Yi Cha Brings Fun, Modern Korean Pub Fare to Highland Park
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Each night, green neon signs illuminate the windows of Yi Cha, a modern Korean American gastropub, on a vibrant stretch of Figueroa Street in Highland Park. One glows with an outline of napa cabbage and another is emblazoned with the restaurant’s name in Korean, a phrase that means a “second round” for food and drinks. It’s a Bat-Signal for a good time.
When chef Debbie Lee opened Yi Cha, she envisioned the space as a kind of pocha — short for “pojangmacha,” the Seoul street food stalls that go hand-in-hand with late-night drinking. Fusion dishes like her Korean nachos — crispy rice cake discs slathered in a gochu-spiced queso and topped with pork belly and kimchi salsa — are built from her upbringing, as a Korean American who spent her formative years in and around Los Angeles. Lee learned to cook Korean dishes like mandu from her grandmother, who hailed from North Korea, and soul food from her mother, an opera singer who immigrated with her father to Jackson, Mississippi after the Korean War.
“It’s so funny because sometimes I’ll get comments from people saying, ‘Well, it’s not very authentic,” says Lee of her approach to Korean cooking. “It’s not meant to be authentic. It’s meant to be inspirational, and make you think about the process.”
Earlier in her career, Lee leaned toward making Southern-style fare, skills that her mother learned from cooking in the kitchens of Mississippian church gatherings. But after becoming a finalist in season 5 of “The Next Food Network Star” in 2009, Lee felt a strong desire to connect to her roots, which she had avoided since getting bullied in school for being Asian. “People were like, ‘Well, you can’t even speak Korean, so why are you trying to cook Korean?’” says Lee. “It really bridged me back to my culture in a way that I thought I didn’t want to be part of.”
Following her TV appearance, in 2010, she opened her food truck, Ahn-Joo, a Korean phrase for food that’s paired with alcohol. Lee’s since published her cookbook, “Seoultown Kitchen,” had stints on other cooking competition shows like “Chopped” and “Morimoto’s Sushi Master,” and ran a tasting-menu pop-up in Silver Lake called Joseon. Yi Cha is a callback in many ways to those early Ahn-Joo days, with an eye toward the future. Here, Lee gives us the rundown on everything you need to know before you go.
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Expect bold flavors that pay homage to Korea and L.A.
“If I’m on the street and I see esquites, that’s the first thing I grab,” says Lee. “I was never a fan of Korean corn cheese because it was just some corn, melted mozzarella, and butter, but esquites always hit for me.”
Lee decided to meld Korean and Mexican flavors, incorporating soy sauce, Kewpie mayonnaise, and Korean peppers into corn kernels, then showering the whole thing with crumbled queso fresco. The bowl arrives at the table with roasted wagyu bone marrow, its fat intended to be scraped into the mixture, adding richness.
Lee’s OG KFC is a throwback to an item she used to serve at Ahn-Joo, and a nod to one of her grandmother’s favorite foods. “My grandmother learned how to make fried chicken from the soldiers because there was no turkey in Korea [during Thanksgiving], and so for me, Korean fried chicken represents that bridge of American and Korean cooking,” she says.
Lee and her brother used to joke that whoever received a drumstick was their parent’s favorite child, so at Yi Cha, everyone gets a leg. Just like her grandmother, she lightly dusts the meat in potato starch and double-fries it, resulting in “super crackling, crispy skin.” Instead of being tossed in sauces, they’re served alongside a dip — either sweet honey garlic or pimento chile.
As the seasons change, dishes rotate, like Lee’s budae jjigae, or Korean army stew, which will return in the fall. She also plans to relaunch weekend brunch with a new menu soon.
The cocktails are just as playful
Philip Ly (of General Lee’s and formerly Patina Group) heads Yi Cha’s beverage program, which runs the gamut of fun Korean-inspired drinks to casual pub offerings like a kimchi pickleback. (There are non-alcoholic options like a sweet fermented rice and barley tea; wine, and local beer to round out the menu.) Ly incorporates Korean soju and ingredients like perilla leaf, pear, and puffed corn into the mix.
One of the most popular drinks is the Bananas Faster, an espresso martini topped with a banana-milk espresso foam that’s reminiscent of the popular dairy beverage in Korea. Ly suggests ordering the refreshing Yellow Bird, their version of a Last Word (but with Italian bitters, soju, and lemon juice in lieu of green Chartreuse, gin, and lime juice) to accompany heavier dishes like the fried wings and mandu lumpia. “It’s a very crisp, balanced cocktail that clears the palate every time you take a bite,” he says.
Travel to Korea through the design of the space.
In Seoul, pocha stalls and tents line the streets late in the evenings, surrounded by neon signs and the string lights dangling from the canopies. Designer Kahi Lee aimed to capture that feeling, and the vibe of Seoul’s bustling Gwangjang Market in miniature at Yi Cha. “She wanted it to be dimly lit and not too bougie, [a place where you could] come eat with your sweats on after a workout, or if you wanted to come for a special occasion or date night,” says Debbie Lee.
Walking through the 2,800-square-foot space feels transportive. After passing the front bar, the 72-seat restaurant grows narrow and alleyway-like with a brick wall on one side and more neon signs like a soju bottle brightening the space. “Think of this as your Korean ‘Cheers,’” says Debbie Lee. “That’s basically what I was trying to accomplish here.”
The striking mural is from an artist featured in “Parasite.”
Lee became such a fan of Korean artist Zi Be Zi — known for his brightly colored, child-like drawings that were featured in the Oscar-winning film “Parasite” — that she messaged him on social media. “He was probably thinking, ‘My God, who is this psychopath?’” laughs Lee. “But after a couple of tries, he and his wife met up with me. We became friends and then I asked him to do the mural.”
A rainbow-hued, floor-to-ceiling mural covers the wall of the entrance to Yi Cha, with whimsical and psychedelic cartoons of anthropomorphized trees and pizza. There are smiling mountains, a Figueroa Street sign, and the Dodgers’ iconic interlocking L.A. logo.
“I told him I wanted him to think about a Korean American chef in Highland Park in Northeast L.A., and he apparently hung out on the streets for a month, checking out the scene and getting to know everything,” says Lee. “It’s really cool because every little part in there says something about what we intend to do.”
Return for a visit to the adjacent Mokja.
Around the back of Yi Cha is Lee’s other business, the recently launched Korean market and cafe Mokja that she runs with Be Bright Coffee owners Frank and Michelle La. At this casual spot, diners can grab drinks like sweet corn lattes and banana milk matcha, and snacks like soy sauce-marinated egg salad sandwiches and oxtail hand pies. There’s also a build-your-own instant ramen bar, refrigerated grab-and-go banchan and packaged meals, and local snacks from AAPI purveyors, like Seoul Sausage’s Korean ramen-flavored popcorn and Loaf Language’s mochi Rice Krispies treats.
“I would have never thought that when I opened Ahn-Joo, this many years later, that this would be the moment for Korean food and culture — and that really excites me,” says Lee. “It makes me feel like all the sweat and tears was well worth it, and I’m really excited to see what the next 10 years brings.”
