November 17, 2020 • 49 mins
In his role as an editor for Eater, Matthew Kang chronicles the best eateries in Los Angeles and has toured North America in search of the finest Korean food. Esther talks with Matt about his journey throughout K-Towns in the United States and Canada, the variations in cuisines, and why they both feel that Los Angeles has the best and most authentic traditional Korean food.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The problem with modern food is that we have this
mentality that food should just stay the same, like just
like our parents and their mentality of like being immigrants,
they're frozen in time. But food isn't like that. And
even in Korea, it's changed and it's mutated and it's evolved. Like,
how's the right to do that here in a way
(00:22):
that makes sense to us as Korean American immigrants. Welcome
to get down with Kaytown. I'm your host esther Troy.
Practically every major city you go to, you'll always be
able to find a Kay town. There's the obvious and
largest Koreatown in l A and New York, but you'll
also be able to find smaller Kay towns in cities
such as Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia to name a few, and
(00:46):
the up and coming unexpected Kay towns of Atlanta or Virginia.
You'll always find pockets of Koreans everywhere. And of course,
to tell you where to eat in these Kay towns
is Matthew Kane. Matthew is the of Eater Los Angeles
and the host of the series k Town, a YouTube
show about cream food in America and beyond. I met
(01:08):
matt when he was covering New York City. I just
opened my third restaurant, miss you. Matt. You remember coming
into my kitchen and making the rice stuffed whole chicken. Yeah,
it was great. Yeah. I think that was the first
time you actually came and cooked in the kitchen. Yeah.
I didn't really do that on any of my episodes,
So so what do you think was I hard on you? No?
(01:28):
It was fine, except I just got like the kim
chi splattered all over my pink shirt. I remember that.
That's funny, and you were supposed to go out that
night with that shirt. I mean, you know it's it's
the new perfume kim chi. Hey, it happened. Story of
my life, dude. So since then, we've become very first friends,
mainly through our love of Korean food, and I can
(01:50):
always depend on Matt for a delicious special meal out
here in l A. Of course, you know everything and
everything about Korean food here. Welcome to the show, Matt,
Thanks for having me. So I'm super excited to have
you as my very first guest out here in l
A because, like, who else would I talk to about
l A's Koreatown, especially about the food, right, I feel
(02:11):
there's no one else you can talk to about just me. Well,
you're like my go to right, and I feel like
I always randomly just texted you and say like, Hey,
what do you think about like this thing, this dish?
What do you think about this ish? Where do you?
Where do I go for this? And you know, I'm
like literally obsessed with l A's Koreatown. Yeah. I always
(02:31):
tell you should just move here. It would just be
easier for your psychology. I know, right, because I literally
sometimes just dream about l A's Korean food. And take
this with a grain of salt, But sometimes I say
that the Korean food out here in l A is
better than Soul's Korean food. I think it's It's an
argument you can make. I have made similar assertions, especially
(02:54):
about like Korean barbecue here, and I have received the
wrath of Korean people in Soul and in Korea. They
fake out. Yeah, they think I'm absolutely crazy and terrible
and wrong, which I might be. I don't. I don't
spend that much time in Korea. I haven't been there
that much. I've been there four times in the last
(03:15):
five years, so I don't think that's that much. I
don't understand Korean food in Korea because I don't live there,
but I can take the small sample size that I
have and compared to what I get to eat on
a fairly regular basis here in l A. And I
think the quality we have here is excellent. And other
people confirm it to me, you know Koreans, Yeah, like
you and other Koreans come from Korea and they come
(03:38):
to l A and they're like, do the barbecue here
is amazing? Why is it that people can compare the
Korean food out in l A in America to Korean
food in Korea. There's so many factors. I think the
easiest one is that what happens with immigrants is they
come to the US and their Korean US it just stops.
(04:01):
It gets shocked, and it's frozen in time, right, which
is like our parents generation. They're still in the seventies
in Korea, right, So it's not like they're thinking like
modern Koreans in they're thinking like nine seventies Koreans and
what do they want and what do they look for?
What do they idealize? Right? It's things that are a
little more traditional, um, things that they grew up with.
(04:24):
And that's why a lot of times you end up
with Korean restaurants and the people that frequent those restaurants,
they're they're just more traditional, they're more um. Where in
Korea it's constantly modernizing, right, It's constantly changing the seeing
restaurants are constantly just being redeveloped totally. I mean, if
(04:46):
you look at like I went to Korea last year
and I filmed the last season of my show, which
was so good, by the way, thank you, it was.
It was fun um. I also nearly died of freezing
because it's so freaking cold. But Korea, Korean cuisine now
in Soul is so advanced and so beyond what I
can imagine. It's really impressive. And that's why there's a
(05:07):
Michelin guide there. That's why there's World's fifty Best Asia
Restaurants in Soul. The Korean food scene in l A
and America is very much just looking backwards, looking back
at what's traditional, what's worked for generations. We don't really
have the luxury all oftentimes to just go to the
(05:28):
store and get pre made items. So a lot of
times you have to make your own kimchi, you have
to make your own ingredients, punch on totally from scratch.
You don't have the option of just going to these
industrial places and picking up ready made stuff, which tends
to be the case in Korea. Right It's it's a
lot of convenience, a lot of ready made stuff, which
is also true in America. But I think if you
(05:50):
look at the restaurants here you went to, you went
to Smoked last night. That's like my favorite restaurant in
l A. By the way, It's unbelievable. It's like Grandma
it is. And if you look at the kitchen, it's
still Grandma's and they're serving you at eleven pm. That
restaurants open till midnight. I don't know how they do it.
They might have twenty seats and the menu is very
(06:12):
small for a Korean restaurant might have things. That's kind
of like what I like about it though, because that
means the dishes that they do especial. It's that it's good.
Of course they know what they can do well. The
kitchen small and all the food is like it's like
home food, like kim or like kimchi is like a
(06:32):
kimchi stud is like a student mackerel. It's like stuff
that my mom and my grandma made me, and you
can't really get that at a restaurant. Yeah, they're hard
to find. Yeah, and they're hard to find really good versions. Um,
and I think they do. They It's like the most
essential Korean food experience there. You get their punch on
(06:53):
is absolute perfection, The rice is perfect. Everything about sitting
in this tiny little place is like I imagine in heaven,
this is what a perfect Korean restaurant is. Like. Yeah, punchon,
by the way, is the little side dishes you get
at a Korean restaurant, right, and those the punch for
me are like sort of the essential thing that makes
(07:16):
a Korean restaurant good. Like if your punch on is bad,
I I can't. Yeah, it's sort of the defining factor
of what Korean. A Korean meal is, right because if
you let's say that you go to a sushi restaurant,
then you're thinking about the rice or maybe the fish.
I don't know. It depends on what your priorities are.
If you go to h a Chinese restaurant, then you're like, Okay,
I want to make sure that such and such a
(07:37):
dish is going to be really really good. When you
go to a Korean restaurant. Punch on is the indicator.
It's it's the most difficult thing to make. There's usually um, six, eight,
ten little dishes on the table, and the effort that's
required to produce them is an indication of how serious
this restaurant is. Yeah, exactly, And some bookdong is like
(07:59):
is so consistent. I've been going there for over ten years.
It's might go to especially because they're open late um
and I don't think I've tried everything on the menu,
but I'll put it this way. It was the place
I took my grandfather when he was alive, because he
would go there for the peeping pop and if he
if I can impress him, then that was it. So
(08:22):
it's like l A's. Koreatown is obviously like Frozen in time.
It's like Korea in it's seventies or or eighties. Right,
It's just kind of like frozen. It's it's a little
sad because I feel that what happens when the grandma's
all you know, what what happens when the time passes
and you know there are no grandmas anymore to be
(08:43):
making the food in in the restaurant, right, Yeah, I
mean I think that's sort of happening. It's something I
actually want to investigate on eat or l A. Is
a lot of the mom and pop, the grandma, you know,
grandma's on the kitchen, were there on their last legs.
They're ready to retire, they're ready to sell. You know,
if you think about Korean immigrations starting in Koreatown in
(09:04):
the nineteen seventies, the early nineteen seventies, right now, it's
fifty years later, right, those people who opened restaurants, who
came because they had no choice. They couldn't speak the language, right,
so they're like, we're going to cook food. They're retiring,
and maybe their children took over, but oftentimes their children's
children are like the next generation. It's not like our
parents wanted us to be restaurant owners. I mean, even
(09:26):
though you are one, right, No, they want us to
be doctors and lawyers and businessmen and businesswomen. And so
what happens is these traditional restaurants after that first generation,
you're gonna start seeing a decline unfortunately, or the number
of places that are carried on by the children is
going to be extremely rare. So this one restaurant I
really enjoys called chun one. You didn't tell me about
(09:49):
this one. You should go there. Oh my gosh, it's incredible.
Um they're also there are menu is a little bit
bigger than UM. But my favorite thing there they have
they gone you love your Yeah, I like my brace fish,
do I? And I really appreciate that because it's not
something that you order. I mean, like, no one would
(10:10):
be like, okay, go order the brace fish at this
Korean barbecue restaurant, which you made me do a part barbecue.
I'm like, why am I ordering a brace fish? But
who was the best thing I had there? So I
order that I order the post some there, which is um,
you know, sort of a steam braised pork belly. I mean,
they're just to me, there are these dishes in these
(10:31):
Korean restaurants that are definitive. They're they're they're outside the
beginner step of Korean food. Right. If you ask anybody
that knows any of my Koreean foe, you have kimchi
Korean barbecue, and uh I don't have it. Maybe that's it, right.
So when I go to place like che, I want
to show people the next level, you know that what's
(10:54):
the next stage of the Korean food experience, and to me,
those are braised dishes. Steam dish is homestyle dishes that
actually have a lot of complexity and a lot of
different layering to them, and especially when you put them
all on a table and eat them together. There's something
I think very transportative about that experience. Also, those are
(11:16):
the best dishes honestly. I mean, of course Korean barbecue
and all that is great, And I know that's one
of your favorite Korean foods because you listed it on
your on your top three, But to me, I guess
because I just love these like homestyle meals, like Korean food,
those braze fishes, fermented crab, like that's the that's the
(11:37):
ship that I like, right, And I feel like if
your palette is sophisticated enough, you will learn to love
it too. Like you can't really go back after eating
after trying the raw fermented crab. Dude, that that that's
just the bomb, right, Yeah, And I made a video
asserting that which is raw sorry, marinated fermented crab is
(11:59):
the most what was the word I use, like the
most refined or the most elegant Korean dish because it
involves um sort of an ancient preparation. Um, it's a
dish that was very traditional. Um. But the amount of
complexity in the flavor, I mean, you're eating crab that
has just been sitting around in some some marinade for
(12:21):
like three days. I mean it sounds a little bit disturbing.
