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Encompassing everything eventually

Susumu Yonaguni, owner and chef of OKitchen, poses in front of vegetables at his restaurant in Seoul. / Courtesy of OKitchen

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Expat runs popular restaurant, OKitchen

By Agnes Yu

Sometimes while living abroad it can be rather comforting to go somewhere and see a familiar face. It's even better if that friendly face can offer you a nice meal in a cozy setting. At OKitchen this is precisely what you can find. The owner and chef Susumu Yonaguni is from Japan and the restaurant is named after his Korean wife, Oh Jeong-mi.

Despite diplomatic tensions with the neighboring island nation simmering in territorial disputes, this long time resident of Seoul is taking it all with a grain of salt to let things simmer on the dining table instead.

Popular among business travelers and local expats OKitchen started out as a place where students could learn about working in a restaurant from start to finish, from both the front and back.

It already has a good reputation and on any day you can go there with your appetite in tow and Yonaguni will make you feel welcome. It's sort of like his home and it took him a while to get there.

Life is often filled with twists and turns and Yonaguni certainly has had his share. Without an initial culinary calling his younger years were spent stumbling along but unafraid to take the leap when necessary.

While still a student he spent a year traveling within Japan almost like a vagabond which extended to a period of hitchhiking in Europe. This led to a job washing dishes in a busy hotel kitchen and within a few months his role in that busy kitchen began to overlap with other duties. As he was favored by the chef, he began to learn a thing or two, hands on and after a few years he got the chance to get involved in a restaurant opening in New York. But before becoming the opening chef of 'Eat and Drink', Yonaguni decided he needed to know more about working in the "hall" which is the name for the seating area where guests are served.
So, at a different restaurant Yonaguni started as a busboy and again, in only a few months, he worked his way up to nearly head waiter until he felt confident enough to work in both the front and back of a restaurant.

Presentation of food is equally important and unable to find suitable plates, dishes, bowls, and flatware he decided to learn how to make his own. He enrolled in a prominent ceramics school and that's where he met his wife. During this period they would usually spend half the year working in a kitchen and half the year as starving artists living on sometimes only $20 a day in a loft in Brooklyn.

Then one day he was approached to make a mold of one of his sculptures so it could be mass produced and sold commercially. At that moment his enchantment wore off and he quit ceramics and returned to devote himself to cooking.

With this devotion, upon deciding that risotto either wet or dry was a dish that he would like to master, he dropped everything and moved to Italy for about 6 months to learn how to make it properly.

Then in order to learn everything eventually, Yonaguni even worked as an apprentice baker for 6 months. He described baking as requiring recipes and mathematic precision whereas cooking often involved the senses and was more poetic so they needed differing mentalities.
Few chefs do both but his opinion is to be all encompassing and this applies in not only the way he has lived his life but the way OKitchen operates.

Eventually his wife's connections led the couple back to Korea.
While on a magazine shoot, they noticed the food was presented more according to color rather than with any innate feeling of how food should be artistically arranged. His wife recognized a need and started teaching classes on styling food and Yonaguni became involved by teaching basic cooking skills.

Those students whose skills were not recognized and considered not employable were the reason OKitchen first opened in 2004.

The original location was a quiet neighborhood in the north part of Seoul and seated only 36 and was essentially a training center for the couple's students. For the aspiring restaurateurs, the appeal was in learning every aspect by working in every position so you leave the place knowing about what it's like to not just work in the kitchen but take orders and clear tables, etc.

Having relocated to Itaewon in 2008, the foreigner friendly neighborhood of Seoul, the concept of OKitchen is sort of like from beginning to end. Affordable set menus at either lunch or dinner attract loyal and even many solo diners. Yonagumi pays particular attention to solo dinners and in fact they often become friends.

Yonaguni believes good ingredients are at the core of every dish. Three years ago, in order to combat high food prices he began to grow his own herbs and vegetables such as healthy organic asparagus, rhubarb, endives and basil to name a few. His garden patch near DoBong-san has gradually spread out to include 10 plots. The basil is especially essential to make the pesto. In fact everything served at OKitchen is made on the premises. The students learn not just about sauces and soups but they learn to bake bread, make puff pastries and pasta, smoke the salmon and duck, and even salt cod.

Yonagumi considers the staff his family. After working long enough at the restaurant both in the front and back areas, the students are encouraged to go and study abroad. Many of them return to work back at OKitchen. He feels a great sense of satisfaction through the success of his staff.

Admired for his pragmatism and true bohemian spirit, asked from where did the fearlessness early in his career stem, he responded, 'if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose'.

OKitchen is in a converted hanok and open daily. The menu is seasonal depending on availability and freshness. Call 02-797-6420 for more information.

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