KAs@Work is a new series that profiles Korean Americans and their jobs. Want to share what you do, or know of people with interesting jobs? Get in touch.

Korean American chef Rachel Yang and her husband Seif Chirchi have lit the Seattle culinary scene ablaze with the Asian-European flavors of their restaurants, Joule and Revel—the latter was was featured on our Korean Food USA series. The pair have been recognized for their culinary feats by appearing on Iron Chef in 2010 and being a James Beard Award semifinalist for the ”Best Chef: Northwest” category this year.

Korean Beacon had the pleasure of sitting down with Rachel at her newest restaurant Revel to discuss her background and culinary endeavors.

Let’s start with your background and what brought you to Seattle.

My husband and I came to Seattle about 5 years ago. We were both working in New York City. After about 7 or 8 years of living there, we knew we wanted to move out of the city, get married, and start a family. There are a couple reasons why we came to Seattle. The first is my husband’s family is in Portland, Oregon, and a friend of Seif’s had just opened a business in Seattle. So we came out here without really knowing anyone.

How did you start cooking?

After high school, I went to a liberal arts college, and when I graduated, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So I enrolled in a one-year cooking school program in New York City. Cooking was something completely new to me at the time, but I loved it because it’s very creative and hands on, and I didn’t need to speak a lot of English, not that speaking English was a problem for me.  It was like a sport in that it’s a team effort and you all have a bonding experience. So I fell in love with the environment.

Did you cook a lot growing up?

I helped out in the kitchen, but it was my mom who did all the work. (laughs)

What was the culinary inspiration behind your current Seattle restaurants, Joule and Revel?

The menu and themes were influenced by what Seif and I like to cook and eat all the time. People want to label our restaurants as Asian cuisine, but we’re not exactly that. At Joule, it’s a little more European-centered, whereas here at Revel, the menu pulls more toward Asian street food. In both restaurants though, we incorporate those Asian flavors that more and more people like these days. In some sense, I think our menu could almost be considered American food. If you ask Americans what they eat every day, more people say they eat Italian, Chinese, Mexican, etc, foods. Not a lot of people just eat steak and potatoes any more. In that sense, we are cooking what has become American food.

When you first came to Seattle, were there a lot of other Korean restaurants?

Seattle is a diverse city, but when it comes to food, there’s a lot of separation, especially with ethnic cuisine. You have restaurants that only do Vietnamese or Thai food scattered throughout the city, and a lot of Korean BBQ places are north or south of Seattle. A lot of restaurants in Seattle are northwest-centered. So in that sense, our Asian-European fusion restaurants were completely new.

Well, it sounds like you’ve found a lot of success by being different!

Yes, we have. People have embraced our restaurants, but being different isn’t always easy, because people are scared of different. There are always some flavors or dishes that people are hesitant to try, so we’ve had to balance being different with meeting our customers’ tastes.

What was the process for developing the dishes at your restaurants?

Well, with Revel, we wanted the restaurant to be fun and interesting, but we had to present the food in a context that makes sense to people. That’s why everything we do is put in salad, dumpling, rice bowls. We use a simple format that lets us put anything in there, so it’s limitless and bottomless in that regard. We really have so much freedom and fun. For example, we have this new dumpling we’re working on since our dumplings are made here in the house. We start with a dumpling dough flavored with curry and stuffed with chickpeas, roasted cauliflower, and cumin. It’s different, but it’s still just a dumpling.

As a chef, what have been your most memorable moments?

When you’re a chef and run a restaurant, every day is both challenging and rewarding. There isn’t one day that stands out more than the next. The people who come in to the restaurant each day are completely different, and so is the experience of cooking for them. Like sometimes you have a food blogger stop by to eat and the next day they’re writing about their experience online (laughs).

In 2010, you and Seif were featured on Iron Chef.  How was that experience, and would you do it again?

When we were first asked about it, we were so ecstatic and honored because at the time we only had Joule, a small restaurant in Wallingford. Being on Iron Chef was a fun and scary experience, since we didn’t know what we would be cooking or how. We also had to close down the entire restaurant for a few days, because the entire staff (my husband, myself, and our assistants) all had to travel to New York to be on the show. Cooking on a show is entirely different from cooking every day in a restaurant. It’s hard, but we’d totally do it again.

