Until recently, you might have assumed that Korean restaurants in America existed almost exclusively in the realm of cheap beer and green-bottle soju (the ubiquitous mass-market spirit stacked in every Korean bar, grocery or restaurant). Those in the know might mix things up with somaek, the playful ritual of dropping shots of soju into beer glasses, but mostly, Korean food simply wasn’t imagined as a canvas for pairings with fine wine or nuanced cocktails.
After all, what wine could temper the heat and tang of kimchi jjigae, the fiery red stew studded with fermented cabbage and fatty pork? What classic cocktail wouldn’t be steamrolled by slivers of raw garlic and fermented bean paste tucked into sweet, spicy strips of barbecued pork? For many, Korean food was seemingly too “exotic” — too pungent, spicy and overpowering — to pair with anything beyond a lager or neutral spirit.
But a look at Chicago’s bustling Korean dining scene tells a story that’s dramatically different. As the American palate has grown increasingly fluent in flavors once written off as novel, ideas about what belongs in our glass have evolved too. And no cuisine has rewritten the rules more decisively than Korean cuisine. Whether through wine, cocktails, or the emerging array of artisanal sool, Korea’s tradition of fermented and distilled drinks, modern Korean restaurants have become the vanguard of some of the most daring drink programs in America.
Breaking old rules
Thomas Oh, the general manager and co-founder of Perilla Korean Fare and Perilla Steakhouse in Chicago, recalls the old adage in wine pairings — what grows together goes together. Indeed, who could question pizza with Chianti, or the French affinity for oysters and ice-cold Muscadet?
It’s a convenient rule of thumb, he admits, but one that falters when so many global cuisines were developed in the absence of wine and European beverage culture.
Early on at Perilla Fare, Oh remembers sharing an after-hours bottle of Bordeaux alongside LA-style galbi with Andrew Lim, founding partner and executive chef of the Perilla restaurants. The sweet-and-spicy beef ribs, singed with char, were a brilliant combination with Bordeaux, he says, but puzzling too. “Why is galbi and Bordeaux such a foreign idea?”
The answer, they realized, was simple. “Our food isn’t really that challenging to pair with wine,” says Oh. “It just needed a little thought and intention.”
Korean cuisine is built on a foundation of “spice and heat, fermentation and funk,” explains Lim. Its intensity and nuance may challenge classical Western beverage pairing rules, says Oh, but the assumption that it’s too overwhelming has always been a reflection of unfamiliarity rather than incompatibility. At Perilla, Lim and Oh have embraced the intensity and complexity of Korean cuisine rather than diluting it to suit an American audience.
Turning challenges into opportunities
Ideal food and beverage pairing often relies on both complement and contrast. At Perilla, Lim explains, pairing dishes with a little funk with a wine that’s similarly funky allows flavors to echo and amplify each other. Other times, Lim looks for contrast to reset the palate, a fattier dish served with a beverage that’s palate cleansing and effervescent. More than anything, Lim looks for pairings that offer surprise and imagination, juxtapositions “that are a bit more creative, not just your usual suspects,”.
The complexity and diversity of flavors in Korean cuisine offer a landscape that’s ripe for this kind of creativity, echoes chef Dave Park, who, with his partner, Jennifer Tran, opened Jeong, a tasting-menu concept in West Town in 2019.
Chef-partner Andrew Lim checks food orders at Perilla Steakhouse on Sept. 24, 2025, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Each dish in the eight-course menu is imagined with a wine pairing selected by Park. Park’s riff on salmon tartare — raw salmon accented with a gastrique of sweet doenjang, crème fraîche, yuja (yuzu in Japanese) and chili, finds unexpected harmony with a dry Hungarian furmint, the white wine better known for its sweet Tokaji iterations. Jajangmyeon, noodles slicked with a sweet black-bean sauce, chili crisp and the smokiness of bacon, pairs against the richness of grenache blanc from Ridge Vineyards, the California producer.
Park’s approach is thoughtful but playful too. He has great respect for tradition, he says, “but I’m not a sommelier or classically trained in wine.” Distance from convention gives him freedom, he says. It allows him to be “a little bit more open-minded, and to do what I feel is really best for the food”.
Cocktails that tell a story
Beyond wine, mixology programs marrying flavor with storytelling have become defining features of many of Chicago’s modern Korean restaurants. At Mister Tiger in West Town, opened in 2025, chef Min Lee and her brother, co-founder Charlie Park, envisioned a space where “unapologetically authentic Korean cuisine” could coexist with a killer soundtrack and a cocktail menu infused with flavors of their childhood, says Park.
