In 2019, Eunji Han set out on her foodways journey to discover her parents’ heritage through exploring the cultural and culinary differences within North and South Korea. Her food blog is Son-mat, which in Korean means the taste of one's hands. Here, Eunji documented family recipes, transcribing measurements that were once only verbally shared. Han’s friends at Bad Bishop Bar in Pioneer Square asked if she would be interested in hosting a pop-up night at the bar to feature some of her recipes. Reaching out to a longtime friend from childhood, Sara Upshaw, the pair set out to share their heritage, discovery of self through food, and the passion for traditional flavors through the Korean pop-up, Jinjja.

Eunji Han
My name is Eunji Han. I grew up here in Seattle and actually Sarah and I know each other because we met when we were children at a Korean church down in Tacoma.

Sara Upshaw
And I'm Sara Upshaw. And like Eunji said we both knew each other down in Tacoma and that's really the Korean community that I know the most and yeah, been cooking for a while now. I've run a food blog for seven-ish years now. And now we both run a Korean food popup since the summer of what year is this now?
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Eunji
2021.

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I'm hoping that the both of you could share with me a little bit about your upbringing, your family growing up and the relationship that you had with cooking. For example, do you have that first moment of smell or taste or texture that you remember back to your childhood that is related to food?

Eunji
Yeah, so my parents, or actually myself, I'm a first-generation immigrant here. And so I moved here when I was a child and my parents immigrated here in the 1980s. And my family, everybody is a really good cook. Everyone's a foodie, Sara and I talk about how Koreans in general, it's in our blood to be foodies and very critical about how food tastes and where's the best of everything.

And interestingly enough my father is North Korean and my mother is South Korean. And so I actually started my food blog two years ago because I was really curious on understanding what are the cultural and culinary differences within North and South Korea, which is something I never thought about or knew about growing up as a Korean American here. And so that is what led me to this journey.

My food blog is Son-mat, which is a Korean word for the taste of one's hands. And Chincha is our collaboration on bringing that here to Seattle. And then I would say probably in terms of what is that food memory for me is really kimchi-jjigae. So it's a kimchi stew and it's spicy and earthy. And it's the thing that my mom makes, always has for me when I get home. So I think that's just something that still is my most deepest food memory for Korean food.

Sara
I think for me, I can't remember the first food memory I have. I think when it comes to maybe not actually cooking the meal, but my halmeoni, which means grandma, her garden and being in, I think I was in preschool, just watching her pull out carrots for the stew for that night, that kind of a deal. But when it comes to actual food and cooking the church that we know each other from, the congregation was about 2,000 people, a little bit under that. And every Sunday they fed everybody, which is why I think it's just normal for both of us to be able to feed a crowd and a large group. I've had friends in the past that don't understand why it's that easy. I'm like, "Well, you got to feed a hungry congregation." Everyone took turns, there was no star person that wanted to showcase some recipe. It was more about just making sure everybody had good food and everyone was happy. So yeah, I think that would be the first one.

Thinking back to the church and just connecting where you both met, and that history. How old were you then? Were you running around playing, were you peeking in to see what's going on in the kitchen? What was your relationship with the food and with the community during those times?

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Eunji
Yeah. I mean, I think we were both there from elementary to high school, so a big portion of our lives. I do have this memory of when we were younger, I was scared to get in line to get the food, because it was all the adults had just come out of their service and the kids would be all playing on the other side and then we're like, "Can we go get our food too?" Right. And then there's the Korean ajummas. So, they're the ladies in the back who spent all day cooking for 2,000 people. And then just being there like, okay, I want to sneak in because I'm hungry. So that's a memory I have. But as you got older, you're like, yeah, I'm getting in line. I'm going to get my soup.

Sara
I feel like there was always somebody's mom's friend was working and so they would make sure the kids got fed. They're like, "Okay, just come here."
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You mentioned soup. Was soup something that was popular? Thinking about feeding 2,000 people what were some of the meals that you remember?

Eunji
They were super simple soups. I remember there was always a radish and beef soup or miyeok-guk, which is the seaweed soup. So, a lot of just easy, clear broth with vegetables and a little bit of meat is what I remember.

Sara
But I Think it's one of those things where it seems simple to us, but other people coming in would probably be like, "Wow."

Eunji
Yeah, this is true.

