Jenny Kwak: Korean food is always comfort food to me.

That's really what I want to eat at the end of the day.

Robin Ha: Well, in the early 2000s, that was still the time where not many people really knew about Korean food.

Either, like, I have to find somebody's mom to cook for me or I have to go to 32nd Street.

Jenny: There was 32nd Street, but there was really nothing downtown.

That's actually why I thought we should open in the East Village.

Shohui Kim: I remember thinking, "Wow.

It's so nice that Korean food is getting popular enough that we're just leaving Koreatown."

Jenny: You might think something I cooked is strange, but it's OK because somebody's going to get it.

That's what I love about New York.

Shohui: It's so great to know that young people these days know words like bibimbap and japchae and soondubu, and we don't have to say Korean chili paste anymore.

We say gochujang, and people know what that is.

[Chopping] This is a recipe that I've been making for over 15 years, so fan favorite, and also it is our favorite.

It's like a mash-up of pork and chive potstickers, Korean mandu, and, um--and Japanese gyoza.

I first learned how to make dumplings with my mother, my grandmother, and that's what I like to do with my children actually, sit around the table and make dumplings together.

This is a Korean family thing.

Who could resist dumplings anyway, they're so good?

You pinch, and then you give, you pinch, fold, pinch, fold, pinch, fold, pinch, fold.

Oliver, will you have some?

Oliver: Yes.

I'm very hungry.

Shohui: Who did this?

That's pretty good, Jas.

Oh, OK. That's good.

[Sizzling] Guys need some napkins?

Jasper: Yeah.

Shohui: Good?

Oliver: It's really hot.

[Sizzling] Shohui: Oh, yum!

Come on.

So good.

Korean food is something that I wanted my children, who are biracial--I thought it was really important for them to learn the communal dining of Korean cuisine.

As an immigrant, having grown up eating the food and then at a certain point rejecting the food, you know, in my assimilation and growing up in the Bronx and then sort of coming full circle as a chef, learning different types of cuisines--French, Italian, new American.

When we had small children, it really was Korean food that was on my mind, and that's really what I wanted to eat every single day.

[Indistinct chatter] Korean barbecue--that was the idea.

My husband said, "We have to open a Korean barbecue restaurant, and it must have karaoke rooms," and I said, "Oh, you're crazy."

Ha ha ha!

Robin: I think it's, like, in our human DNA to just want to sit around the fire and grill some meat.

Shohui: I do ultimately believe the most intimate thing is to consume food and drinks, and it's the most energizing forces of life is to gather.

But insofar as Korean barbecue is concerned, I was also really wanting to showcase the banchan that goes around the grill, and when you put everything together and then you wrap it up and do what I call the perfectly balanced Korean burrito and you chomp away, and when you realize the meat is not the main player.

It is the harmony and the way that the meat--the sweet meat plays with everything that is on the table--that is the beauty of Korean barbecue.

Because it is a crossover restaurant where we're not catering to a lot of Koreans, there was a lot of education involved in terms of food and the way that we barbecue.

That really made Insa what it is today.

[Indistinct chatter] [Jenny speaking Korean] Jenny: Here actually, I decided not to serve fermented kimchi because the work involved in that, it's not a 1-2-3 process.

It takes a week.

[Speaking Korean] There's also people that don't eat it, and when I see my mother's kimchi being thrown away, it just crushes me.

Here, what we do is we serve a kimchi that is a shorter process.

So it's brined, and then it's dressed with a lot of spicy chili pepper and garlic and fish sauce.

Kimchi making is like bread making.

You can't stop.

It's so necessary because it just gives you balance.

Robin: I don't remember a meal without kimchi in it.

It's simple as that.

It's really so versatile.

Nowhere that kimchi doesn't fit in, so it's really the essential item in Korean cuisine.

Jenny: If I were to say, "You know, Mom, why don't you just take a break and not make kimchi anymore?"

she would look at me like, "Well, what do you mean?"

She can just do it with her eyes closed, and the flavors are always just there.

OK. [Woman speaking Korean] Yes.

So I learned to cook from my mom.

My mother was always a very strong part of my life.

In the nineties, her cooking style was very uncommon, the home-cooked style.

I asked her one day, you know, "Why don't we open a restaurant?"

And she said, "Are you crazy?

You don't know what you're talking about.

You're 19."

Heh heh.

I was like, "Well, I have to get a job.

You have to get a job.

Let's just do it."

Started there, and then we just have kept going, and honestly, I think it all really worked because my mother's cooking was so good.

Otherwise, I don't think we would have survived.

Back then, it was just--it was a scene.

When you watch movies, like, from the nineties, it's exactly what it was.

That's what I love about New York.

Back then, Korean food just didn't really hit downtown.

Definitely, there was a desire for it.

I had one of the first Korean restaurants downtown.

I think flavors evolve.

I think that's what's interesting and kind of fun about having a restaurant in New York because people are always looking for more.

You get spoiled by how many choices you have.

It was, you know, hard to win them over.

The East Village was an amazing place to be.

