by Roy Choi
But sometimes, in the deepest of moments, there are no words. There is only food. There is a bowl of rice. There is kimchi. Broiled fish. Soups and noodles. Chopsticks and the newspaper. The only things that truly communicate forgiveness and repair a broken soul.
I was to be repaired at my parents’ Coto de Caza house in Mission Viejo, the same place I had stolen from and used as a surplus center to supply my low-life pawns. It looked like a Miami bungalow, painted bright flamingo pink, with shaded palm trees and windows cascading light in from everywhere. Around us were meandering foothills, soaring falcons, families on horseback. The Saddleback Mountains loomed over the landscape, and a creek dribbled water across the fairway—frogs straight out of a Disney movie would ribbet throughout the night. You might see a mountain lion on the prowl, a coyote chasing bunny rabbits, or a golf ball sailing across the sky toward a sea of bright green.
I hated the place from the moment they moved in. I hated how boring it was, and I abhorred the senseless affluence. But the day my parents brought me back from the Bicycle Club was the day I finally saw past all that and discovered the genuine beauty in the nature surrounding Coto de Caza. Besides, I was exhausted, I had lost all my friends, and I had nowhere left to run. At least there on the seventeenth fairway, I could hide from everyone. Everyone, that was, but myself.
The detox took weeks. I was just twenty-four years old, but between my lost week in New York and my lost years at the tables, I had become frail to the bone. Everything in me was sick. My mind was filled with white noise. I couldn’t think. I had to come to terms with the fact that I had begged, borrowed, stolen, and lost everything. That I had let everyone down, including my friends and especially my family. For days on end, I stayed in my pajamas and stared at the TV and at the pages of books, trying to relearn how to piece words together to form sentences. When my parents left for work at 9:00 A.M. and returned at 7:00 P.M., I was still on the couch where they had left me, empty bowls of food and crumbs everywhere. Towering over me at the end of the day, my parents could do only what they knew to do: keep feeding me, bowl after bowl, hoping their walking dead of a son would come back to life.
After weeks of my wrestling with my demons, nature and nurture finally got the better of the guilt and shame. The jitters slowly went away, color came back to my face, my cheeks filled out again, and I even had a little spring in my step. I put on some real clothes and decided it was about time to face the world and become a part of society again.
First things first. I had to find some work. Classifieds. And right there in black and white was a listing for an investment banking position at First Investors Corporation, a New York firm with a Los Angeles office on Westwood Boulevard. Fancy. They managed mutual funds and were looking for motivated and talented brokers. You could be successful there. I was motivated. I could be talented. I could be successful there.
I dusted off my dad’s tweed suit and drove to L.A. to apply.
First Investors was in a small office in West Los Angeles. An older gentleman named Malvin Scherr, direct from a corner office at the New York branch and looking forward to retiring as soon as he had the L.A. office up and running, oversaw things. His assistant, a beautiful older lady with round glasses, had that look of a New York Jewish aunt. And then there was me, without any experience, licenses, or certifications, but young, fresh off some bad times, and ready to succeed. We all hit it off beautifully. I was hired on the spot.
The plan was for me to take the Series 6 and Series 7 broker exams to become licensed to sell mutual funds. If I passed, Malvin would groom me. I’d start from where I was—the bottom of the bottom—and learn about the company’s funds and how to run the market. And so I did it. I studied up and took the exams on a computer in some office building in Irvine. Somewhere in me, I secretly hoped to fail both tests so I wouldn’t have to work. But I fucking passed. I was a certified banker.
My parents were so proud. To celebrate, they took me and my sister out to Benihana that night. Their son was going to Wall Street! We ordered the hibachi steak and lobster combos. Extra shrimp? Of course! Double the fried rice. And you want the filet mignon, too? Buddha drinks for everyone! My son’s going to Wall Street! Hercules, Hercules, Hercules!
