Clamoring for Korean food? Has your voice gone croaky demanding poke?<\/p>\n
Your calls have been heard, as this week two longtime Alaska restaurateurs are looking to surprise downtown diners with two new eateries featuring unique tastes.<\/p>\n
Korea Garden, in the old Kenny\u2019s Wok and Teriyaki space on Front Street, held a soft opening Monday. Poki Poki, across from the Alaskan Hotel on South Franklin, opens Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Both feature relatively-untested cuisines in Juneau: traditional Korean and Hawaiian poke, or fresh fish sashimi bowls.<\/p>\n
Korea Garden owner Dong Lee, who also owns Juneau\u2019s Asiana Garden, said his new restaurant is a long time coming. Korean food has taken off in America and somebody had to bring the trendy cuisine to Juneau.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people asked me to open a Korean restaurant,\u201d said Lee, who\u2019s originally from Korea. \u201cSo I did something once a week,\u201d at Asiana Garden, where he\u2019d serve bibimbap, a popular rice dish featuring a mix of small sides.<\/p>\n
Korea Garden is not the first Korean restaurant in Juneau \u2014 the Breakwater Inn restaurant devotes about half its menu to Korean food \u2014 but Lee said the demand is high and the \u201ctime is right\u201d for a new restaurant.<\/p>\n
Korean food has increased in popularity since Americans discovered soft tofu soup five years ago, Lee said. He\u2019s been planned on opening Korea Garden since Korean places began popping up in L.A. and Seattle, but he had trouble finding the right space.<\/p>\n
That opportunity came along when Kenny Yoon sold his Kenny\u2019s Wok and Terriyaki. Since then, Lee has completely revamped the space, with \u201conly the wok\u201d remaining.<\/p>\n
Lee is serious about quality dining. He\u2019ll only buy pork for his short ribs from a Seattle distributor, which costs him more, but quality ingredients, along with good service, are the two things you can\u2019t skimp on when investing in a restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetter-quality meat, good service, you can\u2019t go wrong,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIf I have a Korean chef and Korean people are coming in to eat, then you know we are doing something right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sale of the old Kenny\u2019s Wok space meant a new opportunity not only for Lee, but for Yoon. He\u2019s behind Poki Poki, which opened Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The restaurant presents Yoon the opportunity to share one of favorite foods: poke, a Hawaiian dish featuring raw fish with rice, vegetables and a variety of sauces \u2014 a bit like sushi in a bowl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like fish and salad mixed with rice and spicy sauce \u2014 that\u2019s my favorite dish. So I went there (California) and I said, \u2018Oh my god, I\u2019m gonna open this up in Alaska,\u201d Yoon said.<\/p>\n
Poki (sometimes spelled \u201cpoke\u201d) means to cut fish in Hawaiian, said manager Jenny Elske, who\u2019s in town from Sitka helping open the restaurant, Yoon\u2019s fifth in Southeast.<\/p>\n
At Poki Poki, every allergy and food preference can be accommodated. The idea is to offer a healthy and quick option which is customizable to anyone\u2019s taste, Elske said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s assembly-line style dining, with no cooking needed (if raw fish isn\u2019t your thing, Yoon said, they offer cooked shrimp in lieu of tuna or salmon).<\/p>\n
Diners start with either white or brown rice, then add tuna, spicy tuna, albacore, local salmon or shrimp.<\/p>\n
You can then pick from an assortment of veggies and seaweed salad, then top it off with about half a dozen sauces and sesame seeds.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeez, I eat everything,\u201d Yoon said when delineating the options.<\/p>\n
He was planning on opening before Christmas 2016, but a unique feature to the space slowed production. Yoon ordered two custom folding windows for the front of the shop, which when open, create a nearly outdoor eating space; it\u2019s hard to tell there\u2019s even a wall there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know this is Alaska,\u201d Yoon said. \u201cBut summertime we have beautiful weather, so it\u2019s like eating outside when you\u2019re inside.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clamoring for Korean food? Has your voice gone croaky demanding poke? Your calls have been heard, as this week two longtime Alaska restaurateurs are looking to surprise downtown diners with two new eateries featuring unique tastes. Korea Garden, in the old Kenny\u2019s Wok and Teriyaki space on Front Street, held a soft opening Monday. Poki […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":20443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20442"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}