New downtown restaurants dish up Korean, Hawaiian fare

Clamoring for Korean food? Has your voice gone croaky demanding poke?

Your calls have been heard, as this week two longtime Alaska restaurateurs are looking to surprise downtown diners with two new eateries featuring unique tastes.

Korea Garden, in the old Kenny’s Wok and Teriyaki space on Front Street, held a soft opening Monday. Poki Poki, across from the Alaskan Hotel on South Franklin, opens Tuesday.

Both feature relatively-untested cuisines in Juneau: traditional Korean and Hawaiian poke, or fresh fish sashimi bowls.

Korea Garden owner Dong Lee, who also owns Juneau’s Asiana Garden, said his new restaurant is a long time coming. Korean food has taken off in America and somebody had to bring the trendy cuisine to Juneau.

“A lot of people asked me to open a Korean restaurant,” said Lee, who’s originally from Korea. “So I did something once a week,” at Asiana Garden, where he’d serve bibimbap, a popular rice dish featuring a mix of small sides.

Korea Garden is not the first Korean restaurant in Juneau — the Breakwater Inn restaurant devotes about half its menu to Korean food — but Lee said the demand is high and the “time is right” for a new restaurant.

Korean food has increased in popularity since Americans discovered soft tofu soup five years ago, Lee said. He’s been planned on opening Korea Garden since Korean places began popping up in L.A. and Seattle, but he had trouble finding the right space.

That opportunity came along when Kenny Yoon sold his Kenny’s Wok and Terriyaki. Since then, Lee has completely revamped the space, with “only the wok” remaining.

Lee is serious about quality dining. He’ll only buy pork for his short ribs from a Seattle distributor, which costs him more, but quality ingredients, along with good service, are the two things you can’t skimp on when investing in a restaurant.

“Better-quality meat, good service, you can’t go wrong,” Lee said. “If I have a Korean chef and Korean people are coming in to eat, then you know we are doing something right.”

The sale of the old Kenny’s Wok space meant a new opportunity not only for Lee, but for Yoon. He’s behind Poki Poki, which opened Tuesday.

The restaurant presents Yoon the opportunity to share one of favorite foods: poke, a Hawaiian dish featuring raw fish with rice, vegetables and a variety of sauces — a bit like sushi in a bowl.

“I like fish and salad mixed with rice and spicy sauce — that’s my favorite dish. So I went there (California) and I said, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna open this up in Alaska,” Yoon said.

Poki (sometimes spelled “poke”) means to cut fish in Hawaiian, said manager Jenny Elske, who’s in town from Sitka helping open the restaurant, Yoon’s fifth in Southeast.

At Poki Poki, every allergy and food preference can be accommodated. The idea is to offer a healthy and quick option which is customizable to anyone’s taste, Elske said.

It’s assembly-line style dining, with no cooking needed (if raw fish isn’t your thing, Yoon said, they offer cooked shrimp in lieu of tuna or salmon).

Diners start with either white or brown rice, then add tuna, spicy tuna, albacore, local salmon or shrimp.

You can then pick from an assortment of veggies and seaweed salad, then top it off with about half a dozen sauces and sesame seeds.

“Jeez, I eat everything,” Yoon said when delineating the options.

He was planning on opening before Christmas 2016, but a unique feature to the space slowed production. Yoon ordered two custom folding windows for the front of the shop, which when open, create a nearly outdoor eating space; it’s hard to tell there’s even a wall there.

“I know this is Alaska,” Yoon said. “But summertime we have beautiful weather, so it’s like eating outside when you’re inside.”