About Chubbo Chubbington

ChubbO Chubbington (Writer) has lived in Korea for about 2 years. She has been gifted with the ability to eat spicy food and not complain about it or sweat while doing so. She also teaches English in between meals. Her main dietary considerations consist of texture, texture, taste, and texture. It’s gotta feel right between the tongue and the teeth. She leaves the cooking to her Korean husband and focuses mainly on consumption. She knows Krispy Kreme is not one of the main food groups, but hopes to rectify this injustice in the future. She is currently living in Wonju and writes at Wonju Wife when she’s not stuffing her face.

About Eun Jeong Lee

Eun Jeong Lee (Research, Attitude) trained really hard to be a lifelong Korean and has achieved phenomenal results. She speaks Korean well and likes kimchi. She also agrees that Korea has four distinct seasons. She’s the magic maker at ZenKimchi, finding and setting stuff up that we thought was not possible and we were told was not possible.

About Grace

Grace Meng (Writer) is a nonprofit consultant and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She was an immigration lawyer until a few years ago, when she ran away to Mexico to learn how to make mole negro and started blogging at One Fork, One Spoon. She is now writing a cookbook on Korean food with her good friend Diane Choo, which has given them the best excuse ever to take road trips around Korea eating all the way.

About Jenna Collett

Jenna is a creative writer, teacher, and chewer of things. She's in her element slumming it with deep fried foods, but can flirt the shell off an escargot. You can follow her in real life, but she may punch you. You can follow her on twitter @Jenna_Collett

About Joyce

As a Korean-American, born and raised in Texas, Joyce grew up exposed to a diverse palette of food. Her self-studied culinary knowledge grew when she moved to Boston for her undergraduate studies. There, she started reviewing restaurants via Yelp, an online food review, and became recognized for her honest reviews and snappy humor. Since then, she's started a blog, Knifing Forking Spooning, for the English-speaking community in Korea. She loves living in Korea, but it can be frustrating to have limited access to certain foods. For instance, vanilla extract. In Texas, they sell vanilla extract in gas stations. You never know when Aunt Mabel'll be comin' over fer sum apple pah!

She thinks food is what makes a foreign culture more accessible. She's traveled all around the world eating my way through cultures. Just this year, she was in France, Israel, Thailand, and China happily adding to her repertoire of food with each bite of falafel, pad see ew, and the stinkiest cheese (and tofu) imaginable. Instead of coming back to Korea depressed about all the foods she couldn't get here, she started cooking. Her mentality is that some human being made whatever it is she's wanting (cottage cheese, goldfish crackers, dulce de leche), so she should be able to make to make it too. (Logic does not apply to sugar show pieces.)

About shinshine

Shinshine (Editor, New York Bureau Chief) cooks French food in a restaurant kitchen full-time and Korean food in her tiny home kitchen on weekends. Her food adventure reflects her childhood from Korea, her daily life in Manhattahn, and her enthusiasm for endless possibilities of Korean food, which she shares with the readers of ZenKimchi Food Journal as well as her own blog www.shinshine.com. With her understanding of Korean and American cultures, culinary trends and languages, she has also written about Korean food scenes in New York and food trends of Manhattan for Korean publications, and translated for the Korean food dictionary project.

About Steve

Steve Ward (Videographer, Writer) has been living in Seoul for nearly five years now and has dabbled in many different hobbies and types of work in that time. He briefly became known as ‘SkinnySteve’ because of his mission to lose weight while working on the website SeoulSteves, but since SeoulSteves is now defunct, he’s now kinda-sorta skinny, and he’s really bad at making up nicknames for himself, he’s now ‘JustSteve.’ “Steve” also works just fine. SteveWard.TV is the homepage of his official online presence.

About Taeyang Yoon

Taeyang is an entrepreneur who has owned and operated a small Asian fusion restaurant with a sushi/sake bar. He loves to marry flavors and textures from various parts of the world and tries to make them his own. He also founded KarFarm.com, and you can find him roaming around the San Francisco Bay Area or Southern California.

About Tammy

Tammy Quackenbush (Editor, San Francisco Bureau Chief) lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do, back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for her Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking in 2007 (had to put her college degree to use somehow). Her recipes and articles have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

About ZenKimchi

Joe McPherson founded ZenKimchi in 2004. He has been featured and sourced in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, CNN, KBS, MBC, SBS, Le Figaro, Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, Harper’s Bazaar Korea, The Chosun Weekly, and other Korean and international media. He has consulted for The Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” Lonely Planet, and the PBS documentary series “Kimchi Chronicles.”

Mr. McPherson has written for multiple Korean and international publications, including SEOUL Magazine, JoongAng Daily, The Korea Herald, Newsweek Korea and wrote the feature article for U.S. National publication Plate magazine’s all-Korean food issue. He acts as dining editor for 10 Magazine and is on the judging panel for Korea for the Miele Guide. He has recently finished writing a book on Korean food globalization that will be published in 2012.

He spoke at TEDx Seoul on Korean food globalization, at TED Worldwide Talent Search on the rise of Korean cuisine, and in New York City on Korean Buddhist temple cuisine. The company ZenKimchi International organizes food tours for tourists and corporations and acts as a media liaison for foreign and Korean media and local restaurants and producers.