Korean cooking and street food are abundant in L.A. But outside the confines of a Kogi truck, the twain rarely meet.
Ken Lee, the owner of Assa K-Food, a Korean stand at Lincoln and Rose in Venice with no internet presence, believes it all comes down to the massive amount of work that goes into street vending.
Lee should know. He and his wife, Savannah, make the trek from Palmdale to Venice and back five times a week. Once all their equipment–including a four-burner stove–is broken down, unloaded, and cleaned, they rarely get to bed before 2 AM.
Prep starts anew early the next morning, where Ken slices his own bulgogi and pork, prepares his own marinades, grinds three types of peppers for his spicy broths, and cures his kimchi the old-fashioned way, with nothing more than the juice extracted from Asian pears and apples. All before returning to L.A.’s Westside to set up and vend for eight to nine hours in the evening.
Raised in Seoul, Lee’s family immigrated to Michigan in 1976 when he was about 11. A few years later, his parents opened their own Korean restaurant in Grand Rapids, where he learned how to cook, along with getting steeped in the trials of running a restaurant.
Ken later owned and operated BWon, his own big Korean-Japanese restaurant, in Chicago. Then he fell in love. He met Savannah in L.A. 17 years ago through friends. A year later, he moved to the West Coast.