“Korean food is built on bold flavors that are developed slowly and painstakingly,” he describes. The cocktails Park designed had to be similarly bold in flavor, he says, but also pay tribute to the tastes and memories of his Korean upbringing.
Chungju rice wine, left, and Makgeolli unfiltered rice wine are drink offerings at Perilla Steakhouse. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Their Simple Gesture — freshly juiced chamae, the Korean yellow melon, spiked with soju, makgeolli and sweet alyssum flowers — recalls fruit plates that his mother and grandmother would bring as he studied late into the night.
“Korean parents don’t really say, ‘I love you,’” he says.
Instead, it was those fruit plates, and now these cocktails, that serve as quiet gestures of care.
Rediscovering Koren sool
Beyond wines and cocktails, Chicago’s modern Korean restaurants have become rare showcases for artisanal Korean sool, a category only recently emerging on American menus.
Even among Koreans, the revival has been eye-opening. “What I thought was such a narrow category of makgeolli and soju, Korean beer and whiskey was just way more dynamic than I ever imagined,” says Oh, who has worked aggressively to bring new and distinctive sool to Perilla.
In stark contrast to the sweetly, indistinct character of mass-produced green-bottle soju — typically made from cheap starches and masked with sweeteners and flavorings — traditional soju can be serious, expressive spirits fermented from grains like rice and nuruk, a traditional fermentation starter.
At Perilla Steakhouse, Yangchon Brewery’s Chungju, an amber-hued rice soju “with this incredible umami of mushrooms and soy sauce,” has become a staff favorite alongside a dry-aged rib eye, says Oh.
Tteokbokki, a traditional Korean spicy rice cake street food, is paired with Chungju rice wine at Perilla Steakhouse. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
The Summer in Seoul martini, made with Korean soju, at Perilla Steakhouse. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Makgeolli, the cloudy, often delicately fizzy Korean rice wine, has found new life, both imported and domestically produced. Hana Makgeolli, a small Brooklyn-based producer established in 2020 has quickly become a favorite among Chicago restaurants.
At Jeong, Park struggled to pair his opening course of hwe — raw sea bream lightly cured with grapefruit juice, pickled rhubarbs and tomatoes marinated in maesil-ju, the Korean plum wine.
“Every wine I tasted with it felt flat,” he says.
Hana Makgeolli’s Forbidden Tajku, a cloudy, intensely purple makkoli made from an heirloom black rice, was the perfect solution.
“It’s little bit funky,” he explains, “but with just enough sweetness and acidity,” it accentuated the dish like no wine was able.
“There’s such a unique perspective that Korean sool brings to the world of alcohol,” says Oh.
Rediscovering those traditions has not only diversified his drinks list, but also reconnected him to his roots.
“We’re still learning about who we are and where we came from,” he says.
Tradition at the heart of Korean cuisine
Despite the evolution of the modern Korean dining experience, despite its normalization as a sophisticated food culture worthy of equally thoughtful beverage companions, the heart of Korean dining is still defined by simple rituals and conviviality.
Fine wine, cocktails and artisanal sool have been welcome additions, explains Park, but the classic Korean dining experience — ice-cold beers, green bottles and soju bombs — are all things that “we, as restaurant owners, love too, and will always remain a core part of Korean dining.” It’s a deeply rooted culture “of sharing food, feeding one another and pouring drinks for each other,” he explains.
At the same time, newer diners, often less familiar with Korean food, have arrived with an openness to explore drinks of all sorts, from fine wines to esoteric sool, with Korean flavors.
“We like to think that we’ve taken this deeply rooted drinking culture in Korea, where food and this social aspect of drinking with each other is something we hold so dear, and taken it up another level,” says Oh.
Anna Lee Iijima is a freelance writer.
Perilla Korean Fare, 401 N. Milwaukee Ave., 312-243-3344, perillachicago.com
Perilla Steakhouse, 225 N. Wabash Ave., 312-236-9300, perillachicago.com
Jeong, 1460 W. Chicago Ave., 312-877-5016, jeongchicago.com
Mister Tiger, 1132 W. Grand Ave., 312-219-5211, mistertigerchicago.com
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/korean-food-wine-pairings/
