Fire in the Belly: An Interview with Bill Kim

Bill Kim is the chef/co-owner of Urbanbelly and Belly Shack in Chicago. Born in Seoul, Korea, Bill moved to the U.S. at age 7. After getting his undergraduate degree he attended the School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College in Chicago. He then spent the next 15 years working in some of the top French and Asian restaurants in the country, including Susanna Foo’s in Philadelphia and Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. In January 2006, Bill became the executive chef of Le Lan, a stylish, upscale Japanese restaurant that also featured Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, and Chinese dishes and influences where he received three stars from the Chicago Tribune. Not satisfied with the life of a fine-dining chef, Bill left Le Lan in 2008 and with his wife, Yvonne Cadiz-Kim, opened Urbanbelly, a fast casual modern noodle and dumpling concept. In 2009, not content with merely fulfilling his dream of opening a restaurant, he and Yvonne opened Belly Shack, where the bi-cultural duo salute their Korean and Puerto Rican backgrounds with an affordable, approachable menu that reflects the flavors and dishes of their childhoods.

CIA: Why this radical shift in your career? Why at this point in your lives?

Bill Kim: We wanted to have control over our own destiny, creating something very personal to us and our families. We did not want to answer to anyone other than ourselves. No investors or other partners. To make that a reality, we knew we needed to strip down everything from our fine dining backgrounds to the bare essentials: 38 seats (with communal tables), counter service (no servers) BYOB (no liquor service) and a location in a strip mall that offered plenty of free parking, easy access to the highway and access also to public transpiration.

When I turned 40, my priorities began to change. I had proven myself as a chef, I had put in the hours and had sacrificed a lot to get to where I had gotten. We wanted something more personal, more fun, more expressive of who we are as people. Other chefs ask us, “Why are you doing this when we are closing our restaurants?” Well, the low overhead and limited “moving pieces” gave us a great deal of freedom to make this happen without over-extending ourselves.

CIA: How would you describe the concepts of Urbanbelly and Belly Shack?

BK: I’ve been wanting to open a noodle shop since I was 20 years old, so that’s where we started when thinking about what we would serve at Urbanbelly: basically, rice and noodle dishes and dumplings, with a few sides. Although we do have weekly specials, the rest of the menu stays pretty consistent. And we actually love numbering these dishes, so that it makes it easy for the guest to order a “Number 5” (Pork and Cilantro Dumpling) or a “Number 10” (Soba Noodles with Bay Scallops, Oysters Mushrooms and Thai Basil Broth) and easy for us to take and produce that order in the kitchen. Urbanbelly also gives us a chance to re-imagine Asian food outside the stereotypes in a way that is casual and approachable for our customers.

If I had to briefly describe the food we serve at both Urbanbelly and Belly Shack, I’d say farm fresh produce and the finest quality staples such as rice and noodles, cooked with top technique and served at affordable prices. Nothing at Urbanbelly costs more than $13; at Belly Shack, nothing costs more than $9. We have no walk-in refrigerators, so everything has to be made fresh daily. Basically, I think of it as people coming to my living room and I’m cooking for them. And the way we are set up, food comes out in about 5 minutes, people usually take no longer than 20 minutes to eat, and then are gone.

Belly Shack is a love letter to my wife, who is Puerto Rican. Here we have an interesting play of Asian flavors with those of Latin America and the Caribbean. “Number 5” is Marinated Tofu with Hoisin BBQ Sauce and Brown Rice Served with Crispy Plantain (also available with chicken or beef) and a “Number 8” is Somen Noodle Salad Layered with Shrimp, Tortilla Chips, Tomatillo and Jicama.

CIA: How are your dishes created and how does this process work for your business model?

BK: Our dishes are created with a great deal of precision, something that comes from my fine dining experience. Part of what I do is start with Asian-influenced dishes and then play with ingredients that are more readily available to me. Where a dish might traditionally call for water chestnuts, I use jicama. At Belly Shack we have a dish called “Belly Dog” (Note: This interviewer has tried a Belly Dog and note of caution: be prepared to become addicted to this dish!)  We start with something familiar, the best quality Chicago hot dog we can find and then confit it in oil. Instead of a bun, we use flatbread made by an Iraqi immigrant in an 800-degree oven. Curry mayo made from scratch, Korean chile paste, lime, pickled green papaya (think relish, only much, much better), fried shallots and crispy egg noodles then come together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Is it Asian with Chicago influence? Chicago with Asian influence? Does it matter? In all cases, though, we put money into where it counts: creating flavor.

However a dish comes together, it is done with a lot of exactitude; ingredients are precisely measured, sauces are made the same way every time. Consistency is key for a number of reasons: these dishes can then be easily replicated in a very small kitchen, they can be taught to our employees in such a way as to be the same no matter whether we are in the kitchen or not, and we have found that many of our customers latch on to a favorite dish and want it to be the same every time they have it.

CIA: What sort of business “culture” have you been able to create as a result of this different approach to what it means to create a restaurant?

BK: To start, because of the way we’ve set up Urbanbelly and Belly Shack, we have a minimum number of employees, often friends and family and people who we feel are kindred spirits of sorts. We feel that our efforts are more of a collaboration with our employees, helping us create what we consider a sustainable business after having empowered our employees to ‘do it right.’ And here’s something that’s radically different from most operations: we gave profit sharing to our managers at year three and our employees get a chance to see all of our financials. This gives everyone a sense of ownership in what we do.

CIA: What has been the effect on your lives of approaching a restaurant with such a different business model?

