Koreatown: A Cookbook

For two years, chef Deuki Hong and writer Matt Rodbard gathered recipes, stories, in-the-moment photos and thoughtful interviews from Korean American neighborhoods all across the country. Koreatown: A Cookbook is their portrait of a culture, of a community that works hard, feeds generously and parties late and often.

There are nearly two million people of Korean heritage living in the United States today, spread out in Koreatowns all across the country—from sprawling Los Angeles and vertically rising New York City to smaller dots on the map. In each of these communities, big and small, society revolves around clusters of restaurants that serve the traditional foods of the motherland.

In Koreatown we follow Hong and Rodbard as they travel the United States from New York to Washington, D.C., to Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They chronicle the stories and recipes for everything from beloved Korean barbecue favorites like bulgogi and kalbi to the lesser-known aspects of Korean American food and drink, including pojangmacha, tented outdoor restaurants in Seoul that are redefined indoors in the United States. Essays and recipes detail dishes such as dakdoritang (spicy chicken stew), hoedeopbap (Korean-style sashimi over rice), gamjatang (pork neck and potato soup) and kongbiji jjigae (ground soybean stew).

Also featured are Korean-inspired recipes and interviews with chefs driving today’s leading culinary discussion: Sean Brock, David Chang, Eric Ripert, Danny Bowien, Paul Qui, Edward Lee, Hugh Acheson, Stuart Brioza, Edward Kim, Amanda Cohen, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. Journalists and celebrity Korean food fans interviewed include Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant reviewer Jonathan Gold, Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn, TV host Andrew Zimmern, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Adam Johnson.

Source: publisher’s website