And honestly, when I do eat it, even when I
posted on my Instagram, I get a little bit paranoid, like,
oh my gosh, this islam really grows to a non Korean.
It does look gross. It's snoughty, and it looks glooby,
and it's it's nasty. It looks nasty. It's not just objectively,
(12:41):
but it's And so what you gotta do is you
gotta take the carcass and you kind of like you
gotta squeeze out someone to beat and literally suck it out. Right,
You're sucking the life out of this dead creature. Which
and it has kind of like this weird slimy texture.
It's not just absolutely no texture. It's just like no,
I mean, I like I kind of liken it to
bone marrow. But right, it's got that like just fatty
(13:03):
butterinus and the incredible sweetness of the crab. Right, and
and then when you just get the sort of this
glazing of fermentation and things that just only time and
bacteria can make awesome, it's a delicacy. Like we thought
of doing that, right. I think it was just a
matter of preservation. Right, It's like, why is salami and
cheese and all those things good? It's like, oh, let's
(13:25):
like put it to the side. Maybe it'll stay good
and won't kill us. Right. And it's not like you
can go to the ocean and be like, let's get
one crab. No, You're gonna go and I'm gonna get
a thousand crab, Like, oh ship, we got a problem here. Okay,
what are we gonna do with all this crab? Right?
And fed? And you know, and I think it's a
matter of like figuring out, okay, this is this is delicious.
(13:46):
And yeah, when you talk about jong or totium or
other sort of homey dishes, I think I don't think
that it requires a palette or experience. I just think
it's just a matter of diving in and if I
give these dishes to people that have never tried, as
long as they're willing to suck out some crab or
(14:07):
you know, eat this huge, like you know this quote
unquote ugly delicious David Chank type thing where you eat
this dish like I don't know if I can eat this,
and um, you dive in. I think people love it. Yeah,
I mean there's something so special about Korean food. So
obviously we can go on and on about Korean dishes
because both of us kind of obsession with our We
(14:29):
have this level fair with Korean food. But I have
to ask you about traveling and eating throughout all the
cake towns in the country, Like, what was that like,
because every koreatime is so different, right, Yeah, that was
really special. I did. I think I did nine seasons
of my show, and I went to places like Atlanta, Dallas,
(14:51):
Chicago obviously l A and New York. And the weird
one was Toronto. Um. Actually I have relatives that live
in Toronto, so that was interesting to see. And I
saw that, at least for the I don't want to
say lesser, but the second tier of Korean towns, which
are basically not l A or New York because the
(15:12):
Korean community is just not as big there. Yeah, just
just functionally. I would say. The one thing that stuck
out to me was that the fewer Koreans there are,
I think the more Korean you are, right as as
a Korean American living in living in Atlanta or even
more like Dallas. Right, the Koreans in Dallas are just
(15:33):
like fiercely Yeah, they're so proud and they're like, this
is who we are. And it's like, I mean, think
about how heavy of a contrast that is. Right, Ella,
New York very international, not to say that Dallas isn't international,
but dude, you're in the middle of Texas. There's nothing
more American than Texas. One of these guys is Chris Chow,
who's a chef in Philadelphia. Yeah, I know Chris. He's
(15:57):
he's an incredible character. He's second generation, um you know,
restaurant owner. His father opened the restaurant. And it's like
this guy is he's more passionate about Korean food than
I am by far. And it's because I think it's
because he's in Philly, which is like a smaller community
of Koreans, like a lot older, it's a little more
spread out. They they're cat town is not as cohesive
(16:20):
as like let's say, Atlanta's is. And it was really
really beautiful to see the contrast and see all the
people who you know are representing Korean food in far
flung places, even in Toronto, um, which is that like
in Canada. To be super honest, I don't think I
had the best Korean food there, but I do think
(16:41):
the people I met were incredible. I think that it
didn't surprise me. Did you watch Kim's Convenience? Yes, a
few episodes, right, Like, it didn't surprise me that that
show was based in Toronto because there is a substantial
Korean population there and there's like waves of Korean. There's
like a they call it the North Korea and the
(17:01):
South Korea, basically the Old Koreatown and the New Koreatown.
And it was really interesting to be there. I had
literally arrived maybe a couple of weeks or a week
after the terrible tragedy of the crazy van driver who
like ran over a bunch of people and killed them
in Toronto, and it was like that happened in one
(17:21):
of the koreatowns. And I remember driving by the memorial
there's all these like flowers, like, oh my gosh. And
it was interesting because that really galvanized and brought together
the Korean community, like who are we what are we
doing here? We're in this land, We're in Canada. What's
our place here? And you know, because they because they
literally received that direct attack. And what was super interesting
(17:41):
was that there was an immense sense of pride and identity,
people saying I'm Korean, I'm Canadian, Um I belong here,
I want to be here. I'm a part of this
this city, in this country. And the way that they
projected that in strength was through food, right through these
restaurants to markets. They are a big part of that community.
(18:02):
And wherever I was, um, I think in in America,
in American Kay towns, everybody had an opinion and something
to say about. Oh yeah, like Kaytown. They all have
a story. Whether you're Korean or not. You live in Dallas,
you live in Atlanta, you live in Chicago. Everybody has
something to say about a Korean food experience they've had.
(18:22):
And it's because of the Korean Americans living in those cities.
That's right. Going back to Toronto real quick, what do
you mean by the old Kay Town in New Keytown?
So it's like separated, there's like a new right So
they had um there was a Korean town. I know,
it's that that relationship is very interesting with Korean Americans
because I think, as in many immigrant communities, you have
(18:44):
a ground zero, you have a place it tends to
be a little bit more in the city. That's where
the immigrants will first land, and then as they develop
their careers, as they get more money and they want
to send their kids to better schools, they move outward.
So in Toronto especially, there was a I think what's
called I'm terrible, I can't remember the name, but there
was like one street where it was like Korean restaurants
(19:07):
and businesses on you know, every block stacked up high
and was sort of like not not quite as impressive
as like Manhattan's K Street as I like to call it,
but it was a smaller version of that. And it
was like that's where I had hold Quaa, you know,
which is like I literally went to this place that
sells that I know. So hold Quaja is a little
all walnut shaped confection baked dessert thing um that's filled
(19:30):
with red bean or other filings, and it was literally
a store that only made that. I feel like in
Korea it's hard to find that. I remember having that
on like road trips in Korea Korean street food that
you don't really find anymore exactly. And there was a place,
there was a shot that only sold that in Toronto,
(19:50):
and I was like, wow, that's amazing. I had to
do a video there, which I did. So there's that
sort of the old Korea town, like that old you
have very traditional restaurants. And then in the Northern retown
as they called it, that's where the unfortunate tragedy happened.
That's where it's a lot more spread out, like more
new restaurants and they have bobu shops put in. There's
more modern Yeah, it sort of feels a little bit
(20:11):
like uh yeah up today. So speaking of modernized cream food,
you know, I'm going to ask you this what what's
your opinion on like the rise of Korean food and
(20:34):
new fine dining scene. Obviously, you know we have like
att a boy out of mix, like all these cream
restaurants now winning Michelean stars and Korean food being Korean
food in this new light. I've I've had a great
opportunity to try elevated quote unquote elevated, refined, ambitious, fine
dining Korean food, mainly in New York. Also in Chicago. Um,
(20:58):
there's a couple of new replace as I haven't had
the chance to go to. But not in l A Um,
I guess not not really. We did have a place
here called Burrew that was excellent, but it was not
find any at all. It is very simple but still
modernized cream fit. I mean when I say fine dining,
I mean like more modernized cream food, cream food done
(21:20):
in a way where we haven't seen before. I think
the sort of two schools a thought to that. I
think the first one was at you see Korean food
adapting to American palates, to American familiar American presentations. You
could call it watering down all these things. I think
that's one way of looking at it. And a lot
(21:41):
of Koreans, I know, they look at these expensive Korean
restaurants in New York City and they go, yeah, it's
just not as good as like traditional you know places.
And it's because there's this assumption that the chefs and
the places making these food did it so that they
could appeal to a wider audience. I think that's secondary
(22:02):
to the first one, which I hope is that I
think Koreans, especially our generation, we want to make food
that is interesting and fun and adheres to sort of
the cooking methods that we learned. If you ask a
lot of these chefs, most of them had some sort
of classical training. They worked in a French or an
Italian or an American restaurant, and a lot of them
(22:22):
will tell you they didn't learn They did not go
to Korean culinary school. They didn't go to Korea to
learn Korean food. They're just using the flavors that they
know from home or from wherever, that their mom taught
them or grandma taught them what they us, what they
grew up with. So I think, if if I remember
thinking to myself ten years ago, I was like, if
(22:43):
I could open a restaurant, which I would ever do now,
but if I if I would, I would open like
a gastrol pub, but with like Korean pub food, but
sort of done my way right. And I think, what
do you mean, give me example. I'll give you an example, like, um,
you know, I invented this dish that I know other
people have stolen from me, but I've written the I
wrote the recipe of it and put it on my
(23:04):
old blog. But it was like kim chi pokembab rang chini. Right,
So you take pokem bab kimchi fried rice and then
you make it a little different and then you put
it into put a little cheap nava cheese in there,
cover it and then bread it and then fry it
like a risotto arrangini. Right. It's very simple, but it's
like a new way of delivering kimchi fried rice. And
(23:27):
did I have to do it that way? No, But
I think it's fun because I really like orangeini, I
love risotto, and it was just a fun new presentation.
And I think people want to have have a desire
to try something different with their food. Um, whether they
want to charge more, they want to use luxury ingredients.
I think that's totally fine. But ultimately, good food is
(23:47):
good food, regardless of what you charge for or regardless
of the shape it takes. I can admit that there
are some modern Crean restaurants that, like, I don't see
what the point is because what they're doing is something
that is not is a worse version essentially what you
can get in a traditional restaurant. You need to give
me an example, because you know I'm gonna ask you, okay,
So I'll give you an example and I'm just stating
(24:09):
what other people state are saying. I don't necessarily agree
with it. But like, let's say, a prime example of
a modernized Korean restaurant that opened and failed in Los
Angeles was Pot from roy CHOI So, Roychio is one
of the most prominent Korean American chefs. I have a
lot of respect for him. He opened Pot like four
years five years ago in the Lion Hotel in the
middle of Korea Town. I mean, you cannot make a
(24:31):
bigger statement than like the biggest, one of the biggest
Korean American chefs gonna open a Korean restaurant in a
Korean hotel in It's huge, and it was very poorly received.
