Sisters with a shared kitchen and family recipes.
Katherine Kim and Mary Pierson are sisters who grew up eating Korean home cooking and eventually decided to share it with East Manatee. They brought their family recipes with them and a clear idea of what they wanted to build: an authentic Korean food experience that wasn't a chain, wasn't corporate, and wasn't generic.
"There's such a need for services and everything's a corporate restaurant," Mary said. "There aren't a lot of Mom and Pops." That gap is what Sunny Seoul Korean Kitchen is built to fill.
"There aren't a lot of Mom and Pops." — Mary Pierson, co-founder
They tested the concept before committing to a building.
Before the restaurant on SR 64, Katherine and Mary operated as a food truck. It let them introduce the area to Korean food on their terms: banchan, bibimbap, tteok-bokki, japchae. Real dishes made the right way, served to people who had often never tried any of them before.
The food truck proved the demand was real. East Manatee was ready for something different. So they started looking for a permanent space.
9750 SR 64. A real kitchen. A real restaurant.
The transition from food truck to brick-and-mortar brought everything they needed to do the menu justice. A full kitchen, room to make mandu dough and filling from scratch, space to run a specialty machine imported from Korea that molds the dumplings. "We make the filling, we make the dough and it molds the dumpling out," Katherine said.
The restaurant at 9750 SR 64 opened in 2026. Dine in or carry out. The bibimbap is served in a hot stone bowl if you're eating in.
Traditional dishes. A few modern ones too.
The menu is built around Korean staples done properly. Bibimbap in a hot stone with your choice of bulgogi beef, chicken, spicy pork, or organic tofu. Japchae, the popular Korean street food with translucent sweet potato noodles and vegetables. Kimbap, which isn't sushi, made with bulgogi beef, egg, carrots, spinach, and pickled radish. Tteok-bokki, rice cakes in a spicy sweet sauce.
The mandu dumplings are made in-house, dough and filling both, formed by a specialty machine brought over from Korea. Banchan comes alongside every meal. Nothing here comes out of a packet.