Congratulations to Ki Kim, chef of Restaurant Ki and the 2025 MICHELIN Guide California Young Chef Award Winner, presented in partnership with Sysco!
Running a 10-seat restaurant in Los Angeles, the chef focuses fully on the guests. His menu embodies a contemporary approach based on traditional Korean ingredients, flavors and techniques. Before opening his own restaurant, he trained at Jungsik (Three MICHELIN Stars) and Atomix (Two MICHELIN Stars) in New York.
Recently. we spoke with Ki about his journey to becoming the chef he is today.
What inspired you to become a chef?
I went to school for Journalism and Mass Media, and I hated school. I did very bad at school, always ditching classes. I eventually realized if I hated it so much, if I started working, I just didn't think I would enjoy it.
I dropped out of school and was already cooking at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. I realized how much I enjoyed making food. I was 18, and for some reason, I had this weird confidence that I could be really good at this.
How did you choose your next steps? What’s the journey been like?
Distinguishing between what I wanted to learn and finding the restaurant that would offer what I wanted to learn.
I started working for Nobu in Aspen, Colorado. During the off season, I was able to stage in different cities and countries. Benu in San Francisco, and they had just got their Third Star. That changed my life. I got destroyed but also rebuilt.
I spent some time in Tokyo and Shizuoka, Japan, because at the time, I truly thought I wanted to become a master sushi chef. Going made me realize that I don't want to become a master sushi chef!
I'm specifically Korean. That's when I decided to go to New York to work for Korean restaurants. Jungsik was my first restaurant [experience] in New York. After that, I went to Atomix, another Korean restaurant. To learn more about international cuisine, I then worked for Blanca.
What have you learned along the way?
Endlessly thinking about, “what is good food?” Yes, sometimes it makes you think, and sometimes it brings nostalgia, but at the end of the day, it tastes good, quite literally. The moment you put it in your mouth, you're like, “wow, this is delicious.” That's a reaction that I don't think humans can hide. That's step one to what good food means.
What is a distinguishing characteristic about your food?
My cuisine is a reflection of myself and my style, but also the restaurants that I've worked at. I'm kind of nervous because Chef Thomas Keller might read this, and I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about.
What’s one of your menu favorites?
Grilled lettuce ice cream served with caviar and Cheongju cream. Cheongju is a traditional Korean rice wine. I've had ice cream and caviar somewhere else. I knew I wanted to put vegetable ice cream with caviar and some kind of funky cream.
What's my favorite vegetable? Grilled lettuce. Sangchu lettuce is what they would give you at a Korean barbecue restaurant to wrap all your ingredients. Yangchon Chungju, we ended up reducing it, and I forgot to check it, and it reduced into a caramel, almost like a great accident.
How do you think about ingredients?
Ingredients are 90% of cooking. You're going to cook the same way, but this cow that we cooked today will be different from yesterday and tomorrow. Same for produce.
Fortunately, we live in California, which has the best ingredients in any of the states I lived in. At Jungsik, Chef Hoyoung told me, “if they have good wines, that means they have good ingredients. That just means that they have a good climate for agriculture.”
We go to the farmers market three times a week. Being in California, we have freedom to put strawberries on the menu today instead of sugar snap peas.
Having a 10-seat restaurant really allows us to be selective with what ingredients we want to use, and that means not only tasty ingredients, but ingredients that will give us zero or close to zero waste.
What advice would you give to the next generation of young chefs?
Don't give up. The moment you give up, it's over, right?
We live in a time where compassion has so much value. Talk to your friends when going through hardships. It’s so much easier when you take a step forward with your friends instead of trying to do it on your own.
I remember being a younger cook, and I was very afraid because there's so many failures you could face. It could be financially struggling or failing to cut this pint of perfect brunoise celery.
I didn’t think I would qualify to open a restaurant. I didn’t think I would qualify to become a sous chef anywhere. I had small goals. Failed each time, but still continued to do it, and it kind of ended up where I am now. Take a step forward every day. You don’t have to try to be perfect every day.
For me, I opened a restaurant, and I failed. This is my second restaurant. Everybody faces failure, but once you give up, it's over, so don't give up.
All images courtesy of Restaurant Ki