Sara
This is a lot. And it was always flavorful. It's not plain, I don't want to say hospital food, it's not a lot of flavor because even in hospitals nowadays, everyone's pulling in because they understand the importance of it. But yeah, there were lots of soups and I remember going in the kitchen and there was always huge vats of rice cookers and stews and then, I think there was a grill, lots of fridge space. It was a big commercial kitchen.

Eunji
It was a very big kitchen. And I don't know if you were in that class, but in the summer that one year they had a cooking class for kids? And Jen's mom taught it, I think. And so I remember as kids, we got to go in there and learn how to cook the food. And I think that was one of my first cooking classes ever where I was like, "This is how you do it." So yeah, it's so funny I haven't thought about that in so long.
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Thinking back, I know I asked you about that food first memory, but moving ahead, you're mentioning food classes and starting to begin cooking. And I'm wondering if you could both share with me, when did you begin cooking? Were you working with your grandmothers or your mothers? Was it in this class that began to develop?

Eunji
For me, my parents were always the hosts of dinner parties or we also hosted a lot of holidays for everybody. And so I grew up knowing that they were both really good cooks. And I remember that I used to go to the library and rent out cookbooks and then I would go through and pick recipes and be like, "I'm cooking dinner tonight." And most of those dinners were inedible. I remember my mom being like, "What did you put in this?” Because I had no idea how to cook. And that was probably when I was 10.

So, I think I'd always wanted to be a cook, but didn't understand flavor and proportions and ingredients then. But since I was nine or 10, I started to understand that and be able to actually cook edible food, which is great. But even till this, I'm hoping this Thanksgiving, my parents will believe I know how to cook, because even till now my mom will be like, "So you have a popup. Do you actually cook the food?" She doesn't believe it, because also my brother is also a really good cook. And so I've always been the last person in the totem pole that can cook in my family. So hopefully I can change that perception this year, we'll see.

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Maybe it's a Thanksgiving swapping of best practices over to the dinner table?
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Eunji
We'll see. I don't know.
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And Sara, how about you?

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Sara
So, for me, the first memory that I do remember actually cooking was I think I was in middle school and it was for my older sister. We're about six years apart and it was rice and tuna and soy sauce. And it was a staple that I made often. And I just remember being a little sister wanting to impress the big sister of course. I would just get so joy if she ate it. It was edible, because you can't really screw that up. But it was just like, I'm like is she going to eat it? Is it going to be okay? And it was, and she did. So I do think that that's one of the beginning dishes that I would replicate and it's definitely advanced. Now it's a fancy tuna with some seaweed garnishes and all that stuff when I make it today. But it always sends me back to that middle schooler when I was making it for family.

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Your heritage and culture, talk to me a little bit about the role of that and that marriage with cooking. Was it something that you've always reached out to that you've been connecting to learn more about ingredients, spices, bases of things that root back to ancestral recipes? Is this something that you were cooking and having fun and perhaps later in life, you took that dive back into that? Would you share a little bit about just the relationship with your heritage marrying that with food?

Eunji
Yeah. I think for me starting the food blog was this way for me to reconnect with my family. I lived in New York City for about 15 years, and I had just moved back three years ago. And while I was on the east coast, I didn't really speak to my family much just because I was always busy or it was hard to travel back and forth. And I think it was an easy way to have a conversation with my family because it's something that they're all passionate about. And the thing that was really cool for me was to hear the stories that I've never heard before. And I got the idea for my blog when Thanksgiving, when I was at a dinner with my parents, we're a little drunk, everyone's a little drunk and that's actually when I realized, I was like, oh my God.

…my dad is from North Korea, and my mom's from South Korea because they were talking about how, when they first got married, it was so hard for them to eat together because their palates were different. And so I was like, wow, I didn't know this. And I was like, how do I not know this about my heritage? And it sparked why I started writing and collecting recipes and trying to translate a lot of my parents' recipes.

And then it also gave me an opportunity even when I talk to my grandma, who was from North Korea. And so I was asking her, "What are the recipes that you cooked when you lived there?" And it was fun because then my grandma can't search the internet. So then my aunt got involved and was like, "Here are the recipes that grandma wants you to see."

And so it was just this nice way to connect with them because I think without that food story, I don't know what I would be talking to them about, but it's just something that we can all come to the table to discuss. And obviously family is a complicated topic for everybody, and so is heritage.

One of the things that I think Sara and I are passionate about with Jinjja is Korean recipes have been very Americanized for Western palettes and really bringing it back to the recipes that we grew up with and that Koreans eat and sharing that with the Seattle community is important to us. So, using food to bring it back to what it should be, I think is where my heritage and food comes from.

