How K-pop and Korean soaps sparked a global interest in Korean food

We last talked to chef Deuki Hong (who runs an ice cream shop and two bakeries in San Francisco) and journalist Matt Rodbard (the editor-in-chief of Taste) eight years ago when they released their book Koreatown, which explores the rising popularity of Korean food across the United States. Proving the cuisine knows no borders, they've widened their lens with their latest venture, Koreaworld, which explores the influences on Korean cuisine and its impact on the world.

Evan Kleiman: I'm so happy to have you. There's been no slowing down of the reach of Korean cuisine across the globe. As a person who is really lucky to live in Los Angeles, a city that has a huge Korean diaspora with all of that amazing food, you can't divorce the food from the global explosion of Korean pop culture. 

Matt Rodbard: The gateway from the film industry and television has been significant. If you scroll on Netflix and you look at your grid, you're gonna see something from Korea. For a country of only 50 million people, the soft power, so to speak, coming out of Korea is tremendous [with] the global influence of the cinema and television industry. 

With food, we're seeing a similar globalization and interest, and we cover it, not just in Korea but in America. With the book, we were attempting, and I believe we succeeded, in crystallizing a modern Korean cuisine or a modern Korean vocabulary for food. It's not the cannon. It's not barbecue. It's not gamjatang. It's not the "uncle food" that we wrote about in Koreatown almost a decade ago. This book really captures the modern spirit of Korean cuisine and through the recipe list, it's pretty different than some may think.

I find it interesting, this interplay between cuisines that are represented by kind of ossified versions that were remembered and by immigrant home cooks, who often launch the first wave of restaurants that we see when immigrants move to the US. But then there's the reality of how food constantly changes in the home place. 

Matt Rodbard: The home kitchen is not all about tang and guk and jjigae, so to speak. It's about V60 pour overs and gilgeori toast, which is a recipe Deuki developed, inspired by Queen's, up in San Francisco. A lot of the recipe list is pulled from our experience traveling in Korea and through America, and, of course, Deuki's lived experience as a Korean American chef and the great change in the cuisine. 

Our coffee and bakery section in Koreaworld really says something. It says that modern Korean cuisine is not ossified. It is moving, it is at the speed of light. What we did with our stories throughout the book, our citizens of Koreaworld, we captured the essence of this change through modern food.

Can you explain the concept of hallyu?

Deuki Hong: Hallyu, the literal translation is "the Korean Wave." It's a cultural phenomenon. Why are a bunch of non-Koreans dancing in the streets of London, in the streets of Brazil to Korean K-pop? Why are my friends that have nothing to do with anything Korean telling me about the latest Korean drama that came out on Netflix? This maybe started in the '90s but really hit in the last 10, 15 years. Then it got a boost the last five or six years. That's why we felt compelled to document it one more time.

There's so much. I have to say that one reason why I love Korean soaps is the food. I feel like I'm a fly on a wall, watching what is actually happening when people go out to eat or make food at home. It's just so enjoyable.

Matt Rodbard: Are you an Extraordinary Attorney Woo fan?

Oh, my god.

Matt Rodbard: You love it? 

So much!

Matt Rodbard: Isn't it great? I mean, just the way kimbap comes alive with that show. I love your point. It's so accurate. The food, and the way it's served in Korea… Deuki and I have been really fortunate to go to Korea many times. It's quite different even from Los Angeles, which is truly the epicenter, in America, of Korean cuisine. It's so different. And Attorney Woo gets you really excited about Korean food. It's such a great observation.

Can you dig down into that difference and pick one menu item or a range of dishes?

Matt Rodbard: I'll take one to start. I think the difference is this. In Korea, it's not Korean food, it's dinner or it's lunch or it's late night or it's a snack. I think what we've done is we've crystallized these recipes, some of which have been fads. So we go over dalgona, which was a big fad a few years ago, but we also have a dish like rose tteokbokki, which is a traditional tteokbokki rice cake dish but with the inclusion of cream in the sauce, which we saw in Korea quite a bit. 

Another is vongole. We've seen an exploding interest in Italian cuisine in Korea and we have a vongole recipe in Koreaworld, which I think is probably the only Korean book with a vongole recipe, but it made a lot of sense for us. It's this idea that modern Korean cuisine doesn't know any kind of stricture. It really is expanding at the speed of light.

Deuki, is it a traditional vongole or is there a twist?

