Dinner with an ATF Agent 12236 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90066
(310) 390-9300
About a year ago, around 5 am, on a sleepy residential street in Venice, flash grenades were tossed and bullets were fired. Awoken by this warfare, we dropped to the ground, scared of wild bullets soaring through open windows into our skulls. Crawling to the front window, we saw our street lined with men dressed in bulletproof vests, holding very deadly weapons. Written on the back of their uniforms in bold, yellow lettering was: ATF.
We met him at the very appropriate Alibi Room in Culver City. This place used to be the local’s dive bar until it was turned into hip-ville in true Culver City form. Then it became popular overnight when the infamous Kogi BBQ Truck decided to take a permanent parking spot in the kitchen.
For those of you who live under a rock, this social-networking juggernaut led people to chase a truck via Twitter all over Los Angeles in hopes of standing in a two-hour line to taste the culinary brilliance of Korean BBQ served upon a Mexican taco. It lives up to the hype and keeps the culinary gurus on the road to success. Literally. Chase the dream here.
Anyways, we arrived on a Friday night and snagged a seat, which is damn near impossible anytime, day or night. The place looks like the Brig on Abbott, with minimal décor and a sleek, industrial feel. They’ve got a decent selection of beers, a poor selection of wines and a list of sweet, chick-approved cocktails. I recommend the Telegraph Ale, but not the Sweet Minced Tea. But hey, it’s a full bar, so get whatever the hell you want.
As we sipped on our libations we asked the first stupid question of many.
Q: What the hell does ATF stand for?
A: Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
OH, riiiiight. We continued our interrogation, asking him what it was that made him want to get into this field in the first place. He told us that it was curiosity more than anything. As a kid, he’d always wanted to know what was really going on what was happening on the inside. So he followed the rabbit hole to a government job.
But it wasn’t as simple as filling out an application: he had to become an agent. He had to pass a test with an 80% fail rate. Then he had to wait for 9 long months in North Carolina where he worked as a mortgage broker, ripping people off. Then 9 months later Mr. X was sent to LA where his hair was ripped from his head, blood was drawn from his veins, and urine drained from his manhood, all while strapped to a polygraph to catch what the secretions couldn’t. They dug deep looking for an old crack habit or the experimental days of burning man, but were unsuccessful. Turns out, Mr. X has never touched a drug in his life. Never smoked the dope, never hit the hard stuff unlike his company. But that was all about to change with some of the best junk we’ve ever touched: Kogi.
The infamous tacos that made the Kogi coach an instant fame with the public was an instant hit with us. You can get short rib, spicy BBQ chicken, or spicy pork tacos, and we did. Yes, all of the above. The juicy, marinated meats where topped with diced onions, chopped cabbage, shredded cheese, and a spicy, creamy sauce. One bite of these and all the twittering nonsense makes sense.
We also ordered the Kimchi Quesadillas and quickly realized why we hadn’t heard much about them. The Kogi-second-fiddle tasted like something you forgot about in the microwave after a long night of drinking. Flavorless cheese was hardened between dry, stiff tortillas. And we’re not even sure that there was even kimchi in it. The green sauce doused on top didn’t lend much help either.
We chocked it up to being the vegetarian option on Chef Roy’s “who the fuck cares about vegetarians” menu.
But for all you Quesadilla queens, don’t worry. The Kimchi Quesadilla has a brother called the Black Jack Quesadilla, and it got the good genes. It’s stuffed with chunks of flesh and mercy, and we’ve had enjoyed it many drunken nights since.
Well into our first night of Kogi BBQ, we asked Mr. X about his first night on the job. Apparently there’s not much of an orientation process, because Mr. X was quickly thrown into the deep end. The deep end of a pool filled with naked meth-heads and heavy artillery.
His first day on the job took him to a drug bust in South Central. They were serving a warrant at a residence that was selling guns and meth out of the back of the house. His boss thought it’d be a good learning experience if he joined.
So he got briefed, got dressed in goggles and a bulletproof vest, and got in the van. His boss handed him his back-up gun, a 5 round revolver, just in case. This if course was just the case.
