Open Kitchen: A Conversation With Sohui Kim of Insa and Gage & Tollner

By Abe Beame

Open Kitchen is a monthly interview column covering the joys and frustrations of Brooklyn restaurant operation in all its many forms.

Every now and then, in my idle time, I play a game in which I try to decide, if I could trade places with any restaurateur in New York, who I’d choose to become. Money is a factor, but not the main factor, because all these people are a level of successful I’d be extremely happy with. So I’m looking for a business with good bones. I want long-tenured and happy crews. I want creative freedom, and I’d like the option to pivot and/or expand, should the right idea and opportunity present itself. Most importantly, I’d want my restaurants to feel intimate and idiosyncratic. To have a lived-in feel specific to their neighborhoods and moments in culture.

My answer has changed over the years, but today it’s Sohui Kim, whose collection of institutions is so loosely aligned she hasn’t bothered to name the umbrella they fall under. She’s had a wild, charmed journey through the Brooklyn restaurant industry as it developed. She moved to Red Hook with her Upper West Side-born-and-bred contractor husband, Ben Schneider, in the early 2000s. Chef Kim worked under the wings of some of New York City’s best chefs from that era: Michael Anthony, Dan Barber, and, most significantly, the great Anita Lo, before opening her foundational Brooklyn 1.0 restaurant, The Good Fork, in 2006, with $80,000.

The Good Fork is definitional for that era in its ethos, inspiration, and location. Chef Kim had no dreams of empire; she merely wanted to buy herself a job in a second home where she could cook her food for her community. That food spoke to her specific experience as a Korean raised in the Bronx, as well as New York City kitchens. And, of course, it was on Van Brunt Street, around the corner from her house, during an era when the neighborhood was largely residential and it was considered absurd and borderline dangerous for major food critics to ride the train to Carroll Gardens, then take a car or walk a few miles over the BQE to dinner. But they did (as did I, fairly frequently). 

Sohui has since sold The Good Fork (though she occasionally does some consulting for the restaurant that still operates under that name) and today splits her time between Insa, her Korean BBQ/Karaoke hall in Gowanus, and Gage & Tollner, her—ahem—Oyster Chop House in downtown Brooklyn, on Fulton Mall. These restaurants are somehow both wildly and quietly successful, one a thought experiment that has turned into a decade of success, the other a miracle reclamation project that has been running for five sturdy years and already feels like a part of Brooklyn’s restaurant firmament, with all signs pointing to it staying in its landmarked home for years, if not decades.

These various businesses owe much to their success: timing, hard work, great people, great food, and Ben’s cheap labor. But more than anything else, their bedrock and guiding light is Chef Kim. We recently got on the phone for an hour so I could briefly experience life in her shoes.

(This interview has been edited and condensed to make me sound like less of an asshole.)

Can you start by taking me back to the Brooklyn food scene in the early 2000s? 

In the early 2000s—that’s 25 years ago—the chef/owner pathway was not clear to a lot of us. At the time, the Food Network was just getting started as a thing, and most people were only starting to understand it’s possible that you don’t just go to culinary school because you’re a fuck-up. I was sort of a career changer, after university. I was in architectural publishing for a while, before I got off that train in my mid-20s, and I always loved to play with food, so it was like, how do I do this? 

And I think a lot of cooks in New York were having similar experiences. It was mostly young chefs recognizing the reality that Manhattan was getting really expensive, and there were suddenly these small mom-and-pop-type places popping up where the team was a couple, or the chef and the contractor, maybe the sommelier, whoever the partners were, you come together, scratch whatever money you can beg or borrow, and just pour your heart into it. Not to conquer Brooklyn with a restaurant group, but just one meal at a time, one plate at a time. That was the focus that we had and the passion that we had. There was a lot of trial and error and just trying to figure out how to piece the rest of it together. How do you grow from a two-person line where it’s just me and a cook? How do we extend to brunch? How do you then make this fucking restaurant work? How do we survive? 

I remember the fourth month, we got written up in $25 and Under, and it was Peter Meehan. He gave us a glowing review, but it was like, ah, “Let’s see how long these people last,” you know? [Laughs.]

How do you grow from a two-person line where it’s just me and a cook? How do we extend to brunch? How do you then make this f*cking restaurant work?

