847: Korean Soup University with Clara Lee and Eddo Kim of Queens

This Is TASTE

Clara Lee and Eddo Kim, co-founders of the San Francisco Korean American food company Queens, join host Matt Rodbard to discuss their debut cookbook, Korean Soups, and their journey from a beloved Inner Sunset

Key takeaways

• Queens began as a delivery-only deli in 2018 before evolving into an Inner Sunset superette that closed during the pandemic, pivoting to small-batch CPG products like gochujang, doenjang, and kimchi.
• Korean soups are systematically classified by broth-to-ingredient ratios: guk (broth-heavy), tang (premium/elevated), jjigae (rich/in-between), and jeongol (hearty/ingredient-dense).

Main topics

• Korean soup classifications (guk vs tang vs jjigae)
• Flavor layering and fermentation techniques

Notable quotes

"Layering can take on a lot of forms because a big part of the culture and the food culture is about time and the luxury of time."

Conclusion

The episode serves as both a culinary masterclass in Korean soup traditions and a

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) And so I think right now with so many people using different types of tin fish, it's just a good opportunity to sort of blend tin fish that you like, the one that you have in your pantry, with the kimchi that you may have stored in the back of your fridge for months. Speaker 1 (0:25) This is Taste. Speaker 3 (0:27) I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Speaker 3 (0:35) Clara Lee and Edo Kim are the co-founders of Queens, the San Francisco Korean-American food company that started as a delivery-only deli in 2018, became a beloved inner sunset souperette, and now makes gojujang, doenjang, and gojugaru from Northern California-grown ingredients. Their debut cookbook is Korean Soups, recipes for soups and stews that nourish, restore, and delight. I absolutely love it. Today in the show, Clara and Edo join me to talk about Gook vs. Tong and what closing a storefront taught them about building a brand. I hope you enjoy this episode. Speaker 3 (1:16) Ed O'Kim and Clara Lee, welcome to This Is Taste. So great to see you guys. Great Speaker 1 (1:20) to see you, Matt. Speaker 3 (1:22) Your book is amazing. Like Korean soups, what a title. It says it all. But there's like so many directions you could have gone in with it. And I think it's so comprehensive. It's like fun to read. It has a clear visual identity. I'm a huge fan. I have Speaker 2 (1:37) some favorite recipes we'll go over. But congratulations. Thank you so much. Speaker 3 (1:41) So you're in New York right now. Where have you been dining out? I'll start with you, Edo. Speaker 2 (1:46) Yes, we got in last week, and we've been staying with Clara's parents up in Rockland County. And so we haven't gone into this. This is the first day in the city, so we have a few spots in mind. I think we're going to check out Lay. And then also, if our stomachs can handle it, we'll go to Via Corota. But this past weekend, we went up to Upstate Dove's Diner. Our friend, Emma, she... opened up this wonderful diner up there and it was everything was like delicious perfect yeah Speaker 1 (2:14) yeah Speaker 2 (2:15) it Speaker 1 (2:15) was I mean it was perfect it was really yeah perfection she she's been a close friend of ours from San Francisco and she just has such a great food palette and sense of you know style and aesthetics and and so that's been really great but yeah we're excited to check out Lei Speaker 3 (2:33) So take me back to the origins of Queens. You know, you write in the book how you really had a freestyle approach to the service. And I agree, you know, you invited us in graciously to photograph for Korea World, our book, Dookie and I's book. And I loved it. I loved that visit. I'm sad it's not there. Claire, tell me about the restaurant that kind of inspired this book in some ways. Speaker 1 (2:57) Yeah, we kind of started. With the idea of having a grocery and a deli, we really wanted to put something in the community in San Francisco at the time that, you know, wasn't necessarily there. And we wanted to sort of share our knowledge of Korean food, Korean cooking techniques, but especially ingredients. And so we had this idea of a grocery and a deli. And we had this beautiful place in mind and the sunset and it was this cute. kind of long corridor looking space. And initially we were, you know, selling everything from fresh produce to small batch products that we had brought in from Korea, producers that, you know, were from family farms. fishers and ranchers that were working in really small sort of remote areas. And we wanted to introduce those ingredients to the community in San Francisco. So that eventually evolved because of COVID into a big pivot where it became more and more of our in-house products. So we kind of created a whole separate line of frozen food, sauces, condiments, different kimchis. And I think as that started to pick up, we thought of why don't we maybe do a cafe? And so when you came to the spot, that kind of arm started. And so, yeah, it kind of gradually grew and grew and grew. And eventually, I think we both realized that it had evolved into something that was a bit different than what we originally had thought of. And that was great. But I think we really fell in love with the idea of kind of the The product line and the opportunity to be able to share sort of kind of our expertise and our knowledge about the different core fundamental ingredients and kind of how to rethink that in a different lens that is separate from just importing. And so we kind of thought of how