The Legend of Kogi: That Time Jaleel White and Mark Manguera Came Over For Shrimp Cocktail and Slow-Cooked Pork Butt

by Andy Wang
on 04/15/14 at 04:29 PM
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Actor Jaleel White and Kogi's Mark Manguera are longtime friends. Photo by Jenni Hwang

So there's this moment when the founder-CEO of Kogi and actor Jaleel White are sitting in your LA apartment, eating a bo ssam your wife made with a David Chang recipe, and you start wondering about the life decisions that led you to this point.

But, really, this shouldn't be my story beyond the short version of how this night happened: Kogi founder Mark Manguera and White -- yes, the versatile actor best known for his role as bumbling Steve Urkel and ultra-suave alter ego Stefan Urquelle on "Family Matters" -- are good friends. We met them both at a spring menu preview at Fickle, a Little Tokyo restaurant. And a few days later, they came over for shrimp cocktail and slow-cooked pork butt.

Manguera showed up with a six-pound king crab and then displayed serious kitchen skills as he quickly pulled out the meat from each colossal leg. "Game of Thrones, dog!" he kept shouting, and this was explanation enough for what was happening. I really want this man to come with me to every seafood buffet I visit for the rest of my life, so he can crack my crab legs.

When White realized that this had turned into a six-pound-minimum pot luck, he texted a friend who then came over with cookies and two cheesecakes, even though other guests had doubled the recipe for the cake that was already on the premises. And he later kept the party going with the Cards Against Humanity game he brought over.

It turns out White knows a lot about food, too, and loves checking out new restaurants. He instagrammed a photo of himself with Michael Mina at the opening of Bourbon Steak at the Americana at Brand in Glendale the week before he visited Fickle. While at Fickle, the social media-savvy White started thinking about an upcoming New York visit and tweeted his desire to try his first Cronut.

While Manguera is cracking the giant crab, White tells me he's excited about revisiting the crew behind Torrisi Italian Specialties, Carbone and Parm when he's in NYC. He's been friends with Jeff Zalaznick, a partner in those restaurants, for years after sitting near him at Knicks games.

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Wow, nice legs!


As we eat bo ssam, the Coachella livestream is playing in the background. It's a reminder that Kogi, the Korean-Mexico taco truck that really changed everything in Los Angeles, has turned into an empire. Kogi, which launched in 2008, now has four trucks that roam LA daily. And it had to get another four trucks just for Coachella.

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And dinner is served. Photo by Jenni Hwang


The origin story of Kogi is about second chances and a desire to feed the streets. In his recent "LA Son" book about how he became the man and chef he is after surviving substance abuse, bar brawls and encounters with dangerous criminals, chef Roy Choi touched on the Kogi story a bit but left most of it to be told at another time. As Choi admits, the Kogi tale is one that he alone can't tell properly. It's a collective story about, among other things, hardship, drunken revelry, redemption and the power of social media, and we're hoping that Team Kogi writes a book about it all soon.

In the meantime, though, let's indulge in one little known piece of this story.

Kogi's Manguera was a hotel hospitality veteran who got laid off twice in 2008 but not until after he had worked with Choi at the Beverly Hilton and also befriended various celebrities who were hotel guests or attended awards season parties there. After getting plastered one night, Manguera realized that there was an opportunity to create late-night food for partiers like himself, who wanted good, inexpensive hangover-prevention meals after another night at the club.

Once Kogi came up with its Korean BBQ tacos, it was time to spread the word. Manguera told close friends about the plan to start a food truck, even though he wasn't sure how he was even getting a truck. One of those pals was White, whom Manguera had met at the Hilton.

"I told him it was a great idea," White says. "Then I said, 'You should call Mo!'"

Mo was Morris Appel, another Hilton customer Manguera knew.

"I was like, 'Why should I call Mo?'" says Manguera, who didn't realize at the time that Appel's family was a dominant player in the LA trucking business.

Manguera listened to White and called Appel, who agreed to lend him a truck for a short while.

"He said, 'Let's try this out and see what happens,'" Manguera recalls.

Kogi did its first tasting, at a friend of Manguera's Pasadena house, in 2008. White was there. So were a handful of influential bloggers and food writers (including Deep End Dining's Eddie Lin, who's been writing about Kogi ever since), who instantly realized that This. Was. Going. To. Be. Big.

But they had no idea how huge it would become.

Kogi quickly turned into a phenomenon where hundreds of people would track a truck on Twitter then rush over to a parking lot to happily stand in line for more an hour (often while buzzed and looking to hook up) and be part of a food moment unlike anything LA had ever tasted.

"I never gave back the truck," Manguera says.

"I'm still waiting for my royalty," White jokes.

Tagged with: Andy Wang, Asian

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