Promotional events centering on the fictional Cubano-serving El Jefe proved to be so popular that Favreau and Los Angeles-based chef Roy Choi, who consulted on the film, opened a series of pop-up restaurants and thought about making the track permanent.
Jon Favreau did his own cooking by training with food truck chef Roy Choi. Choi sent Favreau to a week of intensive French culinary schooling, where Favreau sharpened his knife skills and learned how to make sauces. "I brought him into the kitchen and he just kind of fit in," Choi recalls. "I threw him a couple of tests, like a case of chives, or a case of onions, or peel two cases of avocados. Just to see where his mind and his situation and his abilities were and how interested he was in these things. He just attacked them. He really became a part of it." Five years after this film's release, Favreau and Choi teamed up again on The Chef Show (2019) which is a cooking/documentary show on Netflix.
Oliver Platt's brother is a prominent food critic in the New York City metropolitan area and has invited Oliver on some of his restaurant visits.
Roy Choi only agreed to train Jon Favreau to cook if Favreau promised to be absolutely authentic in his portrayal of a professional chef, from the way that his character Carl folds the towels at the beginning of the film, to the way in which he cleans his station. Choi also put Favreau to work in several of his kitchens doing repetitive, menial tasks, such as picking parsley. This training was designed to keep Favreau focused on the smallest of details, and to serve as a method acting exercise, in order to understand the mindset of a professional chef, who must be persistently detail-focused in a pressurized environment, which requires repetitive tasks.
The barbecue place in the movie is Franklin's BBQ in Austin, Texas, which regularly sells out before noon and has long lines of customers waiting to dine.