They tore threw the back gate and immediately gassed four pit bulls while people scrambled out of a small plywood house, built in the back yard. It was a second whorehouse. The main house, and main whorehouse, was covered in cheap porno tapped to the walls. Mr. X said the whole place was “sticky.”
Naked criminals scattered in every direction, and training mode took over as a man tried to flee. Mr. X threw him to the ground, arrested his naked ass, and read him his rights (all in Spanish no less). This process was repeated until there were enough perps to fill a wagon, and they headed home. Mr. X had officially seen what it was like on the inside.
This was the first day of his super-hero career. And time for our second course.
We ordered Kogi Sliders and French Fries. The Sliders were out of this world and soon out of sight. Like the tacos, you could order short rib, spicy BBQ chicken, or spicy pork and again, we ordered all three. Topped with cheese, shredded lettuce and a sesame mayo served between soft, butter-kissed egg buns, these were delicious.
And though it’s probably not in our best interest to contradict the Twitterati, we thought these were better than the famous tacos. In fact, they were so good, that for the first time in Dinner with a Stranger history, we went back for another round of the same thing...which we promptly crushed.
Mr. X may have to take our word for it, but the meat high from these tiny burgers was as good as any drug we’ve partaken. And fries kept it coming. They were light, crispy and served with a mayo and Siracha-spiked ketchup that had us twitching and licking our gums.
As we came down, we attempted to talk shop with Mr. X by using the knowledge that we’d accrued from CSI Las Vegas, CSI New York, CSI Miami, CSI Los Angeles and CSI Des Moines. But it didn’t take long for us to realize that we’d sounded like CBS, yet again.
So we’d like to take a minute to set the record straight, for you own good:
MYTH: You can get fingerprints off a gun.
Turns out gun manufacturers aren’t just good at helping you shoot people. They’re also good at helping you get away with it. Nearly every gun on the market is manufactured with a certain type of metal that repels oils. So it’s damn near impossible to lift a print. Sorry, but the truth is, it takes more than a snarky goth chick with glasses and braids to dust a gun and catch the bad guy.
MYTH: You can just wiretap any phone.
Nope. Not even a hard-core criminals. Well, you can but not like Sully does. To get a wiretap you have to get a crazy warrant and the approval of a DA and a district court judge. It’s near impossible. Plus, preparing the nearly 200 page case alone usually take two years plus.
MYTH: No one wants to be a nark.
There are professional informants. It’s a fucking career, actually. And a lot of people make a lot of money doing it. They move to the hoods, they join the gang, they hustle, but all for a fee. Some narks settle for as much as 10% of any monetary bust they’re involved in.
MYTH: Agents pocket some of the money or drugs in a bust.
Cops maybe. LA cops, probably. But agents never. At the federal level, evidence is meticulously booked, checked and rechecked. It’s impossible to get away with.
MYTH: The ATF hates the cops.
Nope. They need em’. The LAPD knows all the folks in the hood. And the LAPD likes the ATF cause they can sentence crooks for longer under the federal law.
MYTH: The Bloodz and Cripz run gangland.
That was once the case. But today, they’ve largely taken a back seat to the booming number of Latin gangs that have taken hold in most parts of the Southern US.
It all started about 20 years ago when Mexican inmates bonded together to protect their small community from the whites, blacks, and guards. They called themselves the Mexican Mafia, or El Eme (Spanish for the letter “m”). They have since taken over the prison system and the streets to become one of the most highly-organized and dangerous gangs in the world.
By the time we finished picking Mr. X’s brain and fulfilling years worth of comic book fantasies, it was nearly closing time. The lights were on, the pints were drained and around us laid a total of 13 Kogi baskets with little more than cabbage bits and kimchi-stained napkin balls inside.
Some would call it a binge, but if you’ve tasted Kogi BBQ before, you know it’s more of a bender. It's a sweet sensation that leaves you hungry for more as soon as you put down the last bite. And suffice it to say, we’ll never forget our first time.
If you haven’t tried Kogi at the Alibi Room before, we’d recommend it... particularly if you can score some with an ATF agent.
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