Shiku

POWER OF THE PEOPLE 🇰🇷 March 1 in Korea is the public holiday of 삼일절 (Samiljeol). On March 1, 1919, after 9 years of Japanese colonial rule, waves of protests broke out across Korea and an independence movement was born. Many of the protestors were young women including the venerated female freedom fighter Yu Gwansun who died after being tortured in prison. She was just 17. Today we celebrate fearlessness in the face of injustice and oppression. And the power of the people to spark radical change 🙏🏼

We are looking for a part-time prep/line cook to join our Shiku shiku! ❤️🤍❤️ Food safety certification + prior restaurant experience + positive attitude needed please. Please email [email protected] with your resume!

The banchan in our doshirak are made every day and change all the time ❤️ Sean and Gene have been mixing it up this past week 🔥 If you were lucky, you might have had:

* Tomato Kimchi (Gene)
* Ripe Papaya Kimchi (Sean)
* Mala Potato Squared Salad with Potato Chips (Sean)
* Doenjang Corn (Gene)
* Braised Potato (Gene)
* Green Curry Mac Salad (Sean)
* Dan Hobak Squash Potato Salad (Gene)
* Chili Jjajang Mac (Gene)

Any special banchan requests, let us know! 🫶🏽

As the Lunar New Year holiday wraps up, we have been trying to come up with a post wishing everyone a happy, healthy year of the water rabbit. With the tragic mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, we wish peace for those who died and those who love them. What happens in the US is not normal. The fact that we have to rely on each other through GoFundMes and not our government to keep us safe and whole is not normal. We start this new year grateful for the community and hoping fiercely for real change 🙏🏼❤️

Happy Korean American Day! Since 1903, Koreans have been building their home in the US, first as sugarcane farm workers in Hawaii to pro-democracy and anti-colonial activists in the first Koreatown ever in Riverside, known as Pachappa Camp. We often talk about what it means to be Korean American, Korean in contrast to American, Korean American in contrast to Korean, as we navigate building our home here. And we often marvel at the strength of the generations before us who came here without the benefits of KakaoTalk and technological connection to their families and friends, facing levels of racism and hostility that we cannot pretend to know. We love seeing people celebrate being Korean American now, embracing Korean culture and all facets of the diaspora ❤️ It’s a great time to be Korean American and we honour the ancestors who made that possible 🙏🏼 Celebrate today by supporting one of the many organisations lifting up the Korean American community like .us 🎉🇰🇷🇺🇸🌎♻️

Happy new year! 새해 복 많이 받으세요! ¡Muy feliz Año Nuevo! We are open today at 11am as usual ❤️ As we kick off the year, we wanna give THANKS to our Shiku shiku: Tommy, Gene, Sean, Marden, Edgar, Ariana, Gloria, José, Gerson, Magda, Virginia who make this business go round 🌀 Every single person on our team is such a good good human being, among many other wonderful attributes, and we don’t take that for granted! Based on the feedback you share, you agree with us 🙏🏼 2023 is going to be a busy one for us, some fun things for Shiku and opening new baroo. Thanks to everyone who’s supported us this far and wishing you all lots of joy, health, love and fun this year! 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽

Happy Winter Solstice or 동지! Today is the shortest day of the year with the longest night. The winter solstice used to be one of the biggest holidays in Korea, referred to as Little New Year since the sun would start to return then ☀️ Traditionally, we celebrate with bowls of red bean porridge 팥죽 with sweet rice dumplings shaped like small birds eggs symbolising rebirth 🐣

This day is said to have the most yin energy, and red beans have a lot of yang energy, so from a traditional medicine perspective, the porridge helps keep us in balance ☯️ Kwang shared this with Deborah Netburn and she wrote a fascinating article covering the diverse winter solstice traditions of our LA neighbors. We learned so much from this article and we love the illustrations here by ! Link is in our bio ✨

From the Santa Ynez Chumash, Iranian, Jewish and Korean traditions, Deb touches on the beautiful origins of our traditions and our commonalities. These words linger from Iranian epic storyteller Gordafarid, based in LA: “Hope for the end of darkness, hope for the sun, hope for a better and brighter tomorrow.” 🙏🏼

CLOSED EARLY TODAY ❤️ Team training and holiday dinner today to show our love for our Shiku Shiku! See you tomorrow!