Can we talk about that for a second? My memory was Red Hook was an extremely unlikely place for a refined bistro at the time. And even as the neighborhood and the borough around it has exploded, many hit places haven’t been able to survive on the waterfront. Can you tell me what Red Hook was like when you opened? 

In 2006, when we opened at 391 Van Brunt St., which is the main drag, if you go much further, you hit the water. It’s a dead stop. So Red Hook is a destination. You don’t go through Red Hook to get to another neighborhood. You either fuck up and end up there by mistake, or you want to be there. And without going into too much detail about the glorious, amazing, fucked-up history of Red Hook—it’s just a little hook that juts out into the Erie Basin and into the harbor that people sort of forgot about. The second-largest housing project in the city is down here. There’s a small number of residents because we’re mixed-use, so we don’t have big apartment buildings or any real density. 

It’s always been a place where, much like SoHo back in the day, artists came for cheap rent, cheap housing, a small space [and] to make your art. And it still had that vibe when [my husband and I] moved here in 2001. It still had a rough-and-tumble feel, but for us, it was perfect. 

We looked at the only other restaurants that were here at the time. One was called 360, this little restaurant that opened two blocks away from The Good Fork, three years before we opened. We became friends with the owner, and he didn’t really know what he was doing, but he was making it work. Limousines and town cars would pull up there; they got written up in the New York Times as well. And they were like, this place is amazing. Great French food, three courses for $25. And there was also a gay couple that opened this diner with karaoke called Hope and Anchor. So we were inspired.

Ben did all the woodwork, and he works really fast. And we just opened one day—quietly, without any fanfare, without any press—and people naturally just came and found us. The neighborhood support really helped. Just like Insa and Gage & Tollner, it was very site-specific. You couldn’t replicate it anywhere else. Everything was homemade; we put a lot of heart into it. And I think people were able to recognize that. So that was our humble beginnings. 

Photo courtesy of Sohui Kim

I didn’t realize you had worked for Anita Lo, but the minute I read that you did, it made so much sense. I put her among the very few chefs that innovated intelligent, elegant fusion, and I see a lot of her design, her restraint and even some of her plating in your food. Can you speak to what you learned from cooking for her?

I got yelled at a little bit when I was writing the initial menu and letting my friends in the industry and family members see. They were like, “This is a crazy menu. How are you going to offer homemade dumplings and homemade pappardelle with duck leg confit?” I got a lot of shit for it. But I stood my ground, because they were dishes that I loved, and I knew I could make stand out, and they were going to be fucking good. It was authentic to me and my taste buds and my experience. Now, you wouldn’t think twice about it, but back then it was a big deal. We even got pushback at Insa.

My arsenal of tricks is all about the pantry. If I’m making kimchi in-house, I’m going to sneak it into my clams casino. I think that’s the thing that I learned from Anita. She’s Chinese American, and she worked for some amazing French and American chefs: Daniel Boulud, [David] Waltuck at Chanterelle. She has great technique, and she was unafraid to see what happens when you use some Xiao Xing or some Chinese sausage. She was bold about it—she didn’t hide anything—but we both had an issue with the word fusion. At the time, if you went to a designated fusion restaurant, it was often very stupid and confused—had no direction, not purposeful. But Anita cooks with absolute integrity, authenticity and flavor. And I try to do the same, and people seem to like it, so I guess it’s all worked. I’m glad that my husband made me write that book, because now that history is documented.

If I’m making kimchi in-house, I’m going to sneak it into my clams casino.

Gage & Tollner doesn’t get enough credit for what an unique restaurant it is. I think it’s thought of as a steakhouse for anniversaries and events, which it is, but it’s not common for a new-ish steakhouse, particularly in Brooklyn, to present in this unapologetic, opulent, neo-classical fashion. And then, also, it’s a Southern restaurant, because of its heritage, and then of course there are Korean notes, because it’s your restaurant. So I was wondering if you could walk through the general conception and research behind it, melding Edna Lewis’s food and your food and a steakhouse into one room.

First off, I’m going to correct you. We are not a steakhouse. We are an oyster chop house. 

Oh, shit. Sorry! 