might we be able to make our own products, you know. Speaker 2 (5:11) I just wanted to add, I mean, in terms of the space, it was this long space that kind of curved. And so the more you just went in, the more you just kind of uncovered what Queens was. And then by the end of it, we kind of wanted everyone to kind of know exactly what. kind of art personality was, but also what Queens was about, which was the ingredients, but it was the art on the wall. It was Spice Girls playing in the background. It was the smells coming from the kitchen in the back. And I think that it reflects the book in a lot of ways too, in terms of the visuals, as you keep turning the page. You know, we obviously wanted it to be sort of organized in a way where you do really get to not only know about Korean soups and the ingredients, but you kind of get to know us and sort of our personality and just sort of our voice. And we kind of wanted to just... maintain, I guess, that authentic voice in the book and just kind of keep it as personal so that people didn't feel kind of too, I guess, afraid of approaching kind of Korean soups, which sometimes could be daunting because when you go to a restaurant and you get like a big, you know, gauntlet of, not gauntlet, but like a big cauldron. Junggol. Junggol, right? You're like, oh my God, this thing's a beast. But we wanted to have, you know, invite people to be able to cook that at home. And so in a lot of ways, yeah, the book, it's a good point that you bring up it. We didn't think about it that way, but it does really reflect our space, you know, our former space and what Queens represents to us. So what does the company look Speaker 3 (6:34) like now as a CBG only company? Speaker 2 (6:37) Yeah, so we we work with distributors now. You know, it's a lot. less exciting, I guess, in some sense. But for us, it's really exciting to see our product on shelves and in refrigerators. Even for us, when our kimchi landed in our neighborhood grocery, we were so excited. We go every day to our grocery and we're like, oh my God, we still get excited about it. You should. Speaker 3 (6:58) I Speaker 2 (6:59) think everyone who has pride in their product, a book or a Speaker 3 (7:02) product, definitely loves seeing it in retail. It's like something's very special. So you have tenjan and you have kimchi? Speaker 1 (7:10) We have doenjang, we have kimchi, and then we have the gochujang. Oh, Speaker 3 (7:13) right, gochujang as well. Yeah, so it's like Speaker 1 (7:14) the two fundamental base condiments and then our kimchi. That's Speaker 3 (7:18) great. And so where is it sold now? Like, is it available nationwide? Speaker 2 (7:22) Yeah, so mostly in terms of kimchi, it's mostly in California. And we're starting to break into Southern California as well, but mostly Northern California. And then gochujang, doenjang kind of scattered across the country in small independent stores. We have pretty good presence in upstate New York for... some reason, more so than New York City. Not exactly sure why that's the case. Yeah, I mean, just Boston, it's just been really cool to see kind of people have an appreciation for kind of our product. And I think in a lot of ways, I think it's speaking to sort of people's interest in Korean food in general. And, you know, people wanting to cook more with products like gochujang, doenjang. And so even seeing like a store in Miami carry our gochujang, it's like, whoa, that's kind of cool. It's very cool. Yeah. Speaker 3 (8:09) And it's a very special product. I definitely tasted it when I was visiting. And, you know, Tenjin, you have your own farm, right? Yeah. And you have your own style and methodology. And not all Tenjin is created equally. Right. It's clearly resonating. Speaker 1 (8:22) Yeah. Speaker 3 (8:23) Well, I love how this book really covers the foundational categories of Korean soups. And it's only soups. I mean, there are at the end of it. There are some other dishes, of course. But it's like tang, gook, jjigae, jeonggal, and then the broth and stock. Clara, take us through these kind of different styles of Korean soups because I think the book does such a great job of explaining what they are and why they're different. Because we see these words. in menus, you know, folks who are not Korean. And there's maybe a little bit of confusion between tang and jjigae. Speaker 1 (9:00) Yeah. For us, I think that was super important to be able to kind of explain and in a way, like you're saying, that's easily digestible, the differences between the different categories. So, yeah, I think it's pretty... pretty uncommon for soups to be distinguished like this in classifications, but in Korean cooking and Korean culture, it's a big part of it. And it's because it's based around sort of the ratio of how the soup is formed. So kuk, starting from kuk, it's a soup that has much more broth than the heavier ingredients that are inside of it. And then it... gradually escalates to a cheonggol, let's say, that has much more of the main ingredients and a lot less broth. And so we really wanted to make that very clear. And to do that, we kind of, you know, we showcase that through charts and sort of a simplified way of looking at it. But yeah, we felt like that was super important. And then going especially into the broths themselves. So that's, you know, the fundamental, the base of any good soup. And so we really wanted to outline that and have that, you know, be clearly stated and written out. Speaker 3 (10:12) I love it. I've never heard it described that way. For real. Like, it's really cool. Tang versus chige. Because we