336: Eunjo Park

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0:31I think it was so great because till then I was working in this French fine dining restaurant. And for me to have this transition from that to Monfuku, for me, it's very liberating and free and open. this is taste i'm your host matt rodbard

0:59unjo park is one of my favorite chefs in new york city and on this great episode we talk about her time working at momofuku kawi as well as her life growing up outside philadelphia and her mastery of kimbap oh i love her cooking so much and i hope you enjoy this conversation

1:24Eunjo Park, welcome to This Is Taste. So great to see you. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to catch up. We've been, you know, DMing and texting and you're part of Korea World and we'll get into your amazing participation. How the hell have you been? Great. I moved back to New York two years ago and then I've been private chefing and taking it slow and taking care of myself. Yeah, we can get a little bit into the private chefing world. It's a whole universe that's so fascinating. They need to do a bear for private chefs. Wouldn't you agree? Yes. And you know what's crazy is that private chefing, I think it used to be not something that chefs are not proud of.

2:08But now with social media and TikTok, it's very out there. And it's cool to see how the private chefing world is now kind of more visible. Yeah, definitely. It's definitely a very, you know, up in like DJ Khaled's Graham, his chef is up there now. So we were talking off mic. I'm going to Dandan tonight, which is a brand new Korean restaurant. And it seems we can talk about the landscape in New York. There's always new openings. It's such an exciting time. And you're like, yeah, you agree. It's definitely an exciting time. I think the Korean food, the modern Korean food especially, is booming, especially in New York City.

2:52It's really cool and fills my heart to see all this younger generation of Korean chefs or Korean-American chefs defining their identity through their version of Korean food. So it's really fun. It's so fun to follow. And it seems like right now there aren't any rules, right? I mean, there are rules, meaning like economic rules. You got to like make money. But like places like Ariari, which I don't know if you've been there. I've been there. That place is really fun. It feels like it could be like Songsu or Hanam in Seoul, a cool Seoul neighborhood. But it also has an incredible long line and hard to get into.

3:33What are some other places that you're interested in right now? I mean, Ari Ari is part of the Han Hospitality. I think Han Hospitality is really crushing with all these small concept restaurants. And I think they're all very thoughtful, too, bringing a very traditional one from Korea and mixing it in here. Have you been to Okdongshik? I have. So, on the jik is gamtang, right? Yeah, 돼지 gamtang. Right, right, right. I think it's really cool to have like a Korean restaurant focuses on just like one type of food. Yeah. And hope to see more of it. Yeah, that restaurant, you know, does the bone broth, but then it has incredible mandu as well.

4:18I love the mandu there. And then a little bit of like beju kimchi or some kind of kimchi, mu kimchi. But it's an exciting time for modern chefs. It is very exciting time. And to be very honest, it excites me to see all these chefs thriving. And part of me, there's a little ache in me because I'm not part of it yet. So hoping, it's definitely encouragement as someone who used to be part of that community. And now I'm very separate or by myself in a private chefing area. As a Korean chef, not being part of, but seeing from it as an outsider, it's inspiring at the most. Completely. And I hope it encourages a lot of younger generation, not just Korean, but any different ethnic other than this fancy European chefs, you know.

5:19Like I see a lot of Taiwanese chefs thriving, Chinese chefs, Filipino chefs, you know. So it's really cool. I want to set some context here because it's important when we're talking about the modern scene, what you were doing at Kaui, you know, when you opened it, it was Momofuku's first Korean restaurant, like legit Korean restaurant. And that's a word that we can talk about. But in one year and you closed because of the pandemic, I'm very sure you would have still been here. Kaui would have still been here without the pandemic. In one year, you became a food and wine best new chef, which I think outside of a beard is the highest, highest honor you can get.

5:56You were on Pete Wells' Top 10 Restaurants of 2019 and Eater's Best Restaurants of 2019. This restaurant was amazing. I got to go three times, and I remember each meal vividly. One time I went to Kira Kudo, and we sat at the counter, and we had all your kimbaps, and it was so cool to try your food. But I want to ask you about Kaui. Did you feel when Dave Chang asked you to be the chef there that you were going to do something that would become this? Well, to talk about Kawi, it brings back a lot of emotions. And actually, Kawi closed one day before our anniversary. So we had a nice 364 days of operation.

6:40And you worked 364 of those days. We worked a lot. Yeah, you did. I mean, when Chef Dave and I had our first conversation regarding his upcoming project in Hassan Yard, I remember sitting down talking to him and I didn't take it seriously, to be honest, because it was such a huge project with a lot of money. and I just didn't think I was ready to take that role because, you know, professionally I've been cooking more than 10 years at that time but I've deliberately avoided being a sous chef because I just loved being a line cook and learning and I wanted to travel, just learn different cuisines.

