Roy Choi - Listo?

 

I was 28 years old, and I was just about to graduate from the Culinary Institute of America. I was on a crazy high, man. I just had worked at two of the best restaurants in New York at Le Bernardin and Oriole at the time. I was doing really well at culinary school. I had never done well in school before, and I was graduating towards the top of my class, I was cocky as shit. I was full of just complete confidence, and even just ordering people around out of nowhere, just like strangers, [audience laughter] telling you what to do. 

 

I got recruited for this job out in California. I had these dreams of just going back to Cali. So, I took the job. I wasn't ready for this job. It was a job to run a resort and be the chef. But when I got offered the job, I just thought and I dreamed, because out of my cockiness, all I thought and dreamed about was the white chef coat and putting my name on my left chest and riding executive chef underneath and wearing the long crisp apron. So, I took the job. It was in Borrego Springs, California. It was a resort called La Casa del Zorro Desert Resort. It was a beautiful resort, cabanas, five star everything. I was there running the kitchen. 

 

I have this weird thing in my life where I end up always becoming friends with people that maybe I don't speak the same language of, or I didn't grow up in the same way, and especially in the kitchen with a lot of Latino cooks and dishwashers and waiters and bussers. There was this man, Salvador. He was our dishwasher at the time. He had this body almost like Jack Black. [audience chuckles] Just red, beautiful face, and always a grin on his face. No matter how hard his job was, every day, he always seemed to be looking at us like, “Yo, everything is good.” 

 

But we never really talked. We always just exchanged whistles, to be honest, you know, “Let's go. [audience laughter] I got you. [unintelligible 00:38:47] let's go.” That was like our whole relationship. But he would always look at me and then he approached me one day, and he asked me if I could help him out with something. His family couldn't help him the next day, and he asked me if I could help him. There was no one that I was with in the desert. I went there all by myself. So, I said yes. And then, I remember the next morning, he came to my doorstep. It was really early. It was 05:30 AM. I don't know if any of you have been to the desert or lived in the desert, but it gets bright really, really early in the desert. 

 

And where we lived in Borrego, it was in the middle of the Anza-Borrego Desert, which is the northeast end of San Diego County. It's an amazing, amazing place. It's sand everywhere, beautiful ocotillo cactus. He pulled up to my house that morning-- I still remember it. I looked out the window, and he rolled up, and there was this cloud of dust. He was standing there like the Tasmanian Devil. [audience laughter] He was holding two cups of Nescafé coffee. He was just there, and he had this red pick-up truck. He looked at me, he's like, “Listo.” And I said, “All right, yeah. Yeah, Listo. Let's go.” 

 

And then, got in the truck and we headed east. We headed east through the desert, through an area called Fonts Point, which is like a canyon and a bunch of dry lakes. We headed towards the Salton Sea, towards Coachella. We went around and under the south bend of the Salton Sea, and cut across to this town called Mecca, which is on the eastern end of the Salton Sea, where a lot of farms, a lot of migrant workers, a lot of immigrants that come directly from Tijuana and Mexicali, and this is their first stop for many of them. 

 

We followed this road down, and there was this crooked sign that said Chivo. A bunch of goats were just prancing in the field. There's a bunch of dudes there, and Salvador got out. The crazy thing about Latino culture sometimes that I see, is even if you don't know each other, you seem like you know each other. I don't know, it's obviously the language, but I think there's a common and shared experience, especially in America, where almost everyone had to come through the country in the same way and in the same experience. So, there's this silent understanding. And then, the language itself lends itself to move itself away from any type of foreplay and go right into it and just be like, “Yo, what's up?” 

 

So, he was talking to the guy, and then they made the exchange, and they put the goat in the back. It was a beautiful little goat. I remember, it was a white coat with little spots of brown and beautiful small head and small little horns. I had no idea what the heck we were doing. [audience laughter] I was just going along for the ride, drinking a free cup of coffee. I mean, I was very naive. I didn't really think about what was going on. I thought were picking up a pet, to be honest. So, then we put the goat back, and we drove back to Borrego, back through the desert, and we went to his house, and he let the goat out. 