You have to be hyper-specific and focused on the past when you’re reopening a historic landmarked restaurant that dates back to 1879. We had to honor those traditions while bringing them into the 21st century. It had been a restaurant, more than the steakhouse, for the majority of its 100 plus years, before it shut down in 2004. It was mostly an oyster house. It started as an oyster cart, grounded in the oyster capital of the world that New York City was, on Fulton Street. They moved to the space that we occupy now in 1892, and there were very few owners in the interim. 

In the beginning, it was all about oysters done 50 different ways. Clams done 50 different ways. A quarter or a dime for this, two pennies for this. It was so interesting just to be able to go down to Brooklyn Public Library, the historical society, and dig into the archives to find gems like Edna Lewis’s she-crab soup. She was here from 1988 to 1992. Peter Ashkenazi brought her in. She is a total hero of mine, and she was the only named chef in the entire history of Gage & Tollner. Her kitchen was cooking the food of the South because that is the food of America. But from the earliest days, it was all about the freshest seafood and chops cooked over coal.

To me, a classic oyster chop house is the best version of a public house. A restaurant where the tired and the weary come to sit down and enjoy this amazing experience. I get excited just thinking about the history. Because it’s so unique, to use your word. There is no other restaurant like it. It’s filled with memories and history, and holy shit, this is going nowhere because it’s landmarked. And the City of New York says, “No, you can’t knock this down.” So when you go there right now, and you look at the restaurant from the outside, the entire block is vacant and they’re probably putting up a 50-story building next door. If the landmark commission didn’t landmark the interior and the exterior in 1975, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So, yeah, it’s a one-in-a-million type of restaurant in New York City. 

To me, a classic oyster chop house is the best version of a public house.

I have to ask a question that’s been bothering me. Am I crazy, or was it briefly an Arby’s?

Yes!

I knew it. [Laughs.]

The last Gage & Tollner service was in 2004, on Valentine’s Day. Right after that, it was a TGI Fridays. And that sort of made sense. It’s still a full service restaurant, right? They lasted about two years. And then, several months later, Arby’s signed a lease, and then they had a field day. I mean, Landmarks had a field day with them. Like, hey, you can’t touch the mirrors, you can’t touch the woodwork. If you want to hang an Arby’s sign, you have to do it in a certain way so that you don’t mess with the architectural integrity of the exterior. So they put up these fake walls covering everything that they weren’t supposed to touch. It was just a monstrosity.

It was so fucking dissonant.

They only lasted nine months. But guess what? If my whole thing is we’re going to nod to the entirety of the culinary history of Gage & Tollner, I have to bring back Arby’s. Maybe a roast dip sandwich for lunch, or something like that.

I’d like that. You’ve opened restaurants in Red Hook, in Gowanus, and even though it’s easy to confuse this with some kind of downtown hub, Fulton Mall, an unlikely place in today’s Brooklyn for a place like Gage & Tollner. So what role would you say community support has played in your success?

The communities meant everything. We like to think of ourselves as community-builders. Red Hook has gone through its share of calamities. We almost went out of business the year Sandy hit, but the community said, no, no, we’re going to help you. Restaurants fail because it’s a really hard business. Independent restaurants are especially difficult. It’s an uphill battle every single year. 

Community showed up when we were trying to raise the funds to open Gage & Tollner. We had no money to build this restaurant. Now we have a little over 40 equity investors, and the rest of them were just our community that showed up. And then there’s the people who have been there since we opened the doors, the people that have shared memories of the old Gage & Tollner. It’s a long history, unlike any other. So people come back. 

We end every interview by asking the chef what the last great dine-in or takeout Brooklyn meal they had was.

I’ve recently been to Sailor, which was great. There’s Cafe Kestrel, of course. There’s Third Times the Charm, it’s a cute little pizza restaurant we love. And also Hoek. We have two pizza joints here and I gotta mention both. Very different styles, but both great.

But last night, my son and I drove back from spending a weekend out in Long Island. And I think for the 20th time this month, he told me, “I’m just going to have a steak burrito from The Flores Mexican Truck.” It’s parked right outside of P.S. 15 in Red Hook, and they’re just there all the time. And for the longest time, it was like, why don’t we have a taco truck in Red Hook? Then one day it just kind of appeared. It’s awesome.