I moved into the East Village when I was 19.

Robin: Wow.

Jenny: Yeah.

I owned Dok Suni's up till 2006.

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That was, like, the only Korean restaurant basically in this area, so I used to go there a lot.

I had no idea that I would actually be talking to you, like, 15 years later, but--ha ha ha--here we are.

Jenny: It's so interesting.

Robin: Yeah.

Jenny: Go to a bar, come home, watch a movie.

[Both laughing] Wow.

This used to be Dok Suni's.

Shohui: I'd think about that a lot as I opened Insa, you know--in a sort of a non-expected place for a Korean barbecue.

Jenny was, I would say, the very first in the city to do that.

So big hats off, and I'm a huge admirer of her work.

Benjamin Schneider: We love being in Red Hook, but on the business level, it gets very sleepy in the winter, and there's not a lot of people.

Shohui: So we wanted to go to where the people were.

Benjamin: Where the people were, but we were looking pretty much in Gowanus because it was close to our house, close enough, because I knew I was going to be going back and forth all the time.

Also close to where the kids were going to elementary school.

Shohui: Mm-hmm.

The genesis of Insa is really about wanting to create a place of our own in Brooklyn, in our life basically rather than driving to these amazing Korean enclaves like Flushing.

I make the trip here once a month for needs of Insa, but I also come here to just do regular shopping.

You know, if I want to make tojangguk at home, you know, I'll just go to H Mart and pick up, you know, the few ingredients that I might not have at the restaurant.

Look at these beautiful rice cakes.

I'm gonna get them all.

[Cashier speaking Korean] [Shohui speaking Korean] What's so great about coming to Flushing, neighborhoods like Flushing for me as a Korean immigrant is the people, right, and where you have Korean people, you have the latest fad foods and the old traditional foods and shopping, and it's like a little mini-trip to Korea for me.

This is exciting.

I've never done this before.

[Computer chimes] We need a sweet potato hotdog, and then we need a cheddar cheese.

Oh, no, we need the ramen hot dog.

Since it's mochi donut, that it is made with rice flour, right?

Like, pounded rice.

So I'm going to get a dozen donuts.

Let's do that.

Oh!

And then they'll tell us when it's ready I think.

[Woman speaking Korean] Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

[Speaks Korean] These are famous Jongro Rice Hotdog.

Ta-da!

Oh, look at the rice--look at the ramen bits.

Ha ha ha!

That looks so good!

That's for the Insa team.

[Indistinct chatter] Adding on a tteokbokki.

[Different man speaks Korean] Robin: When I think of Korean food, it's usually, like, stew, so, like, the broth.

Soondubu, I think, it really has everything that Koreans love.

Shohui: It's one of my favorite stews, and it is a bubbling pot of delicious filled with, you know, seafood, and it has silken tofu, it has a cracked egg in it, and the broth is really--it's just umami-based, and it's bubbling.

It is all that you want on a rainy day or a sunny day or a hungover day.

Heh heh.

Robin: I always love to try different soondubu, you know, like whenever there's a new restaurant opening.

It's kind of like a food you can try to see, like, this place is authentic or not.

Shohui: It is a gauge, it is a barometer.

Like, "How is their jjigae game?"

you know, and you can totally tell.

So when all these folks came knocking, I was like, "Ahh."

Again, a moment like, "Wow."

It's just not my and Ben's crazy dream of putting this random Korean barbecue restaurant, you know, on our street of Gowanus.

It's like, ahh, people get it and people are not just getting it but really appreciating the space, the food, and the hard work that we're putting in.

Jenny: A time that was very encouraging for me at Haenyeo was when we first opened and I didn't expect to get reviewed in the "New York Times," and once I had gotten two stars, I thought, "Oh, my goodness."

I just never pictured it for myself.

I just thought I could take a break from the whole full service and just do, like, an all-day casual eatery.

So if you want to have something that is a little bit of a spinoff on the traditional dishes, you come to Haenyeo.

Terrence Segura: We put a lot of love into it, and we had to build it from scratch, and we care about it.

It's like another child for us, and, yeah, I mean, we spend so much time here that we wanted to make it nice, make it a place that we could be every day.

[Indistinct chatter] Jenny: Haenyeo are the women divers of Jeju Island.

They free dive for seafood.

I think Korea in general really admire strong women.

They are the epitome of that.

It's a way for them to survive and make a living, support their families, and I think it's really great.

They can't just wake up and be like, "Oh, you know, I feel sick today.

I'm not going to go to work."

It's just--you know, they have to show up.

They have to push themselves much like a restaurant.

Terrence: Like them, Jenny is very much a strong person, and she's not afraid.

Her mother now is seeing what she's done with this place, and, you know, I can see that she's proud.

Jenny: I thought a lot about what it is that I want to cook in this restaurant because this restaurant isn't really my mother's cooking.

It's more my cooking.

Having this freedom, I'm able to play around.

I just really wanted to do one very seafood-forward dish, and the bouillabaisse was my take on how I can plate a beautiful, abundant dish of seafood.

