More than a restaurant

Very Street Kitchen, an experimental lab for street food

Joon Oh CEO of Very Street Kitchen

By Yun Suh-young

On a sequestered, shabby street behind Seoul Station, at the heart of the city, there is an old stone building that stands out from its surroundings with its modern sign sporting one big four-letter word: "VERY."

The sign is short for Very Street Kitchen, a cozy, six-tabled restaurant that operates only at night. The tables are different sizes and shapes, giving customers the joy of choosing where they want to sit, including a bar seat accommodating up to six people. In one corner of the restaurant is a DJ console that restaurant staff play, changing the CD every once in a while using their turntable skills.

The name Very Street Kitchen comes from their concept of selling street food.

But their street food is far from conventional. The dishes bear the names of cities such as Osaka, Bangkok, Taipei, Singapore, New Orleans, Canton, Barcelona, Sokcho and Tongyeong, and the dishes reflect the tastes of those cities. They are served as platters rather than as snacks and they are hygienic and made with the freshest ingredients, unlike what you can find from street carts. The word "very" is meant to stress "clean" and the word "street" is reminiscent of "strong" and "addictive."

"It may not be the street food that people normally expect, but we considered street food in the broader sense ― dishes that can be easily found and enjoyed in those cities," said Joon Oh, CEO of Very Joon Oh Atelier, under which Very Street Kitchen operates.

Exterior of Very Street Kitchen located in Manlijae-ro, Jung-gu, behind Seoul Station in central Seoul. / Courtesy of Very Street Kitchen

"Street food carries wisdom. It is made with the least amount of ingredients but produces the same consistent taste. Ingredients that are dismissed in haute cuisine are turned into delicacies and made public."

What Very Street Kitchen ultimately plans to do is to design a holistic experience for Korean street food that is not about the food itself, but the entire dining experience, from the atmosphere, the story related to the food and how to enjoy it.

"Our initial and ultimate goal is to create a brand for Korean food, especially street food,” Oh said during an interview with The Korea Times. “I think street foods are representative of their countries and are the food most consumed, most loved by the people. In that sense, I think street food carries great symbolic meaning.

"I always found it frustrating that Korean food would be represented abroad in the form of fine dining. I don't believe that fine dining is the only way to globalize Korean food. Why do we always have to make it look sophisticated? Why do we have to present it like French cuisine? These doubts propelled me to think opposite and to really focus on our identity."

Oh is not one of those people plunging into the culinary scene simply to run a restaurant. What he wants to do is branding ― on the image of Korean food, that is. He is a designer, as are three of his seven staffers.

As one of the most well-known, highly paid and highly sought-after designers in Korea, Oh has served numerous executive positions in local conglomerates such as Hyundai Card and AmorePacific and currently as creative director of Shinsegae International. He began his career in Paris as a furniture designer and worked as a creative director after returning to Korea.

What made him open his own business?

"I felt like I was going to burst if I didn't try this experiment,” he said. “Working for a company couldn't satisfy my thirst. I wanted to prove that a brand was not about numbers. I wanted to take charge of my own brand and prove it. It just took time to gather people who carried the same vision.”

Oh still works a regular job at Shinsegae International's lifestyle brand, Jaju, as creative director while operating his business, thanks to the company's understanding.

A year into its opening, the restaurant is always fully booked despite the lack of promotion. Oh says he wanted to focus on developing a multidimensional brand to near perfect before making it public. But news spread by word of mouth through social media. Even foreign customers who are residents of Seoul make frequent visits as well as tourists and business travelers. The restaurant's peculiar location in a less-developed district seems to have played up the magic, according to Oh.

"Our neighbors say our restaurant lit up this dark neighborhood. I now think this can serve as a counterexample of the broken window theory."

The restaurant is more of a creative lab than a restaurant as its staff continuously research and experiment during the daytime while the restaurant is closed.

"We open only for dinner because we need time for R&D,” said Oh. “What we're researching now is rice. We're studying rice in depth, from planting to harvesting, as well as which side dishes make the best match."

The reason he focuses his energy on Korean food is because he pities how it lacks resources and infrastructure.

"It's a pity that we don't have many experts in our own food,” he said. “Chefs go abroad to learn about other countries’ cuisines, but we don't even have established schools that teach Korean cuisine here. We seem to belittle ourselves. If Very Street Kitchen succeeds, I want to open up a culinary school where foreign chefs would visit Seoul to learn Korean food.”

His long-term dream is to open a branch of Very Street Seoul in cities such as Paris, Shanghai and Bangkok.

"If I want to spread something good, I think creating an example of something people want to follow is a way of contributing to our society," said the determined CEO.