{"id":99713,"date":"2025-12-18T14:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/99713\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T14:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:41:11","slug":"the-year-bay-area-korean-dining-kept-going-up-up-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/99713\/","title":{"rendered":"The year Bay Area Korean dining kept going up! up! up!\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the triumphant \u201cKPop: Demon Hunters\u201d title track blaring in the background, let us make the declaration: This was the year San Francisco\u2019s Korean dining scene went golden.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Five years ago, it felt like many of the city\u2019s Korean restaurants were playing the same tune, offering the familiar old hits: bulgogi, bibimbap, seafood pancakes, and potstickers, with a few regional specialities here and there. Relative to cities with defined Koreatowns, such as Los Angeles and New York, San Francisco lacked both density and diversity.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, however, a new generation of Korean and Korean American chefs and entrepreneurs has added new depth and dimensionality to the scene. \u201cWe\u2019re always playing second fiddle to L.A. and New York, but now we don\u2019t have to,\u201d says Deuki Hong, chef and co-owner of buzzy <\/a>Sohn<\/a>. \u201cNow we get to be part of the conversation and hopefully change that narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past 12 months, the Bay Area has welcomed more than half a dozen ambitious Korean restaurants, cafes, bars, and markets \u2014 most to great fanfare. Jagalchi, the 75,000-square-foot Korean grocery store at the Serramonte Center, drew an estimated 100,000 customers during its opening weekend in March. Sohn, which brought galbi patty melts and yuja perilla espresso tonics to an industrial stretch of the Dogpatch, draws daily lines. Buoy in Civic Center serves as a coffee shop by day and a sleek Korean restaurant and bar by night, while Yeobo, Darling has fine-dining lovers flocking to Menlo Park for wagyu galbi and kimchi-topped oysters.<\/p>\n

Jilli opened in the Mission this summer.\u200bRigatoni alla kimchi vodka at Jilli.<\/p>\n

Even more exciting are the dining and drinking mini-trends that emerged this year. Makgeolli popped up on the menu at trendy sool-jibs like Jilli, San Francisco\u2019s first bar dedicated to the fermented rice wine. Thick, cream-topped drinks, a riff on the Viennese einsp\u00e4nner, made their way from South Korean cafes to Bay Area menus at Buoy and Sohn. Traditional street foods like tteokbokki \u2014 including the milder, Italian-inspired rose tteokbokki that went viral on TikTok \u2014 were featured on popular Netflix K-dramas like \u201cSquid Games\u201d and \u201cExtraordinary Attorney Woo,\u201d then popped up in the Bay Area at Jagalchi and more established restaurants like Manna and Muguboka.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Korean chefs admit to a kind of reverse culture shock at how rapidly the Bay Area\u2019s understanding of the food and drinking culture has expanded. \u201cBefore, I never had this pride of being Korean,\u201d Jilli owner Hwanghah\u00a0 Jeong says. \u201cNow I\u2019m in a position where people come to me wanting to learn about Korean culture and where to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TwoSohn, a Korean coffee shop and cafe, draws lines every day in the Dogpatch.<\/p>\n

Our seemingly voracious appetite for makgeolli, injeollmi, and kimchi isn\u2019t incidental. All over the country, K-pop, K-dramas, K-beauty \u2014 frankly, K-everything \u2014 have become part of mainstream American culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a sense, a Korean food boom in the Bay felt inevitable. Ashley Jung, marketing manager for Jagalchi, says the massive grocery store\u2019s debut was perfectly timed to ride the K-wave. \u201cIf we did this 10 years ago, it wouldn\u2019t have been this successful,\u201d Jung says. \u201cI think people are more into exploring global flavors. In the Bay Area, people are just more open to new things.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many of the Bay Area\u2019s Korean chefs, owners, and restaurant operators, however, the food boom is personal \u2014 and was a long time coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came to the States 10 years ago for college, I would still get asked if I was from North or South Korea. Now \u2018Golden\u2019 is a song that\u2019s sung by 3-year-olds and American boys in the street,\u201d Jeong says. \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever felt like this before. It\u2019s so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PeopleShoppers can explore 75,000 square feet of Korean food at Jagalachi.\"AThe Korean grocery store sells baked goods, fresh seafood, and more.<\/p>\n

That means that instead of sticking to safe orders like bulgogi and bibimbap, Bay Area residents are sampling the richness of the Korean dining landscape. At Sohn, Melona matcha lattes put nostalgic Korean American flavors at the forefront, while gim-mari (fried seaweed noodle rolls) and fried chicken at Ilcha give San Franciscans a taste of the \u201cfirst round\u201d of a night out in Seoul. Menus at Ssal, San Ho Won, and Bansang showcase deftly executed modern expressions of traditional Korean fare, and the smooth pours of makgeolli at Jilli give a peek into Korea\u2019s famously lively drinking culture.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Korean Americans like Hong, the responsibility of adding to the depth and breadth of how the culture is perceived in the U.S. is not to be taken lightly. For 30 years, Hong\u2019s dad drove a limo and taxi in New Jersey, while his mom worked at a nail salon. \u201cOur parents didn\u2019t get a choice,\u201d he says. \u201cEven if our parents\u2019 generation wanted to do what we\u2019re doing, it wasn\u2019t even in their vocab. But because of them, we get to do our dream now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the triumphant \u201cKPop: Demon Hunters\u201d title track blaring in the background, let us make the declaration: This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[9807,412,101,103,102,104,106,105,52377],"class_list":["post-99713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-korean-food","tag-restaurants","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-the-year-in-eating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}