7:26So for him to ask this person who has no managing skills to run this giant project, I thought he was crazy. I thought he lost his line. I mean, it is an interesting dilemma when he sees someone with such talent working the line and you worked at Coe for almost three years. You worked at Thomas Keller and we'll get into a little bit about that time. But for him to ask you to jump from the line to executive, I mean, wow. What did he see then? It must have been something. That's the biggest reason why I decided to take it, although I knew I wasn't ready. I'm a very self-conscious person and insecure person, and I'm sure if Dave didn't reach out, I would have never considered that I'll be ready to take that kind of a role.

8:16But to have Chef Dave, who I worked for and consider as a mentor, to believe in me to even offer that position, I figured he saw something that maybe I didn't see in myself yet. So although I didn't believe in myself, I decided to believe in him for him believing in me. Let's go over some of those early menu items when you open because I feel like, wow, you were doing, of course, multiple kimbops, but you were also doing large format jungals. And you were doing, I think, some incredibly detail-oriented protein courses, mostly beef. and it was really, it felt right in Hudson Yards. I think that's why those, many of the critics gave you lots of praise because there were a lot of bad restaurants in that place, in that mall.

9:06I mean, really not a great restaurant scene happening in Hudson Yards, but Kaui was the one shining light in that mess there. What were you cooking there that was so, I think I'm going to say influential and it goes back to the earlier conversation about the young chefs and making New York the most exciting Korean-American restaurant scene right now. But what were you making? Well, when I was finally on board, and I think first thing we did was, what's the name going to be? We didn't talk, we knew nothing about what it was going to turn out to, but we knew it was going to be somewhat Korean. And we finally decided with the name Kawi, which means scissor in Korean.

9:52And, you know, scissor in Korean cooking is such an instrumental tool, not just in the kitchen, but also in dining room. So starting with the name Kawi and how we can incorporate that with table-sized service. And so we used to cut rice cakes with table-sized service, of course, the noodles. Namyeon. Uh-huh. Yeah. But also Kawi is another take on Kawi Baibo, which is rock scissor paper. So it's kind of like playfulness in there. And the food ended up being, I want to say it was a reflection of my identity, which was Korean American. You know, I'm a Korean immigrant from Korea to States when I was 11, struggled with the culture, especially with language.

10:45and I think I've always been in that gray area feeling very lost like not fitting in Korean society or American society and I thought that was my weakness but cooking with Dave to create this restaurant it was almost like finding my identity as well because through cooking what I grew up with and it's not always Korean food so 11 years living in Korea and rest of it I grew up in states. So I do feel very strong on both culture and to make that make sense to me to bring it in together. And that was Kawi. We did a lot of fun, playful things with kimbap, rice cakes that we extruded in-house. I know, you're making your own rice cakes for Duck.

11:40I mean, like making your own rice cakes. duck is so difficult and you're doing it I mean, I got only into the fresh duck when I was working in Korea and you go to this duckjib it's the house where they make it and when you try their fresh extruded rice cakes it's another level it's not just chewy but it's a different type of soft chewiness that it is so good and if I wanted to use rice cakes in the menu i for sure wanted to make the best rice cakes to start with to showcase that you know there are better rice cakes that other than the ones that you can buy from h-mart did you ever have the rice cakes at arang on 32nd street those over side do you remember that place that that pocha no i don't think so they had these amazing rice cakes that were like triple the size of normal duck oh really and it was like made with cheese it's like one of my favorite dishes um how were the numbers at kawi when in march 2020 were you were you doing all right no i remember beginning of march um everyone was confused not knowing what's happening because the news were starting to come up and it was getting more serious and mall was empty um i remember our like last week before we closed the reservation we had like four cover for the lunch and less than 20 covers for dinner.

13:12And we closed on the 14th. But our last service, I think, was on 13th. And not realizing that it was a last service. Yeah. Friday the 13th, March 2020. Very famous day. I think we've talked about on the show. It's like the day everything shut down. I think a lot of us had final meals that day. I recall vividly where I was in Brooklyn. What was that last service like? Your last time cooking at Kaui, this restaurant, that will always live as a legend in the history of New York dining? It was just like any other day, because I didn't know. No one knew that this was going to be the last time we'll be cooking in the restaurant.

