Portrait by Roy Son
jamie-yoo
Is Abang Yoli a Korean fried chicken counter? Order the sweet potatoes from the Nicollet location—where most everyone is rushing in for a takeout bag of chicken—and everything you thought you knew about a Korean fried chicken counter is suddenly up for grabs. These potatoes! Purple boats fording through a churning sea of fried Thai basil leaves and fresh mint, white waves of sesame aioli, frothy crests of toasted coconut shreds, burgundy-colored pools of house-made chili crunch, amid scarlet hoops of pickled Fresno chili. Stick in a fork to retrieve a robust charred sweetness, a lush bit of sauce, pricking bits of crackle, contrasting flavors and styles of fresh herb, a little prickle of pickle.
What is happening at this fried chicken counter? Chef Jamie Yoo is what’s happening. Abang Yoli is the first solo project of this rising star, now 29. Fifteen years ago, in Seattle, Yoo was fresh from South Korea, relocated by his dad, who was following a tech job. Yoo, with little English and no friends, was not happy. Self-conscious, lonely, shy, he skipped classes to hide in the school library and read Alain Ducasse and Joël Robuchon cookbooks. “I think at first I just thought, Books with pictures,” recalls Yoo. “But soon I was so impressed with how much effort they put into their plates. It wasn’t just food; it was art. Eventually I asked my dad, ‘Can I get into this industry? I’m not a bad kid, just really quiet, not that good about studying, and I get really stressed about testing.’ I was surprised my parents were just happy I found something I wanted to do.”
Yoo enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America. His reputation for hard work got him stages at a few of the country’s most elite restaurants, like Dominique Crenn’s Atelier Crenn, where Yoo remembers putting in two hours picking and cleaning individual asparagus tips.
But the first elite restaurant where he spent his own money? New York City’s Jungsik, the Michelin-starred Korean restaurant with a high-profile second location in Seoul. “All the proteins were literally melting in my mouth. The fish was so perfectly cooked. I thought, You can do Korean food in this culinarily artistic way? Wow. Korean food for me had been like, I’m helping my mom slice five cases of napa cabbage for kimchi; now I have to slice 80 pounds of daikon by hand—this is not art. At Jungsik, I thought, OK, but actually, it is.”
Yoo cooked at San Francisco’s high-volume Gary Danko and a couple other high-profile spots in Seattle before he got a phone call from Gavin Kaysen’s key chef Nick Dugan. Would he be interested in helping open a new French restaurant called Bellecour? “First of all, I don’t even know—where is Minneapolis?” recalls Yoo. “I’m having a good time in Seattle. My parents are here; the weather is great. What is Wayzata? It sounds sketchy.”
Once it opened, Bellecour was pure French bliss. Behind the scenes, the cooking staff was turning into a sort of Band of Brothers with good knives—Jordan Bach, Lukas Freund, Vili Branyik, Thomas Yang (son of pastry legend Diane Moua), and Jamie Yoo supported and pushed each other—in other words, became besties.
Then the pandemic wiped out Bellecour as a full-service French restaurant, and Yoo was without a high-profile kitchen gig for the first time in his adult life. To cope, he started making his mom’s kimchi in his apartment for comfort. “I was panicking,” he recalls. “What’s my plan B?” Could chicken be the answer? “In Korea, when I was young, we lived in a little town, and there were at least 15 Korean fried chicken places—way more than McDonald’s. I thought, Well, it’s the time of takeout. This is not the kind of food I want to cook, but maybe it can get us there.” For three months, he ate fried chicken while he tried to figure out a good recipe.
He found it. Diane Moua knew the folks at Malcolm Yards and secured Yoo a cooking tryout. Yoo knew exactly what he wanted to do: Abang means “brothers”; yoli means “cuisine.” The band of Bellecour besties would tap their culinary art and build their next thing together.
If you’ve never had Abang Yoli’s fried chicken, drop everything. It’s tender, crisp, light, so very flavorful. Yoo eventually devised a four-hour brine with toasted coriander seeds, lemongrass, and rice wine vinegar, followed by a coating of whole-wheat flour batter that’s somehow light with a hearty, biscuity flavor. Yoo knows what people want. The boneless chicken quarters he serves are huge. When he puts one inside a sturdy custom-made Vikings and Goddesses Pie Company bun, the chicken gaps over the sides and gives you two chicken experiences: that of perfect fried chicken and, once you get to the middle, a sandwich with paper-thin pickles, lively kimchi, and that lush sesame aioli. It’s that thing we all want now: five-star technique that’s casual enough to grab for a lake picnic.
Today, there are two Abang Yolis. The Nicollet one has a slightly bigger menu to go with the larger kitchen. You’ll find Bellecour veterans behind the counter, making the city’s best ssam plates with perfectly tender proteins like grilled short ribs beside beautiful house-made kimchis. You’ll encounter gorgeous four-dollar bao and those unbelievable sweet potatoes. Yoo has plans for more Abang Yolis and a fancy Minnesota Korean restaurant one day, too.
His success reminds me of that saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” In Minneapolis, we should amend it to: “If you want to go far, be sure to go with the people who seriously know how to cook for a picnic.”
