D.C.’s New Shia Serves Korean Food With a Side of Sustainability | Eater DC
"Opened Friday, November 1 in D.C.’s Union Market neighborhood, the small, earth-colored space transitions from a 12-seat bar to a 22-seat dining room (with a planned semi-outdoor dessert lounge) and runs a seven-course tasting menu priced at $160. Beyond the food, Lee tells Eater that there is “a story that we want to tell about sustainability” along the way; as a nonprofit project that grew out of the memoir- and cookbook-author’s LEE Initiative (which began as a mentoring program for women in the restaurant industry and became a COVID-19 relief fund), the restaurant is committed to being plastic-free, making its own menus and coasters from leftover paper, and even dehydrating its own trash to test sustainable alternatives for restaurants looking to contribute to a greener future. “As a nonprofit, our goal is to share every innovation we have,” Lee explains. “This is supposed to be a place where we can create practical solutions for sustainability, so that other restaurants can use it as a blueprint.” The nonprofit arm moves through phases of limited-waste practices — zero gas, zero plastic, and waste reduction — all measured and studied by a national research team of academics (from NYU to Stanford) that will publish papers every six months and produce reviews of sustainable products; a George Washington University environmental-science research assistant will “be spending time in the restaurant every week, collecting data,” says Lee. “She’ll be here, you know, three, four times a week ... keeping us on our toes to make sure that we’re doing the right thing too.” The team will painstakingly document effectiveness and cost — for example, “how long glass bottles last over plastic ones” and the cost trade-offs such as “the cost of turning old wine bottles into plates over buying plates.” Diners can hear about small environmentally minded practices throughout their meal — from bamboo pens that took months of research to the paper machine that turned the restaurant’s liquor license sign into the first menus — or they can opt out and simply enjoy the food. The cuisine is described as inventive yet simple Korean fine dining using seasonal produce and high-quality Korean ingredients shipped more slowly by boat rather than by plane; highlights on the evolving menu include a pine nut, tofu, and apple Korean porridge topped with Maryland crab and a tuna-encased ball of layered bibimbap crowned with caviar and a runny quail egg (a version of which Lee famously made for one of the final rounds of the South Korean cooking competition show he placed second on and the international Netflix hit Cultural Class Wars). Lee framed the project as an effort to break the stigma around nonprofit restaurants: “Most nonprofit restaurants, in the United States anyway, are places that do really good missions, but I would say, are not the best restaurants,” Lee says. “So the uphill battle was that we had to convince people, ‘no, no, no, it’s a nice restaurant.’” Operating as a reservation-only, hidden-away spot between Blue Bottle Coffee and nearby shops leading to La Cosecha, the restaurant was solidly booked for two full-house seatings each night through mid-January shortly after opening, with influencers helping diners find last-minute tables. Over time Lee plans to work with delivery and supply companies to create more plastic-free shipping and other scalable solutions; as he put it, “We’re not gonna change the world with one restaurant,” he says. “We can move the needle, and we can start a dialogue, and we can start getting the word out that this is important. Yeah, it’s time consuming, but it’s not that hard.”" - Emily Venezky