Since you and your husband are both chefs, does that mean you eat very well at home?

Everything we cook as home is pretty simple; we’re never formal at home. My husband and I don’t even have the same days off. We have a 19-month old baby, so we have to rotate our days off to maximize coverage.  Lately, we eat whatever we can put together late at night.

We love going out to eat and trying new places when we can, but we also love simple Vietnamese pho or Chinese food. My husband will be happy with a slice of pizza, and I’m happy with a bowl of rice or soup.

Do you and Seif have any plans to open another restaurant?

We’re very content with two restaurants. It’s hard to not be involved with our restaurants. Will Joule be ok without us? Maybe, but we want to make sure it will be, so we stay involved. We always have a passion for doing more and challenging ourselves, so there’s always room to grow someday.

How is Seattle’s culinary scene different from others you have encountered?

When we first moved here, Seattle did not feel very diverse, but then again we had just moved from New York. Seattle’s culinary scene has grown tremendously over the past 5 years. We notice that Seattle customers really know what they want to eat, and they have high standards. At the same time, they are also willing to experiment, and the fact that we make different food and people are excited about it is great.

For more information on Rachel Yang’s restaurants, go to:

Joule
www.joulerestaurant.com
1913 North 45th Street
Seattle, WA 98103

Revel
www.revelseattle.com
403 N 36th St.,
Seattle, WA 98103
Check out our feature on Revel here.

[Photo: Courtesy of Rachel Yang]

In a weekly series of posts, we will present the Top 5 Most Korean-American cities, selected not only for their numbers, but also for their visibility in mainstream America. Our research was guided by the following criteria: population, famous and/or influential locals, programs, and hotspots.

#4 Seattle, WA

We could begin this post with some witty blurb about Seattle, the rain, and Koreans. Like, “Koreans are raining down on Seattle like wild geese to bank on the good school districts and profitable real estate.” Or maybe even the simpler, “It’s raining Koreans in Seattle!” But let’s just get down to the real nitty-gritty. Here are the main reasons as to why Seattle is #4 on our list of top Korean-American cities.

Numbers

• 52,112 – Seattle metro area (population data compiled using the 2010 Census)

Visibility

• Eugene Cho, a Korean immigrant living in Seattle with his wife and three children, is the founder of Q Café, a neighborhood café and music venue, and the lead pastor and founder of Quest Church. He also co-founded One Day’s Wages—”a new grassroots movement of people, stories, and actions to alleviate extreme global poverty.” Cho’s work with ODW has received widespread media coverage in The New York Times, NPR, The Seattle Times, and other major news publications.
• Matt Kelley, a writer, speaker and communications consultant currently residing in Seoul, founded the Seattle-based MAVIN Foundation—”the nation’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to redefining diversity by celebrating multiracial and transracially adopted youth”—when he was only in his early 20s. And, while he is largely recognized as an advocate for multiracial Americans, he was also the Seoul correspondent for Fridae, Asia’s largest gay and lesbian portal, and, last year, published a poignant piece on his “taboo” love life in South Korea.
• 21-year-old student, poet and organizer, Robin Suhyung Park, battles everyday to break the silence and confront the lack of response/support in her community by openly sharing her experience of being raped by her then boyfriend. She blogs at http://robinisalive.com/ and her first chapbook of poems is available here.

Programs

• The Korean American Historical Society is non-profit organization whose goal is to enrich the lives and experiences of Korean Americans by cataloging and transmitting the history of Korean culture. The KAHS publishes a bi-annual journal called Occasional Papers, conducts interviews with Korean Americans and expatriates, holds seminars and symposia, and also encourages Korean American studies in the world of academia.
• More and more college students are choosing to specialize in Korean studies, but UW’s Center for Korean Studies has always been in the forefront of Korean Studies in the academic world. Former UW professor of Korean History James Palais was the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Korean Studies, one of the few peer-reviewed academic journals that cover Korean Studies.
• The Korean Women’s Association (KWA) was established in 1972 as a non-profit organization to aid Korean wives of American servicemen. However, since it has expanded tremendously, its main focus now is providing a wide range of support to over 150,000 individuals of all different nationalities who are in need of help.
• Sahngnoksoo—meaning “evergreen” in English—is a Seattle-based grassroots organization working to “build political power for the self-determination and liberation of Koreans of all identities.”