Sara
For me, it's definitely like, Eunji was saying, family's complicated for everybody. I am actually estranged from a lot of my family on both sides of my mom and my dad. And my mom's Korean, and my dad is American. He's from Georgia in the South. And going through identity crisis and all that stuff that we all do, for me, it was just not understanding who I was anymore and where I was going to have a connection with people.

I'm a very big advocate for chosen family and understanding that even no matter your situation, you can always have a chosen family. And in that family unit, you can still have the joy, the compassion, the encouragement, all that stuff that you do. And through cooking, that's how I was able to find that chosen family and be able to be a part. That's how I bring nourishment to our family unit basically is how I call it.

Seeing all these Americanized Korean recipes, being half Korean, I was just trying to figure out, I can tell that food is going to help me bring my identity and help me understand my identity. And part of that is Southern cooking too. So, I'm always going to be learning, but learn about Southern food. And that's why even putting meat on fire is what I call it, grilling and whatnot, really understanding that relationship, which does translate into Korean cooking.

And another thing, I'm finding out there was a lot of components of my identity. One is being raised with a military family. So, understanding the food, having a lot of the mothers that were brought over with the American military to raise their families and only having the ingredients at the commissary, it's how are you going to make any type of food that even is recognizable to Korean food.

And so, growing up, it was interesting now to see what all the mothers were doing to like make sure it was at least similar, so their children can taste it. And fortunately, now, especially in the Northwest, we have so many Korean grocery stores and options and online that you can order. But then I think I realized that's why a lot of the Korean ingredients were actually like Japanese, because that was more common here, and it was translated that way.

And then I would see other people make these "Korean" recipes, which is, it's hard to, we never come from a spot of wanting to be the judge of authenticity because what does that even mean? Right. But it's just having the respect and the knowledge of knowing where the base is. If you're going to make a kimchi stew, what are you putting it in it and why? If you're going to switch things out, that's okay. But that's what made me start the food blog too, it was really wanting to define Korean food for myself so that I can understand myself a little bit better.

Both of you brought up the subject of ingredients and I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing with me, when you think about Korean food, when you think about authentic or whatever it may be, I'm wondering back to some of the women that you mentioned of where were they pulling those ingredients, where were they able to source them? I'm wondering if you could share with us a bit about what are those flavors, what are those herbs or spices that come up to you?

Eunji
Yeah. I mean, I think Korean cooking is complex in the sense that there is just so many ingredients that go into it. Probably the base, is like 고추가루 (gochugaru), which is our Korean red pepper. So that goes in everything, anything that's red has that. Almost, I would say 80% of everything we cook has some element of that. Soy sauce, another huge part of, ingredients. 된장 (doenjang), which is a fermented miso that we use is also another one. 고추장 (gochujang), which is a fermented red pepper paste, it's like a paste, not a pepper.

Sara
An example that I like to bring up a lot is just, just soy sauce in itself because every country has so many different types. The Korean soy sauce is different from Chinese, that's different from Japanese. And even that, a lot of people don't know about that. And why would they, because they are used to seeing just Kikkoman in the grocery store. And so it's been nice to be able to see the actual Korean ingredients. So even the chili flakes, I think the number one question both of us probably get outside of just in regular day to day is like, "Can't I just use this other chili flake? Can't I just use the one that I get on my pizza?" It's like, "No, you could make tomato sauce with ketchup, but probably don't want to." So it's like one of those situations I feel like.

Eunji
Yeah. And actually the soy sauce is a great example because even in Korean soy sauces, there's a lot of types. So there's 국간장 (guk-ganjang), which is for soups. And there's 진간장 (jin-ganjang, which is for actual stir frying. And so I did not know that growing up, and us cooking, we're like, "You got to use this for this." And so there's so many subtleties to that.

Sara
A lot of, it's related to the ingredients, something that I noticed with my mom and other people that they ... Wow. My train of thought, just flew for a second, hold on. It was about pre-made things. So back in Korea, I was told in the early days there was a lot of you just having to make everything from scratch to the point when I was growing up and did have more of a relationship with my mother, we talked a lot about like, well, why would, just buy it. Why do you want to make it from scratch? But our generation is starting to bring that up again of wanting to know the recipes. And even when we'd ask family members, they're like, "I don't know, like this, like why do you want to know?" And so we wouldn't, that's why we didn't know about the certain ingredients that were used. We would just see them and see that something was put in there, but never explained why.

