Thanks to a fresh garden that spanned acres, and his mom\u2019s insistence on creating everything from scratch, the drive for perfection, sustainability, and farm-to-table cooking became his raison d\u2019\u00eatre.<\/p>\n
This mantra carried him through years of training under Japan\u2019s most revered cooking masters, fed his ambition to work his way up from a dishwashing station to running two of the most noted restaurants in Montreal, and moonlighting as a judge on one of Food Network Canada\u2019s top-rated programs\u2013\u2018Chopped\u2019. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s where I spent my childhood. My mom doesn\u2019t want me to say that I\u2019m born in Argentina; she wants me to say I\u2019m Korean. So I\u2019m a Korean Montrealer who grew up in Asunci\u00f3n, Buenos Aires, and Rio. What I really am is a messed-up Latino with kimchi in his blood who is seriously in love with sashimi. The food I make at Park is who I am as a person\u2014a blend of the countries I\u2019ve lived in and the cultures that formed me. I learned how to cook from my mom, watching her make things from scratch. The simplest things ever: milling your own spices at home on a stone, drying your own gochugaru peppers, fermenting your own miso, making your own soya sauce. She opened my eyes to everything. How to skin apples. How to cut green onion, napa cabbage, daikon. She gave me so much grief if I wouldn\u2019t peel garlic properly.”
\n“We wouldn\u2019t go to the market to buy fruits and vegetables; they were all in the garden. Pomegranates, yucca, mandarins, zucchinis, grapes, watermelons, eggplants, pumpkins: you name it, you can grow anything you want there. We had a massive backyard; 47,000 square feet. Full of produce. <\/p>\n
I grew up around small farmers, sustainable fishermen, and local food before anyone used those terms to describe them.” <\/p>\n
“So this is who I am, whatever this mix is. Forget the word fusion. I make sushi, I ferment kimchi, I love asado. I\u2019ve been a chef in Tokyo, Osaka, New York, Toronto, and Montreal. People think it\u2019s a sushi place, or a Korean restaurant, but it\u2019s also the South American flavours of my youth.” <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_job_location":"378 avenue Victoria , Westmount QC H3Z 2N4","_application":"info@parkresto.com","_company_name":"Park restaurant","_company_tagline":"","_company_twitter":"","_company_video":"","_filled":0,"_featured":0,"_remote_position":0,"_job_salary":"","_job_salary_currency":"","_job_salary_unit":""},"job-categories":[64],"job-types":[65],"class_list":{"0":"post-3700","1":"job_listing","2":"type-job_listing","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","5":"hentry","6":"job_listing_category-restaurants-and-bars","7":"job_listing_type-merchants-en","9":"job-type-merchants"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n