🇺🇸 United States · Korean cuisine · b. 1972
Korean-American chef bridging Southern and Korean cooking; chef-owner of 610 Magnolia in Louisville.
Edward Lee is a Korean-American chef, restaurateur and writer, born in Brooklyn, New York, to Korean immigrant parents in 1972. He grew up in Canarsie, attended Tilden High School, and went on to study English literature at New York University. After college he worked briefly in publishing before training as a chef in New York kitchens including Bouley.
In 2002 he opened Clay in New York's East Village, a Korean restaurant that closed during the post-9/11 downturn. In 2003, while traveling to the Kentucky Derby, he met Kevin McCardy, the then-owner of 610 Magnolia in the Old Louisville neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, and ended up taking over the restaurant. The unlikely fit — a Brooklyn-born Korean-American running a fine-dining restaurant in Kentucky — became the entire frame of his cooking: dishes that brought together the smoky, slow-cooked, bourbon-soaked Southern tradition with the chile, fermentation and ssam wraps of Korean cooking. Pickled-watermelon kimchi, smoked-pork-belly bo ssäm, country-ham fried rice, bourbon-marinated short ribs.
610 Magnolia, with Lee as chef-owner, became one of the most-discussed restaurants in the American South over the following two decades. He went on to open MilkWood in Louisville (closed 2017), Whiskey Dry in Louisville, and Succotash in Maryland and Washington, D.C. (with Knead Hospitality and Design). He has been a finalist for the James Beard Best Chef Southeast award multiple times, and his book Smoke and Pickles (2013) won the IACP Best American Cookbook Award.
He is also a prolific writer and television figure: his memoir Buttermilk Graffiti (2018) won the James Beard Award for Best Book about Food, and he has appeared as a contestant on Top Chef and as a judge on multiple food shows. In 2020 he founded the LEE Initiative (Let's Empower Employment), which has run national restaurant-worker relief programmes during and after the pandemic and continues to fund culinary scholarships for women and minorities.
The American South and Korea share more than most people realise: both have cuisines built on fermentation, smoke, slow cooking, deeply flavored sauces, and a culture of eating from communal dishes. Lee has built his cooking, his books and his television work around this argument — that Korean-American identity in the South is not a contradiction but a deeply natural cuisine, and that the most interesting American cooking has always come from immigrant kitchens.
His flagship restaurant since 2003. Tasting-menu Southern–Korean cooking.
Modern Korean restaurant opened 2023; a more explicit return to Korean roots.
Casual burger-and-bourbon restaurant inside Louisville's Fourth Street Live complex.
Southern restaurant in partnership with Knead Hospitality and Design.
These recipes from our database reflect the korean cooking tradition that Edward works in. They are not direct reproductions of Edward's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“Korean-American food is not a fusion. It is just what we eat.”
— Buttermilk Graffiti (2018)
“The South and Korea are not opposites. They are cousins who never met.”
— The Mind of a Chef (2014)
Graduates from New York University with a degree in English literature.
Trains in New York kitchens including Bouley.
Opens Clay in New York's East Village; restaurant closes during the post-9/11 downturn.
Takes over 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky.
Publishes Smoke and Pickles.
Stars in Season 3 of PBS's The Mind of a Chef (Emmy nomination); wins IACP Best American Cookbook for Smoke and Pickles.
Publishes Buttermilk Graffiti.
Wins James Beard Award for Best Book about Food for Buttermilk Graffiti.
Founds The LEE Initiative; runs nationwide restaurant-worker relief programmes during the pandemic.
Opens Nami in Louisville.
Publishes Bourbon Land.
Edward Lee is a Korean-American chef, restaurateur and writer based in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the chef-owner of 610 Magnolia and Nami in Louisville and has been one of the most prominent voices in American food writing on Korean-American identity and Southern cooking. He won the James Beard Award for Best Book about Food in 2019 for Buttermilk Graffiti.
Lee took over 610 Magnolia in Louisville in 2003 after a chance trip to the Kentucky Derby. The unlikely combination — a Brooklyn-born Korean-American running fine-dining in Kentucky — became the entire frame of his cooking, which brings together the smoke, slow-cooking and bourbon traditions of the American South with the chile, fermentation and ssam wraps of Korea. He has argued repeatedly that the two cuisines have more in common than most Americans realise.
The LEE Initiative (Let's Empower Employment) is a non-profit Lee founded in 2020 with his business partner Lindsey Ofcacek. During the COVID-19 pandemic it ran a nationwide restaurant-worker relief programme that turned dozens of restaurants into community feeding centres for unemployed industry workers. It continues to fund mentorship and scholarship programmes for women and minority chefs.
Yes. Lee was a contestant on Top Chef: Texas (Season 9, 2011–2012), where he reached the final and finished as runner-up. He has also appeared as a judge and guest chef on numerous American food shows and headlined Season 3 of PBS's The Mind of a Chef in 2014, which received an Emmy nomination.
His cooking centres on dishes that read as Southern and Korean at the same time: pickled-watermelon kimchi, country-ham fried rice, bourbon-marinated short ribs, smoked-pork bo ssäm, fried chicken with gochujang glaze, lard biscuits with chile jam. He treats Korean-American Southern food as its own cuisine, not as a fusion.
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