Eunji
Yeah. And that actually goes back to, I was thinking about this in one of your questions is, growing up Korean American, I think our families were so eager to assimilate us into being Americans that in many ways it was easier for them to just say like, "Forget your culture, forget your language and forget what you're going to eat at home and just assimilate." And there was partially you go to school and my mom used to pack me Dosirak which is a Korean lunch box, and I'd be so embarrassed, because everybody was eating a bologna sandwich and I'd like bust out rice and kimchi, and everyone's like, "What is that?"
And so, now I'd be like, "Oh my gosh, no, I want this, not your bologna sandwich." But I think growing up in the 80s and 90s, that wasn't as accepted. And so I feel like our generation is now trying to reclaim and be like, "Hey, actually I want this to be a part of my day to day. And I want to understand, and put it as a part of our actual lives versus just assimilating."

Just thinking about your journey here, and both of you have mentioned that part of cooking has been a journey of identity and a journey of looking back to the ancestors, to families, to stories, who have been some of the people in your lives, in your families or other chefs, or perhaps each other that have helped you form this journey to bring you to today?

Eunji
Probably for me is my mom. My parents own a restaurant as well. And so watching them run a restaurant has given me a little bit of a foundation for when we started our popup. And she's always just been notoriously a good cook. Any compliment about her from even my family or friends is like, "She's a really good cook." And so, I think she's inspired me to want to get to her level of cooking and Sara and I will base a lot of times, like, "Does this taste like my mom's kimchi or not?"

And so, I think that she's been a really great resource for us. When we're like, "What should this taste like?" I'll just call my mom and be like, "Mom is this right?" And she's like, "Okay, do it this way." And then, also interestingly enough, my father who also is a really good cook, one thing I learned that was interesting is I was talking with a friend and she said that she's never seen her dad even hold a spoon. Men don't cook in Korean culture. And so I was in many ways, really happy that my dad did cook for me because now that I think back to my childhood, he cooked me North Korean food, and my mom would cook me South Korean food. And so like in being able to tap back to that, I've been like, I know what that is, and they didn't know, it was North Korean. And just being able to understand how they bring those culinary differences into my world has been really great for me to reconnect with.

Are there any examples that you could share between your mother and your father's styles of cooking?

Eunji
Yeah, so South Korean food is hot and sweet. So my mom makes really red hot spicy kimchi. And North Korean food, usually it's blander, and they're known for their white water, kimchis. So it's just a totally different style of food. And I would say North Korean food, because it is colder and they didn't have all the ingredients like the South Koreans did, just like in America, the ingredients are very different. North Korean food, there's a lot of salted fish because they had to preserve things more because it just got cold and they didn't have access to different waters or vegetation as much.
And so, yeah, you'll see the differences in my parents' palette, of my dad doesn't like things spicy, he doesn't like sweet things. North Koreans don’t eat a lot of sweet things in general. And the funniest thing is, my dad still says to my mom, your mom's the worst cook, everything just has too much sugar. And then my mom will be like, "Well, your food is really bland and boring." And so that's how I describe it. Those are the differences. And then North Koreans in general were just a poor part of the country. And so there's a dish where literally it's just cold rice and kimchi juice with water. And that was what you ate. And my dad used to make it for me and I'd be like, "What the hell is this?" But now I'm like that is an actual dish, a North Korean dish, because that's what they had.

Sara
‍I think for me, no, I think I know it's definitely my halmeoni, my grandmother, she really taught me not through spoken word because we didn't speak the same language. I can speak Korean like a third grader. I can understand it pretty fluently. I don't know where that disconnect happened. I know a lot of half Korean kids that say the same. But she would just show me how to feed people to make sure that there was enough. Because she had five kids growing up and then she actually took in her sister and her sister's kids. And that was an additional, were so many, I don't remember, five or six. I think there was 11 of them total. And so she just made sure that everyone was always taken care of.
And I remember growing up as a kid, she would always find the best deals on everything, because that was so important, the eggs and maybe it's a day old, but it's actually fine. And I'm like, okay, and all that. Making sure that there was so much banchan, which is all the side dishes that we have. So like kimchi, things that can stay fermented for a long time so that it's always at the ready.
Yeah, one of my favorite memories of her is when we were, my cousin and I were in Minnesota and it was just me and my cousin and my grandma and we were just eating instant noodle ramyeon, which we loved. She was like, "Oh my gosh, there's no banchan." So she just went in the kitchen and just found stuff. I was like, "I don't know what's happening. This is wonderful."
And I think another person, actually, a lot of people credit her to coming back to home cooking for Korean food is Maangchi who she is a YouTube sensation. And she's the, they say the Korean Julia Child, but she can hold her own. She's everyone's Korean mom when it comes to cooking. And she's definitely one of the first people. I've never met her before, but she taught me a lot of my cooking, because she actually explained it. And like I was saying before, that's a very unusual thing to actually say how to exactly do it. And she would even say in her videos, "You guys need measurements. So I made sure I measured this time, but really here's where you can freestyle and whatnot." So yeah, she's someone that a lot of people, she's near and dear to our hearts.

