Help Starry Kitchen and Roy Choi Fund Their Next Projects

If your New Year’s Resolution was to be more charitable, or support a local business, here are two crowd funding campaigns going on right now that are worth taking a look at…

Just after the holidays Starry Kitchen launched the Kickstarter to end all Kickstarters. It’s called “Save Our Balls” (naturally) and they’re hoping to raise $500,000, an obscene amount for a restaurant kickstarter, for sure, but a drop in the bucket for a couple looking to give themselves some security to open the permanent restaurant of their dreams.   For those who don’t pay much attention to food blogs or Jonathan Gold lists, or find it super easy to ignore a guy in a banana suit with a megaphone, Starry Kitchen is the former illegal eatery, turned legal water court lunch spot, turned pop up restaurant that is currently operating out of Grand Star in Chinatown.  Their food, a menu mix of pan-asian homeyness,  has gotten better and better with every incarnation. But clearly the 5+ years of jumping around has taken its toll, leading them to issue this shocking ultimatum: they raise the full $500k to open their own place, or they go do something else. It’s a longshot they make it to their goal, but I’m not going to be blamed for losing out on Thi Tran’s garlic noodles, Singapore chili crab, pandan chicken, and their infamous tofu balls.  And make no mistake about it… if they close, and you didn’t donate, I will blame you.

But wait, there’s more…

Nguyen and Thi from Starry Kitchen aren’t the only famous Los Angeles restauranteurs with hat in hand this month.  Roy Choi, the chef behind too many great projects to list but who you likely are familiar with if you are reading this site, launched an IndieGoGo campaign on Friday to help fund Loco’l, the environmentally conscious fast food concept him and Daniel Patterson announced at the MAD Symposium last year. Sadly the first locations are going to be in San Francisco, not L.A., but anything that pushes fast food to better places is alright in our book. Plus, we’ll pretty much support anything that Roy does.  Unlike the Starry Kitchen campaign, the Loco’l campaign is less about getting badly needed funding, and more about getting people involved in what they are trying to accomplish.

Both campaigns have some cool and fun perks at every level to make donating a lot easier, though it’s worth pointing out that Loco’l will receive all the funds whether they reach their goal or not. The Starry Kitchen campaign only gets your $$$ if they reach their goal, so it’s all or nothing.

Check out the Starry Kitchen campaign on Kickstarter>>>

Check out the Loco’l campaign on IndieGoGo>>>

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