Chef John Chung put his Korean spin on a Japanese classic and gave Seattle its favorite comfort food in the process
. “You can probably find one in any given strip mall,” he mentioned, listing what the menu might contain: “A culinary hodgepodge,” of teriyaki, spicy beef, yakisoba, and bibimbap, among others. And it’s that hodgepodge which provides edible clues to the story behind one of the Seattle teriyaki scene’s unsung godfathers.
Starting in 1965, American immigration laws stopped targeting Asians and the first waves of Korean immigrants arrived. More than 800,000 Korean immigrants came to the U.S. between 1965 and 2001, and in the Seattle area specifically, the Korean population went from just 712 in all of King County in 1970 to almost 13,000 in 1990.
Chung’s teriyaki recipes started with a marinade of garlic, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, wine, and lemon juice. The key, he says, was that he made the marinade fresh each day, and then patiently left the meat soaking for two to three days in the cooler. Then, when it was time to cook, he understood what his customers cherished most: their time.
“When you open that Styrofoam, piping, steaming, it had that glistening, glossy, perfectly caramelized sauce on top, those fresh sprigs of green onion, and the steamed cabbage underneath, the cut mushrooms in with the teriyaki,” Sylvia Kim describes. It’s the consistency of the sauce, adds Howard Chung, that makes it different from other sauces — like that of real maple syrup: dark and runny, yet thick.
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