'Top Chef' Jae Jung Is Going Her Own Fusion Way With KJUN
The fine dining veteran on making good gumbo accessible to Gotham, her go-to spots for authentic Korean food, and some new delights planned for this year.
It seems like a new, innovative Korean restaurant opens weekly here in NYC, especially with cutting-edge, upscale takes. Namely, newcomer Moono from the Michelin-star chef behind Jua, Korean handroll specialists Mari, Oiji Mi and its $325-per-person meat-focused younger sibling Bom, and two-starred Atomix.
Yet despite this culinary trend, and the extended, no-sign-of-stopping moment South Korean culture is having, known as Hallyu, Seoul-born Chef Jae Jung goes very much against trend with KJUN. The restaurant is a scrappy, indie, self-funded spot that brings Jung’s unique South Korea-meets-Cajun concept to the Murray Hill neighborhood after a run of buzzed-about pop-up incarnations since 2021 (In a Bloomberg Pursuits rundown of best new restaurants that year, chef Lauren DeSteno of the James Beard Award-winning Marea selected it as her pick).
A familiar face for Top Chef fans, Jung demonstrated an ambitious fusion streak winning two challenges in the show’s 19th season which aired in 2022. Off-camera, she worked in the exalted NYC kitchens of Le Bernardin, Cafe Boulud (where she served as sous chef), and Oceana, and honed her talents prior in New Orleans at Dooky Chase, Domenica, August, and Herbsaint.
Those years of Southern living and New Orleans’ distinctive Cajun, creole and soul food flavors left an imprint and deep love. She’s since found ways to combine them with her homeland’s inaccessible dishes like the ubiquitous Korean and Southern staple fried chicken, a jambalaya tweaked with kimchi (KJUN’s reigning bestseller), shrimp and cheesy grits, and a generously loaded shrimp and oyster Po Boy sandwich, as well as surprising and eclectic creations like okra kimchi, a “Korean Army Stew” incorporating gochujang andouille sausage, japchae boudin balls, and an addictive albeit decadent don’t-miss-them appetizer, soy-marinated soft boiled eggs with wasabi aioli and chicken skin cracklings.
Here, Chef Jung on making good gumbo accessible to Gotham, her go-to spots for authentic Korean food, and the new delights planned for later this year.
How do you feel KJUN fits in with the new wave of Korean restaurants? It’s quite different from, say, Naro at Rockefeller Plaza and SoHo’s two Michelin-starred fine dining trailblazer Jungsik.
Jae Jung: I don’t know about fitting. I wasn’t thinking anything about that. I didn’t plan on opening a restaurant because Korean cuisine is getting more popular. It just felt like the right timing and I was ready. I spent four and a half years in New Orleans more than a decade ago, and I was the only Korean cook in town. There were no Korean restaurants or Korean influences, so I had to cook at home a lot and I found a lot of similarities between these two cuisines. Spiciness, soup and rice, barbecue. So for me [combining them] made sense, and I thought about it a very long time and dreamed of creating a Korean-Cajun cuisine. During the pandemic I grew really bored, so I started a pop-up and it got a lot of followers and became popular. It was 2021 when I did the first, in the UES, moved to East Village, and then I had to close my pop-up to do Top Chef.
What did you learn from being on Top Chef?
JJ: It’s such a mental game. It’s extremely stressful to be in the competition for months and you live with the other contestants, so you have to come prepared for that. They throw out random challenges, and you have to understand the challenge very well. A lot of us want to cook a dish that’s good, but you must understand the theme. They wanted me to make a dish from the Jurassic Park movies, and I never watched those! It was very hard for me to get connected to the challenge and I struggled and almost got eliminated. They also wanted me to do a NASA challenge and create a dish for the spaceship. I was struggling with those connections, but it was fun at some points, very stressful but overall a really good experience.
When people think “hot foodie neighborhood,” Murray Hill doesn’t usually spring to mind. How did you decide on it as KJUN’s first permanent home?
