My Korea Part II | Hooni Kim
My Korea
By Hooni Kim
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table. My name is Hooni Kim, and I'm back with Suzy to talk about my life, my restaurants especially my new book, my career, and anything else that has to do with running a food business, right?
Suzy Chase: “You caught me at a tumultuous time.” That's what you said to me. When we chatted on April 4th. Now it's five months later. How are you doing?
Hooni Kim: I'm healthy. My family's healthy, which means that we're doing okay. But it's, it's still it's been tumultuous for the past six months. So I guess we're used to it while. I'm used to it, but it's still not, we're still not doing well.
Suzy Chase: So talk about your restaurants a little bit. So you have, for people who don't know, you have Danji right in the middle of the theater district, and you have Hanjan in the Flatiron District, how are they faring?
Hooni Kim: Most restaurants I know, most chefs I know are really losing money. Meaning they're putting in every week dipping into their savings to meet payroll, to meet rent. Fortunately for me, I have two restaurants and one of them Danji, we're only doing outdoor seating outdoor dining, which we have five tables and the revenue that we're generating is about 15% of what we were doing before April. So that's not good, but fortunately I started the meal kit business or service at Hanjan my other restaurant a week before we were closed. So this next week is our 26th week of delivering weekly meal kits to many of the families in the tristate area. Wow. Yeah. And you being one of them as well. And that does generate enough revenue to make up for all of Hanjan's costs as well as makeup for almost everything that Danji is short on.
Hooni Kim: So fortunately, most weeks I don't have to put in money from my savings, but this past week we did because Labor Day, week and a lot of New Yorkers leaving for vacation, visiting relatives and nobody coming in, which is very difficult for New York because we know that during the summers and holidays, a lot of New York leave the city, but we do expect a lot coming in and sometimes even more coming in than leaving during Christmas and New Years. But since the pandemic it's always people leaving or, and nobody coming in. So it's tough.
Suzy Chase: You started off by selling 10 of your meal kits on the first day. How many are you selling now?
Hooni Kim: Well, we go by weekly and I think the first week we sold 40 and every week we kept selling more. And by after a month we were selling out at 160 meal kits a week and we had to cap it at that because back then I delivered by myself and I couldn't deliver more than 160 in a week. And we were doing that for a while until the school's closed. And then all of my clients sort of, well, I wouldn't say all of them, but a lot of them decided to leave the city because they didn't need to be here, no school, no work. And we were hovering around during the summer 80 to a hundred past couple of weeks in a little bit less. Most of our clients are repeat customers. And hence we changed the menu every week.
Suzy Chase: Well, I don't know how much feedback you get, but I have to tell you that these meal kits have been the bright spot for us during quarantine. And I'm honestly going to cry if I talk too much about it, but having your meal kit come on Fridays was like the one thing my family could look forward to in the middle of the pandemic when we were like on lockdown in our tiny apartment. I mean we can't thank you enough.
Hooni Kim: Thank you so much, I still remember dropping off the food on the stairs. Yeah. When I was in New York, I'm in Korea right now. You know, I been in Korea for the past month. We're experiencing in Korea, a little bit of a boost in the infections. And it's not just me. I think a lot of chefs that I know we're trying to find ways to to make ends meet. Now. I haven't gotten a paycheck since March, so I have to look beyond my normal resources, my usual regular resources. So I have an opportunity to come to Korea to do a TV show. So I jumped at it.
Suzy Chase: Oh gosh. So what kind of a TV show?
Hooni Kim: It's like a Top Chef.
Suzy Chase: Oh, that's awesome.
Hooni Kim: A cooking contest. I'm a judge and the contestants are foreign chefs, chefs from Italy, Vietnam, Thailand, China, all over the world who most of them own restaurants in Korea and they're competing to win a hundred thousand dollars. So it's a, it's a regular paycheck for me, a weekly paycheck, which I haven't had since I had my restaurants. So for four months, I have to do this to make sure that I can pay my mortgage and buy my son some clothes for school.
Suzy Chase: I want to get back to the meal kit because I want to hear what your favorite dish is in the meal kit. And I want to tell you what our favorite dishes are in the meal kit.
Hooni Kim: So I like spicy food. I like food that have an impact on your palate right away. So right before I left, I made this spicy cold noodle. I don't know if you remember, or
Suzy Chase: Yeah, that's my husband's favorite!
Hooni Kim: Okay. This noodle is spicy. It's tangy. It's sweet, it's salty. It has all of these different tastes that whatever you're into it'll have. So that was one of the dishes that I was excited to put on the menu. Right before I left.
Suzy Chase: The Spicy Noodles is on page 246 in the cookbook.
Hooni Kim: Of my book. Yeah.
Suzy Chase : If you're going to buy the book, if you already have the book, you can find that on 246. Now my favorite is I need a drum roll. Your hot wings!
Hooni Kim: Oh, which one? Because we have several that we, is it the goopy one with the red sauce,
Suzy Chase: Yes, it was the thick, sticky, hot. It hits you. And then it's sweet. It was like super duper sticky. I think you offered it maybe twice and then it didn't come back.
Hooni Kim: I think you're right. We had it on just twice, two or three times. It's tough when we have just one menu, because we first started this meal kit when a lot of my customers couldn't come to the restaurant because they had to stay home with the kids. So a lot of the menu items we couldn't do really spicy or really bold. We sort of had to think about the kids who the meal kit was feeding, but we were able to sort of put in the spicy dishes once in a while. And then we get complaints like, my four year old can't eat spicy food. So it was on and off, but now it's different. Now. I think my clientele has changed even, just because the families with the children have left the city. And I hope they come back next week with the wings that you like, they will come back. I think next week it's on the menu, not the kimchi menu the week after. So yeah.
