Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix is another title about contemporary food producers by the Seattle publishing house Readers to Eaters. They’ve published nonfiction picture books about urban gardener Will Allen and celebrity chef Alice. This title is a biography of a Korean-American, Roy Choi, who cooked in haute cuisine restaurants until he opened his own food trucks. In them, he and his partner mashed up Korean and Mexican cuisine to create Korean tacos. It’s a wonderful story of the way America adopts and transforms cuisines.

The illustrations are by a Los Angeles graffiti artist. In an essay in the back matter, he talks about how he started creating art, how he did the art for this particular book, and how his life has intersected with Choi’s life.

I also loved the essays in the back by the co-authors, Jacqueline Briggs Martin and June Jo Lee, who helped found the publishing company. It’s hard for me to imagine how you would go about co-writing a picture book, but we get a little glimpse here of the process they used to create this fun book about truly American food.

Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and June Jo Lee, illustrated by Man One. (Readers to Eaters: 2017).

I’m delighted that Alyson Beecher is continuing the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge this year–its seventh! I’m looking forward to reading lots of great books all year long.