On Saturday night, Chris, Kate, and I decided to hunt down the latest gastronomic phenomenon to hit Los Angeles: the Korean taco, served from a taco truck named "Kogi" ("meat").
There is only one truck (starting next week there will be two), and it drives to different locations throughout the city, updating its whereabouts through twitter. Truly 21st century.
The famous food critic, Jonathan Gold, did a write-up in the LA Weekly. In the first paragraph, he describes the location we went to -- a deserted side-street in Rosemead off the 10 freeway and five minutes from our house:
Before that, there was a piece on KCRW's "Good Food," which attracted a ton of customers:
This is the truck setting up before service began. There were already hundreds of people lined up.
The menu. As created by chef Roy Choi. 
They said they would be at this location at 6 pm, and Chris, Kate, and I naively got there twenty minutes past six, and joined the end of the long line. Only in America would people wait for hours on a food line by choice, for kicks. For a taco.
Before service began, one of the guys on the truck came out and announced what the deal was through a megaphone. We had to order quickly (no more than 3 tacos per person), and step aside to wait for our order. Kate was pumped. "Let's do it!"
She took advantage of the downtime by drawing pictures and practicing her letters...
"TREE."
"TREE" with a "BIRD" above it.
A picture of our house. With a tree on the left, a sun overhead, grass below, and a small white stone on the lower right that sits next to our driveway.
We took a lot of walks to the front of the line so Kate could see the cooks in action, smell the food ("Ooooh, that smells good, Momma! I'm hungry!"), and vogue for the camera. I call this one, "Gooooo Kogi!" Or, "I'm Kogi Girl!"
Oooh, "ghost Kogi truck."
This was a shot of an hour and a half later, and Chris and I were getting pooped. We kept checking in on Kate, "Are you all right? Do you want to go home?" "Do you want to hang out at Target across the street while Appa waits?" I was okay to bail at any point, if necessary. But Kate didn't want to leave. She was having a ball being out at night with the "grown-ups" and loved all the attention she was getting from the twenty-something girls on line.
Two and a half hours later (yes, I know, we're nuts), we were finally eight or so people away from the order window when suddenly, the guy with the megaphone came back out and said, "I'm sorry, guys, but I don't know if we can get to all of you tonight! We're leaving in exactly 30 minutes!"
The horror. The horror.
Kate turned to me and said, "OH, NO!! WE MIGHT NOT GET A TACO!" Chris and I had warned her all along that this was a real possibility, and she was surprisingly okay with it. Actually, everyone left on line seemed okay with it. It was an incredibly relaxed and easy-going crowd, even two and a half hours later. No angry taco mob here.
Huzzah! The short-ribs (kalbi) tacos! Of course, just as we were ordering, Kate exclaimed, "I'm not hungry!" Was it worth the wait? Heck, no. But after waiting for three hours, it couldn't possibly meet the level of expectation that was built up. On the another hand, after waiting for three hours, Chris and I were starving, and were ecstatic to be eating, period. It was definitely tasty. Who knew Korean BBQ would go so well with a soft tortilla? But it's something I think I could make at home. Regardless, this was all about "the journey," not about the taco destination. And it was fun.
As we drove away with the heat turned up, Kate said, "Let's do it again tomorrow!" Er, maybe not.
Two days later, Kate and I both woke up with a cold, which officially makes Chris and me bad parents. Of course, on Monday morning, Kate dutifully reported all the details of her night out on the town to her preschool teachers. Hopefully, they won't call Social Services.
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