Young cook leads slow food movement

Chef Edwin Cha

By Park Ji-won

Chef Edwin Cha, 26, cooks to realize the true meaning of food and share it with the younger generation.

“In the kitchen as I was holding some frozen shrimps, I was wondering how these ended up on my plate, so I started to browse the Internet to study more about what we eat,” Cha said.

Describing himself as a contemporary cook and natural food maker, he made a website, “All About Food,” which shares useful information about natural food, holds seminars and runs pop-up stores for one-day restaurants. With 700 members, the site was launched in May 2013 and has held seminars and offered tours to farms.

“As a Seoul-born kid, I didn’t have a chance to learn about where food ingredients came from and how it is processed before coming to us,” he said.

“Deeply-rooted Confucianism in Korea didn’t let us question what we wondered in class every day. So I found this page that questions and urges us to think about the food that affects our whole life in every aspect,” he added.

Cha graduated from a two-year vocational course specializing in cooking, and developed a strong curiosity of cuisine in every sense. Even before that he had devoted himself to cooking as a middle school student.

However, he recalls that he didn’t have much of a chance to ask questions because teachers didn’t like students asking questions.

“I wanted to study more after paying some 4 million won tuition but it was impossible. I started to study by myself and joined food seminars,” he said.

Soon he realized that very few young people pay attention to food ingredients and cooks usually do not act like the stars of their restaurants, but rather like “machines” making and serving food quietly in the kitchen.

“In Korea, cooks produce a product that is consumed, but really have little presence in the whole process. Only very few cooks, especially among the younger generation, know the details of food ingredients and are aware of what important contributors they are to human,” he said.

“The wonders of ingredients can be spread by a cook who connects farmers with customers.”

Cha is now traveling to Italy as a vice chief of the Slow Food Youth Network Korea. The Slow Food Youth Network is a sister organization of Slow food, an international organization founded in Italy in 1986 to look for alternatives to fast food. Its primary goal is to create a movement for sustainable food through the local community.

The chef is working diligently to become a missionary for the meaning of food. He recently entered Kyung Hee Cyber University to major in food studies so he could have a deeper understanding of food.

“I want to study more and make a food lab in my 30s that can be an important middle-man connecting consumers and farmers. That way people can realize the meaning of both food and life,” he said.