The Intersection of Korean and Cajun Cuisine at Kjun

The other evening, a group of mates, sitting close to a West Village dining-space desk for the 1st time in a prolonged whilst, collectively gasped. A cardboard takeout box, its flaps meticulously folded to enable for air flow, experienced been opened to reveal a generous pile of arrestingly lovely potato chips: pretty much weightless, nevertheless crunchy as glossy, clear, and subtly bubbled as stained glass slicked with brown butter and honey and dusted in Cajun spices. Fried to purchase by the chef Jae Jung, they are a highlight, amongst a lot of, of the menu for Kjun, a pickup-and-shipping and delivery-only Korean-Cajun cafe she’s been jogging given that April, 1st from a dormant catering kitchen area on the Higher East Facet and now from the basement of a espresso store in the East Village.

Potato chips—the honey-butter variety has been a trend in Korea considering that 2014, and the Cajun-influenced flavors made by Zapp’s, in Louisiana, since the nineteen-eighties, are some of the greatest snacks on the U.S. market—were just just one of the intersections that jumped out at Jung as she deemed two of the food stuff cultures closest to her heart. Born and raised in Seoul, she inherited her passion for cooking from her mom, who for numerous years owned a kimchi cafe, operating via 3 thousand heads of cabbage a year. Though her mothers and fathers urged her to avoid the company, the call proved also solid: in her late twenties—“my very last probability to go big,” she instructed me recently—she flew to New York to enroll, sight unseen, in the Culinary Institute of The us.

“One of my pals in Korea mentioned, ‘If you go to America, you gotta go to New Orleans,’ ” Jung recalled. Jazz Fest immediately endeared the metropolis to her New York, to a native of Seoul, was common territory—New Orleans was like yet another world. When it came time at the C.I.A. to do an externship, she returned to New Orleans, paying several months, in 2009, in the kitchen area at August, a contemporary-Creole cafe, experiencing the afterglow of the Saints’ Tremendous Bowl earn, dealing with Mardi Gras, and learning to take pleasure in brass-band audio. For four and a 50 percent yrs soon after graduation, she cycled by means of some of the city’s most well known institutions, which includes Dooky Chase’s, whose beloved proprietor, Leah Chase (who died in 2019), Jung regarded a good friend and a mentor—“my Creole grandmother,” Jung mentioned.

All the a lot of techniques Jung discovered for generating gumbo contributed to Kjun’s, which begins with a dark roux and involves pasture-raised hen and andouille sausage. The traditional accompaniment of rice reminded her of soup in Korea, which is also normally served with rice, furthermore kimchi choosing up her mother’s mantle, Jung makes a number of varieties of it employing greens prevalent in the American South, where by, of program, pickles also reign. The gumbo comes with a side of okra, brined in salt and vinegar for at least two months tomato kimchi serves as condiment, layered atop a creamy rémoulade, in an great po’boy showcasing cornmeal-fried shrimp and oysters on a crusty French-model loaf that Jung gets from a Vietnamese bakery. Virtually almost everything is spicy, but there are pockets of reduction: a awesome watermelon salad, with equally fresh cubes and pickled rind, in a yuzu-honey vinaigrette silky white grits with mascarpone and provolone.

For months prior to she introduced Kjun—the success of a longtime desire that she began to prepare for in earnest following she remaining her position as Café Boulud’s sous-chef, at the stop of 2019—Jung manufactured fried chicken each individual solitary day, in an hard work to fantastic her recipe. “At some issue, I actually could not swallow it,” she mentioned. “I would get a bite and spit it out.” Her tenacity paid off: the closing, phenomenal products is marinated in buttermilk and gochujang just before it’s coated in a Cajun-spiced Korean pancake batter that contains rice flour, cornstarch, and potato starch, which assists make it extra crispy, as does frying it twice. Like the chips, the chicken arrives in a box whose flaps have been folded to ward off any hint of sogginess, packed by Jung herself. “I touch anything,” she said. I’d eat nearly anything she touched. (Dishes $9-$45.) ♦