- I think Chicago has had a huge influence.
I was born and raised here.
There's a lot of like mid west influences
especially Italian influences
but they're very minor.
We use Korean techniques and flavor profiles
in applying them to produce or products
that may not originally be found in Korea.
This is not a fusion restaurant.
It is a Korean restaurant
because I am wholly a Korean person.
Your regionality has so much influence
on the way that you cook.
And I think that that's sort of like
the interesting about food in general,
especially when it pertains to one's culture.
Just as I've been influenced personally
with other cultures and other aspects
of being able to live in such a great city like Chicago.
The food mirrors that as well.
The food is very much Korean but it does have
some Italian techniques or flavor profiles
that have been influential
or that really start bridging some of the gaps
that we see between two cuisines
or two cultures that are seemingly very different.
Honam is a region in the south west tip of South Korea
where my grandmother migrated to from North Korea
before the war hit.
This little tiny village that my grandmother lived in,
it was an onion farming village
and there's just like a handful of restaurants
but the one that we would go to
pretty regularly, they would have like the typical
full Korean spread but like the one thing
that stuck with was Korean Tartare.
I just remember like it was such an intense experience.
The meat has like a sweet onion flavor to it
because like the cows were eating so much
of the onions as part of their diet.
I just remember like being so enamored eating this dish.
I wanted to take those components
and then be able to sort of,
not recreate those memories, just because
I feel like, it's really hard to recreate something
from more than 25 years ago.
But just to kind of give homage to the things
that were like very impactful growing up.
Ddukbokki Lamb Ragu, definitely this is a dish
where there is a little bit more Italian influences.
Ddukbokki, it's like a college town food.
You know, 2:00 a.m., you've had a couple libations.
It's just sort of what you eat to kinda end the night.
It's rice cakes that are stir fried in this
spicy, sweet, syrupy kind of sauce.
I always think of memories of
being at UIC because this is like really where
having those Italian techniques and influences,
kind of impacted with what I grew up eating as a Korean.
So we took Ddukbokki which we make our own
homemade rice cakes, and then, the Ragu itself,
it's made in the way that traditional
like Italian Ragu is made.
By having a lamb Ragu as the basis of the sauce
but still adding that sweet, spicy component
that makes Ddukbokki what it is.
And then being able to also make our own rice cakes
in home and then searing it off in the style of gnocchi.
So it's still influential in terms of the Italian techniques
but it's still wholly a Korean dish.
Soondubu is traditionally a soft tofu stew.
For me, the reason why this is such an important dish,
it's something that like me and my mom
share as own own little tradition of like mom and daughter.
My mom lives an hour's drive outside of Chicago
and when I do go visit her,
there's this one Soondubu restaurant
where like that's really all they sell.
The one memory that sticks out to me,
I spent three months in the south of France
and not even like two weeks into being there,
I'm like, man I miss Korean food.
(laughs) and I remember
emailing my mom and being like,
the minute we get back, like can we please
go to the Soondubu place.
So she ended up picking me up, three months later,
and we just straight to the Soondubu place.
I was just like, literally like
crying into my bowl (laughs)
of Soondubu because it was like,
just like coming home in all senses of the word.
Struggling as a Korean American
and saying like, I'm Korean but I'm also American
and like where do I kind of fall on that scale?
And this restaurant and that dish,
is just such a great embodiment of that as well.
The word fusion, I feel like,
it doesn't really mean anything anymore.
It's really just a word.
For me, it personally, it's like a trigger word
and it has like some negative connotations
because I don't know how else to explain it.
Like there are definitely people who are really
just like taking two cuisines and just kinda
squishing them together or fusing them together.
Without like a thought of like,
okay like, what is this culture mean?
I would never like to think of our restaurant
as a fusion restaurant.
But, you know, like it's sort of interesting
for me to hear that because it's like,
well I never claim to be a Korean, Italian restaurant.
I never claimed to be and Italian restaurant.
I have only ever claimed to be a Korean restaurant
and that's all I can give.