Deuki Hong: This is kind of akin, I would say, to maybe how people talk about Tokyo pizza. We're going back to the globalization, the flow of information. I can, with the tip of my fingertips, know exactly what's happening in Italy and the vongole over there. Korea's the same. I know exactly what's happening, not in Korea as a whole, but that region, that town, what they do. 

I think the Korean vongole [has] a strong garlic presence but ingredient-wise, it's very Italian. It's just how hard you put the garlic upfront — Koreans love garlic, Asians love garlic — and how back you put the olive oil. In Korean, it's called the ghee, that oiliness. We're not big fans of it so we'll put it in the backseat instead of the passenger seat. Ingredient-wise, it's very similar with clams and beautiful, fresh ingredients. It's not like, "Hey, it's vongole and here's kimchi on top of it." That's not what we're talking about. It's Koreans going, "Hey, this is the best vongole. We recognize that it's an Italian dish but we like to eat it this way."

Matt Rodbard: We had these breakthroughs throughout our travels. We would go to Jeju, Gangwon-do, we went to Jeolla and experienced some temple cuisine there. But we were surprised around every corner about how our interpretation of Korean cuisine was changing almost in real time.

There's this one page you have in the book: The 17 Best Things We Ate in Seoul and Around Korea. Could you pick something else from that list and break down the evolution of it away from the traditional or if it's something brand new?

Matt Rodbard: One that really stuck out to me was at this restaurant, Hojokban (there's a location in New York City now), and they're doing kimbap with a truffle tuna mayo. To me, the idea that kimbap can be so many different things (we see this in K-dramas, as we mentioned) and to bring truffles, which even 10 or five years ago, was only reserved for Pierre Gagnaire's restaurant in Seoul. But now, truffle mayo is part of kimbap. It had a nice, finely ground perilla powder on top of it. The kimbaps, too, were half the size of what you would find on 32nd Street in New York or out on an Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. It's very different. It's almost like a fine dining version. But when it came down to it, this was like only 10,000 won, which is about $8 a serving. So the point, with this dish, is that it illustrates how Western cuisine and Western sensibilities are being done in Korea in a way that I wouldn't call fusion. It's its own way and it's exciting

Deuki, could you talk about the Mu Kimchi Granita?

Deuki Hong: Yeah, that's a recipe that I came up with a long time ago, actually, more than 10 years ago. It was my influence working in Centrico, which I guess not a lot of people know, with chef Aarón Sanchez, and the idea of hot, cold — of temperature being a source of flavor, a vehicle for sensation and one that's not just sweet, salty. It's like okay, we can play with temperature as well. 

With the Mu Kimchi Granita, a lot of people ignore the beautiful cabbage liquid that comes out. I decided to freeze it, [turn it into] granita, learning that technique from Centrico and applying it to oysters, applying it in noodle dishes. 

I think in Korean cuisine, we play with temperature really well, like hot Korean barbecue with cold noodles, even with a granita, [which is] cold on really cold. So let's have a fresh, cold oyster and let's make it even colder [by putting it on a] shaved ice granita.

Nearly a decade ago, chef Deuki Hong (left) and journalist Matt Robard mapped out Koreatowns across the US. Their follow up goes global. Photo by Alex Lau.

I love the idea of icy, icy kimchi because I love icy, icy soups. You write that a visit to Jeju Island, which is referred to as the Hawaii of Korea, changed the way that you prepare fish at home. What did you learn and from whom?

Matt Rodbard: What an adventure, Deuki, we had. Do you remember?

Deuki Hong: Yeah, you share way better about this part but I'll add on.

Matt Rodbard: So we were in Jeju Island, which is the Hawaii of Korea. Everyone should go there. It has its own foodways. They have this famous black pork but they also have a horse meat tradition, which we tried. It is a little bit more mild than you'd imagine. 

We were driving around and found this little seaside restaurant that was doing a whole, it was kind of like a porgy, fried and what we saw them do gave us the idea for the recipe. They brought the fish to our table fried and they drizzled on this gochujang-based sauce, which was kind of like the gochujang you'd get with Korean fried chicken. Instead of it being served delicately and having each customer pick apart the whole fish as you would at any restaurant, the owner put on some plastic gloves and proceeded to literally smash the entire fish, breaking up the meat from the bone.

We were like, "This is crazy." But when they left it, we were like, "This is actually amazing because it's given us this easy way to enjoy the fish." It separated the flesh from the bone but it also created this kind of bibimbap. It was a bit of a mixed vibe. Deuki, what else did you take from that?

