Adoptee chef discovers herself and family through Korean cooking

Melanie Hye Jin Meyer, the owner of a Korean-inspired pop-up restaurant "Tiny Chef," poses in front of her restaurant, located in St. Louis, Mo. Courtesy of Melanie Hye Jin Meyer

Chef expresses her identity through Korean-inspired food

By Lee Yeon-woo

As receipts roll out of the register, busy hands pin them on a board and call out to a solo Korean-American chef who is masterfully handling frying pans in the center of a micro kitchen. She calls out to the server, "Food's ready. Go go go!"

That's what you'll encounter on a typical weekend evening at "Tiny Chef," a restaurant in St. Louis, in the central U.S. state of Missouri.

Located in The Silver Ballroom ― a pinball bar ― this Korean-inspired pop-up restaurant offers food atypical to the neighborhood ― multinational cuisine enriched with traditional Korean spices. Kimchi carbonara, Korean crab boil cooked with garlic butter and pepper, Korean-inspired tostada with chicken marinated in bulgogi sauce are the main attractions gracing the menu.

Melanie Hye Jin Meyer, a 38-year-old chef born in Korea and adopted to the United States as an infant, opened her restaurant in April 2019. It's a reflection of her identity and 20-year cooking career that ranges from rustic American cuisine to fine dining. She's even cooked fast food.

Despite her experience in various Asian restaurants ― including Vietnamese and Chinese ― she said she didn't dare to work in a Korean restaurant because she felt uncertain of her identity as a Korean adoptee.

"It was always that one battle I had within me for being an adoptee in America. I know that I am Korean and I look Korean. But I always felt that I wasn't, and I wouldn't be Korean enough to get hired in one," Meyer told The Korea Times.

Korean-inspired crab boil and kimchi carbonara served in "Tiny Chef." Courtesy of Melanie Hye Jin Meyer

Now she's a popular local head chef in the area, with her social media comment sections flooding with questions ― like when she will start serving kimchi carbonara.

Meyer recalled the journey was not an easy one. With no one to ask, she learned how to cook Korean food by watching YouTube videos and reading endless articles on her birth country's cuisine. She is entirely self-taught.

It was indeed a test for her strength, ability, and patience to learn something new that is crucial in Korean cultural identity but was missing from her life for so long.

She remembers her first attempt to make Korean rice cake ― "tteok" ― ending in failure. She threw the entire batch into the trash can and her spirits fell.

"I was like, am I doing this correctly? Is this food Korean enough?" It was the endless self-doubt that she struggled with most during the process.

Nevertheless, she felt something click inside her whenever she tried cooking Korean food.

"One of my friends saw me that day and asked me to go home and try again tomorrow. And I did that. The next day it came out perfect. I knew what I had done. I knew in the science of everything what had gone wrong." she said.

She soaked rice in the water, steamed it, and pounded it hundreds of times until the batch became sticky, teaching herself how to make "tteok" from scratch. By following time-tested Korean cooking methods, she found herself feeling more connected to the culture gradually.

Those feelings led her to open a restaurant serving Korean-inspired cuisine. She gave it her nickname, "Tiny Chef," to push her more to be herself. She said she never knew the restaurant would become what it is today. "I even asked my former employer whether I can work again if this restaurant fails. And he said yes," she said with a big laugh.

Surprisingly, the journey of rediscovering her Korean heritage also led her back to her birth parents. "This all happened because of food. I FOUND MY FAMILY BECAUSE OF FOOD," she wrote on social media with full joy while sharing a picture of letters sent from her parents.

Melanie Hye Jin Meyer hugs her younger brother, left, and her mother, center, after meeting them for the first time at Incheon International Airport, June 2. Courtesy of Melanie Hye Jin Meyer

One of the local restaurant owners in St. Louis helped her get in touch with one of the business partners, who has direct ties with adoption agency Holt International. In her adoption file that she received, there was a whole new story Meyer could hardly have imagined in her wildest dreams.

"I'm no longer in contact with the people that adopted me. They weren't great people. And I found out they lied that I was abandoned and there was no love at the beginning of my life," she said.

But the file says Meyer was a healthy, happy baby who smiled a lot. She stayed with her mother for the first three months of her life and was later sent to foster care due to the family's harsh circumstances.

"Right there, it rewrote the person who I thought I was. I realized that I wasn't just this ghost person that just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I have a story. This was my story," she said.

Meyer heard her mother was also looking for her for years but couldn't reach her as Meyer didn't make contact with the adoption agency at that time. In June, she finally got to hug her mother, two younger brothers, a sister-in-law, and a nephew in Korea.

"What's ironic is in the past, I had posted a bowl of seaweed soup I made for myself on social media wishing my mom's health on my birthday. Exactly one year later, I ended up getting a video of her singing me a happy birthday song," she said.

"Because of Tiny Chef, I encountered my culture where I came from. But the journey was not just only discovering my identity. I found my family through it. And this is insane," she added.

Melanie Hye Jin Meyer at her mother's home, June 8. Courtesy of Melanie Hye Jin Meyer

Some of her mother's recipes for homemade "banchan," Korean traditional side dishes, were taken to St. Louis and added to her menu.

Now in St. Louis, she's trying to give back to people who supported her journey in the form of the food she creates. Her best memory is when one of her customers said her food reminds her of her mom who passed away a few years ago. She feels grateful as her cooking can give customers comfort and joy, just like the experience she had in the past.

"When you greet somebody in Korea, it's not like America. They ask you whether you've eaten. They always want to make sure that you eat something. That has also become a strong love language of mine. I love making people happy with meals. Food brings people together if there's a thing," she said.