13:51Wow. We thought, or I thought personally, okay, this seems pretty serious, that maybe a month or two, we'll come back. So our kitchen was still packed, packed with containers of kimchi, pickles, freezers full with, you know, frozen crabs. so we were ready to take a break because we gave all the produce to the team but we were also ready to come back within two months oh right, it was like the short we're going to be right we'll see you in a bit that was it that was it wow, we can move on from Kaui but I'm glad that we could get that down the kind of brief but important history of Momofuku Kaui and now Momofuku doesn't have much of a presence in New York I think Momofuku Sam closed down at Seaport.

14:38I know you worked there a little bit after you left Kaui. And then news recently that Momofuku Ko is, I know you're making a face of sadness, is no more. Tell me about your time at Ko. From bottom of my heart, working at Ko as a line cook was a highlight, you know, as a line cook. I had such a fun time there with really talented chefs. I think it was so great because till then I was working in this French fine dining restaurant. And for me to have this transition from that to Monfuku, for me, it's very liberating and free and open. And especially working at Kohl where you're serving and cooking right in front of the guests and seeing the guests' reaction.

15:33I've learned a lot. I grew more as a person too because I had to talk to people. And I'm a very private person. And it definitely boosted my confidence and wanting to learn more about what I want to cook, which is Korean food. So at that time, Dave Chang was working there. Sean Gray was working there. Chef Dave was around. Around, right. Yeah, but it was Sean Gray and Josh Pinsky. Right, Josh Pinsky as well. And I think the closing of Coe has kind of inspired some very mixed recollections of Coe's importance. And I'm not going to call it anyone because it's their take. But I feel it's strange to not give Coe its due.

16:17And when you talk about working the line at Coe, you mean you were switching dishes daily at times. I mean, it wasn't like a lot of tasting menus where it's a fixed menu for a season or even a year. You're like really riffing there, right? At Ko, they gave more freedom to the cooks to create their own dishes, and which came through the canyapé. I remember lunch was longer. It was like four hours to eat, and the menu changed constantly through the market and what's good at the market. Yeah, I mean, the market-driven is like a cliche at this point, but Ko doing a tasting menu with the expectations and the stars and the beards.

17:03It's very difficult to be that inspired and kind of improvisational for a tasting menu. That's why Ko is special. And, of course, all you guys had six skills. You guys were very talented chefs. Let's go back to Philadelphia. So you moved from Korea when you were around 11, right? And you moved to Philadelphia. So I want to get a sense of what food was like when you moved to Philadelphia. and you had, you know, you were from Korea, but you had an identity that was then starting to be rooted in America. What's the food like? In Korea, mostly raised in Seoul. But when I was in second grade, my family moved to very countryside.

17:45So my grandparents can help my sister and I to, they can watch us while my parents, they actually had a Korean, like a Japanese restaurant. Right. So most of the time it was just my sister and I just like roaming around the countryside with this neighborhood kids. And it's found this memory where, you know, it was very innocent. There's no Internet. There's no cell phone. So it's really with the nature, you know, like very seasonal too during fall. like you i remember just like shaking this chestnut tree for the chestnuts ginkgo nut trees and we would just like start a bonfire this like elementary school kids which is very dangerous yeah right country country living there yeah and then we would just roast them and eat them and i have this really good memory and from there um our family immigrated to pennsylvania i do say Philadelphia because it's very easy to say but I am actually like 40 minutes away.

18:51Okay. So it's Bucks County. Right. Okay. Bucks County. A little different living there. City life. Okay. And I have many first time eating memories and my first meal was chicken nugget from the stop the rest stop and I thought it was a ketchup, but I did that, but it was not ketchup and I was so confused and it ended up being the barbecue sauce. Oh. So that was my first American food experience. A positive experience for your first time tasting barbecue sauce? I don't think so. I think I was just shocked because I didn't know what it was. But, you know, other than eating American cafeteria food at school, it wasn't a huge change because we even other than that we ate mostly korean at home made by our parents and you know at that time they didn't have h-mart so we would drive like 40 minutes once a week to go grocery but also we tried to eat american food and i remember like thanksgiving dinner we had this amazing roasted like golden brown turkey but they were so dry inside you know mashed potatoes from the box with the gravy packs yeah i mean that's that's that's interesting that you would you would have a little bit of american food you know inching in but it was mostly korean cooking at home so i'd love to get a sense of what some of the dishes were that your folks are making Korean style at home?

20:39I think our family were spoiled to eat a really good Korean food in Korea because my grandfather had a small farm and he would grow anything that we needed it. So even till now, they send us a giant box, I think like twice a year, with their housemate, gochugaru, which is chili flakes. Amazing. They will extract their perilla oil and sesame oil and all the dried vegetable that we can soak it and rehydrate it and cook it. It felt like kind of we're still connected from Korea. Yeah. Because getting that sesame oil at the local H Mart or the version of H Mart was not the same. You can't compare it.