Alas, Hercules’s first day on the job was not running with the bulls on Wall Street. While my parents thought I was on the top floor of the Oppenheimer Tower in Westwood, I was actually in the basement, in a dark room with a rotary phone and ten stacks of telephone books. Cold-calling 101. What is a brother to do? Not tell his parents and start with the letter A, that’s what. One by one, I called. Maybe I even called you. Do you remember a guy with a nervous tremble in his voice ringing you up in the middle of the day sometime in 1995, asking if you had ever considered investing in mutual funds, class A shares, then thanking you for your time and wishing you a good rest of the day?
So I wasn’t Gordon Gekko. But the job gave me what I needed: a structure and a goal. I wore a suit every day. I carried a briefcase full of investment portfolios. Door to door, I had more.
Beyond the Yellow Pages, I reached into my own Rolodex, hitting up everyone I knew, from people I met during the old days at church to my parents’ clients to merchants in liquor stores and video shops. It was a slow start. No one was interested in investing in their future. Then, right around the time I hit F in the phone book, I made my very first sale, off a lead from a network of friends within the Korean community. A Class A First Investors aggressive growth fund called Technology sold to a guy who ran an embroidery shop in Costa Mesa.
As soon as I popped my cherry with that first fund, it was on. Boom, another sale, to a family friend who owned a liquor store in Topanga Canyon. These first few clients did so well that they referred me to their friends. And I listened to their stories, examined their lives, and tried my best to give them the right fund to fit their needs. It worked. My picks were gangbusters with incredible returns. It was “You very lucky, man!” all over again.
Things were going good. Over the next few months, I worked my way up, eventually making six figures. I got my step back on the L.A. grind and reconnected with Koreatown, now in full bloom after recovering from the L.A. Riots a few years earlier. But just as I was gathering steam in my new life, I bumped into my old homie and roommate Yogi.
He had graduated from UCLA by then, and his family had high hopes for him. After all, he was the smart kid in his family who was supposed to fly to success and be a doctor, just like his pops. But, to his and his family’s disappointment, he just couldn’t fly straight. He was drinking a lot when we roomed together, and he kept it up even after he graduated. In fact, his reputation for drinking preceded him throughout the Asian-American college community from UCLA to USC to CSUN to UCI to the Cal States and all throughout Koreatown. And he was still ruling the streets when I ran into him again.
After all that shit with the gambling, though, I was a little reluctant to see him. But time heals all wounds, and beer waters the lawns of friendship. We instantly rebonded like nothing had ever happened and went out for a drink. Then a few more. And more. And with each bottle, I started to lose my step and fall behind. Then I just lost my footing altogether, and for the next year and a half, he and I each let alcohol fuel the other’s anger about unfilled expectations, our disappointments, our fears, the stress, the pressure. And so if you were in Koreatown around 1995, you probably ran into Yogi and me running fucking game, getting into fights and defending our turf. The long nights would start at around 9:00 P.M. at the Dragon for black bean noodles, hand-pulled long elastic chewy threads covered in steaming hot onions, zucchini, and pork. We’d slurp that up, our faces covered in black smudges. If we wanted some classic Korean BBQ, we hit Soot Bull Jeep, a place filled with smoke and hot charcoal. The panchan were decent, but what brought us in were the plates and plates of raw marinated meat ready to be singed over nuggets of smoldering mesquite, which had been fired up outside till they burned lava red and brought inside to fuel the tabletop
grills.
When we wanted something more low-key, we went for big bowls of jjambbong, a spicy seafood stew filled to the brim with octopus, squid, shrimp, clams, and onions. Other times we hit Mom’s Place on 8th Street for abalone porridge, where the rice is cooked in stock until it breaks and explodes, then simmered until it’s gelatinous and soupy. Chunks of abalone and a raw egg are mixed in, and it’s all seasoned with sesame oil, garlic, ginger, soy sauce. And there were so many other options: fried chicken done Korean style—marinated in milk and beer and then fried till the skin broke like stained glass—at OB Bear; potato pancakes and kimchi jjigae at Kobawoo House; or drinks and spicy rice cakes at a bar called Bohemian.