A lot of my friends went they were like, yeah,
you know, like oh, so expensive, and I could just
get a cheaper version of that like two blocks away,
(24:51):
blah blah blah. And I'm like, yo, like those restaurants
don't have cool music and nice chairs and a good
ambiance and and theoretically better service. You know this. People
did the typical immigrant thing of like complaining about this stuff,
And in my mind, I was like, guys, don't you
(25:12):
see that there's something really cool that roy is doing.
You know. You know that's kind of crazy because being
on the East Coast in New York City and seeing
Roy Toroy open pot. I remember when it first open
and there was a lot of public city around it.
I remember thinking like, oh my god, that restaurant is
so cool. I want to go there. I can't wait
to eat there. And to me, it look the men
(25:33):
you looked like super interesting. It was very Korean American,
just something different. And to me, I was like, this
is awesome. But but it was sad to see that
it was actually not the case in terms of execution
or do you think it was execution or do you
think it was concept driven. I don't know. I don't
know why restaurants closed. Um, I mean there's a million reasons,
(25:57):
let's be right. I mean, sometimes it's the food. Sometimes
it's not the food. There's so many layers. I think
if he opened that restaurant in Santa Monica or in
West Hollywood or even in Silver Lake Town, why that's interesting, right,
I Mean that's probably he had a deal with the hotel,
the Line Hotel, to do all their food and beverage, right,
(26:18):
So it's probably something like that just sort of finishing
my my thought about modern Korean food. Um, I think
there's a place for it. I think there needs to be.
You need to communicate if you're an owner or chef
of one of these restaurants, you need to communicate very clearly, like, Hey,
this isn't your grandma's food. It's not gonna be it's
(26:38):
not gonna be as cheap as you know the post
on that you spent in Koreatown that's Bucks. This is
going to be forty Bucks. And it's not just because
we're using more expensive ingredients, Like the cost of something
is not just like what's on the menu and then
what's on the plate. There's a lot more than that
people don't understand. But more than I think you have
to like you also have to do something new with
it and and convey like, Okay, gonna pull some but
(27:00):
I'm gonna do with I don't know, beef belly or
lamb belly. I'm gonna land belly. Pulls something that changes
the way you see what the cuisine is and what
it can be. Because I think ultimately the problem with
modern food is that we have this mentality that food
should just stay the same, like just like our parents
and their mentality of like being immigrants, they're frozen in time,
(27:24):
but food isn't like that. And even in Korea, it's
changed and it's mutated and it's evolved. Like, how's the
right to do that here in a way that makes
sense to us as Korean American immigrants, Right, So if
I want to do a Korean style burger or Korean
style pizza or whatever, then that's my way, and that's
how that's an expression of who I am, and and
(27:44):
just make it good, make it balance all the fundamentals
of what makes food good. Just keep to that, and
I think you'll be fairly successful. It's just being a
little bit more open minded about what food can be,
right and communicating that to your customers. You know, I
would say, I'm remember there was a bar in Atlanta
and these dudes it was like a brother and sister
(28:06):
and like it was this bar just like cocktail bar,
and they happen to have all this like Korean bar
food and it was you know, sort of like Southern
inflected and it was really chill. And if you talk
to the guys, I don't think this spoke any Korean.
I mean, at least I don't think the brother spoke
any Korean. He's a great dude. He wasn't like, oh,
this is going to be as good as your you know,
the bars that you went to growing up. This is
(28:28):
just our version of it. And he owned it. He
believed in it. It was really approachable and it was
super successful. I mean when I was filming in there,
I was getting bombarded by like a hundred people trying
to jam into this place. It was very popular, and
I was happy for them because they were using just
a typical cocktail spot serving some bar food, but but
doing it their way with Korean food, and I had
(28:51):
a whole lot of respect for that. That's also they're
doing it in in Atlanta, in Atlantia, which is not
a place that a lot of you know, non Koreans
would think of it as like a place for Korean food.
What do you think of about the future of Korean food,
you know, just like not only in America but globally. Well,
I think I think what Korean food hopefully will forge
(29:17):
its own path. You know, it's I don't want it
to end up. I'm not saying it's better or worse,
but it would be unfortunate if it sort of went
the way of let's say Chinese food, which I love
Chinese food, but it's sort of, at least in America,
went to this place where it was sort of unrecognizable,
but it's sticking back now. It is in major cities.
(29:38):
But like, if you ask an average American what Chinese food,
they'll tell you orange chicken, chow mane, and um, you know,
chow fun, which those are great, and those are also
in their way Chinese, but I think because they were first,
because Chinese food, in particular from Asia, was the first
cuisine to come to the US to have to be adapted,
to have to be morphed and molded so that Americans
(29:59):
would like it, right, So I hope the Korean food
doesn't go that way. I also hope that Korean food
doesn't go the way of um, let's say, Japanese food,
which I love Japanese food, but I also think that
Japanese food has been reduced essentially for Americans too. Ramen
and sushi that's what most Americans think of as Japanese
(30:21):
food unfortunately, right, and they revere sushi, they revere ramen,
but there's not a lot of nuance there. And also
it is like mainstream if you think about it, but
it's a little bit inevitable for it to go to
that place. Maybe I'll come back, but do what you think.
Korean barbecue is kind of Korean barbecue and Peeping pup
(30:44):
is they are the sushi and raman of crane food,
and they're already there. But what I hope happens is
that traditional dishes and traditional preparations can be presented in
a way so that the average diner will love and
enjoy them in a way that um, you know, some
(31:04):
Chinese regional cuisines are being appreciated. See each One Cuisine
for example. Right people are recognizing that's a region of China,
we should have these dishes. These are all the dishes.
Some of them are going to be familiar, some of
them are not, but that's what that region is. Similar
to maybe Thai cuisine and regional thie flavors. If you
look in l a night market all these other restaurants,
they're not just like serving pad tie, And in fact,
(31:25):
if you go there and just order pad tie, they're
gonna be like what else do you want? Because there's
so much more here? And I hope, I hope that
Korean food reaches that point, so that if I go
to Denver or if I go to Salt Lake City,
I'm gonna be able to eat todium and tong tonggu
and all these things that are a little bit a
little bit not familiar to right now but become part
(31:46):
of the canon of what Korean food is. That's like
my dream. Yeah, I mean, that's what I hope and
I think I'm seeing. We're seeing that in Los Angeles.
I would say LA is Koreatown coming back to that
is incredibly resilient. You know, had to endure economic downturns, riots, right.
(32:07):
L A's Koreatown has been through a lot, but it
has the geographical advantage of being in the center of
l A versus other immigrant communities. So because it's in
the middle of l it's prospering and it's become very
very internationalized and it's not just Korean, and in fact
it hasn't really ever been Korean. It's actually huge. Yeah,
there's huge Latino populations, there's a Bangladeshi population, so it's
(32:28):
sort of a it's an interesting place. But what I
love is that the restaurants are recognizing the Korean ones
are like, let's appeal to everyone, you know, let's put
the menus in English, let's put them on pictures. Let's
specialize in good dishes and just and let those dishes shine.
Like I just went to a consu place yesterday, right
and it was delicious. And they have four menu items.
(32:51):
You know, they have specialized scion pancake some and then
they have two different kinds of knife cut noodles. And
it was great because they were super easy, it was
very affordable, it was very welcoming. Anybody can go there,
and I hope that they succeed. Do you know what's
interesting when you said l A's Koreatown is kind of
in the central of all l A. You know k
(33:11):
Town in New York is that way too. It's st
right in Midtown Manhattan, like smack in the middle of
New York City. So I just think that that's interesting
right as Koreans, sure, because I think as a New
Yorker or an Angelino, you're going to interact with Koreatown
at some point. Do you think Korean's it was predestined?
Like we we literally thought about that before. No, I
(33:36):
don't think so. I like to tell people is that
if you look at Koreatown and you sort of took
away some of the modern things about it. It looks
like the Madman era. It's because a lot of these
buildings are international modern style from the nineteen sixties, right,
And it was this one of the main office centers
of Los Angeles in the nineteen sixties. Then white flight happened,
(33:58):
sending get all these people leaving the area, and you
had empty office buildings. You had basically all this great
bones for a community. And so that's when the Koreans
going and they're like, hey, we can set up office here,
we can set business. This is where we can you know,
thrive and this and l A's Koreatown is in a
(34:18):
way just like New York. It's just the hub of
the spoke that goes out into like nine or ten
different communities all around this, you know, southern California. But
l A's Korea Town is ground sero. It's where all
the churches are, it's where all the accountants are, it's
where you know, the radio stations. America's first Crea town, yes, probably,
(34:39):
I mean maybe there was one in some other city
I don't know about, but I mean, it's it's the
it is the quintessential kay Town. And I remember talking
to Matt Rodbert, who who along with Dookie Hung, wrote
the Koreatown cookbook. You know, I helped them along with it,
you know, showed them around, just showed them my favorite spots.
And they wanted to understand because the book was called
Kaytown Town. But he's from New York and I was like, yeah,
(35:03):
like he obviously recognized that l A there was something
special about as Koreatown. So we we went together. I
took him around, um showed up my favorite spots, and
he like I gave him the best picture I could have, Like, Hey,
this is Korea Town, not Korea Street. Right, which is town? Yeah?
Which which in New York At the right, it's it's
mainly it's mainly a street. But in l A, it's
(35:24):
like I feel like it's a neighborhood that you kind
of plucked out of soul. Right. It feels like a
little like a cross maybe like half of the one
just got pulled out and you just pulled it put
it down. In Los Angeles is sort of the vibe,
which is why I love l A so much because
of the Koreatown. Here, I feel like I'm in Korea,
but not in Korea, which is great too, right, Yeah,
(35:45):
I know. Yeah, there's a lot of crap that happens
when you when you're in Korea proper. But l A
is so immersive that you can literally go your whole
life and never learn English. My grandfather never learned English.
He lived in America for forty something years. Yeah, I have. Yeah,
I have a lot of people I know that are
(36:07):
my age that are in their thirties. They immigrated here, right,
they can't speak English. That's crazy because they don't need to, right,
or they struggle with English because Koreatown is just that
perfect of a community. Okay, we get it. You love
l A Koreatown, and Koreatown in l A is like
the ship. I get it. It has its problems too,
(36:29):
and I'm happy to tell you talk to you about them. Yeah,
but yes, I do. You know, I think I have
a lot of pride and I think I enjoy what
how kay Town is this sort of physical embodiment of
our community, um and how it's all of its nuances
and it's warts and ugliness you know, comes along with
(36:51):
the glitz and glamour. And that's because I think that's
who we are as a people too. I think Koreans,
I've always been preached by my parents like we're the best.
