Deuki Hong & Matt Rodbard Author Talk • Koreaworld: A Cookbook

Deuki Hong is a Korean American executive chef and owner of Sunday Bird in San Francisco, CA, who has been recognized as an Eater Young Gun, Zagat 30 under 30, and Forbes’ 30 under 30. A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Deuki first began working as a line cook under Aarón Sánchez at Centrico in New York City, then went on to work at Momofuku and Michelin three-starred Jean-Georges. He was also the executive chef of Manhattan’s Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong, which caught the attention of top chefs including Anthony Bourdain, Benu’s Corey Lee, and his old boss, David Chang. In 2017, he launched Sunday Hospitality Group — a collective of restaurants and chefs rooted in the definition of a neighborhood restaurant, which includes hit spots Sunday Bird, Sunday at the Museum, Sunday Gather, and Sunday Bakeshop. He is also the co-author of the New York Time’s Best Seller, Koreatown: A Cookbook.

Matt Rodbard is a writer, editor, and author of food and culture books with more than two decades of experience working in television, magazines, book publishing, and online media. He’s the co-author of Koreatown and Food IQ, and the Founding Editor of online food and culture magazine TASTE, winner of two James Beard Awards. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and GQ.

MacKenzie Chung Fegan became the San Francisco Chronicle’s Restaurant Critic in 2024. She is a former senior editor at Bon Appétit, and her writing on the intersection of food, drinks, culture, and politics has also appeared in GQ, Playboy, Vice, Paper and Wine Enthusiast. Her profile of chef Brandon Jew for Resy appears in the 2021 edition of “The Best American Food Writing.” In a previous life, she was a video director and producer; her documentaries have won Webby Awards and screened at museums including the Centre Pompidou. In previous previous lives, she worked for social justice organizations like the Ford Foundation and Human Rights Watch, hosted an arts and culture show on a Brooklyn cable channel, and lived on a dubiously buoyant tugboat in Alaska. The New Yorker once called her family’s San Francisco restaurant “the best Chinese restaurant in the world,” an accolade for which she can take no responsibility.

Koreaworld: A Cookbook — Join chef Deuki Hong and journalist Matt Rodbard as they take an insider’s look at the exciting evolution of Korean food through stories of chefs and home cooks, as well as recipes that are shaping modern Korean cuisine, including sweet-spicy barbecue, creative rice and seafood dishes, flavor-bombed stews, and KPOP-fueled street food.

In Koreatown, Deuki and Matt explored the foods of Korean American communities across the United States. Now with Koreaworld, they show how Korean cuisine today is nothing less than an international culinary revolution, from the ancient plant-based cooking of famed Buddhist monk-chefs to modern charred-greens rice rolls and pork-stuffed fried peppers.

Koreaworld takes readers into the bustling metropolis of Seoul, where the modern-day barbecue scene is pushing into new territory with recipes like Smoked Giant Short Ribs cooked over hay and where the city’s third-wave coffee culture is exploding. Deuki and Matt also visit Jeju Island, where seafood dishes like Jeju Whole Fried Smashed Rock Fish rule supreme, and they explore the plant-based temple cuisine found in the rural province of Jeolla-do, with dishes such as Cold Broccoli Salad with Ssamjang Mayo. The tour continues with late-night food adventures in Los Angeles and stops in the kitchens of innovative chefs from New York City to Portland who are putting modern spins on Korean classics with dishes like Rice and Ginseng–Stuffed Roast Chicken, Grilled Kimchi Wedge Salad, Kkaennip Pesto, and Pineapple Kimchi Fried Rice. Filled with recipes, stories, and conversations of Korean food’s global evolution, Koreaworld is essential reading for anyone curious about the future of food.