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Chef Debbie Lee's new-school take on a Korean gastropub in Highland Park—a fusion of her Northern Korean heritage, Southern upbringing, and decades in Los Angeles—is as unconventional as it is deeply personal.
The chef-owner, who has appeared on Food Network Star, Chopped, and Morimoto's Sushi Master, darts around the long, narrow dining room delivering platters of jangjorim (wet beef jerky) and fish jerky to tables, sharing her story in the process. Kimchee is made with salt and shrimp, the Northern Korean way, as opposed to the fish-and-oyster style down south. Paired with tofu and crispy pork belly, it's a delectable dish—best with a side of barley rice, which holds sentimental value for North Koreans since the communist regime banned white rice at markets (barley’s the next best thing).
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Debbie's not trying to do Korean the OG authentic way; there are plenty of great restaurants in Koreatown for that, she'll tell you herself. At Yi Cha, she's putting a modern spin on what Korean food looks like. This, of course, earns her the occasional side-eye from Korean aunties, but also a devoted Korean couple who drives from Venice, orders the whole menu, and calls their leftovers meal prep for the week.
A lineup of cocktails and Korean spirits pair well with the food, which, as you can imagine, has a lip-smacking quality to it. The menu is sectioned off into parts: bar bites, small plates, medium plates, and large plates. The Ahn-Joo platter, a callback to her food truck days, is a sampling of all the bar bites. The mandu lumpia ssam style is a collaboration with her Filipino-American sous chef—her family's halmuni pork and shrimp filling, his preparation, finished with yuja cha chile sauce. The KFC (Korean fried chicken) wings come with gloves for eating them. And if you can round up a group, order the gamtajang—or as Chef Deb likes to call it, hangover stew. Then there's the salad. People told Debbie she had to have one if she was going to have a restaurant in Highland Park. The result is a hyper-fresh chopped sashimi salad with stunning gochugaru lime yellowtail, perilla-cured salmon, and scorched rice croutons for a lovely crunch.
Every dish has a story behind it, down to the fried Asian sweet potato pie with pear crème fraîche and chile peanut brittle—born out of Debbie's anger toward McDonald's for switching to baked, and a dish she's been making for 16 years.
It's impossible not to love Debbie. After only knowing her for 90 minutes, I hugged her goodbye as I would anyone who'd had me over to their home and cooked me a meal with this much heart.
