Get fed
Find out more about Seoul Food’s hours, location, and menu by visiting seoulfood.kitchen. You can order takeout in person during business hours, preorder food on the website for pickup, or order food from Harvestly for delivery. Myndful Kitchen Collective is located at 977 E. Foothill Blvd. in SLO.
Two perfectly formed dumplings peer out from under the plastic lid of a to-go container. Etched with crispy brown patches and still steaming, Seoul Food‘s mandu dumplings hover over spicy pork bulgogi and rice.
Biting through the satisfyingly firm exterior, the first taste reveals that these extra large dumplings don’t need sauce. The flavor mingling through the pork, glass noodles, tofu, leek, cabbage, and green onion is enough all on its own.
Mandu dumplings, bulgogi beef, japchae noodles, kimchi, and spicy bulgogi pork are the regular stars of Korean ghost kitchen Seoul Food, which has served up Seon Kim’s authentic dishes out of commissary kitchens near the SLO Airport and off Foothill Boulevard for the last 10 months. Seoul Food manager and Seon’s daughter-in-law Anna Kim said that starting at the beginning of 2025, they will be working solely out of the Myndful Kitchen Collective on Foothill with plans to be open more days and hours to cater to the Cal Poly college crowd on that side of town.
Owning a restaurant was “just an idea,” Anna said—something that her husband’s parents talked about for 20 years. The biggest reason is because her mother-in-law is such a good cook, Anna said.
“She’s always been very good at choosing good, quality ingredients and making it into a good, flavorful dish for us,” she said.
But the family thought of a restaurant as more of a dream than anything else—that is until COVID-19, when commissary kitchens started popping up in SLO.
“We never thought of it as something that we could carry out, especially for them as immigrants, because they were tight on finances, and owning a restaurant just seemed ridiculously impossible,” Anna said. “But then we learned about these commissary kitchens.”
Commissary kitchens provide a licensed, commercial-grade space that businesses like Seoul Food can rent for a few hours at a time to store, prepare, cook, and sell their food. Kim said she noticed them popping up during the pandemic, and now there are several options to choose from in SLO County, including The Kitchen Terminal by the SLO Airport and Myndful (formerly Benny’s Kitchen) on Foothill.
Being able to use a commissary kitchen as a way to test how people felt about Seon’s food gave the family confidence to take that first step. Customers can also get what Seoul Food has to offer via local food delivery app Harvestly.
“She says that it’s been enjoyable for her and for people to try her food,” Anna said, adding that the response from customers has been positive. “That’s been something that has given her a meaningful reason to continue doing this.”
Customers who have tried Seoul Food’s kimchi, for instance, often order a bulk side of it to take home with their orders. Some even bring their own kimchi in to share with the family.
Anna said that Seon’s kimchi is Seoul style. It’s not too salty, with less of a fish sauce flavor than other areas of Korea might produce. She described it as a lighter, more approachable kimchi.
All of the food dished out by Seoul Food is Seoul style, Anna said, because that’s where Seon and her husband are from. They immigrated to the Bay Area first, which is where Anna’s husband grew up, before moving to San Luis Obispo in 2019 to be closer to their grandkids.
Seoul Food sources local Napa cabbage from Talley Farms for the fermented, spiced accompaniment to almost any Korean meal. The family tries to source its veggies as locally as possible while staying true to authentic Korean dishes at the same time.
“Not a lot of the vegetables here are the same as the vegetables in the Los Angeles area or even Korea,” she said. “Broccoli, for instance, isn’t something you would use in Korea.”
Therefore, it’s not something Seoul Food will use either. Their goal, Anna said, is to stay away from fusion-style food and stick to serving up dishes like they would make at home.
“We actually get the majority, like 90 percent, of our ingredients locally because we want to minimize us having to rely on long distance travel for us to get the ingredients,” she said.
But, still, they have to travel to Los Angeles for things like bulk Korean glass noodles made from sweet potato starch for the japchae, which aren’t available in SLO. In addition to the regulars like japchae, beef bulgogi, and spicy pork bulgogi, Seoul Food serves up specials a couple of times a month to offer customers some variety.
Sometimes, you’ll find kimbap, which Anna described as similar to a sushi roll but without the fish. It’s meat, veggies, and rice rolled up in seaweed and sliced into rounds. Or bibimbap, stir-fried veggies and rice served with bulgogi, gochujang (a Korean pepper paste), and a fried egg.
Gochujang is also the star of Seoul Food’s pork bulgogi. The pepper paste adds depth to the soy sauce-marinated meat alongside serrano pepper. Over some rice, it’s a 10/10. Δ
Editor Camillia Lanham is all about that gochujang. Send heat to clanham@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Dec 19-29, 2024.