JJ: I wasn’t looking for a specific location. The only thing I wanted to avoid was a restaurant in downtown. The audience is good, young and working, but I wanted to be more of a neighborhood restaurant. Not a specific area, but a go-to spot for the area. So after multiple pop-ups in the UES, East Village and West Village, I really needed my own kitchen and didn’t really care about which neighborhood. Something in Murray Hill popped up that I could manage, and I really didn’t want to have investors or partners, so I said, ‘OK this is very small but I can play with it.’ That’s how me and my team moved in. I still don’t have any investors, it’s just me, my cooks and staff.
The menu, while heavy on fusion elements, does have a few “pure” dishes, like the creamy, cheesy grits. What else do you feel is essentially just a straightforward, excellent take on a favorite?
JJ: I would say the shrimp and oyster Po Boy is close, although there is a mint and green tomato kimchi. Maybe the chicken and andouille gumbo is very classic. I wanted to keep it classic, actually. We serve it with okra kimchi and creamy potato daikon salad on the side, but it’s very Cajun.
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The okra kimchi is genius and not something I’ve seen at least in this form before!
JJ: Thank you. It took a year to master it, I almost wanted to give up. Sometimes it was a case of too much slime and really hard to eat, and sometimes it was no slime and didn’t feel like okra. A little bit of slime gives you a creamy texture and sensation in the mouth, and it was so hard to master it.
I read that a factor that inspired you to create KJUN was the lack of good gumbo in NYC.
JJ: It was very aggravating for me not to have a really good gumbo! NY has everything – good Korean food, Chinese food, Thai food, all the ethnicities. You name it, you find it. But it was very difficult to find a good gumbo. I found one in Brooklyn, a little shop called The Gumbo Bros, with a small cup, and so far for me that was the best in NYC before mine!
Alternately, fried chicken is everywhere, including nearby Koreatown, so what factored into creating your version?
JJ: Korean chicken is really difficult. Everyone does it, everyone makes it delicious. It was hard for me to come up with one. It’s fun, everyone loves it. I did experiment for a long time in my own apartment, for a month, and finally found the one I love which was gochujang (chili paste) and buttermilk marinated, Korean pancake battered, twice fried with hot honey but it wasn’t easy. It was quite a challenge.
Do you see yourself opening another Korean-based concept at some point given the literal hallyu hunger out there?
JJ: My all-time dream was to have a Korean BBQ place, but lately, I’ve been having second thoughts because I think it’ll be overflowing. There are so many great Korean places. They all have different charms, but the Korean restaurant business is a difficult game because they also get better and better because of the competition. It’s a good thing for me, because I can go out more often and eat good Korean food.
Any you really love? Hook us up!
JJ: I really love Kunjip in Koreatown and BCD Tofu House. Those are my go-to spots. They’ve been open for decades and always make very authentic Korean food. And I go to Flushing, Queens often for Ham Ji Bach! They have really good food!
Where do you go for inspiration as a chef?
JJ: I don’t really go to specific places to be honest. For me, I get inspiration from my childhood. It’s very random. I stopped reading other people’s cookbooks because I don’t want to get inspired by their stories or recipes. I’ve been focusing on making my own style, but I do read Paul Prudhomme’s classic New Orleans cookbook and the fundamentals.
There currently isn’t any alcohol at KJUN, but do you have plans for serving cocktails at some point?
JJ: We applied for the liquor license and are waiting for the response. I came up with this kimchi bloody mary several years ago and once I have the license I’m going to sell this. I use soju. And I’ve been making sangria with a fermented Korean plum, it worked really well, and a kumquat mimosa was really a good one.
KJUN’s small boxed banana foster dessert with the crumbled dalgona – that honeycomb candy made famous on Squid Game – is a super tasty end to the meal. Will you also add that quintessential New Orleans pastry, the beignet?
JJ: Oh yes. The thing is I have only one fryer and don’t want to use all the chicken and Po Boy oil for the beignet. So in the fall I’ll have a savory beignet.
By the way, I was impressed by the diverse demographics of the crowd when I had dinner at KJUN, from young local tech professionals to academics to foodie tourists. Are there any celebrities or pop stars you’d love to see come in though?
JJ: Chef Eric Ripert, because I used to work at Le Bernardin. That would mean a lot to me.
WORDS Lawrence Ferber
PHOTOGRAPHY Pete Hurley
