13 minute read
AT THE TABLE
Hyun-woo Kim moved to the Triangle 14 years ago, bringing with him his authentic ramen and sushi recipes.
fresh CATCH
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Ramen and sushi at Sono
by LAURA WHITE photography by TREY THOMAS
If you haven’t been to Sono in the past year, it’s safe to say you haven’t been to Sono. Twelve months into his post as executive chef, Hyun-woo Kim’s love of fresh fish and culinary emprise has revitalized the downtown Raleigh Japanese and sushi restaurant. The decade-old spot has gotten a face-lift, a refined menu, and a revised philosophy for slaking the cravings of sushi lovers downtown. Located inside the first floor of the historic Hudson condo building,
Sono opened on Fayetteville Street in 2008, not long after the street itself had reopened to vehicle traffic. Chef Mike
Lee was the owner then, and under his guidance Sono stood the test of time on a street that saw many restaurants come and go. A decade is a long time, after all.
When Lee stepped away last year to focus on his Durham concepts M Sushi and M
Kokko, Chef Hyun-woo Kim stepped in, and over the past year he has been quietly and lovingly making Sono his own, culling and reshaping the menu to reflect his personal and professional heritage.
Style setting
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Kim came to the U.S. 14 years ago when his sister, who was attending UNC-Chapel Hill at the time, went home for a visit. She suggested Kim and his new wife join her in the States; he sold his restaurant in South Korea and did just that. After arriving in the Triangle, Kim worked in a number of restaurants, including Mura in North Hills. Eventually, he became the sushi chef at An Cuisines, a fine-dining Asian restaurant in Cary, where he worked under James Beard Foundation semifinalist Steven Greene. An closed in January 2017 and in February 2017, Kim went to downtown Raleigh. Taking over a restaurant can be a challenging task, Kim says. “I tried to make it my style. It had been eight years that they were running the restaurant before I came here; I could not change everything at one time.” So he set about to make gradual but impactful shifts. After the first three months, he changed the menu a little bit and let it settle. After another three months, he changed the menu a bit more. He culled the sushi list from more than 35 specialty rolls to 15 or so, introduced his own ramen recipe, and eliminated some of the appetizer dishes, like tempura shrimp, for a more limited and refined menu with higher-quality items. It seemed to be going well. Then, he changed the ramen recipe. “So many people complained after that. It was really hard,” Kim says. But he steeled himself to stay his course. “I had to speak to my style. ” Luckily, Kim is no stranger to figuring things out in media res. He earned his stripes in the kitchen, where he began working at the age of 17. He didn’t know what he was good at, or what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to work. It turned out that kitchen life was the right one for him, and every six months to a year he would switch things up in an effort to learn as much as possible, moving from Korean to Japanese to Thai to Italian cuisine. He opened his own restaurant in Korea at the age of 25.
Small batch
When he began working with sushi, Kim knew he’d found his place. In the beginning, though, he was nowhere near the fish. “When I started work, I just
washed dishes and then washed the rice for one year – just that,” Kim says. One day a higher-level chef asked him, “Can you clean up this one?” Finally, he was able to get his hands on the fish. Flash forward 18 years, and Kim, at 39, tastes each and every fish he serves; he teaches his staff to do the same. “It’s very important. Sometimes they’ll ask me: ‘Can I use this one?’ Try it. If you don’t like it, if you don’t think it’s fresh, don’t use it,” Kim says. “Why? Because if you don’t like it, the customer won’t like it. If you don’t like it and the customer doesn’t like it, why would you use it?” And Kim isn’t afraid to send the fish back if it isn’t up to his standards; he’d rather “86” (restaurant-speak for nix) an item than serve something he doesn’t consider up to par. One recent weekend, for instance, he received an order of two yellowtail but he didn’t like one of them, so he returned it. Before the weekend was up, the restaurant ran out, but serving the fish was never even a question. “There’s no choice,” Kim says. Kim’s head-to-tail approach to seafood guides his philosophy, and he sources the freshest possible sushi-grade fish, avoiding frozen at all costs. While you can quite literally taste Sono’s dedication to fresh fish, the restaurant also offers a comprehensive lunch and dinner menu inspired by Kim’s own culinary heritage, including his twicefried