About once a year, Junho Lee’s halmeoni would ship pounds of soy-pickled perilla leaves from Seoul. “Whenever [my grandmother] would send that over, we would scarcely eat it,” he says. “Just a little bit per meal at a time, because we knew that it was such a luxury to have.”
Lee was born in South Korea, but when he was two, his parents emigrated to Gurnee, about an hour from any dedicated Asian grocery that stocked the white Korean radish—or mu—necessary to prepare a similar soy-pickled onion and radish side dish his grandmother supplied. However, there was a Mexican grocery nearby, where his mother discovered an acceptable substitute.
“For the longest time, I thought chayote was a Korean ingredient,” says Lee. “It wasn’t until I got into the restaurant industry that I discovered it was Mexican.”
Now 23 and a graduate of Kendall College, Lee’s first restaurant job was at Beverly Kim’s Parachute. These days, he doesn’t have that problem anymore. There’s plenty of mu around to make the jangachi onion and radish the way his grandmother does.
“That’s very dear to me,” he says.
You can try it for yourself when Lee brings Haru Haru to the next Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up—now at Thattu in Avondale.
“‘Haru haru’ means ‘day by day’ in Korean,” Lee explains. “Something my parents said to me a lot growing up was to not chase after anything. Just do your thing and take it day by day, and it will all come chasing after you.”
Lee has been doing his own thing since he launched his Korean pop-up from his own apartment in 2023, having served some 90 different menus—never the same thing twice.
This time, he’s offering a set two-course meal featuring pajeon—the scallion pancake appetizer he’s serving with green chili, corn, and a black garlic-spiked vinegar-soy dipping sauce.
The main event is a steaming bowl of sundubu jjigae, the restorative soft tofu seafood stew brimming with mussels, shrimp, squid, scallops, and a surprise cameo of fresh noodles from Mike “Ramen Lord” Satinover’s Akahoshi Ramen.
This comes with the classic pairing of Halmeoni Moon Sook Song’s jangachi onions and radishes, alongside Lee’s father’s recipe for danmuji kimchi—yellow pickled radish with sesame oil, honey, and gochujaru.
“I think with this weather, it reminded me a lot of whenever I would visit my parents,” Lee shares. “We’d always go get sundubu at a Korean restaurant. There’s this thing called ‘siwonhan-mat,’ which means ‘refreshing taste,’ but it’s very particular. You can get it from something that is spicy, typically enhanced with seafood and radish. You can almost say it’s, like, hot and cold.”
The refreshing tastes begin at 6 PM this Monday, October 20, at Foodball’s provisional new home Thattu, located at 2601 N. Fletcher in Avondale. (Cash or Zelle only this time.)
Thanks to owners Margaret Pak and Vinod Kalathil, it’s a veritable omphalos for old Foodball friends.
It’s also where you’ll find us on October 27th, when Piñatta throws down for its annual—and ultimate—Luna Negra Halloween pop-up, featuring pastry chef Mary Eder-McClure of Galit and Cafe Yaya.
https://chicagoreader.com/food/monday-night-foodball/haru-haru-thattu-junho-lee-korean-food-pajeon-sundubu-jigae/
