Bay Area chefs offer fresh take on favorite Korean dishes.

Meet the East Bay chefs who are serving up a handful of their childhood.

While cooking together at Pizzaiolo, Julya Shin and Steve Joo discovered a shared interest in Korean food — and then they decided to do something about it.

For the last few months, the two chefs have been cooking Korean-inspired popup dinners throughout the East Bay under the moniker Nokni.

The pair met at Chez Panisse. Shin went on to serve as the chef de cuisine at Pizzaiolo and sister restaurant Penrose, while Joo took his skills north to Wine Country, where he worked as chef de cuisine at Terra in St. Helena. Now they are trying to turn Nokni into a full-time gig — and bring a greater awareness to Korean food in the Bay Area.

As a child growing up outside of Baltimore, Shin ate fast food and TV dinners, but when her aunt who lived in Washington, D.C., would come to visit they would cook lots of Korean food. It served as a reminder of home for her aunt, but it was also a way for Shin to connect to her heritage.

“When she was there, we ate really well and learned a lot,” says Shin.

Joo, who was born in the United States, moved with his family to Seoul when he was 9 and lived there for a little over five years. He didn’t necessarily love Korean food when he was growing up, he says, but there were certain things that stood out for him — like a simple soup (doenjang guk) made with homemade soybean paste.

“There was something very remarkable about how good that simple preparation was,” Joo says.

These memories led Joo to return to Korea as a trained chef, where he spent a year learning more about Korean food and traditional sauce-making.

In recent years, dishes such as Korean fried chicken, or KFC as it’s often called, and bulgogi-topped bar-friendly eats, have become increasingly trendy. While there’s a time and place for this heartier sort of fare, for Shin and Joo their ssam pop-ups reflect a lighter approach reflecting how they want to dine now.

“I’m at a point where I don’t crave the big gut punch of dining anymore,” says Joo.

The chefs eventually plan to open a brick-and-mortar location, but for now, these pop-ups are serving as a chance to experiment and tweak their concept.

In particular, they’re preaching the gospel of ssam — lettuce wraps stuffed with meat, herbs and other fillings, served family-style. Not only is it easy to prepare ahead of time, but there’s a beautiful freshness to ssam, and that’s part of what Shin and Joo, who have both been influenced by the California cuisine school of Chez Panisse, want to bring forward with their pop-ups.

Meats, which range from butterflied Korean short ribs to smoked duck, may seem like the star, but for Shin and Joo, ssam is as much about the fresh seasonal produce. The pair offer a delightful array of fresh lettuces, greens and herbs — like butter leaf lettuce, red romaine, radicchio, chrysanthemum and perilla leaves and anise hyssop — for diners to use to wrap up their little bundles of deliciousness.

“It’s so pretty,” says Shin. “It’s all about layering flavors.”

Accompaniments often include marinated vegetables, like Nokni’s cucumber namul, a simple salad of salted cucumbers tossed with a bit of rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic and sugar and garnished with slivers of fresh red espelette pepper. And, of course, there’s kimchi. In addition to long-fermented versions, Shin and Joo also like to serve a fresh kimchi that can be on the table in an hour. Strips of Napa cabbage are salted so they begin to soften, then are rinsed and tossed with matchsticks of radish that have been massaged with a mixture of Korean chile powder, pureed Asian pear, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, garlic chives and scallions. It’s essentially the same recipe as you would make for a fermented version, but when it’s eaten fresh, says Shin, there’s less funk and the sweeter quality of the vegetables and chiles shines through.

“Every Korean kid has memories as little kids of their mom making little lettuce wraps for them and feeding (them),” says Joo.

“I think it’s a really beautiful way to eat,” agrees Shin.

And when it comes to wrapping the ssam, there’s only one rule, says Joo: “To each their own.”

Nokni’s next pop-ups will be at Grand Fare Market in Oakland (3265 Grand Ave.) on Monday, Oct. 23, and Tuesday, Oct. 24, from 6-10 p.m. Check www.nokni.com for more pop-up dates as they are scheduled.

Sarah Fritsche is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sfritsche@sfchronicle.com Twitter/Instagram: @foodcentric