What I love about the East Village coming from Los Angeles
is that it just seems like there's so many
small, intimate restaurants packed in next to each other.
It's such a great place to walk around
and experience the city of New York.
There's this restaurant called Oiji
that's celebrated as one of the best
modern Korean restaurants in New York City.
And yet I'm wondering, how did they take their experience
with classic cooking and marry it with Korean flavors?
Often, when that happens, you're gonna lose something
in that translation.
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When you take Korean dishes and flavors and techniques
and then kinda merge them with classic French
and Italian technique, is it always a better result?
We're just using modern techniques
that we have from training here
in New York City, French or Italian.
You can still apply those techniques to Korean food.
When people come in here, what do they expect?
What expectations do they have?
Is this a Korean restaurant,
or is it a modern New York restaurant?
Little bit of both?
Yeah, I would definitely say both.
It's definitely Korean, but it's modern Korean.
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This dish really doesn't resemble the thing
that I grew up eating, which is Naengchae.
When you go to a Korean Chinese restaurant,
or you're at a summer party, some celebration,
there's this pile of sliced jellyfish with cucumber
and sometimes some imitation crab
and it's all tossed together in this mustardy sauce.
It wasn't something that I immediately loved or really enjoy
eating in large quantities, just because of
how haphazard it looks.
But in this presentation, how could you deny yourself this?
There's this cucumber brothy vinaigrette
with champagne vinegar and some perfectly placed
drops of oil.
It's covered by this scallop crudo,
which really elevates it.
It gives it this different sense of,
hey we are eating Korean food,
we're having Korean dishes,
but at the same time it is not as immediately recognizable.
It's served with some beautiful little finger limes.
Underneath is where you get the essence of the Naengchae.
There is some very perfectly julienned cucumber and
the wobbly jellyfish underneath and some fresh snowcrab.
We have some julienned Korean pears in here
and the bright orange is a fresh gooseberry.
I'm gonna try it first without any of the finger lime.
That's just so refreshing, it's a perfect summer dish.
Just an edge of that mustardy kick.
But not too much, cause sometimes when you have this,
it's just like a wallop of mustard.
You get a little bit more of the freshness of the seafood,
the scallop which just melts away in your mouth.
And then, it's countered by all sides, with different kinds
of acid, different kinds of things that are refreshing
and cooling like cucumber and Asian pear.
Take a little bit of this finger lime.
This is such a cool ingredient.
These little pops of acidity.
It is not like any other Naengchae that I've ever had.
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In some ways you can't think of
a more quintessential dish than ssam.
Think about the word ssam: it literally is a verb,
it means 'to wrap,' but it also refers to the wrap.
In this case, we're gonna be using baby romaine lettuce.
They've kind of fortified it with this Gang-deon-jang.
With Gang-deon-jang they're taking the basis of the
fermented soybean paste but they're adding in
savory elements of beef, brisket, little bit of mushroom
and it tempers the saltiness and the funkiness.
Another thing that they have done is
they've served it with these lotus leaves,
which is a very palace-style presentation.
I only see this when I get dim sum because this is
a popular dim sum dish.
You can see here, they take sticky rice and they mix in
a little bit of soy for savoriness
and some honey for sweetness.
I'm excited cause I actually have not had this before.
How to start this: we take a little of the baby romaine,
super sticky rice.
This is marinated
and thinly sliced pork butt.
It's covered in this gorgeous, spicy sweet marinade.
I think some of the Gang-deon-jang.
They made this sesame sauce to give it a little bit
of nuttiness and a little sweetness
to kind of round out the edges.
Super thinly shaved leeks.
That kind of gives you that freshness, the crunch
that maybe kimchi would give you.
Micro cilantro leaves.
They've really gone all the way to re-engineer something
that's supposed to be very simple and classic and everyday.
Mmm.
It really just encapsulates the essence Korean food.
You have meatiness, you have spice, you have wonderful,
rich, kind of a paste that just glues it all together.
You get brightness and crunch from the leeks
undergirded by this sweet, warm, glutinous rice.
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The history of this dish is pretty funny.
They were serving it as one of their opening snacks.
It was an homage to this very weird Korean fad.
They have these honey butter chips you can just
buy in a convenience store,
and people were going crazy for them.
The trend did not hit Los Angeles.
The chefs here decided to put honey butter chips
and I think that they think it's even better
than this very strange convenience store fad.
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This is so good.
(laughs)
These are fantastic.
They're so
I just can't stop eating them.
They've perfected that balance between honey, butter, salt.
You get a little bit of heat from the cayenne pepper.
Ice cream and chips.
That's awesome.
At once, fundamentally Korean and yet refined to the point
where you're thinking, this is maybe
where Korean food can go,
it's where Korean food will progress.
Into this level of refinement.
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Thank you so much for watching K Town
and if you want see more of my New York adventures,
click right here.