You know, Korea is the best, Korean number one, blah
blah blah. But I'm like, I'm a realist too, you know,
there's we are not the best. There's no best people.
That's how bad things happen, you know. I think that
(37:12):
there's admirable things about the Korean American community, about Koreans
and what Koreans do in Korea and our relationship to them,
But there's also things that we have to recognize and
be like, hey, that's not okay, that's not good. We
need to change that. We need to make this better. Um,
And how you do that? I think, as you and
me and our generation, how do we instill that in
future generations and children? Our children which we don't have.
(37:35):
But if we do have children, how am I going
to tell my kids like, hey, you are Korean, you know,
but take this stuff with you, but leave that stuff behind.
I did this thing with with my guests. I cook
(37:56):
your favorite dish and you had to name. I mean,
I'm in l A right now, right so I don't
have a proper kitchen to cook, and you name like
the three most impossible things that I could I mean
here at least, so you you said you get done,
which is like a spicy beef stew um and its
long tongue, which is like a bone broth soup that
(38:16):
you have to freaking cook for like three days. And
Korean barbecue, which you have to like go to a
restaurant to eat, which I did. I did do a
Korean barbecue thing for you. So I brought l A kybee. Okay,
l A kybee. I mean it's probably not the Korean
barbecue that you were thinking, but everybody in America as
(38:37):
a Korean has had l A kybe once in their life, right, yes,
for sure, I think. I mean l AB is basically
it's a short rib that's cut into like the laterally.
So I've been told that l A actually stands for
a lateral access not for Los Angeles, that is true,
but everyone thinks of l A kibe as like l
(38:59):
A krbi from l A sure. I mean, it's the
only kind that I really knew growing up, so it
made sense to me that people call the L and
that's what my mom said to me too. But it's
like from like l A l A California, l A
like that. So yeah, so I mean it's funny because
everyone has their own interpretation. But obviously it's because of
the cut of the short rib. Yes, that that seems
(39:21):
to make more sense, but I think more than anything,
it's the ergonomic beauty of of the way that this
meat is cut. So it's the short rib, but the
three bones are still attached to it, so it's almost
like a little like I don't even know, it's like handheld.
It's finger food because you can that's yeah, because you
you hold the bone. Fers hold the bone, and then
just the meat just presents itself to you and you
(39:42):
you kind of hold it with both of your mits
and it's almost like a peace slice of watermelon where
you're just like, you know, you get to get to
go down on the on on the the amazing grilled
beef marinated it's usually like this gorgeous brown color. It's
glistening with fat. I mean, yeah, it is perfect. I'm
glad you brought me some. And then you know, the
(40:03):
great thing about l A Kibe is different from cream
barbecue that you do at the restaurant, which the meat
is obviously cut in this beautiful way where you're not
eating like sinew or like bone parts and you're just
eating like the short RiPP part. The beauty of el
Kibe though, is the sinew that you can like eat
around the bone. Yeah. Yeah, Well it's funny because and
(40:23):
this is slightly embarrassing. I hate that part. Oh my god,
I knew you could hit and see. There's some people
that don't eat it, like my sister doesn't, and they
judge her. I'm so judgmental of the people that don't
eat that, Cindy. That's the best part, dude. I mean
I take, I like to like take it, and then
just not all the way until the sinew. Don't like
to eat the good part, and then you're like, oh,
you guys can eat like the sinew bone. I know
(40:45):
my mom would always pick this up and look and
be like, why aren't you eating like shameful? Well, I
blame my bad jaws. I have like really bad jaws.
You're just well I have t mj' probably spoiled too.
But I was like, no, man, I can't. I can't
chew on this, dude. This is I'm not supposed to
you on that part. That's funny. I knew you man,
(41:05):
that's so upsetting. Okay, so it s good. So l
A kybe I marinated this last night, and I don't
know about you both with l A tybee. I've always
eating it with like kim chee and rice and that's it.
Like I don't need you don't need like the lettuce wrap,
the sum in the sub job. Yeah it's l abe.
It's not like that, right, No, because you know why,
(41:26):
and we talked about it. This is picnic food exactly.
You eat it with your two fingers, this food, right,
Like I remember, Yeah, you go to church and they
literally give you big white plastic buckets full of marinated
kybe and so then you know, the dads would go
to the grille and they'd slap on, you know, just
(41:46):
layer after layers, like waves of just like kybe, and
you know your job was to take it. And they
would have this big aluminum tray piled with l and
you just piled yeah, and and and likes. For me,
I wouldn't even have kim chi. I would just have rice. Yeah,
you I mean, you really don't need anything, you just
need this. Yeah, it's kind of a perfect food, it is.
(42:09):
But I brought you kimchi, and no, I like kim chi. Now.
I would have made that kim chi if you were
in New York, obviously, and I would have had a
different meal for you in New York. But this is
so l a This is so you making this okay,
So so please try it. See how this differs from
your your church picnic, l a ib Why don't you
(42:29):
tell me how you marinated this while I eat it? Well?
First of all, so we saw, I mean, it's very simple,
so we saw sugar, garlics, sess me oil, some pair.
I put par and um and onion. I actually used
shallot because that's what I had um. But I like
the right The shalots are nice, most really good. I
(42:52):
let the hip on too. I love hip on. Hip
On is the microwavable rice that you buy and it's
so convenient and I but I love the rights is
so perfect in hip ho on. I have that at
home all the time. Don't judge me, guys, I don't
judge you, but I swear when this first started hitting
the market when I was a kid, my mom was
(43:13):
like those are toxic. Yeah yeah, but you know, like
every one in Korea eats hip on like all like
the celebrity like all the shows, like the shows in Korea,
like everyone's eating hip on. Hip On is like such
a such an essential. If I invented this, I would
be a billionaire. That guy probably is a billionaire. I
(43:34):
love hip on mm hmm. So can you describe the
flavors for listeners? Sorry guys, Now, you guys gotta go
look up l a ib and try to make it yourself,
because no restaurant sells l A garb. Actually b C
D Tofu has a l A karb. Yeah, I mean
you can find it sort of. It always comes out
(43:57):
pre grilled on, like the metal cast iron tray with
like sliced onions on the bottom. Only BCD two Foo
has that. It's kind of rare. It's I mean, why
would you eat this when you could just see like
regular Cardibi short ribbed something about LP that's just different. Um, okay,
let me tell you what I'm eating. So it's nicely
(44:20):
browned pog or domino sized pieces of meat right that
are just barely hanging on for dear life on the sinew. Um. Yeah,
and the marinade is really good. I would say what
I like about it? Is that it's heavier on the
soy than sweetness, but you still have that sweetness. You
want that sweetness, but it's a multi layered sweetness because
you're also getting some of that from you said there
(44:43):
was shallotte and uh and I used um, organic cane sugar. Organic,
I mean, and that's if you don't do organic, that
why live. But it's a little less sweet than regular
white sugar. So I like that. And um, you know
you you have get some of the air matters to
the garlic and other stuff. It's textbook. I think you
(45:04):
did a fantastic job. You only marinated this for one night,
one night, it's very good way for hours mm hmm.
Does it just remind you of childhood? Kybe? I just
like think of like my mom and grandma mm hmm.
And church church Church is a big l a kype thing.
(45:25):
So it's interesting about short rib when you cook it
this way. I think it happened right on a pan,
not on a grill. Is that the sort of the
fat that's embedded into the meat gives it this very
satisfying chewiness. You know, it's not tender like steak. You're not.
(45:46):
And what's different about kybe is that it's clearly not steak.
It's a little chewier, it's a little it's got a
little more like you know, jaw action, and as you're
chewing it, the fat and all the like flavor just
sort of it just comes out and you get a
(46:08):
lot more than what you would get from another another
piece of meat. I think so too, because because it's chewy,
you're like chewing in it, and as you chew, you
get all these layers of flavor that's different than just
melt in your mouth, right, like all of a sudden
it becomes sweeter. Then it's sometimes like why do people
eat beef jerky? You know what I mean? Like you
(46:29):
on it and it gets more cu away. How do
you even say savory satisfying? I don't even know. There's
no direct translation, you know, like comforting. I don't know.
Like jerky is a fantastic example or sort of analog,
because you're getting these little pieces of meat, they're already
(46:49):
bite sized, and um, they're just very it's very satisfying
to hold the bone. It's so primal, right because you're
like gnawing meat off bone and you know, it was
not until recently where you. You wouldn't get steak on bones.
You would get them. You wouldn't never see bones of
an animal. But you know with things like bone and
ribbi or barbecue, like obviously it's more satisfying. That's where
(47:12):
the good meat is. The meat that's closest to the bone,
for me is always the best flavor, which is why
I love eating this in you. I mean, I'll eat
it now. You don't have to eat like oh man
for me, like cheating on that like I mean gets
stuck in your teeth in whatever. But I think that's
(47:34):
why I don't like it, because I have gaps in
my teeth now I'm old and like that that stuff
that's stuck in there. You know how much floss I have?
I have at least okay, you know those instant, environmentally
terrible flossing things. I have hundreds of them. Oh I
think I saw it in your cards. Oh my god.
Wait was it a freshman or a used one? Oh god,
(48:00):
I'm not going to throw it away in the street.
Every time I go to the gas station, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I should probably like throw these away. That's hilarious. Somebody
gets disgusted. Um, but yeah, you know with the rice,
you have the sort of clean, satisfying carb warm rice
and then you finish it off. I think this is
(48:21):
your ginger to your sushi is, you know, the crunchy, acidic, tangy,
fermented spicy kimchi, and that's just all that fat just
washes away off your palette and you just want to repeat,
and it's just like one, three, three until all the
card bees done and then your mom comes to eat
the sinew off all the bones. Because you're making our
(48:42):
listeners so hungry right now? No smartishly Okay, So, Matt,
where can people find you? Social media handles, et cetera. Um,
let's say I'm on Instagram and Twitter at mattoth who
we so instead of rat it's m A T T.
(49:02):
So it's not a favorite Instagram handle, by the way,
that's so clever. I love it. And that's our show.
