Dina Avila Chef Spotlight THE ACCIDENTAL SUPERSTAR: Han Oak’s Peter Cho How a once-directionless young man became one of Food & Wine’s Best 10 New Chefs in America WRITTEN BY CHAD WALSH Peter Cho’s Han Oak is among Portland’s hottest restaurants. 22 | WINTER <strong>2018</strong> ontrakmag.com
‘‘ I didn’t move here to open my own restaurant. I moved here to take care of my mom and to be close to my parents and start a family of my own. That’s always been the goal, and every ’’ decision we make is based on that. — Chef Peter Cho, on moving to Oregon OREGON NATIVE (by way of South Korea) Peter Cho had always liked to cook, but he never imagined a future in it. After spending a post-collegiate summer feeling out New York City, the fine arts major decided to move into his brother’s four-story communal Harlem brownstone, which another eight or nine people shared. He lived there rent-free, but whenever his number came up he, like everyone else, was expected to put on the home’s weekly Sunday dinner. For inspiration, Cho read cookbooks and watched the Food Network. His friend, another broke graduate, noticed this nascent interest. “He said, ‘Hey, there’s a career to be had cooking— there’s all these great restaurants in New York City,’” Cho said. He’d looked into culinary school and was all set to drop the $35,000 it took to attend New York’s French Culinary Institute at that time, when another friend talked him down by suggesting he at least try to land a job in a kitchen somewhere before committing to that kind of student debt. So he walked over to the now-famous Spotted Pig and offered to wash dishes. The now-celebrity chef April Bloomfield decided to hire him and put him on the fry line instead. Over the next decade, Cho would run The Spotted Pig’s kitchen, as well as the kitchen at Bloomfield’s The Breslin, eventually taking over as director of culinary operations for all of Bloomfield’s many present and upcoming projects. When he finally returned to Oregon to be close to his folks, Cho wasn’t necessarily planning to open a restaurant. “I didn’t move here to open my own restaurant,” he said. “I moved here to take care of my mom and to be close to my parents and start a family of my own. That’s always been the goal, and every decision we make is based on that.” In 2016, Cho nonetheless decided that he would open a restaurant, and Han Oak, in NE Portland. His modern Korean eatery had critics standing at attention from the beginning. They were right, too—during his first year, Cho was named one of Food & Wine’s 10 Best Chefs in America. GQ named Han Oak one of the nation’s best restaurants, period. But it’s not just Cho’s talent that makes Han Oak a magical place—the best thing about it is how the restaurant feels. On a given night, Han Oak is buzzing with locals and foodie tourists who clamor for Cho’s ever-changing menu of Korean delights such as kim chi, dumplings and noodles. But the food is just part of the show. It’s not unusual to see Cho, his wife, Sun Young Park, and their line cooks and servers trading bjorning duties for Cho and Park’s baby daughter, June, or to be chatted up by their 3-year-old son, Francis. And it’s a nightly improvisational mise en scène that’s all scored to a blasting hip-hop soundtrack. Based on the food, it’s the kind of place you’d visit if you were in New York or San Francisco. But because Han Oak is such a family affair, both figuratively and literally (Cho’s family lives in the space adjoining the restaurant), it’s turned into an ongoing, rollicking series of nights where you feel like a friend who’s been invited to a dinner party at someone’s home (you have). It’s decidedly Portland in its originality, taste, vibe and ambience. ontrakmag.com WINTER <strong>2018</strong> | 23
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