Chef Corey Lee was redefining Korean food before it was embraced globally | CNN
Long before he became the first Korean chef to earn three Michelin stars, Corey Lee grew up in a New Jersey suburb where Korean food was scarce. Gochujang paste wasn’t a household staple, and kimchi wasn’t a trendy topping in hip urban eateries.
“In the training period of my career, I would never think that I’d be serving kimchi at a fine dining restaurant,” says Lee.
It’s a different landscape today, though. The Hallyu or Korean wave, has swept the globe, from K-pop to K-beauty, and Korean cuisine has soared in popularity, with exports like kimchi hitting an all-time high last year, and overseas outlets of Korean food companies increasing nearly 25% since 2020.
Lee, 48, started his career in kitchens focused on French culinary techniques, but has gravitated back to his Korean heritage over the past 15 years: first with the East Asian-inspired contemporary restaurant Benu, which earned three Michelin stars; and more recently, with a smart-casual, Michelin-awarded Korean barbecue joint in San Francisco, a Korean concept restaurant in a Singaporean car factory, and a collaboration with one of South Korea’s most popular kimchi brand to create gourmet kimchi products.
Born in Seoul in 1977, Lee moved with his family to the US when he was five, growing up in New York and later, Tenafly, New Jersey. Raised by Korean parents in the US, Lee didn’t grow up watching cooking shows or with dreams of being a chef.
That all changed in 1995. Fresh out of high school and waiting to start college, Lee took a summer job at Blue Ribbon Brasserie in New York. Once inside the kitchen, Lee “fell in love with it right away”: the intensity, the creativity, the physical demands, and the sense of purpose shared by everyone in the room.
The job was supposed to last a summer. Instead, it altered the trajectory of his life.
“I was hooked from day one,” Lee recalls.
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