Gyeongnidan burger pub gets fist bump from celeb chef Baek Jong-won

The staff of California Kitchen & Craft Pub, with Chuck Chun second from right in the top row and Justin Sasaki in the upper right. / Courtesy of Cali Kitchen

By Jon Dunbar

When the restaurant's phone rang, nobody at California Kitchen & Craft Pub expected that on the other end would be a representative of Korean TV's foremost food celebrity, Baek Jong-won. They wanted to feature the restaurant, located in Itaewon's Gyeongnidan area, for an episode of the JTBC show, "Baek Jong-won's National Food: Global Food Edition," about the history of burgers in Korea.

"When they first came here, they wanted to temper my expectations," Chuck Chun, founding owner of Cali Kitchen, told The Korea Times about his meeting with the show's producers and writers. "They told me they were planning on going to a lot of places, and may want to use footage here. Once we talked with them and they tried our food, a lot of things shifted. They were like, 'Wow you guys seem to be doing things a little different from other places.'"

Chun was curious why they chose his restaurant. "It's not necessarily on the burger lists all the time," he admitted. "One of the reasons why we never get noticed for burgers is we don't have 'burger' in our name."

Cali Kitchen's menu is split pretty evenly between burgers and Mexican food, "Inspired by food that we miss from California," Chun explained.

What makes burgers from California different from other places, he said, is a focus on fresh ingredients. "That's been a focus for us since the very beginning," he said. Chun opened the restaurant in July 2015, and just marked its sixth anniversary last month.

"We want to elevate the burgers and use really good ingredients. We're very ingredient-focused," he said. "We're one of the few places that's using never-frozen beef. Not only are we using non-frozen but we're using USDA Prime ― that's better quality meat than an average place in the States would use."

For their segment, they served three of their burgers to the franchise mogul, who gave a positive response to their butter burger.

Chuck Chun, middle, serves the hosts on "Baek Jong-won's National Food: Global Edition," broadcast July 23 on JTBC. / Courtesy of JTBC

The camera crew came by three times, first to shoot the food, next time with the celebrities and a third time to shoot B-roll, or alternative footage. But Chun said the producers have been coming back weekly.

"Initially, we were supposed to be on for a maximum of two or three minutes, and now we were in a 10-minute segment, presenting us as the culmination of what a burger is," Chun said.

"People were telling us, 'if you're on TV, you're gonna blow up ― just be ready,'" said Justin Sasaki, the restaurant's co-owner, who started working there four years ago. "I said, 'Let's overestimate;' we don't want to be one of those restaurants where we close at noon because we're out of food."

The show aired on Friday, July 23, right in time for the weekend. "Saturday was pretty busy, but Sunday was probably the busier day. It was the busiest Sunday we've ever had," Chun said. "But also, the reality is we don't really know. Let's say there were no COVID restrictions… would we have been busier?"

Cali Kitchen's long-running burger of the month, the Bacon Western Burger / Courtesy of Cali Kitchen

They've been working hard to convince the sudden wave of visitors to become repeat customers. To cope with the influx of diners, as well as the strict social distancing measures, they extended their hours, opening for lunch on all days including Mondays.

"It's COVID ― we need to make money somehow," Sasaki said. "The added hours spread it out and make it more manageable for us. More people come out earlier than later now."

The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on Korea's food and beverage industry, especially in the Itaewon area, which suffered following an outbreak in the area in May 2020.

"It hasn't been easy," Sasaki said. "Yeah we're doing well now, but the numbers (of customers) aren't bigger than before the pandemic. We're figuring out how to survive. Doing great? We're surviving. We're doing double the work just to get by."

The current Level 4 social distancing measures mean they can't serve groups larger than four in the daytime, and after 6 p.m., customers can't show up in groups larger than two.

"As the pandemic hit, one of the things that helped us survive is that there are so many people in the neighborhood," Chun said. "People aren't traveling very far for food. You need the regulars. Thanks for keeping us afloat."

One of the other main focuses of the restaurant has been craft beer. "Gyeongnidan is where craft beer started in Korea, literally down the street," Chun said. "In Korea, food and drinks go hand in hand. A lot of times, you can find craft beer that's decent, but you can't find good food to go with it. We want to give people a lot of reasons to come. We didn't want to be a restaurant where food is the afterthought or beer is the afterthought."

Unlike other craft beer places, they don't serve their own in-house beer, instead offering up the beers of supposed "competitors."

