637: The Korean Restaurant Family Novel with Jinwoo Chong

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Part of it, I think, is a little insidious. There's a lot of sympathy marketing out there for small businesses. A lot of those videos go viral where somebody is recording an empty restaurant and then everybody swarms in, of course. All of that kind of—it feels a little insidious to me, but I wanted to write about that in a way. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novels I Leave It Up To You and Flux a New York Times editor's choice and finalist of the Penn Hemingway Award for debut novel I really enjoyed I Leave It Up To You It's a family story set in Fort Lee, New Jersey and features a Korean family working in a Korean restaurant with a family dynamic that feels really real Jinwoo and I talk about the research that went into writing so colorfully about restaurant culture as well as his own food memories from growing up in New Jersey And at the top of the show, it's the return of three things, where Eliza and I talk about what is exciting us in the world of restaurants, cookbooks, and the food world as a whole.

1:36I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:42What's up, Eliza? How are you? I'm good, Matt. How are you? Good. You want to talk about three things? Yeah. You want to go first? Yeah, I will. I really, really, really am excited about Room for Dessert. It's David Leibowitz's book, originally published in 2010. he has revised it for a new edition with new recipes and brand new photos from the terrific photographer Ed Anderson. And if you remember this book, it's David's big breakout and really introduced David to the world of pastry and recipe writing. And I just I love the classic recipes like an apple quince tartatane. There's a nectarine raspberry upside down gingerbread cake.

2:19and the new recipes are as good as the old. And I just love that he's brought it back and showing his life in Paris and his new apartment there and going to the markets with Ed with a fresh photo program. Terrific book. Yeah, gingerbread upside down cake sounds delicious. It's great. What's your first thing? My first thing is that I went to a new lunch spot for me here in Midtown. I went to Pave, which is a French bakery that Mahira Rivers, our lovely taste contributor, mentioned in her truly Herculean New York Times croissant roundup that she did, where she tried over 200 croissants in the city to find the best.

2:58So the croissant there is what she highlighted. But when I went, I got a ham on bear sandwich. That was just such a perfect version of that classic. It was like the right size and heft of bread. They make it fresh there. And I don't think there's a lot of like great food options on that side of Midtown. So that's my first thing. I love that. I remember talking to Mahira about that epic journey and Pave did come up in our convo. So amazing you went there. How close is the office? Is it like a short walk? Okay. It's not like I did the walk, but it's easily 20 minutes for One Direction. And it was 90 degrees when I did it.

3:32So I don't think I would recommend that necessarily, but it is what happened. I love it. I love it. I'll make the journey. Yeah. I'll bring you one next time. Thank you. What's your next thing? My next thing is I was sent a incredible coffee. I'm blown away by it. The fine folks at Coffee Project New York dropped a bag in the mail to me and I want to talk about it. It is a Colombian coffee from Finca Milan. And what's interesting about it is they're using this nitro culturing process, which involves nitrogen assisted fermentation. It's an anaerobic method using fruit must and selected microbial cultures in a controlled bioreactor.

4:11I definitely read that from the website. That is a quote. It's giving PR. It's giving PR, but it's also giving like there's deep science behind this interesting coffee. It expresses like a naturally processed coffee. So it has it doesn't have that clean wash coffee, that tightness that I love so much about wash coffees. It's like the opposite end of the spectrum. It's not the like coffee for everyone, for sure. It definitely has really broad flavors of fermentation and wildness. And I think these, when you get into the naturally processed and fermented coffees, it really drinks like a natural wine versus a more traditional wine method.

4:48And I really didn't know much about Coffee Project New York, and I'm really happy to be introduced to them. They have tasting rooms and workshops around the city. I think they have three locations. And the founders seemed great. and maybe we'll have them on the show one day. It was really terrific coffee. That sounds delicious. What's your next one? My next one is I want to call out the CSA program that One Love Community Fridge just launched because I think it's really cool and I've been enjoying seeing different kinds of community-supported, well, I guess CSA inherently is community-supported, but a community-supported CSA, not only in that it's supporting local farms, but also it's broadening access to who is able to participate in the CSA.

5:26So what they're doing is you can sign up for this 10-week subscription for the CSA and every subscription kind of supports at least two other donated bags for people in the community. Or you can also just go on the website and buy an a la carte bag that is going to be gifted to someone else. It's running from 10 weeks from August through October, which I think is actually the best season for produce here in New York. We have all of the end of summer crops that are just so delicious going into fall. I think by the time this episode comes out, the enrollment period for the CSA will be closed, But I think you'll still be able to go on the website and buy an a la carte bag for someone.

