Korean-American chef Edward Lee’s fame lies as much in his story as in his delicious dishes: a native New Yorker travels to Louisville, Kentucky, and at first bite, instantly falls in love with cabbage green and fried chicken.

Lee I focused on Southern comfort food.incorporating Korean ingredients and flavors that helped it become known. His career took off and he participated in competitions Top Chef And Iron Chef America, cook a state dinner at the White House and win a James Beard Award along the way.

Recently, during the hit Netflix cooking competition Culinary class warsthe 52-year-old had a new story to tell about himself – one about belonging and the trial and error that comes with being part of two cultures. It was also the first time he shared his Korean name “Kyun” on television.

“To be honest, I struggled a lot with my Korean identity. Am I American? Or am I Korean?” Lee said slowly and carefully in Korean. (After the show aired, Lee admitted that he had hired a Korean tutor three weeks before the recording.)

Sangwoo Kim / Netflix

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Netflix

He shared part of his journey during the first mission of the semi-final, where contestants were tasked with presenting a “life-defining” dish. Lee served bibimbap, a traditional Korean rice bowl that deliciously mixes meats and vegetables. He compared this to how he came to embrace his Korean heritage and American upbringing.

“When I focus on cooking, those thoughts go away. I can just relax and work hard to bring out a flavor. That’s what’s most important to me. That flavor,” he said. “When you first look at bibimbap, it has a variety of ingredients and a lot of colors. But when you mix it, it creates a single flavor.”

Lee finished second out of 100 talented chefs on Culinary class wars. But the Netflix series opened a new culinary chapter for the veteran chef. At Shia, his new restaurant in Washington, D.C., Lee continues the conversation, exploring what it means to be Korean-American in real time and documenting his journey through each dish. He dives deep into Korean American cuisine, going beyond traditional recipes and fusion concepts to create something unique. One dish that will surely make an appearance is their iconic bibimbap.

“I kind of want to continue on this path, whatever that means and whatever that looks like,” he told NPR.

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For NPR

Lee’s culinary passion grew out of watching his grandmother cook when he was growing up. It didn’t hurt that Lee hailed from Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood — a melting pot of cultures — where Pakistani, Jamaican and Italian cuisine were close by. Lee got his first cooking job at age 16 and opened a small Korean restaurant in lower Manhattan after graduating from New York University. But after the events of September 11, Lee felt he needed a change.

That’s when he remembered his visit to the Kentucky Derby a few months before and how his first bowl of collard greens made him feel like “home.” So in 2002, he moved to Louisville and started working at 610 Magnolia with former chef and owner Eddie Garber, who later turned the restaurant over to him. Lee continues to own the business today. He also opened several other restaurants over the years, including Whiskey Dry in Louisville and Succotash in Washington, DC.

Lee said there is a freedom in being a Korean American New Yorker and cooking Southern cuisine. “Because I’m not 100% Southern, I don’t have the burden of cooking proper Southern food like every Southerner has for generations. I can live in this world where I can straddle both cultures and I can kind of do what I want,” he said.

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For NPR

But over the years, there has also been a certain loneliness. “In a way I feel sad sometimes. I’m not 100% Korean, I’m not 100% American, I’m somewhere in between.”

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For NPR

Before Lee filmed Culinary class warsthe future restaurant was named “Mr. Frances” to pay homage to American food writer and one of Lee’s role models, MFK Fisher. At the time, Lee hadn’t yet decided on a specific menu, but he knew he wanted it to be mission-driven, focused on finding solutions to the culinary world’s shortcomings when it came to sustainability and of diversity.

Around the same time, Lee was thinking more and more about Korean cuisine. In 2023, he was chosen as guest conductor of the State dinner at the White House during the visit of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. That year, he also opened a traditional Korean barbecue restaurant in Louisville. “What is Korean cuisine? And what is Korean identity?” Lee remembers wondering.

These questions became even more important during the competition on the Netflix series. “I really enjoyed some of the dishes I made on the show and wondered if there was a way to preserve some of the dishes,” he said.

Now named Shia, inspired by the Korean word for seed, Lee’s 22-seat Korean fine dining restaurant aims to reduce plastic. He has hired research assistants to track and analyze costs, and plans to share data with other restaurants in the hope that it will encourage them to adopt more sustainable practices. For now, this “experiment,” as Lee calls it, is only supposed to last five years, at which point his restaurant’s lease ends.

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For NPR

“The goal has always been to inspire conversation, dialogue, spark creativity and inspire people to do similar things in their hometowns,” he said.

Shiites have refrained from using cling film and plastic containers and have invested in materials like environmentally friendly trash bags. Some ingredients like soy sauce still arrive in plastic packaging – a challenge they are working to address in the coming months. Shia also has an open kitchen layout to practice transparency with its customers. Lee also plans to run a mentoring program for the restaurant’s female chefs.

The day I met chef Edward Lee at Shia, his team was perfecting his frozen dessert recipe incorporating the toasted, slightly bitter notes of barley tea, known as boricha in Korean.

The drink is so common in the Korean community that it is often simply referred to as “hot water” and is the first thing you are asked when seated at a Korean restaurant. Turning it into an ice cream flavor wasn’t just a nod to his Korean heritage — it was a way to evoke shared memories.

“I wanted to take that memory of Boricha and make it different,” Lee said.

When I was a child, I used to cringe every time I accidentally sipped my parents’ cup of hot barley tea. Years later, after leaving home and going through my own Korean-American identity crisis, I was served barley tea at a small Korean restaurant. The first taste brought on an unexpected wave of homesickness that moved me to tears. Drinking didn’t solve all my problems, but for a brief moment, I had nowhere else I’d rather be.

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For NPR

Even after saving Culinary class warsLee said he’s still figuring out what it means to belong, but there’s one thing he’s more sure of than ever.

“I think the hope and encouragement is that you belong somewhere, we all belong somewhere, even if we don’t feel like we have a real identity, there is a place where you belong,” he said.

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