Deuki Hong: Outside of the flavors, it was the presentation piece of it. The joy of that, the textures, even the cartilage you're eating, it was actually really good. I think the sauce was incredible but it could apply to any sauce. It was just the way of eating that I felt was okay, we're in the middle of essentially nowhere. There are no signs here. There's no Yelp rating here. And this couple, who were of my parents' generation, this is all they do. Every table has this fish. It's this presentation piece, it's the texture, it's the familiarity of fried but not the familiarity of, "Hey, I'm picking out the bones, as well." It was eye-opening for me.

That dish, I just love the photograph. It gives you permission, you know?

Matt Rodbard: We love the recipes in the book. We think it's actually quite doable. Frying a whole fish with a cast iron pan, it's easier than you think. It's such a set piece for a dinner party.

Let's talk about the coffee and dessert culture because it's crazy. It's crazy here. I can only imagine what it's like in Korea. Is there a particular person or group of people who are at the forefront of the growth?

Matt Rodbard: I write about coffee a lot at Taste where I'm editor and I've done consulting in the coffee world. I love coffee and I've been going to Korea for almost 15 years. When I first started going to Korea, it was all about Nescafe push button culture, which you know, not great. But in the past five years, the so-called Third Wave movement in Korea has been so incredible. It's lapping Japan. 

Everyone talks about Japan as being this amazing coffee culture and it's not untrue. But if you go to Seoul, you can go to a couple places that come to mind. One is Mesh and this restaurant called Nanpo Seongsu, which is kind of the Bushwick of Seoul. It's a very up-and-coming neighborhood, a little former industrial space. And also Fritz, which you can find in LA at Dayglow Coffee, which is a great cafe. They have one in Hollywood, I believe. You can buy it and it's just this tremendous roasting that's happening there that would be on par with any of the American or Scandinavian roasters.

What about the desserts or pastries that go along with a cup of coffee?

Deuki Hong: I run two bakeries, pastry shops in San Francisco, so I went to Korea in these last two years with a really keen eye on the pastry scene and what they're doing. I remember the first time, the visuals and the concepts and eating in a hanok — beautiful. I would say the product fell second to that beautiful concept. 

The last time around, the product was insane. Everyone just caught up. I would say in America, Eunji Lee of Lysee is probably leading the forefront of fine pastry dining, if you could even call it that. Just high technique, introduction of flavors that we haven't seen and she's really Korea or America. I would say she's leading on those fronts. 

In Korea, we have a couple of favorite cafes, Nudake is one of ours. They are known for their croissants and they have these huge onigiri-looking croissants. Koreans really have fun with it.

Matt Rodbard: I'll shout out a place in Hannam, in a neighborhood on the north side of Seoul, called Honeybee that is doing the most tremendous lemonade doze and also a certain style of European-driven but Korean-flavored pastry. I feel like right now, the pastry scene in Korea and the desert scene is extremely exciting and innovative. And I agree Lysee in New York City is one of the top pastry shops in the world.

Wow, maybe they'll open in LA. What chefs or cooks should we be paying attention to here in LA?

Matt Rodbard: Evan, this question is so loaded. We have so many friends. You are blessed with some of the most talented people in the world. So Deuki, I'm just gonna say a couple names and you can say a couple names. We've got the folks at Yangban. Yangban is doing something that is hard, which is banchan that is transcending any banchan I've ever had, using pears and acidity. I think about what Perilla what Jihee Kim is doing down in that cool little spot on the Eastside. I'm not sure if she's been on your show but I think Perilla, as a concept, is really modern in that it's a daytime cafe, doing dosirak-like box lunches but it's also this incredible banchan shop.

Deuki Hong: To put a pastry mix in there, one of my favorite cafes is Smoking Tiger. They're more in the OC, just to give a little greater Los Angeles love. Smoking Tiger is one of my favorite spots. Really big Korean influence, incredible drinks. Shamelessly, Korean is in the forefront. Misugaru indarmee. They don't shy with it. Even their pastries, they put a yakgwa, which is a very, very traditional [cookie]. Our parents' generation eats this dessert and it's on top of a croissant. If you had to say, "This is a Korean cafe," I would say Smoking Tiger embodies that.

"Koreaworld: A Cookbook" follows the evolution of Korean cuisine to its current state. Photo courtesy of Clarkson Potter.