6:05And I think just in general, seeing this program happening, which I believe is in partnership with Project Eats and J.Crew sponsoring, is just nice to see. And it was terrific meeting Azamaran at our event at the Bell House. And I just I love this organization. We'll keep talking about it. I appreciate you bringing it up. Yeah. What's your last thing? My last thing is a reminder that Van Leeuwen is absolutely top of the game when it comes to Nandere. I love their non-dairy line. And they're using for the one I recently tasted, which was their Sicilian pistachio. They're using oat milk, which I think is a really nice choice for non-dairy ice cream.

6:41I'm not the biggest fan of the coconut profiles. I love non-dairy ice cream express. But I just I love the Sicilian pistachio flavor. It's really great when you have it at that perfect temperature. It actually it's like gelato. It really gives a lot of gelato flavor and texture. And I love this product. Yeah, I'm a fan of their non-dairy flavors also. What's your last one? My last thing is this dish that I've been obsessed with eating this summer that I want to talk about. It's a matcha udon salad at Moteki Udon, which is kind of in the larger Barclays area. They have so many things in this salad that I can't list them all here.

7:14But there's this perfect like made-in-house springy matcha udon noodle that's being paired with okra and mushrooms and greens and pickles and tofu sobaro. and it has this like light truffle yuzu dressing going on. Oh, lovely. Tanya recommended it to me because I said I was looking for a chilled noodle that was in like the larger neighborhood. And I've been back twice since. It's just so satisfying and delicious. And every time it's so much food that I think I'm going to take it home. And then every time I manage to eat it all. I love a new done choice. And you know what? It probably travels well.

7:48I think it would travel well because it's not sitting in broth. I just, you know, can't help myself. But they have a ton of other amazing looking udon on this menu that I'm looking forward to eating once it's no longer quite so hot. Great. Well, thanks for sharing the three things. You too.

8:06Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on three things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames.

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10:02Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Jin Noo Chong, welcome to This is Taste. How are you? I'm really good. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to speak with you. I've spoken about your book on the show on three things. When I read it, right away I was like, Jin Noo, you have this instinct to write so clearly about restaurants and restaurant families. I think your novel is obviously about more, and I'll ask you a bit more about the logline because it's incredible. but honestly first off from the jump um what's food like in your life and do you uh do you have any favorite new york restaurants that you're going to these days oh yeah well first of all let me thank you for that that's that's the highest compliment to to to be noticed by people who know food and all of that i feel very out of my element writing about it sometimes and that that means so much so thanks a lot yeah sure um eating out i'm so big on hand rolls right now because they're a little bit bigger than just a little piece of nigiri that you would eat.

11:04They're smaller than like a tray of rolls. And I love the counter eating part of it. Yes. And so there's a couple. I work in Times Square right now and I go right over to Bryant Park where Mari.ne is. And the chef there, he's responsible for Kochi and Mari as well. Chef Shim. Yeah. He's unbelievable. It's so beautiful. And I love that one. Brooklyn DeKalb Market has Daigo Hand Rolls. Yeah. And they are unbelievable. I go there all the time and I have no business going there because I live in New Jersey now. It's like a like an hour and a half commute to go there. But I still I still do that. I love that place.

11:48I've been to the restaurant on 4th Ave. They have a restaurant? They do. Daigo has a restaurant. I think it's off of 4th, kind of like in Gowanus, Park Slope, kind of that bumper. Oh, no way. And the DeKalb Market stand. I love that it's never come up on the show. And Daigo doesn't get a lot of press. It certainly isn't in the New York Times top restaurants. Great call there. Yeah, they're just lovely. And so I'm obsessed with hand rolls right now. And we'll see what happens. So let's set up the book a little bit. We encountered Jack Jr. in the opening scene, and it's really unique. So just for our listeners who haven't read the book, and please do, I leave it up to you as the name of it.

12:27I think if you enjoy food and you enjoy a really great story, a love story, a story about family, this book is going to speak to you. But set it up a little bit. Absolutely. Okay, so the elevator pitch I've gone with, and I struggle with elevator pitches. My first novel was a sci-fi fiction thriller. called Flux. It was very difficult to boil down. This one, I worked kind of more diligently to do that. And it's about a young man who skips COVID because he's been in a years-long coma. And when he wakes up, of course, everything is different. His fiance is gone. His job is gone. His apartment in New York is gone.

13:04And he really has no other choice but to reconnect with his estranged family in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which is, if you're unfamiliar with the geography, It's very close to the GW Bridge. And this family of his runs a sushi restaurant that is the main setting for the rest of the novel. Yeah, and it's a Korean-American family. And it's set in, and I've written about Korean-American communities in America. And Fort Lee is truly unique in that it's across the river, literally from Manhattan, Koreatown, but very different, very village-like. Like, you know, many restaurants feel like they're not pressed for that innovation and that they're not moving forward as fast as Manhattan.