Thanks for listening. Do you like what you heard? Please
subscribe and leave us a five star review. Get Down
with Kaytown is a production of I Heart Radio and
was created by our executive producer, Christopher Hasiodes and me
Esther Troy. Follow me on all social media at toy
(49:24):
buy and I'd also like to thank our producer, editor
and mixer, and Marcy Topina. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The problem with modern food is that we have this
mentality that food should just stay the same, like just
like our parents and their mentality of like being immigrants,
they're frozen in time. But food isn't like that. And
even in Korea, it's changed and it's mutated and it's evolved. Like,
how's the right to do that here in a way
(00:22):
that makes sense to us as Korean American immigrants. Welcome
to get down with Kaytown. I'm your host esther Troy.
Practically every major city you go to, you'll always be
able to find a Kay town. There's the obvious and
largest Koreatown in l A and New York, but you'll
also be able to find smaller Kay towns in cities
such as Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia to name a few, and
(00:46):
the up and coming unexpected Kay towns of Atlanta or Virginia.
You'll always find pockets of Koreans everywhere. And of course,
to tell you where to eat in these Kay towns
is Matthew Kane. Matthew is the of Eater Los Angeles
and the host of the series k Town, a YouTube
show about cream food in America and beyond. I met
(01:08):
matt when he was covering New York City. I just
opened my third restaurant, miss you. Matt. You remember coming
into my kitchen and making the rice stuffed whole chicken. Yeah,
it was great. Yeah. I think that was the first
time you actually came and cooked in the kitchen. Yeah.
I didn't really do that on any of my episodes,
So so what do you think was I hard on you? No?
(01:28):
It was fine, except I just got like the kim
chi splattered all over my pink shirt. I remember that.
That's funny, and you were supposed to go out that
night with that shirt. I mean, you know it's it's
the new perfume kim chi. Hey, it happened. Story of
my life, dude. So since then, we've become very first friends,
mainly through our love of Korean food, and I can
(01:50):
always depend on Matt for a delicious special meal out
here in l A. Of course, you know everything and
everything about Korean food here. Welcome to the show, Matt,
Thanks for having me. So I'm super excited to have
you as my very first guest out here in l
A because, like, who else would I talk to about
l A's Koreatown, especially about the food, right, I feel
(02:11):
there's no one else you can talk to about just me. Well,
you're like my go to right, and I feel like
I always randomly just texted you and say like, Hey,
what do you think about like this thing, this dish?
What do you think about this ish? Where do you?
Where do I go for this? And you know, I'm
like literally obsessed with l A's Koreatown. Yeah. I always
(02:31):
tell you should just move here. It would just be
easier for your psychology. I know, right, because I literally
sometimes just dream about l A's Korean food. And take
this with a grain of salt, But sometimes I say
that the Korean food out here in l A is
better than Soul's Korean food. I think it's It's an
argument you can make. I have made similar assertions, especially
(02:54):
about like Korean barbecue here, and I have received the
wrath of Korean people in Soul and in Korea. They
fake out. Yeah, they think I'm absolutely crazy and terrible
and wrong, which I might be. I don't. I don't
spend that much time in Korea. I haven't been there
that much. I've been there four times in the last
(03:15):
five years, so I don't think that's that much. I
don't understand Korean food in Korea because I don't live there,
but I can take the small sample size that I
have and compared to what I get to eat on
a fairly regular basis here in l A. And I
think the quality we have here is excellent. And other
people confirm it to me, you know Koreans, Yeah, like
you and other Koreans come from Korea and they come
(03:38):
to l A and they're like, do the barbecue here
is amazing? Why is it that people can compare the
Korean food out in l A in America to Korean
food in Korea. There's so many factors. I think the
easiest one is that what happens with immigrants is they
come to the US and their Korean US it just stops.
(04:01):
It gets shocked, and it's frozen in time, right, which
is like our parents generation. They're still in the seventies
in Korea, right, So it's not like they're thinking like
modern Koreans in they're thinking like nine seventies Koreans and
what do they want and what do they look for?
What do they idealize? Right? It's things that are a
little more traditional, um, things that they grew up with.
(04:24):
And that's why a lot of times you end up
with Korean restaurants and the people that frequent those restaurants,
they're they're just more traditional, they're more um. Where in
Korea it's constantly modernizing, right, It's constantly changing the seeing
restaurants are constantly just being redeveloped totally. I mean, if
(04:46):
you look at like I went to Korea last year
and I filmed the last season of my show, which
was so good, by the way, thank you, it was.
It was fun um. I also nearly died of freezing
because it's so freaking cold. But Korea, Korean cuisine now
in Soul is so advanced and so beyond what I
can imagine. It's really impressive. And that's why there's a
(05:07):
Michelin guide there. That's why there's World's fifty Best Asia
Restaurants in Soul. The Korean food scene in l A
and America is very much just looking backwards, looking back
at what's traditional, what's worked for generations. We don't really
have the luxury all oftentimes to just go to the
(05:28):
store and get pre made items. So a lot of
times you have to make your own kimchi, you have
to make your own ingredients, punch on totally from scratch.
You don't have the option of just going to these
industrial places and picking up ready made stuff, which tends
to be the case in Korea. Right It's it's a
lot of convenience, a lot of ready made stuff, which
is also true in America. But I think if you
(05:50):
look at the restaurants here you went to, you went
to Smoked last night. That's like my favorite restaurant in
l A. By the way, It's unbelievable. It's like Grandma
it is. And if you look at the kitchen, it's
still Grandma's and they're serving you at eleven pm. That
restaurants open till midnight. I don't know how they do it.
They might have twenty seats and the menu is very
(06:12):
small for a Korean restaurant might have things. That's kind
of like what I like about it though, because that
means the dishes that they do especial. It's that it's good.
Of course they know what they can do well. The
kitchen small and all the food is like it's like
home food, like kim or like kimchi is like a
(06:32):
kimchi stud is like a student mackerel. It's like stuff
that my mom and my grandma made me, and you
can't really get that at a restaurant. Yeah, they're hard
to find. Yeah, and they're hard to find really good versions. Um,
and I think they do. They It's like the most
essential Korean food experience there. You get their punch on
(06:53):
is absolute perfection, The rice is perfect. Everything about sitting
in this tiny little place is like I imagine in heaven,
this is what a perfect Korean restaurant is. Like. Yeah, punchon,
by the way, is the little side dishes you get
at a Korean restaurant, right, and those the punch for
me are like sort of the essential thing that makes
(07:16):
a Korean restaurant good. Like if your punch on is bad,
I I can't. Yeah, it's sort of the defining factor
of what Korean. A Korean meal is, right because if
you let's say that you go to a sushi restaurant,
then you're thinking about the rice or maybe the fish.
I don't know. It depends on what your priorities are.
If you go to h a Chinese restaurant, then you're like, Okay,
I want to make sure that such and such a
(07:37):
dish is going to be really really good. When you
go to a Korean restaurant. Punch on is the indicator.
It's it's the most difficult thing to make. There's usually um, six, eight,
ten little dishes on the table, and the effort that's
required to produce them is an indication of how serious
this restaurant is. Yeah, exactly, And some bookdong is like
(07:59):
is so consistent. I've been going there for over ten years.
It's might go to especially because they're open late um
and I don't think I've tried everything on the menu,
but I'll put it this way. It was the place
I took my grandfather when he was alive, because he
would go there for the peeping pop and if he
if I can impress him, then that was it. So
(08:22):
it's like l A's. Koreatown is obviously like Frozen in time.
It's like Korea in it's seventies or or eighties. Right,
It's just kind of like frozen. It's it's a little
sad because I feel that what happens when the grandma's
all you know, what what happens when the time passes
and you know there are no grandmas anymore to be
(08:43):
making the food in in the restaurant, right, Yeah, I
mean I think that's sort of happening. It's something I
actually want to investigate on eat or l A. Is
a lot of the mom and pop, the grandma, you know,
grandma's on the kitchen, were there on their last legs.
They're ready to retire, they're ready to sell. You know,
if you think about Korean immigrations starting in Koreatown in
(09:04):
the nineteen seventies, the early nineteen seventies, right now, it's
fifty years later, right, those people who opened restaurants, who
came because they had no choice. They couldn't speak the language, right,
so they're like, we're going to cook food. They're retiring,
and maybe their children took over, but oftentimes their children's
children are like the next generation. It's not like our
parents wanted us to be restaurant owners. I mean, even
(09:26):
though you are one, right, No, they want us to
be doctors and lawyers and businessmen and businesswomen. And so
what happens is these traditional restaurants after that first generation,
you're gonna start seeing a decline unfortunately, or the number
of places that are carried on by the children is
going to be extremely rare. So this one restaurant I
really enjoys called chun one. You didn't tell me about
(09:49):
this one. You should go there. Oh my gosh, it's incredible.
Um they're also there are menu is a little bit
bigger than UM. But my favorite thing there they have
they gone you love your Yeah, I like my brace fish,
do I? And I really appreciate that because it's not
something that you order. I mean, like, no one would
(10:10):
be like, okay, go order the brace fish at this
Korean barbecue restaurant, which you made me do a part barbecue.
I'm like, why am I ordering a brace fish? But
who was the best thing I had there? So I
order that I order the post some there, which is um,
you know, sort of a steam braised pork belly. I mean,
they're just to me, there are these dishes in these
(10:31):
Korean restaurants that are definitive. They're they're they're outside the
beginner step of Korean food. Right. If you ask anybody
that knows any of my Koreean foe, you have kimchi
Korean barbecue, and uh I don't have it. Maybe that's it, right.
So when I go to place like che, I want
to show people the next level, you know that what's
(10:54):
the next stage of the Korean food experience, and to me,
those are braised dishes. Steam dish is homestyle dishes that
actually have a lot of complexity and a lot of
different layering to them, and especially when you put them
all on a table and eat them together. There's something
I think very transportative about that experience. Also, those are
(11:16):
the best dishes honestly. I mean, of course Korean barbecue
and all that is great, And I know that's one
of your favorite Korean foods because you listed it on
your on your top three, But to me, I guess
because I just love these like homestyle meals, like Korean food,
those braze fishes, fermented crab, like that's the that's the
(11:37):
ship that I like, right, And I feel like if
your palette is sophisticated enough, you will learn to love
it too. Like you can't really go back after eating
after trying the raw fermented crab. Dude, that that that's
just the bomb, right, Yeah, And I made a video
asserting that which is raw sorry, marinated fermented crab is
(11:59):
the most what was the word I use, like the
most refined or the most elegant Korean dish because it
involves um sort of an ancient preparation. Um, it's a
dish that was very traditional. Um. But the amount of
complexity in the flavor, I mean, you're eating crab that
has just been sitting around in some some marinade for
(12:21):
like three days. I mean it sounds a little bit disturbing.
