How did your career as a chef begin?
I originally started doing a popup series called Yooeating around bars in Brooklyn, as a side hobby alongside my full-time job as a photo producer at Food Network. Each popup had a different theme of either exploring other cultural cuisines through the lens of Korean food (like Vietnamese x Korean or Cuban x Korean, or focussing on unique aspects of the Korean food I grew up with (like drinking food, after school food, or cold noodles). During COVID I pivoted to sharing about food online, which is something I'm still doing under the moniker Yooeating. Eventually, I teamed up with my husband Nick, who's been working in bars his whole life (most recently as the beverage director at Nitehawk Cinema), to concept and open Orion Bar in 2024 as a Korean & American neighborhood bar.
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Tell us about your debut cookbook, SOJU PARTY: How to Drink (and Eat!) Like a Korean! What inspired you to create the first major book on Korean drinking?
Soju Party is a cookbook with recipes for Korean drinks, cocktails, and drinking food, but moreover it introduces the Korean drinking landscape in general, like the history of Korean alcohol including soju, makgeolli, and beer, as well as drinking rules, games, and even hangover recipes.
In Korea, drinking is incredibly ubiquitous—it's not uncommon to see people drinking a bottle of soju over a hangover breakfast, or sharing some makgeolli at lunch, or grabbing a drink at the corner convenience store—so alcohol is an essential part of the Korean food culture. But it's a topic I wasn't really seeing or explained to the English-speaking world. Originally I was approached about writing a Korean cocktails book, but I wanted to expand the book to really introduce the culture at large. I felt like it was important for people to understand the basics of how Koreans pour, drink, eat, and share before offering my personal riffs on cocktails or drinking food recipes.
What’s your favorite part about the New York culinary community?
I love seeing other chefs and culinary professionals support and uplift each other! We love going to see our friends at their restaurants and bars on our nights off, and seeing our colleagues come into Orion Bar on theirs. We're always thrilled to celebrate each other's successes and commiserate in our shared woes because we all know how hard it is in our industry. Plus, it's always a good time.
We love your Bushwick spot, Orion Bar! How has co-owning the bar informed the way you cook and develop new recipes?
Thank you so much! Ultimately I want my menu to live somewhere between craveable comfort food and drunk munchies (which oftentimes is one and the same). I've always done my pop-ups at bars so fortunately I've had some experience tailoring to a drinking crowd. But I don't want to just do traditional Korean drinking food or regular American bar food, so I'm constantly looking for new ways to evolve the food I want to share. For example, I don't really want to do Korean fried chicken, because there are so many other places in the city (like Peeps Kitchen!) that do it better. So my own Korean fried chicken recipe (which is in the book!) evolved into the Dubu Nuggets on our menu. It's a crispy battered tofu tossed in a spicy soy sauce that hits a lot of the same tasting notes but also happens to be vegetarian.
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Congratulations on receiving your James Beard Award for SOJU PARTY! What does this award mean for your next steps and future plans?
Eeee thank you! It still feels so crazy and surreal to me, but it's also really validating in terms of feeling like it was the right time to write the book and to keep doing what I'm doing. I want to keep thinking about what other aspects of Korean food culture I want to share, but also explore how I can tell more global stories about eating and sharing comfort food. Ultimately, it's been a crazy past couple years writing this book, opening the bar, and also having a baby (!) so at the current moment I want to focus on continuing to grow and celebrate all three of those.
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