13:48And let me ask you about Fort Lee, about this community. I don't even know, did you grow up in and around it? Because you really, you get a sense in the novel for just geography, the way people walk around Fort Lee. You talk about the cliffs versus the, you know, the more urban sprawly parts of it. Really astute. And I just, I love Fort Lee so much. Oh, thank you. I grew up very close by-ish. I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, so a little bit more central in the state. But almost every weekend, my parents took me there to Fort Lee to sometimes go shopping for banchan, like groceries, because there was an H-Mart there.

14:27And way back then, in the early 2000s, there were no H-Marts anywhere like they are now. And sometimes I would get my hair cut there. We'd go for dinner, things like that. We'd spend all Saturday there. And of course, at 10 years old, that sucked. I hated going to Fort Lee. You wanted to be watching TV. I wanted to watch SpongeBob. I wanted to do just Hangout. I wasn't allowed to watch TV during the week as well. So Saturday was one of my real TV days. And I knew at 8 in the morning when my dad woke me up and said we're going to Fort Lee that my entire day would be ruined. And for a lot of my adolescence, it was ruined.

15:07And I look back on that with such regret because when I think of my parents who were, they're both first generation immigrants. My mom came here when she was five and my dad when he was 17. So different experiences. But they saw in Fort Lee something that they were missing, especially my dad. Like he could order at restaurants without having to translate himself or just look around and see Korean people everywhere. And that was a very strange thing to realize. comforted them because it discomforted me. I grew up around all white people in Princeton and going there, it just felt very strange to be around so many people that looked like me.

15:50And now I look back on it with such fondness. My parents still live in a little bit north of Fort Lee now in Alpine, Demarest area. And every time I visit them, I want to go to Fort Lee to have dinner and you've written this novel that pays a lot of tribute to the community and what's what's the food like for you at age 10 at age 15 uh is your are you cook your family is your family cooking korean food at home and then picking up the panchon and picking up all the ingredients at each mart um is korean food kind of your food my folks were weird uh we did not cook anything korean that's interesting we went atypical i'd say yes the immigrant experience right Everybody's mother has a kimchi recipe.

16:34Everybody's got a soup recipe, all of that. We didn't have any of that. We went out to eat when we wanted Korean. And so that probably informed all of those visits to Fort Lee when I was younger, because that was usually the only time that my parents ate Korean food was over there. At home, it was a lot of American, like suburban things, a lot of turkey sandwiches, a lot of spaghetti, a lot of just very small. Both my parents worked full time and they were home right at six. They had to, you know, toss everything together really quickly because everybody would be hungry. So there wasn't a lot of opportunity for meals and things.

17:10And then also there wasn't a lot of opportunity for the handing down of culture in our kitchen. It didn't really happen there. It happened in the restaurant. Yeah. Did you ever go to Machel House? No. Does the name ring a bell for you? I don't think I've ever heard of that one. It's like closer to Leonia, I think. It's one of the, it's a Fort Lee. For me, it had a hoi de ba place in the front and in the back, gamja tong was like the main dish that they kind of known for. My really good friend and buddy and co-writer Duki Hong on my two books is from Leonia. Oh, wow. So he introduced me to a lot of places.

17:46Is it still there? Yeah, I think so. I've got to check that out. Last time I checked. But it really, it may have been a COVID casualty and it leads to my next question. You know, you are so skilled in this novel of capturing the restaurant family. It's at many levels. You know, we're talking about restaurants as family, just the employees who work there and who spend all these crazy hours and doing family meal. But then there's also the family who literally owns the restaurant. And you capture this succession of the chef, the father, and the son. And I think the intimacy there and the conflict is very common in restaurants when you're talking about generational restaurants.

18:26And you really, really nail it. And I spoke to me. My sister-in-law owns a restaurant, so it's part of my own family. How did you research for this novel? Knowing that you really didn't work in restaurants. You don't work in this industry. But you somehow were into this family connection. And I think I messaged you. I was like, did you embed with a restaurant? So skilled. I wish I had embedded. Sometimes I lack the gumption to really do so much to go out. Because I am afraid of rejection. I am afraid of wasting people's time, things like that. I have a friend whose book came out in May. She said she went to therapy for the first time to understand what her characters would go through in therapy.

19:11I feel like I don't think I could. I would feel, I feel so uncomfortable like embedding, as you say. So a lot of my research was YouTube. It was a lot of food memoirs. The one I can think of is Your Table is Ready, Chechi. That was really incredible eye-opening. And when I think about the YouTube videos like Eater New York, all of those kinds of, the sharply cut kind of really glossy videos that take people inside the business of the restaurant. It's always at a really fancy, like, vibey place. Everyone's very professional and they're talking about getting fish deliveries from their guy at the market.