21:25You can't compare it from Korea when you have your... And it's amazing when you can actually buy Korean perilla oil. I try to seek that out myself. when did you know you wanted to go professional, when you wanted to actually go to culinary school and become a professional chef? I've always enjoyed watching or looking at the photo of cookbooks. I didn't have cable, so I watched a lot of PBS after school. And I remember eighth grade, I took home ec class. that was my first actual experience like cooking non-korean food and i remember making like shake and bake and apple dumpling apple dumpling i remember so vividly because this fresh apple you put some you know like store-bought this pastry and you bake it and it's like this fragrant it smells so good too and i was very i think that got me into that i really want to cook i want to learn how to cook.

22:32Were you good with your hands and have like a little bit of an artistic streak? You know, were you good at art? I don't think so. Interesting. Yeah, I don't think I was like that talented, like born talented, or I was just genuinely interested. So I took vocational school in high school. You went to a vocational school. I did. And I went to CIA three days after my high school graduation. I just wanted to get started. Oh my goodness. Wow. Three days. You're living up in Poughkeepsie on the campus of Hyde Park. Tell me about that experience. Did you make a lot of friends there at TAA? I met a lot of friends, but most of my classmates were a lot older because I think all the younger kids would be joining like two, three months after because they would be taking some time after high school graduate or high school.

23:24But so I got to learn a lot from my peers as well because they had more experience. I was the youngest of them and met a lot of Korean chefs too. So tell me, Joe, what was your experience in restaurants before you went to CIA? You had the vocational training, but did you work at restaurants? I did. My first, I worked three restaurants in high school. First one, Korean-Chinese restaurant as a buzzer. and second one was at this like a small very old like an inn that's been operating for 100 years very like local classic restaurant yeah and i was also a busser there but the chef though they had two chefs um both of them graduated from cia and they're the one that gave me the recommendation letter to go to CIA.

24:21Oh, cool. So I would go there on my weekends to like a stash in the kitchen. I remember making like creme boulet, you know, basic stuff. And my senior year in high school, I worked at Bonefish Grill. Oh, cool. I was hoping that you would say a chain because, you know, Bucks County or anywhere outside of a major city, there's a lot of chain restaurants and many of our most talented chefs and decorated chefs started at places like Applebee's at Bonefish. So tell me, what is Bonefish? You work in the line at Bonefish? I was the garbache So what's that like? I'm so glad I've experienced it Because it's very intense Like during Friday night The ticket, it's really rolling in Just streaming in You make, I think, three salads And then also desserts But I remember just busy And just wanting to be with the cool kids on the hot side but I was the high school young girl.

25:21So you were working Garbanger but then there was like the dudes or whoever working hot. What were they like? What were these characters like? This was your first kind of kitchen experience. Is it a colorful cast of characters I would expect? We were friendly but it was hard for me to get like become friends because they were also older than me. So and I've worked maybe like four hours a couple days a week because I was still in school. Yeah, I remember going there after class, working service, and my parents or my dad or my sister would pick me up. Yeah. And all I wanted was to go home and maybe eat a slice of kimchi or something.

26:05I mean, you were tired, I'm sure. After a long day of school, doing classwork and then working online at Bonefish. But it clearly formed this work ethic. And also just it really started to get you thinking about restaurant culture. You graduate from CIA and you end up working for Thomas Keller for years. You worked a variety of jobs. But let's hear a little bit about what your time was with the TK group. Well, I spent a good my early 20s to mid 20s at Per Se. Heard of it. Pretty nice restaurant. You know what's crazy that I still haven't eaten there. That's crazy. That is crazy. I don't eat out a lot.

26:48I want to eat there, but I have a small stomach. I'm a little worried that what's going to happen to me if I go there. But I would love to go there one time. I'm with you. You know, it's much respect, but it's maybe not for everyone eating that much food for a tasting menu. Per se, it was really good, really hard. I've learned so much. I think I've learned how to work efficiently the most you really need to build your self-discipline because as soon as you're clocked in and ready to go you need to know what you're doing for the whole day because it's just you fighting with the clock because there's so much things to prep and you're always constantly thinking okay, what's next?