Suzy Chase: Well it made me laugh because on one of the menus, it was like, these wings are not for children or something like that.
Hooni Kim: Yeah. anything that's red is spicy in Korean food. We don't use ketchup. We don't use tomatoes. So anything that's red is red hot peppers. Whether it be in pepper flakes or Gochujang, which is a pepper paste. I sometimes forget that some people might not notice that, you know, after the complaints, we decided to put it in writing certain dishes don't feed your kids.
Suzy Chase: And you can find that recipe on pages 296, 297 and 298.
Hooni Kim: Yeah. That's a Danji spicy wing recipe that is actually served at Danji right now with our outdoor dining.
Suzy Chase: We'll have to go up there. I'm going to bring napkins with me.
Hooni Kim: It is so much better when it's straight out of the fryer and the sauce is sort of just put on. There is that textural sort of a goopy sauce and a crispy wing that makes it just besides being delicious. It's just fun to eat. When you have that textural change. A contrast.
Suzy Chase: So, our 14 year olds favorite dish was the radish and beef soup. And it's on page one 94 in the cookbook. Can you describe it?
Hooni Kim: It's funny that your son likes that. Cause my son, who's 11, that's his favorite breakfast dish. It's a soothing, comfortable dish that you can eat a lot of because it's not spicy. It's not really peppery. It's not really too salty either. And you can have it with rice. It will hydrate you in the morning. Yeah, it's my son's favorite. And it's explaining it to your son's favorite too,
Suzy Chase: But, but I just have to say everything in the meal kit is amazing. There was nothing we didn't like everyone in New York needs to order it.
Hooni Kim: Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, it's tough because my staff, we were not used to making 160 portions of anything. At the same time, we became a, almost a banquet kitchen where we never done banquet style food. We always made one or two servings a la minute when people order it and it took us a couple of weeks to learn how to do it the right way. But we're, we're, we're pretty comfortable now. So all of my cooks myself we're very technically, I think there, when it comes to making these meal kits.
Suzy Chase: I got so excited when I saw that article come out and made, it said kimchi could make it difficult for the coronavirus to penetrate the body. Did you see that article?
Hooni Kim: I didn't read the whole article because it's something that I believe from a long time ago. It's something that I posted even in April or healthy gut biome is so critical in your immune system. So I made that connection a while back when there's an article about kimchi or any kind of probiotic dishes helping to fight off bacterial and viral diseases. It's, you know, something Koreans have known for a long time.
Suzy Chase: So does going back to Korea as an adult make you feel like you're a kid again?
Hooni Kim: I used to come to Korea for vacation, for fun to eat. I did have more of a connection to my past. I saw relatives. I visited my father's grave on his homeland Soando, but this time not so much, I don't travel. I won't dare to try to visit my father's islands, Soando just because it's not safe. The restaurants in Korea are all closed by 9:00 PM. As far as I know, schools are still closed. You know, this world has changed. You know, my trips to Korea was something that I always look forward to. And when I was here every minute that I was stuck in my hotel room, I felt like I was missing out on another meal or visiting another city. But now it's serious. So I'm just being very careful
Suzy Chase: On a lighter note this week in your heat and serve meal kit you are offering for the first time, I think your 120 day kimchi stew. Tell us about that.
Hooni Kim: Second time. Because first time we offered it was I think when we first started, yeah, it's, it's a very deep, deep, acidic kimchi flavor. And when it's over two, three months, when it's 120 days, I don't like to eat it just straight or I wouldn't say raw, but just the kimchi as a banchan, as a cold dish I feel better cooking it because the flavors are just so bold. So strong. I do feel like I need to balance it out with, in this case, pork fat and and anchovy broth and some tofu to make it not so bold. Yeah. It's, it's delicious. And I consider it medicine, but yeah, I'm excited to be able to offer it again after what is it four months now? Since the last time we offered it? Well, that's how long it took for us to 120 days. Yeah.
Suzy Chase: So the season on the podcast, I have a segment called Last Night's Dinner. What did you eat for dinner last night?
Hooni Kim: You know, the same thing I've been having for the past three weeks, I don't go out to dinner. So in my hotel there is a Dosirak system. Dosirak means like a little bento box where they give you a balanced meal. And for me, because I have a gluten sensitivity, basically it's a vegetable ragu with French fries and a salad and some cheese for dessert. Yeah. It's not exciting. It's not something that I want to brag about. It's not Korean, but I'm just glad that they're giving me something because I am not able to venture out to restaurants because I am here to do a job and I cannot risk, not just myself, but my entire, you know, the staff that we're working with and the entire show, if something horrible happens to me. So I'm just doing another quarantine by myself, in my hotel in Seoul.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Hooni Kim: You can find everything about my book, my restaurants at HooniKim.com. But I think I am the most active on my Instagram, which is Hooni Kim as well and I think next week is when the restrictions will ease up a little bit and I would start venturing out to as many restaurants as possible. So you know, my, my feed gets a little bit more exciting next week and I hope you can join me.
Suzy Chase : I will close with a quote that you translated on your Instagram and it goes, "effort will never betray you, the truth reveals itself through flavor." Thank you so much. Hooni for coming back on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Hooni Kim: Thank you so much for having me again, Suzy.
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