Just as we got our buzz on, it was off to the club for more drinks, showing off for girls, and turf battles, then to the twenty-four-hour Hodori Restaurant for some blood-cabbage soup or El Taurino for drunken spicy tacos and more phone numbers. Then to Yogi’s to crash at his pad on Beloit right near Sawtelle Boulevard.
In the mornings, we ate at Hurry Curry, dead hungover, pouring that extra-spicy glop all over the rice and chewing like horses on hay, or went to Junior’s or Langer’s and ate our pastrami sandwiches in silence, contemplating.
And all throughout, night or day, we’d walk up and down the streets, glaring like mean mothafuckas, sometimes drunk as shit, red-faced and potbellied, breaking windows for the hell of it. Sometimes I’d start fights for the hell of it, bringing my crew into a brawl that would spill into the street and block traffic with our swinging chains, knives, and bats.
Even our own friends weren’t immune to our belligerence. I’d pick drunken fights with them just as soon as I’d start pounding on some random guy who looked at me the wrong way. Or I’d grab a buddy’s girl and just start making out with her. Then we’d all fight it out, friend and foe. At first my friends laughed it all off. But I kept pushing that line, and they went from laughing to warning to threatening. When that didn’t work, they just tried to avoid me altogether. But they couldn’t hide: if they were at a booth somewhere, I’d crash it. If they were at a party, I’d show up. Same shit, different day.
Meanwhile, I was clocking into First Investors later and later every morning, reeking of alcohol and pale as the moon. My clients blew up my pager, asking for my advice about their funds. My advice should have been to run from me before it was too late. I stopped going back to Coto de Caza, and my mom’s stews probably sat on the kitchen table, steaming under plastic wrap, waiting yet again for her son to come home. The Buddha celebration at Benihana could last only so long.
Six months of compressed chaos finally came to a head one night in 1995. It was almost 3:00 A.M., and I was hanging out with friends and drinking in the lobby of a karaoke club. I looked up, and there she was. Grace. My ex-girlfriend. We had dated back when I was still playing poker; she was beautiful and clever, and she stuck with me through a lot of shit. It had been a few years since I had last seen her, but she was still as fine as fine could be. So I stepped to her again, opening up some old wounds but also cracking some old jokes to help her remember our good times. We were just sinking into a good moment when her boyfriend came up.
He asked her to come with him. I grabbed her arm and said, “She’s staying with me.” Then I went the fuck off. I thought he was Chinese and started yelling “Ni hau ma, muthafucka!” and telling the punk to say hello and to respect me first. I started to shove him, but I was so drunk, I couldn’t even stand straight. Then out of the blue, from the bleacher seats, whoomp! Coldcocked, and I hit the ground. Maybe ten dudes came out kicking, hitting, punching. I grabbed one guy and broke his fingers, but I was done. Knocked out and down for the count.
Amid this mayhem, I glimpsed my friends shaking their heads at me and walking away. At any other moment, they would have had my back, but the “ni hau ma” was the final straw. My act was getting old. As far as they were concerned, I was a beast and a burden, a dead weight who was getting exactly what he deserved.
Meanwhile, I was dragged into one of the karaoke rooms. The boyfriend’s goons threw me down on a couch, whipped out their guns, and put the barrels to my head. The boyfriend asked me if I wanted to live or if I wanted to die. It was quiet. I’m sure the other guys were waiting, just waiting, for the signal to pull their triggers. But the boyfriend took his time. Because my old girlfriend was now his girlfriend, he had just the slightest, most microscopic bit of sympathy for me. So he asked me again.
“Do you want to live? Or do you want to die?”
I dripped blood. Slobber drooled from my nose and mouth. My bruised face ballooned like the Elephant Man’s. I thought about his question, but the answers just weren’t coming into my head. So I stood up. Raised my two fists, clenched except for the middle fingers held sky high into the air. And said, “Fuck you. I’m still standing even after all you punks tried to kick me. I’m still standing.”
And I walked out of the room.
They should have shot me.