"We wanted to have a place where we could introduce local beers to people coming through," Chun said. "Something we hear a lot is, 'I've never heard of that brewery before.' We're kind of always sending people to other locations. People who are traveling through, they're glad they came to our place because now they know all the places to go. We want to help people who are doing it the right way so we can be the ambassador for it."

As a result of their spirit of experimentation and collaboration, they've turned Cali Kitchen into something of a platform business, where outside brewers and chefs can offer their own products. They've collaborated with Chef Greg who now runs Italian American delivery kitchen Bocca, as well as Sublord Subs and vegan cream cheese and meal providers Vivi's Veggie and Nosh.

Prior to the Level 4 restrictions, they had monthly industry nights gathering F&B professionals to give honest feedback. "It's a perfect way to test new stuff, because industry people will be honest," Sasaki said.

"We've had other restaurants thank us for doing it," Chun added.

They partnered with Hand & Malt in 2019 to start a Hawaiian brand, Mahalo Kitchen, but the pandemic got in the way before they could open. They also ran food operations at Amazing Brewing Company's flagship location for a year.

When they began offering a burger of the month last year, one of their surprise hits was a vegan burger.

"It wasn't the best-selling burger of the month, but we noticed the people coming in, they wouldn't have come in otherwise. It was a new group of customers," Chun said. "It's hard to do a vegan burger in a non-vegan space because of cross contamination. We had to ask, 'How do we make this so it can work in our kitchen?'"

Last month, they introduced vegan chorizo, which they had made with tofu, cauliflower, mushrooms and walnuts. But if customers hadn't been told it was vegan, they wouldn't have been able to guess on their own.

"Our goal is that vegan people will find vegan food and hopefully they'll find us," Chun said, "But regular people looking don't care that it doesn't have meat in it because it's good stuff. If I can make it taste really great without meat, do I need to (put meat in it)?'"

Last August, Chun and Sasaki started their second brand, American Gentleman Chicken, serving American-style roasted chicken and non-traditional sides reminding them of Californian restaurants like Zankou Chicken and California Chicken Cafe.

"I was being stubborn at the time. I said, 'This is a new kitchen, it's delivery, let's try something new and we can always go back,'" Chun said.

Chuck Chun takes a selfie with Justin Sasaki at the opening of American Gentleman Chicken last August. / Courtesy of Cali Kitchen

"We're so small we're able to pivot, and we pivot quickly when we do, which is probably why we're able to stay around," Sasaki added.

Sasaki, who came to Korea in 2016, originally started working for Cali Kitchen four years ago, when he replied to a job ad on Craigslist. An MBA holder with over 10 years of F&B experience, he had a big company job during the week, but he wanted to get a bit of experience working temporarily and see how businesses work in hopes of getting into the startup industry someday. But he liked what he saw, so he became a co-owner.

Chun's entry into the F&B industry was about as unexpected. He had moved to Korea in 2013 to work for a cosmetics company, but after a year, he planned to move back to the U.S.

"Before I left, I wanted to do something fun," he said. So he offered a one-day pop-up, which wasn't quite as common back then, named, "Stuff You Can't Eat in Korea."

The reception was positive and supportive. He ended up going back to the U.S., working in a cousin's restaurant and then returning to Korea to test the waters. He did more pop-ups and offered an omakase-style private dining service from his home.

"Initially I thought that was how it was gonna go," he said. "Although there were burger places in Korea, they didn't hit the spot for me. There wasn't Mexican food that hit the spot for me. The average Korean couldn't have good American food that resonates with me. That's kinda how it all started."

So he decided to start Cali Kitchen with his original business partner, Kenny Hirata, where they could introduce easily approachable food to customers.

"I'm not a chef, I don't consider or call myself a chef," he said. "I usually make most of the recipes here. I usually set the direction for the food."

Three owners of Cali Kitchen, from left, former owner Kenny Hirata, Justin Sasaki and Chuck Chun / Courtesy of Cali Kitchen

Both their businesses have seen an increase in delivery orders amid the pandemic, but some of Cali Kitchen's menu items are only available for eating in. Their signature butter burger, Baek Jong-won's favorite, isn't available for delivery or even takeout, because, as they explain, the butter would all melt away by the time it reached a remote customer's mouth.

Visit fb.com/calikitch or Instagram @calikitch, or find them on delivery apps such as Shuttle Delivery, Coupang Eats and Baedal Minjok.