And a lot of those recipes’ skills have been passed through that oral tradition that you mentioned, less writing down of exact measurements. Wondering if the two of you could share a little bit about the popup, how did it come about? Why now? And also Pop-Ups in Seattle, right? You are building food that is stemmed from grandparents and parents and that you've created all tied in this Seattle Pop-Up craze.  

Eunji
So this is where it all started. So Jesse, who is one of our dear friends, him and I, one night we were just talking about, this actually used to be a Korean restaurant. And so for him it had this nostalgic like, "Can we do Korean food here?" And so he had known I had started this food blog and one night we were like, "All right, let's do a Korean Pop-Up." And I committed before I knew how I was going to do it. And so we're like, "All right, we're going to do it." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have no one to help me. I've never worked a full kitchen."
And Sara and I had connected on Instagram of all places doing our Korean food blog stuff. And so we rebuilt our connection and just on a whim because I was like, "Oh my gosh, I don't have anyone help me." I was like, "Sara, do you want to help me?" And she thankfully said yes. And that's how we started our Pop-Up. And we didn't know if it was going to be anything more than just a one time fun experiment.

Sara
Right. Just like a one night thing, for sure.

Eunji
Yeah.

And right now we're in the, you want to let listeners know where we're sitting and where we're located?

Eunji
Yeah. So we are at Bad Bishop Bar in Pioneer Square. And they've been around for about five years now. And they're a wonderful, beautifully decorated cocktail bar here in Pioneer Square.

Sara
And they've been one of our biggest supporters throughout this journey. It's been so easy to work with them. And Jesse and Keaton own the bar. And they just make sure that no matter what we need we have provided for us, whether it's logistic questions or ingredient ordering questions and whatnot. But yeah, I remember the day when I got the text message from Eunji and we hadn't talked to each other for almost 17 years, we found out, because we had just, Eunji crossed into New York, I stayed here and life happens and I didn't even realize it was her photos that I was liking and commenting on. I was like, I feel like, because I didn't see any of your pictures, because obviously if they did then I would've.

But then that's when we were connected. And I remember getting the DM and I was in the middle of writing a cookbook at that time. And I was like, "This should be, it might be a one-night thing, sure, of course." And it's not just been a one-night thing, which has been great.

But yeah, the craze in Seattle it's been phenomenal with Pop-Ups because a lot of people are able to experience food that they never would in a normal, just a sit-down restaurant situation.
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To be frank, in Seattle, everyone knows it's an expensive city and it is difficult for people to have actual restaurants and stores set up because of all the red tape that this city has compared to other cities. So, this Pop-Up situation has been so nice to be able to be there for a community that's just craving something different or craving nostalgia.
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That's our customer base. It's either someone that's wanting something new or someone that's like, "Oh my God, I haven't had this since I was a kid." We've heard that a lot. Yeah, which has been wonderful.

Eunji
And the Pop-Up community in Seattle has been amazing. At our last Pop-Up, I think we had six or seven other popups just come in to say hello. And we've been really good about connecting and supporting all the other Pop-Ups. And it's become like this mini support group of like, "Hey, how are you doing this? And what's going on here?" And sharing tips and tricks. So that's been really awesome to see for Seattle.
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When the two of you were coming together, how did you develop the menu?

Eunji
I think that's our favorite part of Pop-Ups, because her and I both separately have a ton of different recipes that we've created and we cook. And I think the magical process is usually, what do you want to cook this in? What do I want to cook?