But I walked out, spitting and thinking I was such a bad ass, not knowing that if it weren’t for the grace of Grace and the love that her new boyfriend had for her at that moment, I’d be dead. Not knowing that I was a piece of shit whose life was spared because a dude got asked by his girlfriend to please not kill me. Some tough guy, huh? Grace drove me back to her apartment in my car as her friends followed her in their cars. I woke up the next morning in the passenger seat and haven’t seen her since.
I didn’t learn my lesson. The stupid cycle continued a little while longer, with me roaming the city with black eyes and swollen body parts from nights and fights I couldn’t even remember. I probably would have spun even more out of control if it weren’t for the smell of beef bourguignonne.
A few weeks after the scene at the club, I woke up on Yogi’s couch in the haze of that 11:00 A.M. hour, half asleep, half dead, half drunk, half high, half assed. I turned on the TV and started to sink into a show hosted by a dude cooking in a checkerboard-tiled kitchen. As his voice trailed off and my eyes began to roll back under heavy eyelids, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a slap across my face.
“Hey, wake up. Wake up! What the fuck are you doing?”
Very slowly, I started to wake up.
“Why do you act like this? Here, smell this. Try this. Taste this. It’s beef bourguignonne. These are herbs. Oregano and basil. Wake up and get your shit together!”
Bam. The weights on my eyelids lifted. The room was fuzzy and the TV was still on, but the body in the screen was three-dimensional. Emeril Lagasse wasn’t talking to the camera anymore. His eyes were looking straight at me like fucking Mona Lisa’s. He was talking to me. And he was shoving oregano and basil under my nose. For one long second, I felt the herbs tickling my nose; I smelled the stew bubbling in the pot. It was exhilarating. Captivating. And bam, just like that, I knew. This was my destiny.
The second passed, and I touched the TV. Emeril was back in the checkerboard kitchen, doing The Essence of Emeril, as if nothing had just happened.
Up until that moment, I just didn’t see it. I didn’t realize how much food was a part of my family, a part of me. I was almost too close to it all, too close to the screen to really see the big picture. But the moment Emeril waved those herbs at me, my whole world clicked into place and I saw what had been in front of my face this whole time: Food. Flavors. Sohn-maash. I saw myself in the kitchen. I saw myself at home.
That was it. I made up my mind. I was done with the anger, the shame, the mistakes, the self-pity, the pain. For real this time, I was done. I peeled myself off the couch. Got up, went to the bathroom, and took a hard look at myself. You fucking low-life SOB. Get your shit together. Get your shit together.
I got up and left that old me on Yogi’s couch. Moved back to the seventeenth hole, and, for the next six months, I stayed strong and focused my energy: I returned to First Investors, where Malvin took me back under his wing. I got back in touch with my clients, took care of their questions, and started navigating the deep laby
rinths of the market. I enrolled in a local culinary school, and, two nights out of the week, I honed my knife skills and studied the French method of cooking along with the nine other students in my class. I set my sights on a full-time professional cooking program, learned everything I could, and saved my money.
And, once again, my parents were there. If I was really serious about this, they said, they’d help me. And if I was serious, I had to go to the Harvard of culinary schools—no fucking around this time. We found the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. I had no idea what or where it was. Just that it was in the sticks. As it happened, my cousin was doing his residency in Manhattan and offered up his futon for 250 bucks a month.
I got into the CIA and moved to New York. It was the move that would change my life forever.
I was very lucky, man.
KOREAN-STYLE BRAISED SHORT RIB STEW
* * *
This is that meal from home that every Korean kid says his or her mom does best, the dish that gets packed in CorningWare and taken to parties, the dish that creates some serious lines in the sand over friendship and heated arguments over who seems to know it better or “owns” the best-of-the-best title for it. I don’t know whose mom does it best, so try mine.
SERVES 4 TO 6
SAUCE
½ cup chopped scallions
1½ cups soy sauce
¼ cup chopped peeled fresh ginger
½ white or yellow onion, peeled
½ cup garlic cloves, peeled
½ cup sugar
½ cup mirin
½ cup fresh orange juice