The Question:
You have one meal left in your life. You can eat whatever your want. What’s your last supper?
The Eater:
Chef Won Kim (aka Stephen Kim, aka Revise CMW): the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Yall might have come across the couple football field sized murals he’s got at Lincoln Park Whole Foods, or the compositions for Goose Island Clybourn; or perhaps you know him as an urban street artist. When not creating, Won is consuming…immoderately. Homeboys been known to slog through a charcuterie plate alongside a stack of pork turrines whilst flipping the bird to his gout condition.
Chef Kim is also renowned for placing the amp back into the social food setting. Sans his street chef collective, Chicago popup dinners would look hella different. For the sud heads, Won has also invigorated the Chicago Craft Brew culture through his homebrewer showcase events such as BrewLala, BrewHoho and BrewHeyhey. He’s also written delicious gluttonous narrative for these jibronis. Yall can follow Won’s street shenanigans at his blog: sleepingisforsuckers.
The Last Supper:
It’s interesting to me when I work in a new kitchen whether it’s at someone’s house or in an established restaurant because there are truly so many ways to die. This is a pretty morbid way to think when starting your inevitable minimum 12 hour shift. The thought of dying while maybe choking a literal chicken in your hand always looms and is quite possible, not to mention how on edge and psychotic a lot of good cooks are. They are all ticking time bombs, the best of them can snap over something as trivial as a cup dropping or silverware not rolled correctly. One of my biggest fears is falling down the stairs holding a pot of something. I’ll just go ahead and assume that’s what the strange white girls swimming in brain milk from the Minority Report announced, but instead of preemptively trying to prevent it from happening, I just said “fuck it,” because I just don’t want to work dinner service tomorrow and I prepped my last meal in celebration.
My last meal is super simple and screams comfort having grown up with less than moderate means in Chicago. It was what my mom would make to quickly feed us, get our bellies full and our mouths shut. There isn’t a name for it, but it hits all the right sensations and reminds me of important simplicity is sometimes. It’s a bowl of short grained rice mixed with soy sauce and butter, kimchi (sometimes fried), a sunny side up egg, toasted nori and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil.
It’s a poor mans bi Bim bap, but for me, it’s as real as it gets. It’s essentially a Seoul bowl (see what I did there?) and it’s like wearing a turnt up yellow snuggie filled with warmed up Vaseline. It may sound a little underwhelming but having eaten at some amazing places, you soon realize that some times a bowl of humble pie goes a long way after a shitty day no matter what you do in life.