Portland Korean Restaurant the Soop Grows its Veggies With Hydroponics | Eater Portland

"I visited a West Burnside restaurant called The Soop, a farm-to-table concept born from Ann Lee’s garage hydroponics experiments; she and her son grow lettuces, microgreens and sprouts in a glass mini-farm in back using a mix of deep water culture, nutrient film technique, and aeroponics. The shop straddles the line between a casual lunch cafe and a Korean restaurant, offering sorrel salads, a BLT made with their lettuces, ham-and-cheese with alfalfa, kimbap rolled with microgreens, bibimbap topped with sunflower sprouts and even nachos topped with microgreens — radish and beet sprouts in particular are surprisingly flavorful. Along the seating wall trays of sprouts are lit with colored lights while tomato vines climb a wooden frame (they're still trying to get them to fruit). The beverage program is similarly thoughtful, with a large cold drip tower, glass coffee siphons, espresso and a back cooler stocked with soju, sake and makgeolli. Lee makes her mother's kimchi and a house gochujang she plans to offer in a dolsot bibimbap, and they hope to expand the menu (kimchi jeon, crispy fried green onion, galbi ssam with their lettuces, and vegetable mandu) while growing more crops onsite." - Brooke Jackson-Glidden