The soup is really a take on maeuntang, which is a fish soup, and in Korea, you usually use a whitefish.

The bouillabaisse consists of rich, labor-intensive fish stock that we make here, codfish, scallop, whole shrimp, mussels, clams, and I'll add whatever else is available that looks really good.

Shohui: Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a very small town in a big city.

You get to know most of your neighbors.

Van Brunt Stillhouse, they were the people that I wanted to talk to you about having our own brand of Insa soju.

I remember talking to you about wanting specifically a Soju that is sippable soju, something that's really well-made that goes back to the way it originally was made.

Daric Schlesselman: What Soju was before the grain stuff was really quite remarkable.

It was either sweet potato or rice.

For us, I really wanted to just do the quintessential rice spirit.

Since Korea didn't have traditional Western grains in the sense that we in the U.S. know, so that's the only ingredient in this, it's rice, water, and we ferment it with yeast.

In Korea, almost all soju was made with a single a distillation, so we sort of stay true to that, and then we just run thus through the still once.

Mmm.

It's so clean, but the spirit of rice really is right there.

Shohui: And it's not too sweet.

It's that--it's that floral sort of sweet rice note that you get, but it is so drinkable.

Benjamin: Cheers.

Terrence: I'm going to sip, then shoot if that's OK with you.

I'd like to just-- Shohui: Cheers.

Terrence: Cheers.

Shohui: You have to pick a song.

Jenny: Karaoke.

Terrence: Oh, no.

Jenny: Can you put in my song, and then we'll be done?

All: ♪ Don't you, don't you ♪ Shohui: You're so crazy.

All: ♪ You're so vain You probably think This song is about you You're so vain You probably think ♪ Terrence: ♪ I know this song is about me, isn't it?

♪ Jenny: Very nice.

Terrence: This is delicious.

Benjamin: It's actually both.

Terrence: It's kind of floral.

It's kind of floral.

I love it.

Benjamin: But it still has that, you know, bite.

Terrence: So this is a value.

Jenny: I think I'm gonna start drinking more soju now.

This is excellent.

It's so different from the Chamisul now.

Shohui: Yeah.

Jenny: That I remember.

the original one, remember, it tasted like rubbing alcohol.

Ha ha ha!

Bartender: We have this Dirty Soju Martini.

Jenny: Ooh.

Bartender: And the Squid and the Whale.

Terrence: Beautiful, Bernie.

Thank you.

Jenny: Thank you, Bernie.

You're spoiling us.

Ha ha ha!

Terrence: Cheers.

Jenny: Cheers.

Cheers to you, Bernie.

Terrence, cheers.

Terrence: That's your--that's your kind of drink.

The L.A. Rose.

Jenny: Beautiful.

There's the [indistinct].

Terrence: It's a beautiful drink, Bernie.

Jenny: Thank you so much, Bernie.

Cheers.

Terrence: Cheers.

Jenny: Mmm.

Terrence: See, this is great on a hot day.

Jenny: Ready for some beignets?

Terrence: I cannot wait.

Jenny: Well, let's dig in.

Terrence: Thank you.

Jenny: I have to thank you for inspiring me to make these.

Terrence: Cheers, cheers, and you did a hell of a job.

They're perfect.

Jenny: Ha ha ha!

Aah!

Ha ha ha!

It's a snowball fight really.

Look how airy and fluffy these are.

Terrence: They're perfect.

Look at that.

Jenny: I'm sorry, but-- Terrence: This is--this--this is all technique.

Jenny: Ha ha ha!

Anyways, uh, that was fun.

[Indistinct chatter] Shohui: Thank you, sir.

I'll give it back.

My joy comes from the management meetings or the staff gatherings or the staff meal, and it really--that to me every day is really honestly the only validation that I need, or to hear my child say, "Oh, yeah.

I kind of miss doing karaoke.

I'd like to do karaoke, you know, next weekend with my friends," or all of this is really the best sort of positive reinforcement that a restauranteur and a chef could want.

Jenny: This restaurant has been a second chance for me.

You know, it's been hard.

Just because you open a restaurant in the city doesn't--you're not always just successful, and in a city with so many restaurants, to be perceived as being, you know, good and quality worthy is, you know, a huge accomplishment.

It was weird growing up in the states.

Like, you don't really you--you didn't really realize how impactful your culture can be, and to be here now doing that and it's not a restaurant full of Korean people is a really cool feeling.

It's not like I attended school.

It was all just kind of self-taught and taught to me by an immigrant woman.

In the nineties, that would not have gotten any accolades, but I think now people are more open, and they're able to say, "Yeah, you do deserve credit for it, and we eat your food, and we appreciate it."

Robin: Living in New York, I got to feel like I didn't miss out by not being in Korea by, like, going to these restaurants, and also like, to see, it's so thriving, I feel really proud, you know, when I see that.

Shohui: I didn't realize how much the culture and the food of Korea was in me until I think I became a chef, and for me to be able to share and cook the food that I was raised on and that I have such fond memories of, it really means the world.

It really means that somehow we made it.