Korean fried chicken made with 15 spices, pan-fried dumplings, and tableside Ishiyaki BBQ. And about that ramen. During his two decades in the kitchen, this is the recipe Kim has been perfecting (just last year he did some serious reconnaissance work in Japan). Sono now offers five variations of the soup based on two house-made broths: a pork-based Tonkotsu, and the pork, chicken, and katsuo (skipjack tuna) Shoyu. The Tonkotsu ramen is a milky broth made with black garlic oil and cuts of tender pork chashu floating in a nest of curly ramen noodles. It is salty and savory, and just the thing for a chilly day. The Spicy Miso ramen is a zesty spin on the Tonkotsu, bright red in color, with just the right amount of heat. The ramen broth is made fresh in 20-gallon batches every four or five days; the Tonkotsu is a 16-hour process, while the Shoyu cooks for about five. Sono sells over a thousand bowls of ramen a month, but Kim plans to keep the menu options limited.“If we had more kinds, it is hard to control the quality.” And that quality is critical for Chef Kim and his crew. While they have been refining and fine-tuning the food menu, they’ve also been working to drastically expand their alcohol selection. They now offer one of the region’s largest saké programs at 38 bottles, both small and large format, and their wine list grew from 6 bottles to 90, with 15 available by the glass. The last Tuesday of every month you can get a taste of all these bottles at their Wine & Saké Social; from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., $10 gets you a sample of one or two wines, several sakés, and snacks. Over the years, Kim has worked across a host of different environments. He says the switch to Sono has been one of the most exciting. He revels in the big-city vibe, the casual elegance, and the diversity of his downtown guests. After work, he can often be found walking the streets and people watching, exploring his community; he’s excited to see where Raleigh’s growth takes the restaurant, takes him.
Shown opposite: Artist Hayley Serrano painted the mural in two weeks while visiting her family, who live locally (Serrano lives in Canada.)
Recipes
While chef Hyun-woo Kim’s ramen recipe is a sacred secret, here are two Sono-inspired appetizers to make. Poke is a fresh raw fish salad and yakitori a savory traditional marinated chicken dish.
Ahi tuna poke
For poke: 2 tablespoons dry seaweed 3 ounces sashimi-grade ahi tuna, diced 2 tablespoons shallots, chopped 2 tablespoons green onion, thinly sliced ¼ cup cucumber, diced 2 tablespoons spicy poke sauce (recipe below) 1 teaspoon tobiko (fish roe)
For spicy sauce: ½ cup fish sauce 1 cup soy sauce ½ cup honey 2 tablespoons salt ½ cup Gochujang (red chili paste) 2 tablespoons sesame oil ¼ cup Togarashi (Japanese spice mixture available at most Asian markets and in the spice section of specialty grocery stores)
Soak dry seaweed in cold water for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the spicy poke sauce: Add all ingredients to a mixing bowl and whisk until well combined.
Chop soaked seaweed. Combine freshly chopped seaweed, tuna, shallots, green onion, and cucumber to a mixing bowl. Add 2 tablespoons spicy poke sauce and stir until well combined. Transfer to a serving bowl and top with tobiko.
Serves 2 - 4 as an appetizer
Yakitori
1 pound chicken thighs, diced into 1-inch portions 7 ounces (14 tablespoons) soy sauce ¾ cup mirin (Japanese rice wine, available at most Asian markets and specialty grocery stores) 1 teaspoon onion powder 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon black pepper ½ cup saké 3 cloves garlic, chopped 5 green onions, diced 1 small knob ginger, diced 8 bamboo skewers 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
Marinate chicken: Whisk together 6 tablespoons soy sauce, ¼ cup mirin, onion powder, garlic powder, and black pepper. Add chicken thighs and marinate overnight.
Make teriyaki sauce: Add remaining soy sauce and mirin (½ cup each), sake, garlic, green onion, and ginger to a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes, then allow to cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, soak bamboo skewers in water for 10 minutes. Set oven broiler to high.
Skewer marinated chicken pieces and arrange on a sheet pan. Brush skewers with teriyaki sauce and put under broiler for 1-2 minutes. Remove skewers from heat, turn over, brush with more sauce, and repeat for a total of 8 minutes, or until cooked through. Transfer to serving plate and top with sesame seeds. You can serve additional teriyaki sauce for dipping, if you’d like.
Makes 8 skewers
QUENCH
QUITE AN UPGRADE
Chef Coleen Speaks serves a variation of coffee, cocktails, and small plates at newly opened Hummingbird on Whitaker Mill Road. Hummingbird was formerly the bathroom at A&P Grocery’s loading dock.
