DIARY OF AN EXTREME FOODIE
Top Chef Canada judge makes dining out her life’s passion
Top Chef Canada: All-Stars Sundays, Food Network Canada If normal people ate like Mijune Pak, they would be Goodyear blimps. Last year, this human anomaly ate at 641 restaurants and sometimes went from one multicourse dinner to another, driven to try as much of the world’s best food as possible. Yet, she’s no blimp. She’s pretzel-thin.
Pak is, she’d agree, an extreme foodie. The Top Chef Canada: All-Stars judge lives for food on a global scale. In December, The Sunday Times published an article on four of the world’s mostextreme foodies and there she was, the only female gastronome in the group. “They’ll fly across the world to try a new restaurant near the Arctic Circle. They eat 13-course lunches — and still go out for supper. They consume 5,000 calories every day and Instagram every meal,” the article says. The men of the foursome, with fat bank accounts, had eaten at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants or all of the three-Michelin-star restaurants.
“I’m the grasshopper of that group,” Pak says. “But for my age (30) I’m not doing too bad. I’ve done 20 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.” She’s eaten at about 15 threeMichelin-star restaurants around the world. (There are about 115 to 120 three-stars from year to year.)
Last August, New Yorker magazine featured the food-seeking quartet visiting “the most exclusive restaurant in America.” The Damon Baehrel restaurant outside New York claims to have a 10-year waiting list and hosted a slew of celebrities (both of which the article threw into doubt). “It was quite the experience in a great way. It took seven hours and was a very, very unique dinner, in a basement,” Pak says.
“I’m a little OCD,” she says. “If I’m really passionate about something, it takes over everything. I’d rather be researching food, food history and culture than sleeping. I’ve literally booked trips to try something — Navette cookies ( boat-shaped, orange-blossom flavoured) in Marseilles that I’d read about or a stew in Hungary.”
One evening, at a Kaiseki dinner, I’m seated between her and another food-lover with extravagant tastes. The latter mentioned a dinner at the three-Michelin-star Sushi Saito in Tokyo.
“What???!!!” shrieks Pak. She’d moved heaven and earth to score a table at the restaurant armed with contacts, chefs, friends of friends, credit-card companies, concierges, but failed.
The woman said she might be able to help Pak get in and Pak is ready to hop a plane the next day if she could get her a reservation. “I want to try that food so bad! There are tons of amazing two-Michelin sushi places, but this one is arguably the creme-de-la-creme.” It’s about craft and quality, but she likes the chase and doesn’t want to miss out.
On April 2, she debuted as one of the judges on Top Chef Canada: AllStars. “It’s the equivalent of a record deal for singers,” she says. “Oh my God. It was so easy. It was just like my daily life,” she says of the taping, last fall. “It was easy-peasy.”
Top Chef Canada supervising producer Eric Abboud says they hired Pak for her encyclopedic knowledge of food.
“She brings an incredible knowledge of food, food history and could talk about why we eat what we do and how we prepare it. She’s intelligent, passionate and is completely charming,” he says. “She’s got great knowledge of all sorts of foods because she’s travelled a lot.”
When in a city for a limited time, Pak says she’ll sometimes eat three to five dinners back to back.
“Volume doesn’t matter. It’s like, if I haven’t tried a dish, I’ll make room for it,” she says.
She’s built culinary credibility and international connections allowing her to monetize her sparkly personality and Follow Me Foodie brand. Her FollowMeFoodie Instagram and Twitter accounts have 19,700 and 17,700 followers, respectively, but she’s no longer pouring heart and soul into tomes detailing her experiences on her blog.
Foodies eat with their eyes and so she focuses on Instagram. “It’s not my style, but I’m not going to hate on it,” Pak says. “But it’s more international. It doesn’t need words.”
Pak hasn’t set goals, she says, saying her life is a journey. “I don’t want to eat at all of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants or all the threestar Michelin restaurants. I’d love to work more in TV, but I’m pretty much a one-woman show right now.”
I’m a little OCD. If I’m really passionate about something, it takes over everything. MIJUNE PAK, Top Chef Canada judge