Come meet the Franks, sip some punch and munch on Frank’s famous meatball parm from the Kogi truck at the Bar this Tuesday, June 29th from 8-11pm. Frankies Spumantino is Brooklyn’s brick-walled Italian American comfort food favorite. The cookbook is filled with easy on the home cook small bites including Cremini Mushroom and Truffle Oil Crostini to entrees like Cavatelli with Hot Sausage & Browned Butter. The Kogi truck will be on hand, dishing out Frankies famous meatball parm along with music spun by The Lonesome Cowboy.

Tomorrow, Levi’s is holding their 3rd annual powersliding event at the Santa Monica pier. In addition to free Kogi, the event will feature the top powersliders in the nation competing against each other, a performance by Matt & Kim, shirts by Hit & Run screen printing, a Polite in Public photo booth, and giveaways to win Levi’s prize packs. The event is judged by celebrity judges Jonny Moseley, Wee Man, and the Girls Next Door star Kendra Wilkinson. The event is free and goes from 3-5pm.

Can Food Really be Authentic? That was the topic last week at Zocalos Public Square moderated by LA Weekly’s Jonathon Gold. On the panel Nancy Silverton of Mozza, Roy Choi of KoGi, Jimmy Shaw of Loteria Grill, and Sarintip “Jazz” Singsanong of Jitlada. After Gold took entirely too long to introduce each person on the panel, the discussion was finally underway. Each chef discussed their own experiences with food, some authentic, some not. Do real ingredients make authentic food? Does an improvement on those ingredients make it inauthentic?

The crowd gets ready to dish on authentic food with Jonathon Gold at the Skirball.

Chef Silverton discussed how her food is inspired by her travels in Italy, and as J Gold noted, are slightly upgraded from its sometimes unglamorous preparation to impress the foodies who diverge on Mozza on a nightly basis. Chef Shaw talked about how LA lacked any real authentic taquerias as he knew them in Mexico City. So he opened up Loteria Grill in the Farmers Market to fill that “mex-mex” gap. Chef Roy from Kogi, well… he uses authentic Korean flavors and infuses them with Mexican influences. And we all know Jaz’s Southern Thai cooking at Jitlada is about as authentic as they come.

What came out of the discussion is that it’s authentic as long as you can’t put the word “cal” in front of it. In other words, cal-italian, cal-asian, and cal-mex. There’s a snippet of the video below, but you can watch the entire 80 mins at the Zocalo web site.

Kogi isn’t the only Korean food truck in town. The Flying Hotteok serves the classic South Korean sweet treat from a parking lot mall in Korea Town. But I’m not here because I have a sweet tooth. I’m here for their potato wrapped hot dog on a stick. I’m not sure of the origin of this yummy deep fried collaboration of hot dog and potato, maybe it’s the way hotteok is pronounced, hot duk.

But it sure hit the spot after a long day of hiking. There are two variations of the dog here. One, called hot dog with potato and the other, excuse the broken English, hot dog with inside sausage. At only $2 bucks each, we try both. The dogs are both battered, not with your typical corn dog batter, but something of a sweeter variety made with flour. The potato version is then rolled in little chunks of potato and submerged in the hot fryer. The plain dog is battered a little bit thicker and then rolled in what seemed to be some sort of panko type flakes.

The dogs are served topped with old fashioned ketchup and yellow mustard. A little bummed, I was expecting some spicy Korean version of ketchup. The potato is lovely and crisp on the outside, soft and warm on the inside. It’s unfortunate that the hot dog inside is bland and boring. I could imagine how this would be, with an authentic Nathan’s or even a Let’s Be Frank dog, on the inside. Maybe Pinks could add it to their menu as a homage to the large Korean population in LA.

The Flying Hotteok is located, for now, in the IB Plaza on Western just south of 8th Street.

Almost as bright as a big yellow bus.

Very few choices, a hotteok, bean cake, or fried hotdog on a stick.

Deep fried, covered with potato, mustard, and ketchup.

Too bad the hotdog itself was on the bland side.

If you haven’t been able to track down the Kogi Korean BBQ truck yet, and have wanted to check out The Doheny, then this is the perfect night for you. For this one night only you can grab a Korean Avacado Tostada and have a drink at the ultra cool, invitation only, Doheny Club.

On January 26, the Kogi truck will be serving up their special Korean goodness in the Doheny parking lot on the corner of Flower and Olympic from 9:30pm – 12am. The first 20 people to rsvp to SORRY LIST IS CLOSED! will be invited, along with a guest, to an hour and a half long private menu with the truck and entrance to the otherwise invitation only Doheny Club. Imagine chowing down on a short-rib taco and pairing it with a hand crafted cocktail made by one of Doheny’s excellent libation experts.

Usual disclaimer stuff. You must be 21+ to make reservations at The Doheny. You have to pay your own way with the food and cocktails, but that’s a small price to pay for this one time chance to check out the Doheny and grub on some tasty Korean BBQ. Please only RSVP if you really can make it. The list is only open to 20 people and their guests. We’ll try and update this story as soon as the list in closed.