Photos by L.G. Patterson
Ask any chef how their restaurant is run and you’ll never hear the same answer twice. Some chefs thrive in chaos and their kitchens operate like amusement parks or dance floors. Some kitchens are orderly, well-oiled machines with no room for surprises or disruptions — although those are impossible to avoid in the restaurant industry. In Jina Yoo’s case, her restaurants are a concert.
Her Asian-fusion recipes are the sheet music, the kitchen tools are her instruments and the staff is her choir. Yoo originally studied music before becoming a chef and says running her restaurants isn’t all that different from creating music. After 18 years of operating two successful restaurants, Yoo can keep all of her dishes in tune just by ear — or by eye. “I can see just by a customer’s plate how I’m doing,” she says. “I know what’s going right and what’s going wrong.”
The food makes the restaurant, but the service makes the experience, so Yoo structures her staff like she would a choir. She wouldn’t put a soprano in the alto section, just like she wouldn’t stick someone who thrives in the kitchen in the front of house. Yoo says restaurants are a “people business.” She knows where to place her staff, what each plate should look like and how to read her customers, leading to the success of two of Columbia’s most popular restaurants.
For years, locals and in-the-know visitors alike crave the ramen and bao buns at Le Bao, and happily file in line at Jina Yoo’s Asian Bistro for an upscale dinner out.
But what’s next for Columbia’s queen of Asian cuisine? She wants to try her hand at a bar.
Bar J, a speakeasy-style cocktail joint, opened in May next door to Jina Yoo’s Asian Bistro after five years in the making. Yoo has never run a bar before, but is eager for the challenge.
Bar J is “the same chord” as her other establishments, “just a different key.” This isn’t your typical neighborhood pub or sticky-floor bar. While all are welcome, Yoo envisions Bar J as a place for women to meet old friends and spend a night without feeling out of place the way they might at a sports bar or a college haunt. “You walk in and it’s age appropriate,” she says. “It’s familiar and comfortable.”
Inside, high-end wines and signature cocktails are served at a massive U-shaped bar. Snakes curl across the red walls of the lounge area, where booths are available by reservation. Eventually, the bar will also feature live music.
The cocktails, including a matcha martini, a cosmopolitan and more classics are a major focus, but Yoo is most excited for the new succinct but tasty food menu.
Small plates are made out of the same ingredients from fan-favorites at Jina Yoo’s. She describes them as remixes of some of her biggest hits, plus some new additions to her album. The Korean barbecue braised short rib tacos and the spicy, smoky tuna cigar roll are two items Yoo anticipates being popular.
Speakeasies like Bar J don’t often serve food, but Yoo says the place would’ve felt incomplete without it. “Without the food, I am not having fun,” she says. “It’s a restaurant, but it’s still my playground.”
Yoo is a self-admitted “mad woman” for adding a third restaurant to her overflowing plate, along with the unpredictable challenges that go handin-hand with the restaurant business. No two days have ever looked the same for Yoo, her schedule always chaotic. With the addition of Bar J to her repertoire, she says, “I haven’t even imagined how much everything will change.”
Running three restaurants? Managing a cohesive kitchen? Devising new menu items? Keeping a team in order? For Jina Yoo, the show must go on.
