A food truck.
Then a kitchen on SR 64.
Before the restaurant, there was the truck. Katherine Kim and Mary Pierson started by taking their family recipes directly to people, serving Korean home cooking to an area that had never really had it.
"There aren't a lot of Mom and Pops," Mary said. "Everything's a corporate restaurant." The food truck was the proof of concept. The demand was real.
The food truck era.
East Manatee's first taste of Korean home cooking.
"There aren't a lot of Mom and Pops."
Mary Pierson, co-founder
A real kitchen.
The food truck proved the market. Katherine and Mary found a permanent space on SR 64 in east Bradenton and made the leap to brick-and-mortar.
A full kitchen meant they could do the menu justice. Mandu dough and filling made in-house, formed by a specialty machine imported from Korea. Bibimbap served in a hot stone bowl. Banchan made fresh every morning.
"We make the filling, we make the dough and it molds the dumpling out," Katherine said.
9750 SR 64, Bradenton.
Dine in or carry out.
Two sisters. One kitchen.
Katherine grew up eating Korean home cooking and brought those recipes to Bradenton. She runs the kitchen and put together a menu that covers traditional dishes and a few modern ones. Mary is Katherine's sister — the one who spotted the gap in the market and pushed to fill it. Together they went from a food truck to a full kitchen on SR 64, building the kind of Mom and Pop restaurant East Manatee didn't have.