Cooking is one of the most zen things - you have to be there.

It's so easy to produce food, throw it away, and watch people starve. It's so hard to produce food mindfully and to feed and to reduce waste.

In mainstream media, everything gets turned into a stereotype of ourselves.

All Korean food is not just one thing.

Straight up, Oreos, sodas, chips, salsa dips, egg white omelets, yogurts, breads, ketchups, mustards, barbecue sauce, frozen pizzas, hot pockets, ice cream, all these things that you eat in your normal life - I think if chefs got more involved in that, then it could be better. Because we're the ones that know flavor.

When you have parents that come from a country that you weren't raised in, you feel this weird sense of familiarity, like you've returned to something.

Korean food is primarily based on herbs and shoots and sprouts. There's no pasture land in Korea; we eat like Hobbits.

Public television is a very important thing for our human race, and it allows us the ability to discuss the elephants in the room and understand stories beyond the headlines.

I'm a little old-school in that I think there's some value in the classics and the steps of achieving a certain profession. If we start slanging the word 'chef' on anybody and everybody who cooks, it takes away a lot.