Video Exclusive: Marja Vongerichten on How Her Korean Cooking Inspires Jean-Georges

A sneak-peek at an upcoming episode of Kimchi Chronicles. Courtesy PBS.

Marja Vongerichten, wife of three-star Michelin chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, may not have culinary degrees, or enough James Beard Awards to wallpaper a loft. Yet. Because when it comes to cooking Korean, even her husband can’t compete with her fare. Born outside Seoul to an unmarried Korean woman and an American serviceman in 1976, Marja was put up for adoption at age three. She grew up in Northern Virginia, not knowing her biological mother, but harboring a faint desire to reconnect with her roots. Just days shy of her 19th birthday, Marja came to New York to reunite with her birth mother for the first time in 17 years. Naturally, one of the first things they did was eat.

“It’s how Koreans show their love,” she says.

Sixteen years later, now with a daughter of her own, Marja is re-exploring her Korean roots in Kimchi Chronicles, a new, 13-episode series on PBS produced by the same folks that did Spain: On the Road Again with Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow. Following the Vongerichten family and friends through Korea—across the coast, city centers, and every fresh-food market and rice field in between—Kimchi Chronicles is equal parts travelogue, heart-wrenching biography, and cooking show. Vongerichten family pal Hugh Jackman narrates, having bonded with Marja over adoption (Jackman and his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, have two adopted children).

On a recent afternoon in Manhattan’s Koreatown, VF Daily sat down with Marja for some bold, get-your-blood-rolling Korean food and comfortable Konglish—that’s English conversation with Korean thrown in for good measure. Highlights from our chat:

Sarah Kwak: What is your first Korean food memory?

Marja Vongerichten: Jjajangmyun (black-bean noodles). I always remembered that smell, but I didn’t know from where. Years later, after coming to New York and meeting my birth mother, I found out that the noodle dish I loved was actually jjajangmyun, and that it was a Korean/Chinese restaurant that we always used to go to. That was my first solid, solid memory—like, I’ve had this before.

So what was your first full proper Korean meal?

The day I came to New York to reunite with my mother, she had been cooking all day. She made me bulgogi (marinated beef), daengjang chigae (soybean stew), kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage), and kim (dried press seaweed, similar to laver).

That sounds delicious, and traditional.

It was, and I loved it. I remembered the taste of bulgogi, and she gave me chungah kimchi because she was like, Do you remember this? I remembered the taste—she said, “I used to put it on a chopstick for you, and then I would rinse it off and you would cry because it wasn’t spicy enough.” I’ve always loved Asian food anyway, but she really exposed me to it, and I just developed a great passion for it after that. Not to mention its health benefits.

Yeah, unlike some other Asian cuisines, there isn’t a whole lot of deep-fried food, and there are a lot of soups.

I always call it the soul food of Asia because it uses the cheapest cuts of meat, and a lot of times it’s about what you can find. It takes a lot of love, creativity, and a lot of time. For the book [a companion Korean cookbook, to be published in August], I tried to make it easy and accessible for Americans to do while still keeping it traditional. I’m not trying to Westernize it in any way—I just want to make it easier for Westerners to actually do it.

How much of this TV show was about promoting Korea and sharing its food with the world, and how much of it was personal, something to do for yourself?

The Korean government funded this project. They’re pushing to globalize Korean food, which I think is smart. But this story became a part of my journey. I don’t think it was written into the show for me to get all emotional at times. We had ideas for the show, but it wasn’t until we got there that we saw what stories would be best. So we just kind of went with what looked good—the real stories about the halmuhnees (grandmas) who start their businesses. That’s what was interesting.

Who makes better Korean food—you or your husband?

Me. He didn’t know anything about Korean cuisine before we met. But we cook a lot of my favorite things on the weekends for family, and everybody loves it. And he’s been experimenting more with the flavors. He added, on the Perry Street menu, a steak with a ggojujang (chili paste) butter, and at Mercer Kitchen, he’s doing a hotdog with kimchi relish.

So he’s really embraced the flavors.

He loves it. He says now that he’s had so much Korean food, especially after our trip, he can’t live without eating chili. It’s got to be flavorful and pungent. He actually said one day, “After eating your food, I feel like mine tastes so bland.” I was like, “Hey, that’s a pretty good compliment.”

Do you have any memories of Korea from before you were adopted?

I do. But my memories are like little vignettes. My mother’s presence was always there, but I could only see her from the waist down, like from a three-year-old’s height perspective. But I remember washing blankets with her. She knew I always loved to stomp on the blankets with the soap to get all the dirt out. I remember her washing clothes in the stream and beating it with a rock. I remember going to get ice cream. I remember banana milk. I remember stepping on a nail, and my mom biting my foot to get the nail out and getting the blood out. Korean mothers are hardcore.

So you became really close with your mom. How often do you see and talk to her?

She lives in Brooklyn, and I see her as much as anybody would see their mother. We’re very close. She’s my best friend. We go to noraebang (karaoke) every Monday.

How did the whole reuniting process happen?

Growing up, I went to mostly white schools, where I was the only one that looked like me. I didn’t look black, didn’t look Asian. I didn’t even talk about being Korean. I just said my parents were mixed. I went to a performing-arts high school in D.C. that was predominantly black, and then I went to a historically black college, Fisk University, in Nashville, and I just really needed to find out who I was because I went from one extreme to the other. I even went through a kind of pro-black, militant phase because at least I knew it was something I belonged to, you know?

So when I went to college, I decided to start looking, but I didn’t want to tell my parents because I felt guilty for even wanting to know. I think all adoptees have that. But at the same time, no matter how much your parents love you, you’ll never have your mom’s eyes, and when you’re talking about a family tree, those aren’t your ancestors, really. So I always used to wonder if [my birth mother] ever thought about me, if she was drinking orange juice when I was drinking orange juice.

When I was in college, then, I called the Korean Embassy in D.C. I said I’m adopted, I’m half Korean, and I’m trying to find my mom. And then they gave me the number of these nuns, and I gave them all the information I had from my dad. They called back a few months later, and said we found your birth mother. She’s living in Brooklyn. But they were like, just be prepared because we don’t know what her circumstances are. She might be remarried, and maybe she didn’t tell him. There are a lot of things that could go lots of ways.

So, I had this number, and I was just holding it for three or four hours, just staring at this number, wondering, Do I call? Not call? Thinking, like, what if she’s a crackhead or something, you know what I mean? But how can you just [get access to] somebody that’s half of you and just walk away? I wanted to open this box.

So finally I call, and by then it’s 11 at night. My cousin through my mother’s marriage at the time answered the phone. He sounded really pissed, like a typical New Yorker, and he said, “Hello?” And I said, “Hi. My name is Marja Allen, formerly known as Brenda Bae. Is there a Korean woman living in your house?” And there was silence. I thought he hung up on me. And then I heard him call out, “Aunt Sookie, your daughter’s on the phone! Brenda’s on the phone!” She picked up the phone, and then she fainted.

What did she say?

Nothing. She couldn’t speak. Then, I think I called almost every day after that and just talked to my cousin. She would just listen on the line.

Incredible. That was your first introduction to Korea, as well.

It was. And from that point on, I really embraced it.