsa, pickled radishes, cotija cheese, and toasted peanuts from Chego!. And the spicy finger-lickin’ double-fried Jamaican jerk chicken wings at Sunny Spot.
For the collaboration, Choi said, “I tapped into my dream world and envisioned scenes of outer space through a psychedelic kaleidoscope lens. ” He said in a press statement. “I wanted the packaging to look like another cannabis consumer created it—I’m hoping the designs on these snacks will spark grins and chuckles as consumers enjoy the products.”
"If cannabis can become more mainstream, then maybe it can help people to understand each other more." -Roy Choi
While Chef Roy Choi has said he would love to open a dope ass weed coffee shop and that he would be a “really f*cking good cannabis chef”, this partnership is his first foray into the new world of legal cannabis. Rather than going the easy route of putting his name on a pack of pre-rolls or flower, he created an entirely new cannabis edible with unique flavors inspired by his youth in a collaboration with TSUMo Snacks Co-Founder & CEO Caroline Yeh.
Roy Choi's ability to break down cultural barriers through food, and his unique perspective on the power of food and cannabis to inspire creativity, bring people together, and foster social change is remarkable. His influence in the legal cannabis edible market is a much-needed and welcome authentic voice.
“I’ve completely separated my purpose from my ego. And I want to use whatever I have to be some sort of reasonable voice in the room, that says, 'This stuff is broken, man. This can’t continue in a way.' Instead of blaming you, I’m gonna show you how we can fix it,” he said on Weed + Grub. “Being more mature allows myself to say, maybe I’m part of the problem too... Maybe I’m holding back the evolution and development of what cannabis can do. If cannabis can become more mainstream, then maybe it can help people to understand each other more.”
Christina Wong is a cannabis food, drink, and travel writer, creator, and baked baker in Los Angeles, California. She’s the Founder & CEO of Fruit + Flower Co. and writes Fruit + Flower Unfurled, a weekly newsletter for culinary cannabis enthusiasts. Her work has been featured in High Times, Cherry Bombe, CannaCurious, and Kitchen Toke magazines.