And honestly, when I do eat it, even when I
posted on my Instagram, I get a little bit paranoid, like,
oh my gosh, this islam really grows to a non Korean.
It does look gross. It's snoughty, and it looks glooby,
and it's it's nasty. It looks nasty. It's not just objectively,
(12:41):
but it's And so what you gotta do is you
gotta take the carcass and you kind of like you
gotta squeeze out someone to beat and literally suck it out. Right,
You're sucking the life out of this dead creature. Which
and it has kind of like this weird slimy texture.
It's not just absolutely no texture. It's just like no,
I mean, I like I kind of liken it to
bone marrow. But right, it's got that like just fatty
(13:03):
butterinus and the incredible sweetness of the crab. Right, and
and then when you just get the sort of this
glazing of fermentation and things that just only time and
bacteria can make awesome, it's a delicacy. Like we thought
of doing that, right. I think it was just a
matter of preservation. Right, It's like, why is salami and
cheese and all those things good? It's like, oh, let's
(13:25):
like put it to the side. Maybe it'll stay good
and won't kill us. Right. And it's not like you
can go to the ocean and be like, let's get
one crab. No, You're gonna go and I'm gonna get
a thousand crab, Like, oh ship, we got a problem here. Okay,
what are we gonna do with all this crab? Right?
And fed? And you know, and I think it's a
matter of like figuring out, okay, this is this is delicious.
(13:46):
And yeah, when you talk about jong or totium or
other sort of homey dishes, I think I don't think
that it requires a palette or experience. I just think
it's just a matter of diving in and if I
give these dishes to people that have never tried, as
long as they're willing to suck out some crab or
(14:07):
you know, eat this huge, like you know this quote
unquote ugly delicious David Chank type thing where you eat
this dish like I don't know if I can eat this,
and um, you dive in. I think people love it. Yeah,
I mean there's something so special about Korean food. So
obviously we can go on and on about Korean dishes
because both of us kind of obsession with our We
(14:29):
have this level fair with Korean food. But I have
to ask you about traveling and eating throughout all the
cake towns in the country, Like, what was that like,
because every koreatime is so different, right, Yeah, that was
really special. I did. I think I did nine seasons
of my show, and I went to places like Atlanta, Dallas,
(14:51):
Chicago obviously l A and New York. And the weird
one was Toronto. Um. Actually I have relatives that live
in Toronto, so that was interesting to see. And I
saw that, at least for the I don't want to
say lesser, but the second tier of Korean towns, which
are basically not l A or New York because the
(15:12):
Korean community is just not as big there. Yeah, just
just functionally. I would say. The one thing that stuck
out to me was that the fewer Koreans there are,
I think the more Korean you are, right as as
a Korean American living in living in Atlanta or even
more like Dallas. Right, the Koreans in Dallas are just
(15:33):
like fiercely Yeah, they're so proud and they're like, this
is who we are. And it's like, I mean, think
about how heavy of a contrast that is. Right, Ella,
New York very international, not to say that Dallas isn't international,
but dude, you're in the middle of Texas. There's nothing
more American than Texas. One of these guys is Chris Chow,
who's a chef in Philadelphia. Yeah, I know Chris. He's
(15:57):
he's an incredible character. He's second generation, um you know,
restaurant owner. His father opened the restaurant. And it's like
this guy is he's more passionate about Korean food than
I am by far. And it's because I think it's
because he's in Philly, which is like a smaller community
of Koreans, like a lot older, it's a little more
spread out. They they're cat town is not as cohesive
(16:20):
as like let's say, Atlanta's is. And it was really
really beautiful to see the contrast and see all the
people who you know are representing Korean food in far
flung places, even in Toronto, um, which is that like
in Canada. To be super honest, I don't think I
had the best Korean food there, but I do think
(16:41):
the people I met were incredible. I think that it
didn't surprise me. Did you watch Kim's Convenience? Yes, a
few episodes, right, Like, it didn't surprise me that that
show was based in Toronto because there is a substantial
Korean population there and there's like waves of Korean. There's
like a they call it the North Korea and the
(17:01):
South Korea, basically the Old Koreatown and the New Koreatown.
And it was really interesting to be there. I had
literally arrived maybe a couple of weeks or a week
after the terrible tragedy of the crazy van driver who
like ran over a bunch of people and killed them
in Toronto, and it was like that happened in one
(17:21):
of the koreatowns. And I remember driving by the memorial
there's all these like flowers, like, oh my gosh. And
it was interesting because that really galvanized and brought together
the Korean community, like who are we what are we
doing here? We're in this land, We're in Canada. What's
our place here? And you know, because they because they
literally received that direct attack. And what was super interesting
(17:41):
was that there was an immense sense of pride and identity,
people saying I'm Korean, I'm Canadian, Um I belong here,
I want to be here. I'm a part of this
this city, in this country. And the way that they
projected that in strength was through food, right through these
restaurants to markets. They are a big part of that community.
(18:02):
And wherever I was, um, I think in in America,
in American Kay towns, everybody had an opinion and something
to say about. Oh yeah, like Kaytown. They all have
a story. Whether you're Korean or not. You live in Dallas,
you live in Atlanta, you live in Chicago. Everybody has
something to say about a Korean food experience they've had.
(18:22):
And it's because of the Korean Americans living in those cities.
That's right. Going back to Toronto real quick, what do
you mean by the old Kay Town in New Keytown?
So it's like separated, there's like a new right So
they had um there was a Korean town. I know,
it's that that relationship is very interesting with Korean Americans
because I think, as in many immigrant communities, you have
(18:44):
a ground zero, you have a place it tends to
be a little bit more in the city. That's where
the immigrants will first land, and then as they develop
their careers, as they get more money and they want
to send their kids to better schools, they move outward.
So in Toronto especially, there was a I think what's
called I'm terrible, I can't remember the name, but there
was like one street where it was like Korean restaurants
(19:07):
and businesses on you know, every block stacked up high
and was sort of like not not quite as impressive
as like Manhattan's K Street as I like to call it,
but it was a smaller version of that. And it
was like that's where I had hold Quaa, you know,
which is like I literally went to this place that
sells that I know. So hold Quaja is a little
all walnut shaped confection baked dessert thing um that's filled
(19:30):
with red bean or other filings, and it was literally
a store that only made that. I feel like in
Korea it's hard to find that. I remember having that
on like road trips in Korea Korean street food that
you don't really find anymore exactly. And there was a place,
there was a shot that only sold that in Toronto,
(19:50):
and I was like, wow, that's amazing. I had to
do a video there, which I did. So there's that
sort of the old Korea town, like that old you
have very traditional restaurants. And then in the Northern retown
as they called it, that's where the unfortunate tragedy happened.
That's where it's a lot more spread out, like more
new restaurants and they have bobu shops put in. There's
more modern Yeah, it sort of feels a little bit
(20:11):
like uh yeah up today. So speaking of modernized cream food,
you know, I'm going to ask you this what what's
your opinion on like the rise of Korean food and
(20:34):
new fine dining scene. Obviously, you know we have like
att a boy out of mix, like all these cream
restaurants now winning Michelean stars and Korean food being Korean
food in this new light. I've I've had a great
opportunity to try elevated quote unquote elevated, refined, ambitious, fine
dining Korean food, mainly in New York. Also in Chicago. Um,
(20:58):
there's a couple of new replace as I haven't had
the chance to go to. But not in l A Um,
I guess not not really. We did have a place
here called Burrew that was excellent, but it was not
find any at all. It is very simple but still
modernized cream fit. I mean when I say fine dining,
I mean like more modernized cream food, cream food done
(21:20):
in a way where we haven't seen before. I think
the sort of two schools a thought to that. I
think the first one was at you see Korean food
adapting to American palates, to American familiar American presentations. You
could call it watering down all these things. I think
that's one way of looking at it. And a lot
(21:41):
of Koreans, I know, they look at these expensive Korean
restaurants in New York City and they go, yeah, it's
just not as good as like traditional you know places.
And it's because there's this assumption that the chefs and
the places making these food did it so that they
could appeal to a wider audience. I think that's secondary
(22:02):
to the first one, which I hope is that I
think Koreans, especially our generation, we want to make food
that is interesting and fun and adheres to sort of
the cooking methods that we learned. If you ask a
lot of these chefs, most of them had some sort
of classical training. They worked in a French or an
Italian or an American restaurant, and a lot of them
(22:22):
will tell you they didn't learn They did not go
to Korean culinary school. They didn't go to Korea to
learn Korean food. They're just using the flavors that they
know from home or from wherever, that their mom taught
them or grandma taught them what they us, what they
grew up with. So I think, if if I remember
thinking to myself ten years ago, I was like, if
(22:43):
I could open a restaurant, which I would ever do now,
but if I if I would, I would open like
a gastrol pub, but with like Korean pub food, but
sort of done my way right. And I think, what
do you mean, give me example. I'll give you an example, like, um,
you know, I invented this dish that I know other
people have stolen from me, but I've written the I
wrote the recipe of it and put it on my
(23:04):
old blog. But it was like kim chi pokembab rang chini. Right,
So you take pokem bab kimchi fried rice and then
you make it a little different and then you put
it into put a little cheap nava cheese in there,
cover it and then bread it and then fry it
like a risotto arrangini. Right. It's very simple, but it's
like a new way of delivering kimchi fried rice. And
(23:27):
did I have to do it that way? No, But
I think it's fun because I really like orangeini, I
love risotto, and it was just a fun new presentation.
And I think people want to have have a desire
to try something different with their food. Um, whether they
want to charge more, they want to use luxury ingredients.
I think that's totally fine. But ultimately, good food is
(23:47):
good food, regardless of what you charge for or regardless
of the shape it takes. I can admit that there
are some modern Crean restaurants that, like, I don't see
what the point is because what they're doing is something
that is not is a worse version essentially what you
can get in a traditional restaurant. You need to give
me an example, because you know I'm gonna ask you, okay,
So I'll give you an example and I'm just stating
(24:09):
what other people state are saying. I don't necessarily agree
with it. But like, let's say, a prime example of
a modernized Korean restaurant that opened and failed in Los
Angeles was Pot from roy CHOI So, Roychio is one
of the most prominent Korean American chefs. I have a
lot of respect for him. He opened Pot like four
years five years ago in the Lion Hotel in the
middle of Korea Town. I mean, you cannot make a
(24:31):
bigger statement than like the biggest, one of the biggest
Korean American chefs gonna open a Korean restaurant in a
Korean hotel in It's huge, and it was very poorly received.
