Monday, September 13, 2010

this past weekend: across the desert to KOGI!

...just got back from another weekend jaunt to the L.A. area; due to funny timing this year,
we had two conferences to attend, just a few weeks apart...So, last Friday afternoon we took an after-work flight to LAX, got in a rental car, and on the way to our destination, we made a culinary pit-stop:


Yes--FINALLY: KOGI! The now-legendary Korean-Mexican taco-truck! (Actually, there are now four of the trucks; check out their website, and you'll see that the trucks move all over the L.A. location throughout the week for lunch, dinner, and late-night locations: http://kogibbq.com)

It has started a nationwide trend; check out this New York Times article from a couple of months ago:
"The Tortilla Takes a Road-trip to Korea"... Atlanta. Chicago, Brooklyn. Portland...Viva cultural fusion-food!

So, we looked up the location and dutifully followed the GPS directions through Los Angeles...and ended up in a light industrial office park in suburbia. At first I thought--huh? Are we lost? Was there a misprint on the website? Nope. The Friday-night location was in this warehouse area because of the plentiful parking--and we turned a corner and there was a long eclectic line of people...We waited forty minutes, chatting with a family behind us, who'd just come from soccer practice with the kids...And S. and I. had spicy pork tacos, kalbi (Korean-marinated beef short-rib) tacos, AND a glorious kimchee-pineapple-pork quesadilla topped with sesame seeds, a ponzu glaze and even toasted seaweed flakes! Wow, eh?

The pseudo-pilgrimmage for this food was not the main point for our weekend trip...but definitely a fun extra.


A few out-the-window views from the Friday-afternoon flight--yes, gratuitous shots from my iPhone:

looking NE over Tucson and the Santa Catalina Mountains,
with some of the irrigated fields of the San Xavier del Bac Indian Reservation in the foreground:

closer in--you can just make out the tiny cluster of 'high'-rises of downtown Tucson
in the left middle-ground...where we live is just off to the right of this photo:

the ribbon of blue is the Colorado River, just south of Lake Havasu on the AZ-CA border;
whenever I've flown over the SW, I'm always struck by the suddenness of irrigated farms in the middle of barren sands...
Back to Tucson.
Back to work.

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