Cocktail bar and coffee shop join forces in an unexpected location
Triple THREAT
by CATHERINE CURRIN
Between the sunny yellow bar stools and ample natural light, you’d probably never guess that Hummingbird, the new coffee shop-restaurant-bar on Whitaker Mill Road near downtown Raleigh, was formerly a men’s bathroom. There’s evidence, though, in the seafoam green tiles that are chipped in places; in the cracked unfinished concrete walls; and in the exposed galvanized pipes connecting bar to kitchen. The building, Dock 1053, was formerly the produce warehouse for A&P grocery stores and then Winn-Dixie. Refurbished today to include a co-working space, brewery, distillery, and modern furniture store, Hummingbird’s corner location is tight and it’s run like a ship. It’s also bursting with color and texture. Chef and owner Coleen Speaks says the place inspired its own name: It is beautiful, small, and efficient, just like a Hummingbird. Speaks is a self-taught chef, she says, with years of experience honed in the kitchens of restaurants in New Orleans. She came to Raleigh in 2000 and worked at local establishments like Bloomsbury Bistro and Enoteca Vin before opening her catering company, PoshNosh in 2008. All the while, “I’ve always known I wanted to have a restaurant,” Speaks says. “This
DINE ALL DAY
Above top: The portrait room mixes old and new, like sleek leather and refurbished walls. Above bottom left: Chef and owner Coleen Speaks (Hummingbird) has been in my head for 25 years. It’s an extension of my catering (approach). We’re serving food that you would expect to get in a bar, but stepped up a notch.” The menu includes, for instance, ricotta fritters, chargrilled oysters, and buttermilk fried quail. Hummingbird’s setting is likewise what you would expect to get in a bar, but stepped up a notch. The bar’s adjoining portrait room is a moody, quirky spot with mismatched paintings hanging on dark refurbished walls. And it is one of the only places in Raleigh open 8 a.m. - midnight, Monday to Saturday. (Cocktails all day, Speaks notes, lends a “very New Orleans vibe.”) The ambitious hours have been well received: Since its January opening, Hummingbird is nearly always lively. Speaks says she is thrilled to have a space that makes people feel at home and linger, whether it be for breakfast, lunch, or a nightcap. In the spirit of going big or going home, down the back hall of Hummingbird is Speaks’s other new endeavor, event space Whitaker & Atlantic. W&A is open to Hummingbird guests on vacant weekends, but more regularly used for receptions, pop-ups, and gatherings. Speaks says she’s proud of her female-owned business, a pride she emphasizes with cheeky drink titles like “Someone to Watch Ovary,” and with floral inspiration, from a drink’s pink shade to an edible flower garnish. Take, for instance, the Petal Guru. A mixture of gin and rose water, when stirred into vintage glassware from Speaks’s extensive collection, the drink is as pleasing to look at as it is to consume. Head bartender Tal Collins, who moved to Raleigh two years ago and got his start at Fox Liquor Bar downtown, says he’s excited about Hummingbird’s evolving, intimate environment. He feels
encouraged to create and experiment, he says. “Coleen wants things to keep rolling. She’s the type of person who says ‘let’s make it happen’ when there’s a need for something new.” The Petal Guru is a new, floral take on a gin martini. Using Durham Distillery’s Conniption Gin, it’s a liquor-forward mix with vermouth and a dash of Peychaud’s bitters to give it a subtle, pale pink shade. Fragrant rose water is stirred in, and the vintage coupe glass topped with an edible flower. The drink is a study in contrasts: fresh and delicate, but potent and spirit-forward. Much like the place where it’s served. “Because it took me so long, I got to iron it all out,” Speaks says of Hummingbird. “When it opened, it felt like it’s been here forever.”
PETAL GURU
Ingredients:
1 ½ ounces Durham Distillery Conniption Navy gin 1 ½ ounce dry vermouth One dash rose water One dash Peychaud’s bitters In a mixing glass, add gin, vermouth, rose flower water, and bitters. Stir with ice and strain into coupe glass. Garnish with dried rose petal.
BRIGHT AND AIRY
Clockwise from top left: Event space Whitaker & Atlantic; the Petal Guru served in vintage glassware; Tal Collins, Hummingbird’s head bartender.