We have a stack of copies of Lunch From Home available at Shiku! This children's book is inspired by the childhood memories of our own Mina, LA son who needs no introduction to our shiku, who we have admired for so long for their cooking and activism and who has inspired us for carrying on her family's legacy (with our favorite latkes and chocolate babka omg so good) 🤩 Written by part of our shiku for life now with the most delightfully detailed illustrations by ❤️❤️❤️

Take it from our kid (biased), our niece (totally biased), kids of our friends (also biased), but Lunch From Home is a fantastic book for the fantastic kid in your life! You can order through our website for pick-up at Shiku 📚

The perfect antidote for a rainy day 🌧🍜 We discovered through their retail collaboration with and also their Hello Kitty noods 💕 Koreans don’t mess around with instant noodles so we were surprised how much we loved the A-Sha noodles! Made in Taiwan, home of the famous Taiwanese beef noodle soup, the texture of A-Sha noodles is so impressive. How are they so bouncy and keep their bite 🤩 So when they approached us to create a special using their noodles, we were thrilled! For all of November, we are making a Spicy Pork Belly Kimchi Ramen with the A-Sha Meteor Noodles that are ridged to grip onto every last drop of kimchi broth 💪🏽 Our broth is halfway to a stew or jjigae, and we finish the dish with our Kimchi-Braised Pork Belly, charred scallion oil, fried egg, minari and perilla powder 🙏🏼 What else do you need for this rainy day? ❤️❤️❤️

Happy Hangul Day! 해피 한글날! October 9th is a national holiday in South Korea celebrating the Korean written language 🇰🇷🎉 In the 15th century, King Sejong created the Korean written alphabet to help spread literacy among Koreans while the elite, scholar class used Classical Chinese. The creation of the Korean written language allowed literacy outside of the elite class and among women to grow, which the yangban class found threatening. Until the 20th century, Hangul was referred to as Eonmun 언문, which tellingly is sometimes translated as “vulgar/crude writing”. Chinese characters known as Hanja were still used heavily in newspapers and academia up until relatively recently. Hangul has been banned at various points in Korean history, most recently during the Japanese colonisation of Korea. Mina’s grandfather was jailed during the occupation for refusing to take a Japanese name. So today, we celebrate the egalitarian and resistance history of our written language, Hangul 🙏🏼❤️🇰🇷

There are some great stories, photos and design in the premiere issue of Secret Menu, a magazine by…. Don’t know why they want to do a magazine but their first issue is truly great, featuring Los Angeles and its diverse Asian American F&B and farm community, filled with wonderful stories by our talented AAPI writers and photographers. We are so touched by the story that wrote about us and Shiku, the quotes from our beloved , and it made us smile to see Lisa capture in a pull quote our approach of going with the flowwwwww, not in a passive way, but an intentional way where we let go of resistance 🌊 Hope you can find a copy because this issue is a wonderful read 🙏🏼

We hope everyone had a joyous and delicious Chuseok and Mid Autumn festival! We would have posted on Saturday which was the official Korean holiday lbut it was wonderful mayhem prepping the orders for our Chuseok sets! (Sorry if you haven’t heard from us since we started prepping last week, we will catch up on messages someday 🤪) We also had big plans to take some decent photos of our Chuseok set for next year, but well, these are the only photos we took 😬 Our team worked really hard to pull off our Chuseok event during the heat wave, and we want to give a shout out to and for their finesse and palates in executing so many of the dishes. And we are especially touched by the fact that so many of you celebrated Chuseok with us for the second year in a row 😭 We hope to continue celebrating with you all! And we are so grateful for the messages we received from those of you who enjoyed the food, who shared stories of your grandmothers and mothers, who spoke of being comforted by our food in their absences. We also thought of our mothers, Kwang’s in Seoul and Mina’s who passed away, while we drank in the tang guk and snatched pieces of jeon straight from the pan. Cooking for Chuseok is about staying connected with our families, savouring our memories as we savour the food of our childhoods. Thank you for sharing that with us 우리 식구 ❤️🙏🏼

Thanks for all the supportive messages about the chargeback issue we posted in our stories! 🙏🏼😭❤️ We are grateful chargebacks are rare for us but definitely want our fellow restaurant peeps to know that it’s happening so take measures to document pickups of big orders! We of course love and appreciate large orders but they do require a lot of attention and time by our small team who are also working on all the walk up orders at the market. When we don’t get paid for them, it is 💔🤯💔Anywayyyyy, we are happy there’s some rain today and we are busy prepping for this Saturday’s Chuseok pickups. Take care of one another and thank you! 📸: by our friend in HK ❤️🥰

The reason is the best — having a feast with so many tastes of LA! 😍 Grateful to be part of this landmark LA institution surrounded by all our fellow vendors representing their communities through their food 😭📷:

Last year, we spent days preparing a Chuseok feast for our shiku 우리 식구 and had some leftovers for ourselves to celebrate cozily at home 🥰 This year, for Chuseok (aka Hangawi), we are offering a full menu for your family feast again! Available in limited quantities for pre-order at our online shop now 💛

** Pick-up only on Saturday, 10 September between 11am-3pm.

Our Hangawi Set 한가위 세트 includes our favorite festive dishes and is made for FOUR people:

🌕 Galbi Jjim 갈비찜 is a soy-braised beef short rib with harvest vegetables
🌕 Modeum Jeon 모듬 전 - Selection of 3 jeon including perilla stuffed with shrimp and kimchi'd corn and mungbean pancakes with pork and kimchi
🌕 Tang Guk 탕국 - a traditional, healing soup with beef brisket, taro, tofu and dried pollack (2 qt)
🌕 Nabak Kimchi 나박 김치 - a refreshing water kimchi with mu, napa cabbage, korean pear (1 qt)
🌕 Songpyeon 송편 - 15 pieces of the classic Chuseok dessert, moon-shaped rice cakes stuffed with sweet sesame etc

Our family celebrates the morning of Chuseok which is Sept 10 but we realize most of you will be celebrating the evening of with your shiku! Thanks for celebrating with us!