A lot of my friends went they were like, yeah,
you know, like oh, so expensive, and I could just
get a cheaper version of that like two blocks away,
(24:51):
blah blah blah. And I'm like, yo, like those restaurants
don't have cool music and nice chairs and a good
ambiance and and theoretically better service. You know this. People
did the typical immigrant thing of like complaining about this stuff,
And in my mind, I was like, guys, don't you
(25:12):
see that there's something really cool that roy is doing.
You know. You know that's kind of crazy because being
on the East Coast in New York City and seeing
Roy Toroy open pot. I remember when it first open
and there was a lot of public city around it.
I remember thinking like, oh my god, that restaurant is
so cool. I want to go there. I can't wait
to eat there. And to me, it look the men
(25:33):
you looked like super interesting. It was very Korean American,
just something different. And to me, I was like, this
is awesome. But but it was sad to see that
it was actually not the case in terms of execution
or do you think it was execution or do you
think it was concept driven. I don't know. I don't
know why restaurants closed. Um, I mean there's a million reasons,
(25:57):
let's be right. I mean, sometimes it's the food. Sometimes
it's not the food. There's so many layers. I think
if he opened that restaurant in Santa Monica or in
West Hollywood or even in Silver Lake Town, why that's interesting, right,
I Mean that's probably he had a deal with the hotel,
the Line Hotel, to do all their food and beverage, right,
(26:18):
So it's probably something like that just sort of finishing
my my thought about modern Korean food. Um, I think
there's a place for it. I think there needs to be.
You need to communicate if you're an owner or chef
of one of these restaurants, you need to communicate very clearly, like, Hey,
this isn't your grandma's food. It's not gonna be it's
(26:38):
not gonna be as cheap as you know the post
on that you spent in Koreatown that's Bucks. This is
going to be forty Bucks. And it's not just because
we're using more expensive ingredients, Like the cost of something
is not just like what's on the menu and then
what's on the plate. There's a lot more than that
people don't understand. But more than I think you have
to like you also have to do something new with
it and and convey like, Okay, gonna pull some but
(27:00):
I'm gonna do with I don't know, beef belly or
lamb belly. I'm gonna land belly. Pulls something that changes
the way you see what the cuisine is and what
it can be. Because I think ultimately the problem with
modern food is that we have this mentality that food
should just stay the same, like just like our parents
and their mentality of like being immigrants, they're frozen in time,
(27:24):
but food isn't like that. And even in Korea, it's
changed and it's mutated and it's evolved. Like, how's the
right to do that here in a way that makes
sense to us as Korean American immigrants, Right, So if
I want to do a Korean style burger or Korean
style pizza or whatever, then that's my way, and that's
how that's an expression of who I am, and and
(27:44):
just make it good, make it balance all the fundamentals
of what makes food good. Just keep to that, and
I think you'll be fairly successful. It's just being a
little bit more open minded about what food can be,
right and communicating that to your customers. You know, I
would say, I'm remember there was a bar in Atlanta
and these dudes it was like a brother and sister
(28:06):
and like it was this bar just like cocktail bar,
and they happen to have all this like Korean bar
food and it was you know, sort of like Southern
inflected and it was really chill. And if you talk
to the guys, I don't think this spoke any Korean.
I mean, at least I don't think the brother spoke
any Korean. He's a great dude. He wasn't like, oh,
this is going to be as good as your you know,
the bars that you went to growing up. This is
(28:28):
just our version of it. And he owned it. He
believed in it. It was really approachable and it was
super successful. I mean when I was filming in there,
I was getting bombarded by like a hundred people trying
to jam into this place. It was very popular, and
I was happy for them because they were using just
a typical cocktail spot serving some bar food, but but
doing it their way with Korean food, and I had
(28:51):
a whole lot of respect for that. That's also they're
doing it in in Atlanta, in Atlantia, which is not
a place that a lot of you know, non Koreans
would think of it as like a place for Korean food.
What do you think of about the future of Korean food,
you know, just like not only in America but globally. Well,
I think I think what Korean food hopefully will forge
(29:17):
its own path. You know, it's I don't want it
to end up. I'm not saying it's better or worse,
but it would be unfortunate if it sort of went
the way of let's say Chinese food, which I love
Chinese food, but it's sort of, at least in America,
went to this place where it was sort of unrecognizable,
but it's sticking back now. It is in major cities.
(29:38):
But like, if you ask an average American what Chinese food,
they'll tell you orange chicken, chow mane, and um, you know,
chow fun, which those are great, and those are also
in their way Chinese, but I think because they were first,
because Chinese food, in particular from Asia, was the first
cuisine to come to the US to have to be adapted,
to have to be morphed and molded so that Americans
(29:59):
would like it, right, So I hope the Korean food
doesn't go that way. I also hope that Korean food
doesn't go the way of um, let's say, Japanese food,
which I love Japanese food, but I also think that
Japanese food has been reduced essentially for Americans too. Ramen
and sushi that's what most Americans think of as Japanese
(30:21):
food unfortunately, right, and they revere sushi, they revere ramen,
but there's not a lot of nuance there. And also
it is like mainstream if you think about it, but
it's a little bit inevitable for it to go to
that place. Maybe I'll come back, but do what you think.
Korean barbecue is kind of Korean barbecue and Peeping pup
(30:44):
is they are the sushi and raman of crane food,
and they're already there. But what I hope happens is
that traditional dishes and traditional preparations can be presented in
a way so that the average diner will love and
enjoy them in a way that um, you know, some
(31:04):
Chinese regional cuisines are being appreciated. See each One Cuisine
for example. Right people are recognizing that's a region of China,
we should have these dishes. These are all the dishes.
Some of them are going to be familiar, some of
them are not, but that's what that region is. Similar
to maybe Thai cuisine and regional thie flavors. If you
look in l a night market all these other restaurants,
they're not just like serving pad tie, And in fact,
(31:25):
if you go there and just order pad tie, they're
gonna be like what else do you want? Because there's
so much more here? And I hope, I hope that
Korean food reaches that point, so that if I go
to Denver or if I go to Salt Lake City,
I'm gonna be able to eat todium and tong tonggu
and all these things that are a little bit a
little bit not familiar to right now but become part
(31:46):
of the canon of what Korean food is. That's like
my dream. Yeah, I mean, that's what I hope and
I think I'm seeing. We're seeing that in Los Angeles.
I would say LA is Koreatown coming back to that
is incredibly resilient. You know, had to endure economic downturns, riots, right.
(32:07):
L A's Koreatown has been through a lot, but it
has the geographical advantage of being in the center of
l A versus other immigrant communities. So because it's in
the middle of l it's prospering and it's become very
very internationalized and it's not just Korean, and in fact
it hasn't really ever been Korean. It's actually huge. Yeah,
there's huge Latino populations, there's a Bangladeshi population, so it's
(32:28):
sort of a it's an interesting place. But what I
love is that the restaurants are recognizing the Korean ones
are like, let's appeal to everyone, you know, let's put
the menus in English, let's put them on pictures. Let's
specialize in good dishes and just and let those dishes shine.
Like I just went to a consu place yesterday, right
and it was delicious. And they have four menu items.
(32:51):
You know, they have specialized scion pancake some and then
they have two different kinds of knife cut noodles. And
it was great because they were super easy, it was
very affordable, it was very welcoming. Anybody can go there,
and I hope that they succeed. Do you know what's
interesting when you said l A's Koreatown is kind of
in the central of all l A. You know k
(33:11):
Town in New York is that way too. It's st
right in Midtown Manhattan, like smack in the middle of
New York City. So I just think that that's interesting
right as Koreans, sure, because I think as a New
Yorker or an Angelino, you're going to interact with Koreatown
at some point. Do you think Korean's it was predestined?
Like we we literally thought about that before. No, I
(33:36):
don't think so. I like to tell people is that
if you look at Koreatown and you sort of took
away some of the modern things about it. It looks
like the Madman era. It's because a lot of these
buildings are international modern style from the nineteen sixties, right,
And it was this one of the main office centers
of Los Angeles in the nineteen sixties. Then white flight happened,
(33:58):
sending get all these people leaving the area, and you
had empty office buildings. You had basically all this great
bones for a community. And so that's when the Koreans
going and they're like, hey, we can set up office here,
we can set business. This is where we can you know,
thrive and this and l A's Koreatown is in a
(34:18):
way just like New York. It's just the hub of
the spoke that goes out into like nine or ten
different communities all around this, you know, southern California. But
l A's Korea Town is ground sero. It's where all
the churches are, it's where all the accountants are, it's
where you know, the radio stations. America's first Crea town, yes, probably,
(34:39):
I mean maybe there was one in some other city
I don't know about, but I mean, it's it's the
it is the quintessential kay Town. And I remember talking
to Matt Rodbert, who who along with Dookie Hung, wrote
the Koreatown cookbook. You know, I helped them along with it,
you know, showed them around, just showed them my favorite spots.
And they wanted to understand because the book was called
Kaytown Town. But he's from New York and I was like, yeah,
(35:03):
like he obviously recognized that l A there was something
special about as Koreatown. So we we went together. I
took him around, um showed up my favorite spots, and
he like I gave him the best picture I could have, Like, Hey,
this is Korea Town, not Korea Street. Right, which is town? Yeah?
Which which in New York At the right, it's it's
mainly it's mainly a street. But in l A, it's
(35:24):
like I feel like it's a neighborhood that you kind
of plucked out of soul. Right. It feels like a
little like a cross maybe like half of the one
just got pulled out and you just pulled it put
it down. In Los Angeles is sort of the vibe,
which is why I love l A so much because
of the Koreatown. Here, I feel like I'm in Korea,
but not in Korea, which is great too, right, Yeah,
(35:45):
I know. Yeah, there's a lot of crap that happens
when you when you're in Korea proper. But l A
is so immersive that you can literally go your whole
life and never learn English. My grandfather never learned English.
He lived in America for forty something years. Yeah, I have. Yeah,
I have a lot of people I know that are
(36:07):
my age that are in their thirties. They immigrated here, right,
they can't speak English. That's crazy because they don't need to, right,
or they struggle with English because Koreatown is just that
perfect of a community. Okay, we get it. You love
l A Koreatown, and Koreatown in l A is like
the ship. I get it. It has its problems too,
(36:29):
and I'm happy to tell you talk to you about them. Yeah,
but yes, I do. You know, I think I have
a lot of pride and I think I enjoy what
how kay Town is this sort of physical embodiment of
our community, um and how it's all of its nuances
and it's warts and ugliness you know, comes along with
(36:51):
the glitz and glamour. And that's because I think that's
who we are as a people too. I think Koreans,
I've always been preached by my parents like we're the best.