And then we'll align on like, well, what do we want the experience to be? Or what's in season? And I think a lot of times we root it down to, what do we want to share? Because we don't want to cook just the things that you can get at any Korean restaurant, the standards. So we want to cook things that are near and dear to our hearts as well as new for other people hopefully. And so I think most of our menus have been different. They're seasonal. Like our 4th of July Pop-Up, we had a Seattle Korean hot dog, which is actually a huge hit. We'll probably have to bring it back this summer. But we try to keep it seasonal as well as just something that we want to share with our community.

Sara
And we're also balancing the, with Pop-Ups people don't expect a lot of, what is it? Needing to switch out ingredients. They want to just take what's offered to them. But we also understand there's a lot of people with different food lifestyles or restrictions who being vegan and gluten free, all that stuff. We're navigating through that also because in the end we want to be able to feed as many people as we can, but we know that we can't please everyone.
But part of that has been education on our part for other people. A lot of kimchi and side dishes have fish sauce to season. And that's just common. But in, say all of America, for some reason, it's like, "No, if it looks like it's just vegetable, then it should be, why would you mix it?" And then we'll have to explain, well, it's the depth of the umami and that's how you get the saltiness and whatnot. So that's been interesting. Something that I don't think that we predicted that we were going to have to do, but it's been fine. It helps us know about it a little bit more too.

I love the idea of the hot dog. Is the Seattle, hot dogs, there’re a thing, Seattle hot dog. What are some ways is in which you've evolved in the older traditions? Something that inspired you that was maybe handed down. But as you're saying, you bring in that seasonal, you bring in local things that are fresh in season here in Seattle and the Northwest. Would you share a little bit about what that evolution has looked like?

Eunji
Yeah. I think for me, it's been around our kimchis. And so when we have our Pop-Ups, we do a lot of banchans, which are the side dishes. And for the kimchis we'll always try to do, we'll always have of our standard Napa (cabbage), but we've done a lot of different iterations and different things that are in season. So like, once we did garlic ramps, which is a really fun one to do. This round, we did chives because they were in season.
And I think, we're always trying to figure out like how do we use things that are in season too.
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As much as we try to be traditional, we also want to be thinking forward. I think ferns, we have a lot of ferns here in the Pacific Northwest. So I remember as a child, my mom would, we had these woods across the street, she'd go in there and pick the ferns. So me and my brother would go pick a ton of ferns and she'd dehydrate them so we could eat them in soups as well as side dishes.

Sara
We would do the same. You'd just see on the side of the roads, 20 Koreans just going at it. Parents and the kids just waiting patiently or trying to.

Eunji
Or blackberries, blackberry wine is a big thing in Korean culture. So I remember my grandmother who was visiting from Korea, she made us pick a bunch of blackberries so she can make us wine. An interesting thing I've seen my mom do, and I've adopted is they live out in Ocean Shores. And so they razor clam a lot, which I'm going next week. And so she'll actually use that for the base of Miyeok guk, which is the seaweed soup. And so she uses the local ingredients for different things and I'm like, "That's actually a really great mash up." And so just being able to incorporate some of the amazing ingredients we have here in into our food has been really fun.

Sara
We like to say that we do traditional and playful. So another popular item that we have is spam chips, because spam is very important in Korean cuisine. I'm not going to try to generalize and say all Koreans love it. But every Korean I know does. Yeah. It's a important part of being able to quickly cook this meal. And when it first came to Korea, it was because of the military base nearby. And it was just something that was available. So it goes in stews, it goes pan fried, with rice or put it in Kimbap, which is the roll or it's in everything. So we definitely incorporate it whenever we can just to give people a taste, because a lot of people we found out they get scared of it a little bit. They're like, "No, you have to eat it the right way. You don't eat a hot dog right out of the package. There's certain ways to do it."

So anything that the two of you would like to share that we haven't talked about specifically with a Pop-Up where people can find more information or listening? Any information?

Eunji
So we've decided to take the holidays off, which it's always good to take rest. And then next year we're actually planning on really doing a residence here at Bad Bishop Bar and depending on timelines for both us. We both have full-time jobs. And so we have to work around that, but hopefully monthly or bimonthly we'll be able to host here in Bad Bishop in 2022. And so, stay tuned for that.

Sara
I think it'll be good for our customer base because even though popups are exciting and moving around to different locations, we've been able to feed different people in different regions of Seattle, but it'll be nice for us to have a home base, so people know where to go if they can't make one, they can catch the next one. And we know we have a full on kitchen, which is nice, because some public locations that you'll have a table, it's like, all right, there's your challenge.