 

Again, I'm thinking everything's okay. But then, there's that moment where you start to see clues. [audience laughter] And then, as we walked into his backyard, I looked to my left and I saw a table, a small little table, with knives on it. And then, I saw a rope hanging from a hangman's kind of noose. And then, I saw him go over and start to fill a bottle, a Corona bottle, empty Corona bottles with water and salt. Again, we didn't really talk, we're just chilling. [audience laughter] But it's still really early. By this time, it's only like 09:30, 10 o'clock. The sun is really hot. He looks at me again, and he asked me, again, “Listo?” And I said, “Yeah, I'm ready.” 

 

And then, we started running after the goat. [audience laughter] It was like Rocky with the chicken. And then, we were running after. I remember Salvador went from the left and I went from the right, we couldn't catch him. And then, all of a sudden, I felt something, and Salvador came from like up in the clouds, like a La Lucha Libre, [audience laughter] and jumped right onto the goat, and got him in a headlock. And then, he started yelling at me. [speaks in Spanish] And then, he told me to get the bottles. And then, I gave him the bottles, and then he just took the goat and started feeding water, the solution to the goat. It looked really, really beautiful for a moment. [audience laughter] 

 

And then, once the goat drank all the salted water, he pulled the goat over. At that moment, I started to see things change very rapidly. I’d cooked at this point for a while and I butchered a lot of meat, but I had never killed animal before. He was just so natural about it. He wrapped the rope around the hind legs, pulled the goat up. The goat's horns were maybe a centimeter above the dirt. I remember that goat. I remember it every day of my life now, right at that moment, that goat was looking straight at me in the eye. I don't know if it was really looking at me or if it was my imagination or that feeling when you have when you think that every baby is looking at you, recognizes you. But I remember that moment, those eyes were staring straight at me, and almost crying out to me to say, “Yo, man. The fuck, dude.” [audience laughter] Like, “Fucking help me, man.” 

 

Those eyes were huge, like the sun. And then, right at that moment when the eyes open, Salvador came up with a knife and slit that neck, and then the goat's neck snapped back and the blood fell from the neck. And then, he went right to work on the belly and split the hide, opened it up, pulled out the guts. He looked at me, and he reminded me about the bottle. He was teaching me. He was teaching me what was going on. He explained to me that the solution didn't make the gut-- When you cut the belly open, that the guts wouldn't smell. I realized that there was no smell. 

 

So, we went to work from there. He showed me how to pull the hide off. We moved it over to the table, broke it down into primals and sub-primals, packed it up, and wrapped it. We had music going. We were playing-- At that time, this was the late 1990s, so we were playing music from Joan Sebastian, and Grupo Limite and Banda El Recodo, and all that music was going on. The sun was creeping up, and we were packing and wrapping it in Ziploc and plastic wrap, putting it in glues and ice. Took a moment, had a cigarette and a beer, and it was like 11 o'clock. [chuckles] 

 

And then, we jumped in the car, put everything in, and then we went down to Mexicali. We drove and it's about an hour south. You can find some of the best Chinese food in the world there, which you may not know, but you can. We went through into town, and we went to his mom's restaurant, and we went through a screen door, and there were a bunch of ladies in there. You know that feeling when you're made to feel like you're late when you weren't even late? [audience laughter] Especially when mothers do that to you, like, “Where you been?” But it's like there was no time you were supposed to arrive in the first place. [audience laughter] So, they were there, and it was like, “Oh,” all of a sudden when you arrived. And all of a sudden, it's like, “Oh my God, you wasted my whole day, and now I can get to work.” [audience laughter] But they were already cutting the cilantro and the onions and the garlic. 

 

They brought the goat. She brought me over, and I have this weird connection also with mothers and grandmothers, when I walk in, they pull me over always, and then they want me to cook with them. It's really weird. So, she showed me how to make birria, basically. They were wearing flower aprons, and all the knives were really worn. There was wrinkles on their faces, and they were tasting with their thumbs and their fingers. I sat down and then helped them. They fed me the most wonderful bowl of goat stew in my life. And then, we got back in the truck and we headed back over the border. 

 

Across the border, a different man. I felt like I knew everything about cooking when I went to that town, this small town, I looked down on him in a way, I was just like crazy chef, amazing young chef from New York City. I was going to show this desert town how to cook, but I came back a different man. We went back to work. About a month later, Salvador called me again and asked me if I was ready, and I told him, “Vámonos.”