Photo credit: Tom Hilton That’s the question the new Sneaky Dee’s-adjacent bar Jang Bang used to launch their new menu at the beginning of December. But if things continue at the rate they are in Toronto, soon everyone will know the answer as readily as they know gourmet hamburgers, indie coffee shops, or any of the other myriad food trends that the city has since incorporated into its day-to-day culinary milieu. Once a gastronomic curio, Korean tacos – Mexican (or often American) style tacos embellished with Korean style meats and ingredients – look primed to become the go-to menu item for any new bar or restaurant looking to create a buzz. “About a year ago, my brother Jason realized that Korean tacos were really trending in the States, especially in places like L.A. and Seattle,” says Jang Bang owner Michael Jang. “Trending really seems to be the way now in Toronto now, with social media and pop-up events and stuff like that.” Jang Bang seems engineered to appeal a certain young, urban cultural consumer whose name we shall not mention, with Pabst Blue Ribbon served up in mason jars, vinyl record sleeves hanging as wall decorations and DJs spinning the likes of The Weeknd. Korean tacos fit that mentality, appealing to patrons looking for the newest “in” thing. When overzealous prognosticators refer to dining in Toronto as “the new indie rock”, they’re referring to the way some Torontonians seek out a cuisine concept as they would a Pitchfork-approved buzz-band. The Korean taco trend was popularized by Kogi Korean BBQ, a small fleet of food trucks in the Los Angeles area. Aside from their mouth-watering kimchi quesadillas and short rib sliders, the mobile eatery built a huge cult following by being one of the first restaurant brands to fully embrace Twitter. The huge swarm of taco groupies that meets Kogi every time they tweet their whereabouts even led Newsweek to declare it “America’s first viral eatery.” Swish By Han was likely the first to introduce the concept to Toronto in 2009, though the $10 spicy pork neck tacos available at the swanky Wellington Street Korean restaurant are decidedly more upmarket than most of their contemporaries, here or south of the border. The brainchild of Toronto-born, Philadelphia-raised brothers Leeto and Leemo Han, Swish is less about jumping on fads than an attempt to globalize and legitimize Korean food, a cuisine once stigmatized in Toronto as the sole arena of cheap bibimbap and quickly-served kimchi. “We don’t like to get our heads too big, but the whole Korean taco thing, I feel like we kind of started that here in Toronto. Now that everyone else is doing it, they’re kind of killing it,” declares general manager Leeto Han (Leemo does the cooking). “The reason we did it was because it was something a little fresh, something a little new, but it doesn’t feel that way anymore now that the same thing is on every menu.” Still, the fact that a modern variation on Korean food has reached that level of acceptability, if not ubiquity, is a credit to Swish By Han’s influence. That Korean tacos can show up, for instance, on the menu of the new non-Korean Leslieville pub Goods & Provisions, just goes to show how integrated the food has become. “The main reason we opened this spot up was to globalize Korean food a little bit more, to put it in another perspective that most people haven’t really seen it in,” says Han. “A couple of years ago, no one would really touch that kind of stuff outside of Bloor and Christie. Now that people are, we’re proud of that. We don’t really look at it as competition; it’s actually helping us and pushing us forward.” Though Swish By Han opened the door for this kind of experimentation, many of the people offering Korean tacos veer closer to Kogi’s street food origins. The new Banh Mi Boys franchise, for instance, offers its own version of Korean tacos, despite its ostensible origin as an upscale twist on the Vietnamese sandwich shop. Rather than a corn tortilla like Jang Bang, Banh Mi Boys uses a naan-like bread as its vehicle, creating a serious cultural mishmash. “What we sell here, what we’re trying to do here, is take on the street food trend,” says co-owner David Chau, who, like the Jang and Han brothers is a second-generation Canadian (and runs the restaurant with his siblings). “In a way it’s hard to do a street food concept when you’re not on the street, but it’s so hard to get an actual license to operate a stand or a food truck that it’s not really worth it. I think people want it in Toronto, but there’s no real outlet for it.” There are a few people attempting to change that. College Street deli Caplansky’s has managed to launch its “Thundering Thelma” food truck, while food writer Suresh Doss has been putting on popular single-location Food Truck festivals throughout 2011. If infrastructure improves, Korean tacos are likely just the beginning. Japanese hot dogs? Irish pork buns? Time will tell.