Hotspots

 
• Revel—featured on our Korean Food USA series last month—offers a fresh modern take on traditional Korean cuisine. The husband-and-wife chef duo, Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi, also own another restaurant in Seattle, Joule, that serves a cross-cultural blend of varying tastes that you’d never expect to combine in one dish.
• Voted ‘America’s Best Food Truck‘ by Good Morning America, Marination Mobile, co-founded by Hawaiian Korean Kamala Saxton, rocks Korean/Hawaiian fusion foods like kalbi tacos, kimchi quesadillas, spam sliders, and kimchi fried rice. After trying LA’s famous Kogi Truck, Kamala and other co-founder Roz Edison wanted to bring the same experience to those living in the Seattle area. And thus, Marination Mobile was born.

• If you’re looking to get your NRB fix, check out Xanadu Karaoke in Lynnwood. Its rooms come in various sizes to accommodate groups of all sizes and are well furnished with big, comfy couches. Drink some beers, pick out your favorite K-pop song, and let the good times roll.
• Open late until 2am, Cockatoo in Federal Way is a great option for those who want to relax on some Hite beer or knock back a couple soju shots. Cockatoo’s menu specializes in yangnyum, or deep-fried chicken, which you can get plain, glazed with a sweet chili sauce, or super spicy. Their happy hour extends from 5-8pm during which you can get $5 fried chicken, ddeokbokki with kimchi, odangtang, and other anju favorites.

Locals

 
• Heartthrob, b-boy extraordinaire and musical artist Park Jaebom, a.k.a Jay Park, was formerly the leader of the K-pop band, 2PM, until his departure in 2009 after a comment on Park’s MySpace was misinterpreted by Korean netizens. Park returned to Seattle, where he was born and raised, to continue working on his music as a solo artist, and released his first mini-album in April 2011, Take a Deeper Look.
  
  
  
  
• Gowe, or Gifted on West East, is a Seattle-reppin’ rapper who was adopted and raised by a Chinese family. Gowe didn’t find out he was adopted until he was 18 years old, and has since wanted to find his biological mother, for whom he wrote the song, “I Wonder.”
• The singing talents of 18-year-old, Erin Kim were mostly unknown until she claimed her victory at last year’s Kollaboration Seattle. Erin will be attending college in Los Angeles where she hopes to continue pursuing her passion for music.
• Other Seattle natives include stand-up comedian Suzanne Park and Chris Kwak of rock band New Heights.

Look out for #3 next week!

UPDATE: Check out our Top 5 Most Korean-American Cities Map!

Melissah Yang and Mink Choi contributed to this post.

Korean Food USA is a new series that showcases Korean and Korean-inspired eateries all around the nation.

Seattle’s newest Korean-American fusion restaurant Revel just opened late last year, but it has already been garnering rave reviews. During his recent visit to Seattle, food writer extraordinaire Frank Bruni took the time to pay a visit, and described it as a “sleeker, sexier Momofuku Ssam bar.” The Seattle Times also praised it as trademark Korean street food gone upscale. Run by husband and wife chef duo Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi, the restaurant joins their two other establishments, Joule and Quoin. The menu is pared down, with roughly 18 items, but there is also another menu exclusive to brunch, a popular dining option at Revel.

The small menu is carefully curated, with 3 different types for each category: salad, pancake, dumpling, rice, noodle, and sweet sandwich. Stand out items include the short rib dumpling with scallion and shallot, a pork belly, bean sprout, and kimchi pancake, and a bibimbap garnished with asparagus, pistachio olive chutney, and radicchio. Brunch offers equally innovative and tempting dishes, particularly the chocolate pancake with salted peanut brittle and chili cream.

The restaurant offers a fresh, modern take on traditional Korean cuisine, and is definitely on our list of top eateries to check out.

Revel
403 N 36th St., Seattle, WA 98103
246-547-2040
http://www.revelseattle.com/

[Photos: Revel]