Chef Sky Haneul Kim earns a James Beard Award for dishes inspired by life in Korea.
By Lannan O’Brien
Photography by Catherine Dzilenski
As a child in Korea, Sky Haneul Kim spent most of her time in her grandmother’s kitchen. “My parents were always super busy while I was growing up,” she says. “But with grandparents, the food is always good. So mainly, I have a lot of memories of my grandmother’s food.”
Several times a year, Kim’s grandparents held ceremonies called jesa, a Korean tradition of honoring ancestors, which, of course, involved preparing a variety of food offerings. “At least four or five times a year, we were doing this ceremony, which involved a lot of cooking,” says Kim.
She never imagined that childhood experience would ultimately lead her to earn a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast. When asked what it meant to receive the award, she says with earnest wonder that she still doesn’t believe it happened to her. “People who are in this industry dream about this moment, and I just didn’t realize it’s going to come to me. I’m still processing,” she says.
Although she learned to cook from a young age, Kim didn’t always plan on a career as a chef. She initially studied food styling in Korea, and her professor–a chef himself–advised the class that to style food, they should learn to cook professionally. So, she took his advice: Over summer vacation, she completed an intensive cooking program in Italy. “We were literally cooking from 7 a.m to 6 p.m,” she remembers.
But she was hooked. Upon returning home to Korea, she told her parents that she wanted to go abroad again and immerse herself in the culinary arts. And that’s how Kim found herself, at 18 years old, in Missouri with a student visa, but no real plan. To learn a bit of English and hone her cooking skills, she visited the kitchen of a nursing home near her accommodation. “I just told them, ‘Hey, can I work here for free to learn, basically?’” she says. “I was working for free the whole summer, cooking. I still talk to their chef.”
Although the chicken stock and pureed ingredients she incorporated were a world away from fine dining, it was a positive learning experience that provided a stepping-stone for Kim’s career. She next attended Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island to study the culinary arts, graduating in 2014. Then, as an intern-turned-employee at Birch–a now-closed restaurant in Providence–she befriended owner Ben Sukle and helped him open the restaurant Oberlin.
After spending some time in New York, Kim found her way back to Rhode Island to take on the role of chef at Gift Horse, which shares a kitchen with Oberlin–and is also owned by Sukle.
Now, she works alongside her husband, Chris Pfail, a chef at the neighboring restaurant, which was also nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant. While she wishes that Oberlin also won an award, she says, “It was such a special moment that both of us got into the final… another crazy moment for us.”
Most of Kim’s dishes reflect pieces of her childhood and culture. She has crafted a bulgogi burger special for Gift Horse, a comfort food favorite of hers, which is sold at Korean McDonald’s (bulgogi features marinated beef or pork and a special sauce). “I was growing up eating those. I love this so much,” she says. “And then one time, I was putting a fried egg in it, and it changed the whole thing. I make my own bulgogi sauce, I marinate [the meat] and make the bulgogi burger, and then add a fried egg in it. It just brings back my childhood memory.”
Another favorite dish Kim recently created was a spicy squid sandwich, inspired by an off-the-menu burger also sold at a Korean McDonald’s (a theme in her cooking). “It was kind of a hidden item, and nobody really knew about it,” she says. Kim’s rendition was served with a “super spicy” squid sauce.
Often when she’s at work, Kim is brought back to those days cooking with her grandmother. It frequently happens when she’s making jeon, a type of Korean pancake. And sometimes, it comes out of nowhere: “I will be thinking, ‘Hey, this literally tastes like something from my grandma’s kitchen.’”