You know, Korea is the best, Korean number one, blah
blah blah. But I'm like, I'm a realist too, you know,
there's we are not the best. There's no best people.
That's how bad things happen, you know. I think that
(37:12):
there's admirable things about the Korean American community, about Koreans
and what Koreans do in Korea and our relationship to them,
But there's also things that we have to recognize and
be like, hey, that's not okay, that's not good. We
need to change that. We need to make this better. Um,
And how you do that? I think, as you and
me and our generation, how do we instill that in
future generations and children? Our children which we don't have.
(37:35):
But if we do have children, how am I going
to tell my kids like, hey, you are Korean, you know,
but take this stuff with you, but leave that stuff behind.
I did this thing with with my guests. I cook
(37:56):
your favorite dish and you had to name. I mean,
I'm in l A right now, right so I don't
have a proper kitchen to cook, and you name like
the three most impossible things that I could I mean
here at least, so you you said you get done,
which is like a spicy beef stew um and its
long tongue, which is like a bone broth soup that
(38:16):
you have to freaking cook for like three days. And
Korean barbecue, which you have to like go to a
restaurant to eat, which I did. I did do a
Korean barbecue thing for you. So I brought l A kybee. Okay,
l A kybee. I mean it's probably not the Korean
barbecue that you were thinking, but everybody in America as
(38:37):
a Korean has had l A kybe once in their life, right, yes,
for sure, I think. I mean l AB is basically
it's a short rib that's cut into like the laterally.
So I've been told that l A actually stands for
a lateral access not for Los Angeles, that is true,
but everyone thinks of l A kibe as like l
(38:59):
A krbi from l A sure. I mean, it's the
only kind that I really knew growing up, so it
made sense to me that people call the L and
that's what my mom said to me too. But it's
like from like l A l A California, l A
like that. So yeah, so I mean it's funny because
everyone has their own interpretation. But obviously it's because of
the cut of the short rib. Yes, that that seems
(39:21):
to make more sense, but I think more than anything,
it's the ergonomic beauty of of the way that this
meat is cut. So it's the short rib, but the
three bones are still attached to it, so it's almost
like a little like I don't even know, it's like handheld.
It's finger food because you can that's yeah, because you
you hold the bone. Fers hold the bone, and then
just the meat just presents itself to you and you
(39:42):
you kind of hold it with both of your mits
and it's almost like a peace slice of watermelon where
you're just like, you know, you get to get to
go down on the on on the the amazing grilled
beef marinated it's usually like this gorgeous brown color. It's
glistening with fat. I mean, yeah, it is perfect. I'm
glad you brought me some. And then you know, the
(40:03):
great thing about l A Kibe is different from cream
barbecue that you do at the restaurant, which the meat
is obviously cut in this beautiful way where you're not
eating like sinew or like bone parts and you're just
eating like the short RiPP part. The beauty of el
Kibe though, is the sinew that you can like eat
around the bone. Yeah. Yeah, Well it's funny because and
(40:23):
this is slightly embarrassing. I hate that part. Oh my god,
I knew you could hit and see. There's some people
that don't eat it, like my sister doesn't, and they
judge her. I'm so judgmental of the people that don't
eat that, Cindy. That's the best part, dude. I mean
I take, I like to like take it, and then
just not all the way until the sinew. Don't like
to eat the good part, and then you're like, oh,
you guys can eat like the sinew bone. I know
(40:45):
my mom would always pick this up and look and
be like, why aren't you eating like shameful? Well, I
blame my bad jaws. I have like really bad jaws.
You're just well I have t mj' probably spoiled too.
But I was like, no, man, I can't. I can't
chew on this, dude. This is I'm not supposed to
you on that part. That's funny. I knew you man,
(41:05):
that's so upsetting. Okay, so it s good. So l
A kybe I marinated this last night, and I don't
know about you both with l A tybee. I've always
eating it with like kim chee and rice and that's it.
Like I don't need you don't need like the lettuce wrap,
the sum in the sub job. Yeah it's l abe.
It's not like that, right, No, because you know why,
(41:26):
and we talked about it. This is picnic food exactly.
You eat it with your two fingers, this food, right,
Like I remember, Yeah, you go to church and they
literally give you big white plastic buckets full of marinated
kybe and so then you know, the dads would go
to the grille and they'd slap on, you know, just
(41:46):
layer after layers, like waves of just like kybe, and
you know your job was to take it. And they
would have this big aluminum tray piled with l and
you just piled yeah, and and and likes. For me,
I wouldn't even have kim chi. I would just have rice. Yeah,
you I mean, you really don't need anything, you just
need this. Yeah, it's kind of a perfect food, it is.
(42:09):
But I brought you kimchi, and no, I like kim chi. Now.
I would have made that kim chi if you were
in New York, obviously, and I would have had a
different meal for you in New York. But this is
so l a This is so you making this okay,
So so please try it. See how this differs from
your your church picnic, l a ib Why don't you
(42:29):
tell me how you marinated this while I eat it? Well?
First of all, so we saw, I mean, it's very simple,
so we saw sugar, garlics, sess me oil, some pair.
I put par and um and onion. I actually used
shallot because that's what I had um. But I like
the right The shalots are nice, most really good. I
(42:52):
let the hip on too. I love hip on. Hip
On is the microwavable rice that you buy and it's
so convenient and I but I love the rights is
so perfect in hip ho on. I have that at
home all the time. Don't judge me, guys, I don't
judge you, but I swear when this first started hitting
the market when I was a kid, my mom was
(43:13):
like those are toxic. Yeah yeah, but you know, like
every one in Korea eats hip on like all like
the celebrity like all the shows, like the shows in Korea,
like everyone's eating hip on. Hip On is like such
a such an essential. If I invented this, I would
be a billionaire. That guy probably is a billionaire. I
(43:34):
love hip on mm hmm. So can you describe the
flavors for listeners? Sorry guys, Now, you guys gotta go
look up l a ib and try to make it yourself,
because no restaurant sells l A garb. Actually b C
D Tofu has a l A karb. Yeah, I mean
you can find it sort of. It always comes out
(43:57):
pre grilled on, like the metal cast iron tray with
like sliced onions on the bottom. Only BCD two Foo
has that. It's kind of rare. It's I mean, why
would you eat this when you could just see like
regular Cardibi short ribbed something about LP that's just different. Um, okay,
let me tell you what I'm eating. So it's nicely
(44:20):
browned pog or domino sized pieces of meat right that
are just barely hanging on for dear life on the sinew. Um. Yeah,
and the marinade is really good. I would say what
I like about it? Is that it's heavier on the
soy than sweetness, but you still have that sweetness. You
want that sweetness, but it's a multi layered sweetness because
you're also getting some of that from you said there
(44:43):
was shallotte and uh and I used um, organic cane sugar. Organic,
I mean, and that's if you don't do organic, that
why live. But it's a little less sweet than regular
white sugar. So I like that. And um, you know
you you have get some of the air matters to
the garlic and other stuff. It's textbook. I think you
(45:04):
did a fantastic job. You only marinated this for one night,
one night, it's very good way for hours mm hmm.
Does it just remind you of childhood? Kybe? I just
like think of like my mom and grandma mm hmm.
And church church Church is a big l a kype thing.
(45:25):
So it's interesting about short rib when you cook it
this way. I think it happened right on a pan,
not on a grill. Is that the sort of the
fat that's embedded into the meat gives it this very
satisfying chewiness. You know, it's not tender like steak. You're not.
(45:46):
And what's different about kybe is that it's clearly not steak.
It's a little chewier, it's a little it's got a
little more like you know, jaw action, and as you're
chewing it, the fat and all the like flavor just
sort of it just comes out and you get a
(46:08):
lot more than what you would get from another another
piece of meat. I think so too, because because it's chewy,
you're like chewing in it, and as you chew, you
get all these layers of flavor that's different than just
melt in your mouth, right, like all of a sudden
it becomes sweeter. Then it's sometimes like why do people
eat beef jerky? You know what I mean? Like you
(46:29):
on it and it gets more cu away. How do
you even say savory satisfying? I don't even know. There's
no direct translation, you know, like comforting. I don't know.
Like jerky is a fantastic example or sort of analog,
because you're getting these little pieces of meat, they're already
(46:49):
bite sized, and um, they're just very it's very satisfying
to hold the bone. It's so primal, right because you're
like gnawing meat off bone and you know, it was
not until recently where you. You wouldn't get steak on bones.
You would get them. You wouldn't never see bones of
an animal. But you know with things like bone and
ribbi or barbecue, like obviously it's more satisfying. That's where
(47:12):
the good meat is. The meat that's closest to the bone,
for me is always the best flavor, which is why
I love eating this in you. I mean, I'll eat
it now. You don't have to eat like oh man
for me, like cheating on that like I mean gets
stuck in your teeth in whatever. But I think that's
(47:34):
why I don't like it, because I have gaps in
my teeth now I'm old and like that that stuff
that's stuck in there. You know how much floss I have?
I have at least okay, you know those instant, environmentally
terrible flossing things. I have hundreds of them. Oh I
think I saw it in your cards. Oh my god.
Wait was it a freshman or a used one? Oh god,
(48:00):
I'm not going to throw it away in the street.
Every time I go to the gas station, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I should probably like throw these away. That's hilarious. Somebody
gets disgusted. Um, but yeah, you know with the rice,
you have the sort of clean, satisfying carb warm rice
and then you finish it off. I think this is
(48:21):
your ginger to your sushi is, you know, the crunchy, acidic, tangy,
fermented spicy kimchi, and that's just all that fat just
washes away off your palette and you just want to repeat,
and it's just like one, three, three until all the
card bees done and then your mom comes to eat
the sinew off all the bones. Because you're making our
(48:42):
listeners so hungry right now? No smartishly Okay, So, Matt,
where can people find you? Social media handles, et cetera. Um,
let's say I'm on Instagram and Twitter at mattoth who
we so instead of rat it's m A T T.
(49:02):
So it's not a favorite Instagram handle, by the way,
that's so clever. I love it. And that's our show.
Thanks for listening. Do you like what you heard? Please
subscribe and leave us a five star review. Get Down
with Kaytown is a production of I Heart Radio and
was created by our executive producer, Christopher Hasiodes and me
Esther Troy. Follow me on all social media at toy
(49:24):
buy and I'd also like to thank our producer, editor
and mixer, and Marcy Topina. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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