Everyone is family at Korean Village
“This used to be a strip bar,” says Jason Lee.
He points to mirrors lining one wall of his parents’ restaurant, Korean Village.
“That’s where the stage was. My mom liked the mirrors so we kept them.”
That was 38 years ago. It was before the Korean bank and the Korean supermarket opened up on this section of Bloor St., just west of Bathurst. It was before Jason was born, when the family restaurant was one of only two in a predominantly Greek neighbourhood that would later become Koreatown.
The mirrors were just the beginning of Ok Re Lee’s repository, the first in a collection of objects that she has refused to throw away.
Known affectionately to customers as Mom, Jason’s mother was an actor back in Korea.
She made more than 100 movies before she met Jason’s father, a teacher, and moved to Canada to open this restaurant.
She’s a little late meeting us. Jason says she wants to look her best for the camera.
Tonight her hair is piled high. Dressed in a leopard print blouse, pearls and heels, she tours me around her restaurant, starting with her shrine of photos, some customers, some celebrities. Jackie Chan, Olivia Chow and a dozen 14th-division police officers smile back at me from the wall, next to a stack of birthday and Christmas cards.
At first, her son translates between us. But the more we talk, the more comfortable Mom gets communicating in English.
The customer side of what was once a sushi counter (Jason bemoans his mother’s ever-expanding menu, the additions of sushi and barbecue) is now overgrown with balloons, stuffed animals, fancy olive oil, snowshoes, stacks of paper and miniature flags.
Jason picks up a brass sculpture of an ant driving a stagecoach pulled by ants.
“What is this?” he asks, shaking his head. “What is this even doing in a Korean restaurant?”
But to Mom, they’re all treasures. As the face of the restaurant for 38 years, her loyal customers never stop bringing her gifts.
Some diners tonight, regulars, have brought Mom pastries and salt cod fritters from a Portuguese bakery.
“Every day,” she says, holding up the evidence of her beloved status. “People bring me.”
Jason keeps the tour going, sifting through bric-a-brac of unused beer coasters and Chinese nesting dolls the way an explorer hacks through the jungle with a machete, until we arrive at the back of the restaurant, where two dolls, still in their packaging, sit on top of a small, white piano. I ask Jason who plays this.
“No one,” he says. “It’s a player piano.” He presses a button on the top, which ejects a 3-1/2-inch com- puter disk with the label “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The technology hasn’t been in use for 25 years. “My mom’s a bit of a hoarder.” She says she misses show business, that she still gets offers to act in Korea. But that she couldn’t abandon her family. Mom holds up two fingers. “One is family life. One is my own life.”
She folds the second finger in half, the one representing her personal life.
Neither she nor her husband had any restaurant experience before they came here. The secret to the restaurant’s longevity, says Mom, is her love for her customers. At 72, she still regularly hosts, cooks and washes dishes as needed. And her big fear of retirement, she admits, is losing her connection with the people who come in every day.
In the kitchen
Mom’s nails dig into my back.
In the close quarters, it’s easy for her to prod me around the kitchen, pushing me toward the vegetable fridge, the protein fridge, pointing to the next ingredient I need to make jjampong, japchae and bibimbap. Her nails are at least half an inch long, and pointy.
And each time I don’t move fast enough I get a jab between my shoulder blades. I let out a small yelp. From the corner of the room, her son shrugs. “That’s just my mom,” he says, letting me know I’ll be better off if I go with the flow.
Chef Sang-Kun Suk has worked here since 1986. He’s like a member of the family, says Jason. “I would do anything for Mr. Suk.”
Although both in their 70s, Mom and Mr. Suk zip around the kitchen as quickly as any 20-something snackbar owners.
“Needs a little salt,” Mom says of my japchae, as I stir and toss vegetables and glass noodles in the wok. “But the colour is good.” When I move on to the bibimbap stone bowl rice dish, and the jjampong spicy seafood noodle soup, she slides in next to me, correcting my movements. It’s an unusual way to cook, fending off an attack at the same time. But I think I’m being treated like one of the family.
When we sit to eat, she serves me and my photographer, scooping us the prized crispy rice at the bottom of the bibimbap bowl. She fixes a third plate for herself, but doesn’t touch it, passing it to her son, insisting that he eat, despite his protestations that he’s not hungry.
And when we leave, she calls us back to shove a handful of lollipops into our pockets.
Every time we say no thank you, we’re full and can’t eat another bite, Jason reminds us that she won’t take no for an answer.
We do as we’re told. When a person unilaterally declares herself Mom, everyone in their orbit becomes their child. mintz.corey@gmail.com