- This is honestly one of my favorite restaurants
in the entire country.
We're here at Parachute in Chicago.
What I love about this place is that
it's a husband and wife team,
Beverly and John.
They use their backgrounds,
Korean,
American,
Midwest,
and they just blend them perfectly together.
You have something that's just
truly delicious and unexpected.
(upbeat music)
You grew up in Chicago,
so you have the Chicago kind of mentality.
You actually grew up near here
and then you moved to the suburbs?
- I grew up in the suburbs.
- [Matthew] Oh you grew up in the suburbs, okay.
- But I was in chicago 'cause our Korean church
was located in the heart of Koreatown.
It was nice.
I had two identities.
I had one that was more Korean
with my Korean friends from church
and then I had my suburban friends too.
I remember there was a time when people looked down
on Korean food 'cause it was funky,
it was stinky,
and if it wasn't this traditional European style cooking,
it wasn't important.
Accolades don't define me,
but I am proud of the fact that we break some barriers.
- What about for your parents too?
How do they feel?
- When I first went to culinary school
it was like the last thing my parents wanted.
They were like ashamed of me going
to culinary school in a sense.
- It's not law school.
- It isn't.
(Matthew laughs)
Yeah, it's not something you brag about.
You know?
It kinda settles a lot in my heart with them,
they truly love me,
they wish me the best,
they believe in it too now.
You can turn people who are not believers into believers.
(upbeat music)
- If you look at this menu,
there's bibimbap.
And you sometimes have mandu,
but otherwise it's just kinda like modern American food.
So how do you guys infuse the Korean in.
- There's something about the Korean thought process
that inspires me.
If you got to a bakery,
it's totally not even Korean,
but it tastes Korean.
Like you can eat a Korean donut at Dunkin Donuts
and it's different from a donut
that you have here in Chicago.
(Matthew laughs)
It just is.
Maybe it's the way that they add
a little rice flour to the mix
and it gives it a chew or maybe they use sweet adzuki beans.
That's kind of how we wanted this restaurant to be.
It doesn't look Korean,
we can be doing things that are inspired from elsewhere,
but then when you taste it it's like oh,
there is still that soul that's Korean.
For me,
I didn't speak Korean fluently,
it's very chopped up.
Food is something that I can remember and hear,
and in here,
and it's a language that I can speak.
And it's been amazing to be able do that here in Chicago.
- My Korean's horrible too,
it's okay.
(Beverly laughs)
Everyone makes fun of it. (laughs)
- Okay, I'm not the only one.
(upbeat music)
- I have to dive into the bing bread.
It's already cut,
it's made to share.
Some of this sour cream butter,
little bit of salt.
(chewing)
Holy crap.
Yeah, that might be one of the best bread starters
you could conceivably have at a restaurant.
'cause it's warm,
it's comforting,
it's plush.
The outside is nice and brown
and then you get these surprises inside.
You get little chunks of potato,
you get chunks of scallion,
smokey bacon.
There's nothing that jumps out that says Korean about it,
but it has this essence of like pa jun,
of Korean pancake,
scallion pancake.
I think that it's a must order if you come to Parachute.
(smooth music)
Now we have the gyeran-jjim.
It's not meant to be anything more than eggs,
toshi and maybe a little bit of chopped salted shrimp.
This version here,
right away it's like you get a hit of
frickin shaved black truffles.
It would make a lot of sense in like a French restaurant
to have truffles over eggs and why not here?
This is ridiculously good.
Mmm.
God, this place is killing me.
This is absolutely spectacular.
This is easily one of the best,
if not maybe the best,
gyeran-jjims I've ever had.
(upbeat music)
The boudin noir dumplings.
And they're kind of fried like won ton style,
maybe like ragoon style.
And there's an aged plum sauce that they actually made here
and then these dumplings,
they're fried up,
and then they're dusted with hibiscus dust,
which adds an element of acidity to them.
Let's dip it here,
this is just finger food now.
Man, that is really excellent.
It's just perfectly fried.
The wrapper is super thin,
way thinner than what you would even get in Korean mandu.
And the filling,
it's boudin noir so it's definitely got
a little more intensity than even sundae,
because sundae is kinda cut with vermicelli noodles
and it looks dark,
but this one is just pure fat and blood.
It's approachable,
it's a little more like hey it's fun,
it's finger food,
you dip it.
And the plum sauce adds a nice element of tart,
savoriness,
it doesn't overwhelm.
It's a nice balance to the rich boudin noir.
Gonna start diving into their dolsot bibimbap,
which is a stone pot bibimbap or a mixed rice bowl.
And they do it in a pretty untraditional way,
it's unfamiliar.
If you looked at it,
then only thing that you would really recognize
is this stone pot.
There is a soft cooked egg in here,
there's just that immediate smell of sesame oil
and of course gochujang,
which is the spicy sauce that really
just binds it all together.
I like mixing up bibimbap.
The word bibim literally means to mix
so I think this is the way it's intended to be enjoyed.
And what's nice is you can see on the bottom,
the rice,
look at that,
you can see it's really brown and crisp.
Oh, that's so good.
The crazy thing is you don't expect it
and yet that preserved lemon,
the immediate acidic punch of that,
is really the first thing you taste.
And then all the other things start to shine.
You get a little bit of that half cooked tuna,
little bit of sweetness from the pomegranate seeds,
the smoky onion.
What's really incredible about this
is that it's so refined,
it's got this like finesse,
this elegance,
it really is Michelin quality.
(upbeat music)