Diary of an extreme foodie
Mijune Pak makes global dining her life’s passion
MIA STAINSBY
VANCOUVER SUN
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. She lives for food on a global scale. In December,
published an article on four of the world’s most-extreme 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 threeMichelin-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 three-Michelin-star restaurants around the world. (There’s about 115 to 120 three-stars from year to year.)
Last August, 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, creditcard 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 a Food Network Canada celebrity as one of the judges on All-Stars. “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 easypeasy.”
supervising producer Eric Abboud of Insight Production 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 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.”
Standout meals include a dinner at Alinea in Chicago. “It was a game-changer, so theatrical. You love it or hate it. I was interested in the story on the plate.” She recently went to Modena, Italy, to eat at Osteria Francescana (No. 1 in the 50 Best Restaurants in The World list in 2016). “He (Chef Massimo Bottura) came out to say hi and was so full of personality. He gave me a ride back to my hotel in his Maserati. Like, is that ever going to happen again?”
She’s eaten at 51 of the 2017 list of Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants, but her food grails aren’t all high-end. She loved a meal in a private home in Israel. “It was a total hole in the wall and the food was Druze.” And some celebrated Holy Grails end up disappointing her — like Masa in N.Y., where one spends about $500 for sushi. Although food comes before service, she left upset because of the strict rules and lack of hospitality.
She 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.”