BK: First, working with my wife Yvonne on a shared vision has been a rare opportunity to bring our lives together. We both have had successful careers in fine dining and now we get a chance to grow in new ways and create a new kind of balance in our lives. Because of the way we construct recipes for the dishes we serve, we can have time away from the restaurants, giving our employees a chance to do what we’ve trained them to do, knowing that the consistency of quality will exist in our absence.

And this sort of business model allows us to turn on a dime in adapting to new realities and opportunities. On September 25th we are coming out with a line of sauces: Urbanbelly Seoul Sauce and Belly Fire that I hope will help demystify cooking with Asian flavors at home. And we’re looking at some new ventures. Perhaps campus dining or airports…why not? We never thought when we opened Urbanbelly that we could come into food service in a different way and we’ve done that.

Chef Jose Garces

Jose Garces is the chef-owner of the Garces Restaurant Group. Since opening his first restaurant, Amada, in Chicago in 2005, Chef Garces has emerged as an enormous talent and one of the nation's most gifted young chefs. He has opened seven additional restaurants in Philadelphia and Chicago; authored a stunning cookbook, Latin Evolution (Lake Isle Press, September 2008); won the James Beard Foundation's prestigious “Best Chef Mid-Atlantic” award in 2009; and won a season of The Next Iron Chef, making him one of just seven chefs in the country to hold the prestigious title of Iron Chef America.

We recently had a chance to catch this peripatetic talent for a conversation on the play of tradition and innovation in interpreting Latin cuisines, vibrant bar food scenes, and why “Village Whiskey”?

CIA: Perhaps we can start out by briefly noting your 8 restaurants and a few words about their concepts:

In Chicago:

1. Mercat a la Planxa: Catalan tapas bar and restaurant

In Philadelphia:  

1. Amada: authentic Andalusian tapas bar and restaurant Amada is located in Philadelphia, and was Chef Garces' first restaurant.  
2. Tinto: Basque wine bar and restaurant  
3. Distrito: Modern Mexican bar and restaurant  
4. Chifa: Latin-Asian bar and restaurant, named for the Peruvian eateries, serving Peruvian-Cantonese cuisine, of the same name  
5. Village Whiskey: Classic American bar and restaurant with a focus on brown spirits  
6. Garces Trading Company: European-style gourmet market and cafe  
7. JG Domestic: artisanal American food and drink

CIA: In looking at this eclectic list, what are the common threads that define your approach to creating a restaurant?  

JG: In every instance, I'm drawn to sharing the best possible ingredients with my guests.  At Amada, where it all began, we imported artisanal Spanish ingredients to create our authentic Andalusian small plates, and ever since, I've been obsessed with creating artful interpretations of the foods that inspire me.  JG Domestic, my most ambitious restaurant to date, is a showcase for American food and drink from top producers across the country, prepared according to the seasons to highlight each ingredient's inherent flavor and character.  

CIA: You were born in Chicago to Ecuadorian parents and have restaurants that feature Latin-inspired cuisines, from Andalusia, the Basque region, and Catalonia to Mexico and Peru. What is the play between “tradition” and "innovation" that inspires and guides you in creating menus and dishes for these restaurants?  

JG: Traditional dishes are nearly always the foundation of my cooking, but again, I like to incorporate top-notch ingredients into them and that often breeds innovation, to make those ingredients shine.  For example, our tortilla Espanola at Amada is simple as can be - a potato and egg cake, cooked in a skillet – and we serve it traditionally, with a side of aioli.  But we season our aioli with saffron, for a distinctive and delicious twist on the classic dish.  

CIA: A number of your restaurant concepts buzz around a lively bar food scene, whether it's the small plates of Spain, artisanal American ingredients, and in the case of Village Whiskey, more than 80 different types of whiskies (and brown spirits) and the foods they love. What is it about the energy of a bar setting that is so inviting to people?  

JG: There's a centuries-old tie between food and drink that Americans have rediscovered in the decades since Prohibition.  Throughout the world, no meal would be complete without a complementary beverage – think sangria in Spain or fine wine in France – and we mimic that synergy by creating restaurants that are also lively bars, serving drinks that complement and enhance the food on the menu.  

CIA: Your collection of ways to enjoy food and wine outside the home seem to exemplify the “World Casual” theme of this year's Worlds of Flavor Conference at CIA Greystone: cafes, wine bars, restaurants with markets attached, places where great food is served on small plates and perhaps across a counter and a taco truck.  What is it about this moment in time that this on-the-go, drop in, neighborhood feel, casual yet well-crafted approach to eating is so appealing to Americans? What about this “world casual” approach attracts you as a chef and entrepreneur?  

JG: As more and more Americans learn more about the food they eat, they naturally begin to demand higher quality.  Suddenly, once you open your eyes to farming and regional specialties, heat-and-serve fast food doesn't seem so appealing.  Our restaurants make high-quality food available in a fun, interactive way - without breaking the bank or forcing diners to endure hours-long meals over white tablecloths.  It's not to say that you can't linger over a great meal in our restaurants (try the chef's tasting menu sometime if you doubt that!), but it's also easy to grab a quick bite at the bar or pick up a picnic-to-go and enjoy that same quality of food any time, not just at a big splurge dinner. 

There's something really appealing about enjoying artful food and drink any time, rather than just on special occasions, and I think our guests have really responded to the idea that great meals don't have to cost a fortune, and they don't have to be relegated to special occasions only once or twice a year.  Everyone deserves to eat well all the time, and with a taco truck, a grab-and-go coffee kiosk, a market-café and a host of small plates restaurants, we allow them to do just that.