Eunji
Yeah. And I think one of the things that we've been talking about experimenting next year is really around banchans and Bad Bishop, they're going to maybe incorporate even into their menus here. And so once we figure out what that's going to look like, hopefully we can get Seattle some good banchan here. So good kimchi.
Thinking about just the last section is that transmission of legacy. And both of you are bringing forth recipes, you're bringing forth all parts of who you are in your heritage, as well as your Northwest roots. How do you see that food continuing through? How do you, you talked about a little bit of the evolution that you're bringing forth. You also shared a bit about people who are showing up are either remembering a taste that they haven't had in a really long time or they're discovering it for new.

How do you see yourselves as part of that continuation of legacy of food?

Eunji
I think for me it would be really around really fostering a community where we can share food and share stories.

It's been a journey for me and Sarah to really discover our own heritages and identity, giving people the space to do that as well through food. And if it is able to spark conversations with their family or help them tap into something that they haven't been thinking about that they want to reconnect with, I think food has that powerful element to do that.

And I think something we're super passionate about with Jinjja is building a community and supporting just the Pop-Up scene and also elevating other voices around us. And so hopefully this can be that platform for us to be able to do that for community.

Sara
I think for me, when it comes to legacy and passing things on it's a very, legacy means something so different these days. And like I talked about before really understanding the importance of chosen family and whatnot. For me, it's being able to take the time to actually share the recipes and stories online. Just like Maangchi is the Korean mother for so many people right now. There's a lot of people that don't have that traditional family landscape and are part of the Korean community in one way or another, whether they're a Korean adoptee or they have a partner that's Korean or they just have a love of the food, they have a connection some way and they're just looking for some guidance. And that's something that I try to remember when there's a lot of information online and it's a lot of free work and hard work and whatnot.

But that's what builds on top of each other in order to share with other people. Because when people tell you I've made your recipe or I made this thing for my partner who's been missing it, it's just amazing. It's like jolts to the heart in a positive way. It's pretty great. But yeah, I think, and that's what we're doing in Jinja too. Just exposing more about Korean food to other people so it doesn't die down into this whitewashed version. It's something that's like, "Hey, this is actually more authentic ingredients or how it would be prepared authentically." Maybe not the hot dog but our stews and whatnot. But yeah.

Well thank you. And thank you both so much for sharing so much of yourself and your history and what you both are building in here.

Sara
Thanks for having us. This was exciting. It's not usual to just sit down and talk about history and whatnot. And I think it brought up a lot of memories that we didn't even, we haven't thought about in a long time for sure. ‍

Eunji
Yeah. Thank you so much.
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And you brought some photos.

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Eunji
Yes.
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I'm wondering if you'd like to share some of those.

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Eunji
Yeah. So actually my brother brought these from Korea that my grandmother had of my mom. And so I had used these for my blog as well. And so just one, it's always fun to see what your mom looked like when she was a child. But she also has these really great photos. People cooking, and it's fun to see how Koreans ate in their homes, as well as I brought ... So how my blog started was my best friend as a wedding present to me, I'm no longer married, worked with my mom to write down all the Korean recipes that were my favorite. And so that was a wedding gift to me. And so she wrote this, but the best part is she had no measurements. And so my blog is really all about me taking her recipes and actually putting measurements to it. And so I brought just, and she'll write the ingredients as say, "It should taste like this." And I'm like, okay. And so, yeah, that's actually where a lot of my food recipes started from.

Is this your mom in this photo?

Eunji
Yes.

Sara
Which one is she? On the left?
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Eunji
She's the one first.
Sorry dad. I don't have any photos of you. You're somewhere. They're probably in my parents' house.
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So you've taken the time to actually go through, figure out the exact measurements. How long did that process take?
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Eunji
It was too long. And as Sarah knows, creating recipes and measurements is, it takes so much time actually, because a lot of Korean cooking, you just put it in. But when you have to create these recipes, you actually have to the measure and document all of it. So yeah, a lot of the recipes on my blog are these that I've translated over.

Sara
Yeah. Even something as simple as half cup of kimchi in recipes today, you have to be specific about, is it very well fermented? Is it a little bit more fresher?

Eunji
How much juice goes in it?

Sara
Right. Some people will be like, "Well, this doesn't taste the same." And I'm like, "Well, I think the ingredients might be a little different, that's why."

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Yeah.
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Thank you.

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