Downtown Spokane welcomes Gangnam Style, new family-owned Korean street food spot | Food News | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander

When Les Kim and his wife Sunhwa Han dreamt of bringing authentic Korean food to Spokane, they didn’t just imagine plates of crispy chicken and fiery tteokbokki. They envisioned a space where strangers turn into drinking buddies over soju bombs and family recipes passed down through generations. At Gangnam Style, a new Korean restaurant that opened on July 1 in downtown Spokane, the couple’s dream is now sizzling to life.

While the menu is inspired by the quick and affordable Korean food and drinks at street-side stalls called pocha, the restaurant elevates the experience, perhaps nodding to its namesake, the upscale Gangnam neighborhood in Seoul, Korea. (Yes, Gangnam is a place, but made popular by Psy’s 2012 hit).

When you step into Gangnam Style, located at 411 W. First Ave., absent are the hard plastic stools used for seating at traditional Korean food stalls, replaced by sleek and minimal birch wood benches and wood laminate tables that Kim built by hand.

Induction cooktops are built into the center of most of the tables, used for shareable main dishes like the spicy or black bean sauce rice cakes, called tteokbokki ($15), or the Chuncheon dak galbi ($35), spicy stir-fried chicken served with vegetables like lettuce to wrap the meat in.

“There’s a lot of Korean food [in the U.S.] that, when I taste, it’s more targeting to American taste. There’s a lot of missing components and ingredients,” Kim says. “We want to make it very simple, but we want to make it powerful, [so] that it tastes like real Korean food that we actually grew up with.”

Since opening, the family has been surprised by the popularity of lesser-known Korean dishes like bossam ($25/single, $45/double), braised pork belly wrapped in napa cabbage with sauces and garlic for a flavorful mouthful.

Still, Korean foods like bulgogi ($18-$22), thinly sliced marinated Black Angus beef, and bibimbap ($17-$18), a mix of rice, fried egg, vegetables and fermented red chili sauce, continue to be hits for American palates.

Certain homestyle dishes, including the bulgogi, spicy pork ($17-$19) or stews ($16-$18), come with complimentary steamed rice and Korean side dishes like stir-fried anchovies, potatoes and fishcake, cucumber and cabbage kimchi, and seasoned soybeans. Sides vary by availability and season.

“One Google review actually really touched us and that was one person said that it felt like they were invited into a Korean friend’s home and that their parents were in the kitchen cooking their family recipes for them,” says the owners’ son, Caleb Kim, who moved here temporarily from New York City to help out at the restaurant.

The recipes were passed down through Les and Han’s families, but are also a culmination of trial and error. The couple had to perfect batch sizes for restaurant-size proportions, also adjusting the recipes on the fly if they run out of Korea-imported ingredients.

“I cannot tell you how much chicken I’ve had to eat,” Caleb says, joking about the numerous test batches of sweet and spicy yangnyeom sauce that coat one of the three fried chicken ($15) options.

Of the other two choices, there’s fried chicken sprinkled in cheesy, sweet seasoning and another glazed with garlicky soy sauce. Or get your fingers dirty as you dig into the sharable basket of crunchy chicken goodness.

Introducing tidbits of Korean food culture to Spokane has come with a learning curve. When seated, you’ll notice buttons on the table with Gangnam Style’s logo that you press to call a waiter. Though a common feature in Korean restaurants, it’s an entirely new concept for many Spokanites.

“As a server, a lot of people have been like, ‘Oh, I feel so rude,'” Caleb says. “But once you really get used to it, it’s actually very convenient for both parties involved because I think in your typical American restaurant you’re always trying to catch their eye to ask for the check or ask for more water.”

One of the main cultural divides, however, comes from the different paces of eating.

“I think a lot of Americans, or at least me growing up in America, this is what we feel about restaurant culture is you go in, you eat and then you get out,” Caleb says.

In comparison, he notes how grabbing food and drinks with friends in Korea can be a three-plus hour affair, ordering here and there over laughs and conversation.

Caleb also heads up the restaurant’s drink program, diving into social media algorithms for inspiration on the latest Korean trends.

Non-alcoholic beverages include Milkis ($3), a Korean cream soda, green plum juice ($3.50) and a one-liter container of house-brewed iced Korean barley tea ($2). Get even more adventurous with handcrafted milk-based drinks like the dalgona latte ($7), topped with the Korean honeycomb toffee, or the sweet corn latte ($6) that blends in a corn puree.

The yuzu cider ($5) has been a customer favorite, made with Korean yuzu syrup and sparkling water. Or, transform it into a cocktail like yuzu highball ($8) that adds bourbon whiskey, the yuzu margarita ($8) that incorporates tequila and grapefruit soju, or the yuzu sunset ($8) with rum and hibiscus.

Other signature cocktails include the Makito ($8), mixing makgeolli (Korean rice wine), white rum and lime, and the Milkiway ($8) which adds vodka and Blue Curaçao to Milkis soda.

A true Korean drinking experience, however, wouldn’t be complete without some bottles of soju ($16.50-$32), a traditional Korean alcohol distilled from rice.

“We have all the fruit sojus,” Caleb says. “We have Jinro Fresh, obviously, but we specifically carry Chamisul Original which has the red cap, in addition to some of our premium sojus [like Andong Soju].”

Gangnam Style has slowly stockpiled the empty green glass bottles, which now line a shelf by the entryway and bar area. To make this decor feature even more special, pictures of customers are printed out and stuck on in place of the bottle’s label.

Opening up a Korean restaurant in Spokane has been Les’ American dream, his son notes. Though born in Korea, Les moved to Huntington Beach, California, when he was 12 years old. Les and his family later lived in Georgia for decades, where he tried to open up two different Korean restaurant concepts that failed respectively due to hurricane damage and the pandemic.

“So this is the third one,” Les says. “Third [time] is the charm, so hopefully no COVID and no hurricane in Spokane.”

Les and his wife moved to Spokane nearly a decade ago, but travelled to Korea at the tail end of the pandemic for two years to reconnect with their roots, and for restaurant inspiration. There, Han even attended a traditional Korean culinary school to learn about the cuisine on a deeper level.

Once they returned back to Spokane, the location they signed a lease for in 2023 in downtown Spokane wasn’t as turnkey as they hoped. They were drawn to the spot (which previously housed Thai on First) for its kitchen, yet the inside needed to be completely rebuilt.

With a background in web and graphic design, Les tried his hand at interior design.

“Part of the design of the restaurant is inspired by a Korean hanok home,” Caleb says. “And so you notice the benches are actually on raised cement blocks. The idea is that in a traditional family home in Korea, way back when, all of the other rooms would be surrounding the courtyard and the courtyard is where everyone would come out to eat food together.”

So grab a table and become a part of Gangnam Style’s family. Here, you can fill your belly with homemade Korean cuisine, but you’ll also find yourself wanting to stay just a little longer.

Gangnam Style • 411 W. First Ave. • Open Tue-Sat 11:30 am-
3 pm, 5-10 pm • gangnamspokane.com • 509-904-2615