My business is a Korean lunch restaurant called Tiger Box.  It is located in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.  I had been working on the lunch concept since 2009, but the restaurant wasn’t in action until September 2016.  I started serving food in January 2017.  We offer nine appetizers and 16 entrees that are made from high-quality ingredients made from scratch on-premises.  The restaurant has 12 seats for customers, but most of my business is take-out or delivery.

Our big dish is Bibimbop, the traditional Korean rice and vegetable bowl.  However, I try to make all of my dishes a little different from the traditional preparation, and I try to make each ingredient special.  For Bibimbop, with or without meat, I have a special preparation for each of the six vegetable ingredients.  For example, I cook the spinach in hot water, squeeze the water out and then season it with salt, scallion, garlic and sesame oil.  The cucumber I season with salt, squeeze water out and add sesame oil.  Aster Scaber is a native Korean herb that I sautée with garlic, soy sauce and wild sesame oil, also known as Perilla oil, on a very low heat.  If you want an egg, I will fry it with wild sesame oil, and that gives it a really nice, elegant flavor.  Wild Sesame is a savory, high-quality ingredient that doesn’t have any trans-fat.

Tiger Box’s signature food is a marinated pork dish called Spicy Pork Ssam.  All items on the menu are authentic Korean dishes, but the pork dish is a new invention of mine.  I marinate the pork for 48 hours in a chili paste marinade, and then I serve it with tofu, fried kimchi, cilantro, chili pepper, jalapeno, and garlic, served over rice.  I also serve Galbi, a traditional Korean dish of grilled beef, but I use less sugar than the traditional preparation, so it has a more of a grown-up taste.