HARVEST MOON 🌕 This year, Saturday, 10 September is 추석 Chuseok, one of the biggest holidays in Korea with other similar harvest festivals happening throughout Asia ✨ Just a heads up, we will be offering our Chuseok feast for home again, and will be opening pre-orders later this week. Again we are making classic festive dishes like 갈비찜, 탕국, 나박김치, 모듬전, 반찬 galbi jjim, tang guk, nabak kimchi, modeum jeon and banchan ✌🏽If Chuseok isn’t already a tradition in your home, join our shiku’s tradition! We plan to celebrate with you all every Chuseok whether from Shiku or Baroo next year ☺️ Incredible photo of a past harvest moon by

Gwangbojkjeol 광복절 or The Day the Light Was Restored 🇰🇷 August 15 is celebrated as Korea’s National Liberation Day from Japanese colonial rule. Rather than referring to independence, the official holiday’s name refers to return and restoration emphasizing that Korea and the strength of the Korean people preceded the Japanese occupation. Here’s to restoring light in all the dark corners of our world ✨

The banchan in our doshirak change from week to week, day to day even ❤️ It’s summertime so we have been feeling all kinds of Korean coleslaw. And the whole shiku has been sharing their banchan skills! This past week, you might have had:
- Curry coleslaw
- Jjajang Fish Cake 짜장 어묵 볶음
- Soy-braised Baby Potatoes 감자 조림 by
- Spicy Braised Tofu 두부 조림 by
- Korean Mustard Coleslaw

More to come from the rest of our Shiku shiku. Keep an eye out on your doshirak! ✌🏽

Fluffy pillows of MANDU 만두 😴🥟❤️ Handmade in-house and filled with a classic Korean mix of beef, pork, tofu, pyogo mushrooms, garlic chives, vermicelli and more 💚 Available today!

We are hiring! Like so many restaurants! 🤪 It’s a crazy time for everyone, with hiring and inflation and Covid and etc etc etc it’s seemingly neverending and it’s our industry and basically any other industry our friends work in. Be kind to one another, and thanks to everyone who has been so kind to us 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

So we are looking to expand our evening hours soon and need one more cashier and another line cook. We pay our line cooks $18/hour plus everyone splits tips. Full time employees get a monthly stipend for health insurance, and everyone gets a stipend that covers monthly parking at GCM or if you don’t have a car, your commuting costs. We are a family business and do our best to help out our Shiku shiku when things come up. We’re working on adding more benefits once we are able. We have an incredible team here and if you love the hustle and bustle of GCM like we do and you have experience, email us at [email protected]! ❤️❤️❤️

We 💚 !! So we so excited to be a part of this coming Sunday’s Dish ALOUD] in support of the Library Foundatjon and all of the incredible programs it funds at our public libraries 🙏🏼 We will be sharing a story about one of our favorite dishes along with some great culinary storytellers like our friend ! Thanks to ALOUD] for having us! Registration on the ALOUD site ends tomorrow!

Happy National Fried Chicken Day! 🔥 We’ll be honest, after the dumpster fire of the past couple of weeks, we didn’t feel much like celebrating Fourth of July but we CAN get behind celebrating women restaurateurs and chefs today! Kim Prince of and of — have embarked on an eating tour of delicious fried chicken at women-owned restaurants all over the city. (Mom and pop shops like ours included! 🙏🏼) They’ll be traveling in style in “El Gallo,” the chicken car, and will land at all the locations marked with a * on the schedule (see second pic)!

Take a peep at what Jenn & Kim are up to on Instagram all day long as they wing their way from restaurant to restaurant eating crispy, juicy, and delicious fried chicken from women throughout Los Angeles and talking to restaurant owners, chefs, and other friends! Thanks for , Kim and Jenn for cheering us up with some sisterhood today! 🐔

SHIKU FAMILY STYLE ❤️🤍❤️ Gearing up for July with a take-home family-style meal for four people. Maybe your family, maybe your friends who are your family—in other words, your shiku❣️

The Family Style set comes with:
🥢 Choice of a platter of LA Galbi, Kimchi-Braised Pork Belly or Grilled Maekjuk Chicken
🐔 Side of Original or Spicy Korean Fried Chicken
🥬 Three half pints of the daily banchan - tomorrow’s banchan is sauteed broccoli + bean sprouts, Korean sesame coleslaw, sautéed kimchi
🍚 Steamed White Rice
🌶 Aji Verde or Srirachujang Sauce

Available for pre-order in our online shop 🙆🏻‍♀️🙆🏻‍♂️

Thanks for all the love for our Honeydew Melon Shake, which made its debut earlier this month! 💚🍈💚 Inspired by the beloved Melona bar, made with fresh honeydew melon, there’s no better way to beat this 90 degrees heat 🔥