27:43Okay, I have 10 minutes to do this and I have to move on to the next project. So I became more organized with prepping. And it sounds so cliche to say, but respecting the ingredients and not just the ingredient, but also the tools that you're using in the restaurant. I remember the sign that it has it on their office. it says treat it as your own and maybe one day it'll be yours. Oh my, that's good. That's good advice. And it's not cliche coming from you. It isn't. I mean, you're being honest. And yeah, so per se, I've grew so much. And after per se, that's when I went to Momofuku. When you're talking about fighting the clock, it's an interesting idea because, you know, it's true.

28:34We all as home cooks think about the clock a lot. You know, when we have to do a dinner party and got guests arriving in 90 minutes. But there's something got to be satisfying if you've beaten the clock. Oh, for sure. If you've gotten your work done. And then you get your marking yard. Okay, done, done, done. And in prep kitchen, they have this thing. The sign reads sense of urgency. And I think it's so important as a cook to have that sense of urgency. Because you need it. Like you really need to push yourself, not just because you can get it done, but it's the way of hustle, you know, hustling.

29:13Is service at per se, I mean, prep is intense because there's so many dishes, but is service a little bit lighter or is service pretty intense? No, service is pretty intense. Wow, this career of yours, it just amazes me when I talk to chefs like yourself. You know, like the harder it is, I think the satisfaction after it comes, it's more greater. Let's transition to kimbap because you, I was so honored to have you in Korea World and got to plug the book. I'm going to put in the show notes to pre-order. It's our book coming out next April. We read a profile of you, citizens of Korea World. You're one of our citizens.

29:50But you, we worked on two recipes for kimbap. Let me ask you, what interests you in kimbap so much? Because Kaui had such a reputation for interest in kimbaps. I have to give full props to Chef Dave for pushing me to put kimbabs on the menu. Cool. Because, you know, when he first brought up the idea of kimbap, I thought it was cool, but I knew it's very labor intensive and I didn't know how I could incorporate in this big restaurant. so we ended up just making a kimbap section so we could have the whole station with like a four line cooks just dedicated with kimbaps and raw seafood and just like the whole menu i think kimbap you know like it's something that most of koreans grew up eating and nowadays you know there's a lot of like a chain kimbap restaurants in korea but back then like only time you eat kimbap are like the fun events you know like a picnic or field trip or birthdays because it's made by your mother it's labor intensive and for me to take that and to create my own i almost saw it as a a blank canvas basically and what made sense to me you know it doesn't it's maybe it's not traditionally korean but for me it made sense to me and in a way with kavi's food it was me expressing myself through that it's it's well said and and i think as americans we we obviously have such a connection to japanese maki rolls right we have such a like we know that we get them at gas stations you know so for a chef like yourself to to say well there's a korean version of a rice roll but it's different you know we're using a lot of pickled uh vegetables using namol seasoned vegetables you're putting foie gras in some of them which is really cool the rice is slightly different than a traditional japanese roll now let me ask you the question is when diners come in and have a kimbap of yours were they like whoa this is totally different or were Were they like, wow, this is like a version of a Japanese rice roll?

32:10I think a lot of the guests didn't really know what kimbap was. I'm sure they thought, oh, it's like a sushi roll, you know. And we made sure one of our goals was to eliminate any Japanese word on our menu. because I think we're so used to using and it's so norm to use Japanese terms like nori or kakigori. But there is the same thing in Korea and Koreans might use it differently or in a different style. And I really wanted to make sure that we are putting our foot down as this is a Korean restaurant, not Japanese restaurant. Respect that. Thank you for doing that and saying that. Is there going to be a Joe Kimbop stand, restaurant, chain, the sweet green version of Kimbop?

33:09You know, there are so many things that, well, now that I'm a private chef, I have, I do have more time. There is a lot of concept that I want to do. We'll see. I would love to. I do have some pop-ups coming up. Yeah, and like next week. A couple weeks? In end of November. Yeah, okay. End of November. I have one for this year. And I'm planning a couple starting next year. So we'll see. I definitely, definitely want to get back into the restaurant world. What's the new Joe pop-up like? You know what? Like for just because I don't have this one restaurant that I want to do, I thought it would be really fun to kind of do pop-ups in very different style of a restaurant and kind of work within that restaurant style.

34:02And I want to create my own kind of food with them. Not with them, but like... Well, with their like larder, with their pantry, with like what they're kind of known for, but obviously making it Korean. Yep. So what are you doing? This one, the menu I'm finalizing now, but, you know, it will be Korean for sure. And there's going to be kimbabs. Right now, I'm working on barbecuing, which is really fun. I want to do a lot of smoked meats as well. Kind of similar to kawi, but more personal, I would say. Very cool. I love that you bring up smoked meat. We have a smoked short rib in Korea world, inspired by mongtan barbecue in Seoul.