![]() He experiments, mixes, and remixes, creating fusion food in the truest sense of the word: Shin Ramyun Black instant noodles with cut-up hot dogs, kimchi, and other add-ons bacon, egg, and cheese in a pan-fried glazed honey bun frozen saag paneer naan-chos layered with yogurt and crushed Takis. When it comes to Pablo’s cooking, there are no such uncertainties or preconceived limitations. “If they’d claim me in the same way I want to claim them.” “I can’t help but wonder how much my people are mine,” he ruminates in a fraught moment. Those are the moments when he sharpens, animated by passion and real know-how: giving Lee snack pairing suggestions when they first meet in the deli (“We also carry gummy frogs if you want that mallowy toothsomeness with a hit of surreptitious peach”), and working his magic with “Hot Snacks,” consisting of leftovers, frozen food, and other miscellany transformed by culinary ingenuity into late-night feasts for his friends.įood, according to Choi, is “the one place” where Pablo - the son of a Korean mother and a Pakistani father - isn’t self-conscious about his identity, or the fact that he can’t speak either language, or his perpetual awareness of the ambiguity of being mixed race. It’s similar to the way Pablo - otherwise aimless, caught in stasis, wont to treat everything and everyone with a distance that masks the question mark looming over his future - talks about food in Permanent Record. “Those memories are super vivid to me,” she says. at the age of 14 and discover that there are more kinds of dressing than Thousand Island. She can still recall the Pretz and Pocky and Yan Yan from her childhood, how old she was when she tasted her first Cool Ranch Dorito (7), what it was like to move to the U.S. To Choi - who was born in South Korea and grew up in Hong Kong when it was still under British rule - that specificity, and the differences between, say, a Portuguese pastel de nata and a Hong Kong dan tat, or a classic New York cheesecake and a jiggly Japanese one, matter. ![]() “This is more substantial and toothsome,” she says, palming a Ritter Sport milk chocolate square with cornflakes, before moving on to Darrell Lea mango-flavored soft Australian licorice. It becomes clear, as Choi picks up each product encased in plastic packaging, that she is just as much of a munchies expert as Pablo. ![]() Book cover: Simon & Schusterīy now, we’re sitting in a coffee shop on the same block as Green Ivy, pairing our drinks with our snack haul. “I like the idea of having such a huge pop star… a force of nature, someone who can command attention and almost sway public policy - and then have the story end up being quite small,” Choi tells me after our deli run.īuy Permanent Record now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Simon & Schuster. The book, Choi’s sophomore effort after her New York Times bestseller Emergency Contact (2018), is about social media, and clout and fame, and the crushing weight of expectations, and growing up, and what we owe our friends and family, and did I mention it’s also a love story between regular guy Pablo and a mega-huge, world-famous pop star known as Leanna Smart, or Lee? We’re talking astronomical levels of celebrity - think: Ariana Grande or Demi Lovato, both of whom Choi has interviewed in her years as a journalist. The resemblances between the real, live store and its fictional counterpart are obvious: Both are, in the words of the novel, “huge by New York standards,” open 24 hours a day, and sell all kinds of “rich-people fetish food.” In Permanent Record, out September 3, that array of food is the purview of protagonist and narrator Pablo Rind, a 20-year-old snack connoisseur and college dropout who works the graveyard shift at a Korean-owned Brooklyn deli in between running a moderately successful half-snack, half-sneaker Instagram account (not a real account - I checked) and evading a growing pile of credit card and student debt. She used to come here a lot when she lived in the area, around the Brooklyn neighborhood of Gowanus (Choi now lives in Park Slope). Choi through the open door beneath the store awning labeled “Green Ivy Organic Natural,” is that this is the largest bodega I’ve ever seen.Īlthough “bodega” isn’t really the right word for it with its cases of ready-made sushi and dumplings, counter-service sandwiches, and hot Korean dishes like kimchi fried rice, Green Ivy is technically a deli, or according to Google Maps, an “organic food store.” The deli in Choi’s new YA novel, Permanent Record, is largely based on Green Ivy, the author - dressed in all black, sporting a denim snapback embroidered with a tiny LaCroix can - tells me as we wander through aisles overflowing with fresh avocados, Tate’s cookies, and more kinds of ketchup than anyone needs. My first thought, upon following Mary H.K. ![]() Spoiler warning: There are minor spoilers for the novel Permanent Record by Mary H.K.
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