K is for Korean: Manifestations of Culinary Identity and Masculinity in Contemporary Korean American Chef Memoirs

Year 2022, Issue: 56, 91 - 116, 01.11.2022

Gül Karaaslan

Abstract

While with the waves of K-Pop, K-Dramas, and K-Beauty
products, Korean culture has gained popularity in the U.S., Korean
culinary culture does not seem to have a substantial benefit from this
visibility since Korean American culinary identity follows a different
path. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, Korean American chefs
contributed to American foodscape with the traditional food they had
prepared at local restaurants, and cookbooks. In the 21st century, the
rise of the foodie culture provides a fresh flow through which Korean
American chefs have gained visibility in their restaurants, TV shows,
and other culinary platforms. Meanwhile, Korean American chefs heva
started to publish memoirs as a reflection of their culinary identity. The
memoirs provide a broader perspective on transformation of Korean
American culinary culture and culinary identity. The chefs, although
their approaches to memoir as a genre differ from one another, adopt
food memoirs as an expressive medium to reflect not only what they
encounter behind the doors of the industrial kitchens but also their
requiem for a sense of cultural belonging, individual expression, and
culinary subjectivity. Within this framework, this paper concentrates
on memoirs written by contemporary Korean American chefs
including Roy Choi’s L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food (2013),
Edward Lee’s Buttermilk Graffiti (2018), and David Chang’s Eat a
Peach (2020). The article aims to answer how the contemporary chefs
construct their culinary subjectivity in relation to the Korean American
culinary culture and the U.S. culinary framework. This work also tries
to intrigue how Korean American chefs envision contemporary chef
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identity with a specific focus on its intersections with ethnicity and
culinary masculinity.

Keywords

Korean American Chefs, Korean American Cuisine, Culinary Identity, Culinary Masculinity, Multicultural Kitchen

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