Old and new Korean cuisine at Perilla
Idread when I’m asked what my favorite Korean restaurant is.
I do dine out when I’m homesick for Mom’s cooking since she doesn’t live nearby, but I have hesitated when answering the queries because I don’t want just one spot to represent the entire culture’s cuisine.
Plus, I go to different restaurants for specific Korean dishes, and I didn’t grow up eating the barbecue or bibimbap most Americans picture.
But if I had to really choose a great place for Korean, I would recommend Perilla: Korean American Fare.
Perilla in Fulton River Park is easy to navigate — it’s close to the Loop, it has traditional inset table grills and the menu includes the familiar, rustic Korean dishes and elevated, contemporary cuisine.
For example, patrons can find the quintessential marinated short rib and explore more atypical menu items such as jangjorim. Executive chef Andrew Lim has crafted a modern version of this rich, salty and slightly sweet braised beef side dish into a refined appetizer. And I was delighted to also find wagyu steak tartare and tuna tataki as appetizers.
Lim and general manager Thomas Oh, friends since middle school, are the partners behind the restaurant that officially launched in July.
A chef-driven concept, Perilla, 401 N. Milwaukee Ave., centers on the first generation Korean Americans’ experience as well as the food their parents prepared for them when they were growing up in the Chicago suburbs.
“We wanted to find a good middle ground, be accessible…” said Lim, who bucked tradition and his parents’ wishes by pursuing professional cooking. “If it’s too cool, then only the [younger generation] will like it, so we feel like we’re in a good place. Our generation can appreciate it and our parents’ generation can find familiar items and flavors and be proud of the evolution of our cuisine. How funny is it when we were kids we had to sneak our lunch so we wouldn’t get made fun of but now [customers are willing to pay] for it.”
Despite dreaming of being a chef early on in his career, Oh — who honed his operating and leadership skills at Lettuce Entertain You Group and Roka Akor Restaurant — quickly figured out, “I wanted to host the party rather than cook for it.”
Lim and Oh, who lament the dissipating of Koreatown, relate to the struggle of “never being American enough or conversely being Korean enough” and the “strong connection to this foreign food we grew up eating at home” but feeling as though “none of the cool restaurants downtown or in the trendy neighborhoods” represented them.
“L.A. has their Koreatown and it’s massive, and New York has two Koreatowns . ... As a community in Chicago we’ve lost what’s special about having a little pocket in this beautiful city. A mission of ours is to try and reignite that,” Oh said.
For grilling at the table, there are nonmarinated and marinated prime cuts of short rib, ribeye, brisket and skirt steak. There’s also a wagyu NY strip steak and
Berkshire pork belly.
A thoughtful array of banchan (Korean side dishes) and dipping sauces are served alongside a basket array of leaf lettuce and perilla leaves. Perilla in Korean — kkaenip or ggaenip — is a hearty, adaptable, robust plant from the mint family that can survive various environments and is adaptable to various cooking and pickling techniques. Oh and Lim chose Perilla as their restaurant’s name because the plant’s resilience and strength echoes their parents’ lives and their story as immigrants.
“[Korean food is] very much a vegetabledriven cuisine, as well as seafood,” Lim said. “I feel like our vegetable dishes really shine here.”
A showstopper is the steamed egg, similar to an omelette soufflé, that spills over the bowl flavored with beef dashi, sesame oil and seeds, and chili that turns heads when served in the dining room.
Not-to-be-missed vegetable plates include the roasted asparagus with onion cream sauce base and toasted perilla seeds, topped with a generous heaping of trout caviar and charred lemon.
Sautéed Brussels sprouts come in a brown butter and anchovy vinaigrette with parmesan and walnuts. Blistered shishito peppers are tossed in with sweet soy, hazelnuts and crispy baby anchovies.
In October, as the menu transitions for fall, look for galbi-jjim or braised short ribs and soondubu-chigae, a silken tofu soup with seafood.
Perilla recently made news with its Michelle Obama mural on the side of its building. Obama is wearing a traditional Korean dress or hanbok in the mural. Originally, the owners wanted a mural of their mother but L.A.-based artist Chris Chanyang, aka Royyal Dog, suggested the famous Chicagoan. Lim and Oh feel the mural represents diversity, inclusion and the sharing of cultures.
“What you learn, you teach, what you get, you give,” Oh said.