19:50And then I started thinking, and this is where I think the exercise of imagination came in was, what if that guy, your guy at the market was your dad or your uncle or something like that? And how complicated would that then be to figure out the deadlines and the margins and all of those really slim things that happen in running a business like that? Because it can be so precarious, so dangerous. And then add on to that, the emotional weight of dealing with all of that with your family. It feels like a time bomb. And so I try to imagine what that would be like to work with your family. It's very, very, very astute.

20:33And I think the frequent visits the characters make to the fish market in a beat up passenger van and like the waking up in the morning at 5 a.m. And this is a restaurant that's like an omakase. It's a place that really prides itself on the quality of the fish. And anyone who knows omakase knows there has to be multiple fish runs a week and hand selecting fish is key. And you really nail that. and did you did you hang out at the market a little bit was that pure imagination that was pure imagination so cool i knew a little bit about the fulton fish market which is the one that features in the novel it used to be in seaport um you can tell because in home alone 2 the wet bandits arrive after breaking out of prison in at the fish market um but they moved to hunts point yeah um a while ago and i'd never been there but uh for a while it wasn't open to just shoppers it was fully just like a professional kind of place and now I think they're open to shoppers so I would love to go let's talk about the actual the cutting of the fish because I think you really nail the way omakase is prepared and it's clear that with YouTube as your main research you were like really you know looking at videos but you also credit in the acknowledgments I would 20 restaurants in there.

21:54How did you geek out? And you mentioned hand rolls. So clearly Japanese food is very important to you in this traditional cutting of fish. But how did you figure out the realistic portrayal of fish cutting? So firstly, sushi is my favorite food. I would eat it every day if I could, even though it's kind of fatty, kind of unhealthy. So I try not to. And also the rice. But I would eat it every day if I could. And it was, as you say, just a lot of observation. And it does make sense that I gleaned a lot of that learning from the visual media of watching people do it, not just in video, but across the bar at these restaurants.

22:31The ones that I name in the book were my childhood places. It's one of the first places where I ate sushi for the first time. And I think I have a very tender spot in my heart for those places. One of them, anyone who went to Georgetown will understand this place called Epicurean, which was like a student hangout. By any means, not high end. You know, there was one guy working there who would make a salmon roll, that kind of stuff. But it holds such a special place in my heart to watch him make orders and also just to interact with customers. I feel like that's a thing in America, especially the distillation of the craft of omakase towards American audiences has taken this kind of like performance edge to it.

23:19You have to talk. You have to look cool while doing it. You have to use the blowtorch, the butane torch. You have to do interesting things like use interesting ingredients that catch people's eye. In Japan, they just put it right in front of you. They watch you eat it and then they make the next one without another word. And that was interesting to understand the difference between those two kinds of disciplines. Yeah, really smart. I think Jack Sr. is a little bit more laconic, right? And maybe not. He's of an older generation who maybe weren't into the performative nature of the omakase. Oh, yes.

23:55And Jack Jr. comes in and has a little bit different flair. I love also that it's not just the fish cutting. You know, there's a dish, it's a garam jim, or it's like a custard. that I apologize, I can't remember exactly the detail, but you talk about the pains of creating it perfectly. How did you come upon that dish, that single dish that was being scrutinized and like really no one could figure out how to do it except for the two jacks? Yes, that's tamago yaki. Oh, it's tamago. Okay, that's what it was. Great. It's something that's usually served at the end. It has a bunch of, it comes in quite a few forms, of quite a savory, very eggy form.

24:32Yeah. And then also a very sweet, almost dessert-like form when you add a starch to it. And that's from Daisuke Nakazawa's recollections. He was responsible for a couple of restaurants here, but was an apprentice under Jira Ono. And Jira Ono would serve a very kind of cakey, very decadent tamago at the end of his omakase. and Chef Nakazawa said that he labored for years to make one exactly that would pass Jiro's test. When he made it finally after years, he wept because it was such a relief. And that story has always stuck with me because, you know, it is such a, I've now done a little bit of research into how it's made and you have to basically observe it at all times over the lowest flame possible to cook it almost like sous vide it over a flame.

25:26And that really spoke to me as something, this like kind of unreachable ideal that Jack Jr. is striving for. Yeah, I love that technique in the novel and it is grounded in reality. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière. An exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. the 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist.

26:08Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus. The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code. Now, Clayton, have you ever tried one of those subscription boxes?

26:46Yeah, Matt, my friend gave me a code for that one that has all the chopped vegetables in little baggies. I felt like a drug dealer trying to cook dinner. Yeah, man, I have so been there. ButcherBox is a true exception. I was sent a box of premium beef and pork and was blown away by the quality and variety. There was 100 % grass-fed pasteurized ribeye, tri-tip, and ground sirloin for my favorite at-home smash burger recipe. George Motes, you better watch your back. For pork, they sent me a beautiful center-cut pork loin for slow roasting. I was super impressed, and I haven't even talked about the ribs, which I cooked in my Instant Pot.