Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson put healthy twist to food with Locol

Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson have given a new hope to Watts, Los Angeles with their new restaurant, Locol. It is the new quick-serve restaurant that is trying to transform Watts one spicy noodle bowl at a time. If you are Los Angeles and you go down to the 103rd Street looking for a parking space, tooling past the Jordan Downs projects and the Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School, it is not hard to spot Locol. You will instantly notice a line spilling out of the door of the restaurant and trickling down Anzac Avenue. And the jaunty sign with people hollering to their friends through the screened windows of the lanai-like structure.

Locol has a great ambience

Locol’s ambience is absolutely amazing. The chairs and tables are placed on the patio which looks like children’s building blocks more than like proper adult furniture. It is difficult to understand, until you see the customers tug them into a hundred different configurations. And you will never see so much hugging outside of a big family picnic. On a weekday afternoon in Watts, Locol is clearly the place to be.

Watts is at the centre of what is sometimes called a food desert, which the USDA defines as “a census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store.” Locol isn’t in an area completely devoid of options — there are a couple of small markets, a Chinese takeout place, an outlet of Louisiana Fried Chicken and the excellent wings and grits breakfasts at the Watts Coffee House within a block or two — but there is nothing like a supermarket within Watts proper, and it is much easier to grab a pack of Top Ramen at the convenience store than it is to prepare or find a proper meal.

Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson have given their restaurant everything

With Locol, chefs Roy Choi, whose Kogi truck and Korean hot-pot place Pot regularly makes it to The Times’ list of L.A.’s 101 best restaurants, and Daniel Patterson, whose San Francisco restaurant Coi holds two Michelin stars, aim to do nothing less than revolutionize the system of fast food in America and to bring delicious, nourishing food into the lives of people.

At the 2013 MAD conference in Copenhagen, Choi electrified an audience of chefs with a talk about hunger and civic responsibility, which he illustrated with slides of underserved communities in Los Angeles. Chefs were at a moment of unprecedented celebrity, said Choi, and it was time to use some of that influence to change the culture; to make sure that everyone in those communities had access to food as healthful and delicious as what they were serving their relatively affluent customers. Perhaps, he suggested, they could persuade investors interested in their restaurants to also help them open food venues in less-glamorous parts of town.

Patterson had been in that Copenhagen audience and introduced himself to Choi. At the 2014 MAD conference, he and Choi announced their idea for Locol: a chain of restaurants with a loose skate park feel, serving fresh, healthful cooking for about the price of a drive-thru meal — not a replacement for fast food, but a better version of it.