My brilliant Korea... Gizzi Erskine on her new pop-up K-Town

Celebrity chef Gizzi Erksine is opening her own pop-up selling Korean food. Here she says why she's as much at home with fish sauce as with salt and pepper
Alexa Baracaia12 September 2012

It's five o'clock in Shoreditch and Gizzi Erskine is tucking into pizza. There was a wobble — “I’m going out for dinner tonight … but I’m sooo hungry.” Later she’ll tweet from Duck & Waffle about the “suitably filthy” pig’s ears and scallops with truffle.

This girl loves her food: “World food is my bag but I feel most at home in Asia,” she says. She grew up with it, her mother working for a time in Thailand and the two bonding over mammoth cooking sessions: “I feel just as comfortable using fish sauce as salt and pepper.”

It’s why she is so excited by her new project, K-Town, a pop-up eatery inspired by New York’s Korean quarter.

While the 33-year-old has forged a foodie career out of cheffing at popups, usually collaborations, this is her “first big showcase because it’s the first time I’m choosing the food”. It takes place over three October nights at Concrete, in the basement of Pizza East, where we meet. “I want to make it as much like a dirty 1980s backstreet Korean joint as possible — lots of neon and steam, a stage with bands and karaoke, long communal tables and food thrown at you.”

A Korean cuisine revolution has been simmering in London, fuelled by a boom Stateside and the opening of restaurants such as Holborn’s Kimchee. What’s the fuss? “It’s like Japanese with heat and sweetness,” explains Erskine. “There’s more chilli and it’s more stewy, with these gorgeous pure sashimis and sushis too. It’s healthy but hearty.”

She’ll be “doing 100 per cent all the cooking” and has created a five-course menu that includes a Deep South twist on Korean fried chicken: “I soak it in buttermilk, add tempura flakes, sesame, chilli, loads of garlic and onion and deep fry it — it’s super-delicious.”

After dinner she’ll be cooking up a storm on the decks for those still snacking on pork buns, playing ping pong and dancing until 2am. It’s quirky, ambitious fusion fare (“the food that excites me is the stuff people wouldn’t want to cook at home”) served with a hefty dose of underground spirit.

Gizzi may have come top of her year at Leith’s School of Food and Wine but she hates “tweaky” cooking. She adores the chaos and creativity of street food and cites New York-Korean chef David Chang, of Momofuku fame, as a culinary hero: “I love Chang’s restaurants because they’re edgy, completely about food and unapologetically fun.”

In person, Erskine doles out big hugs and gabs nineteen to the dozen. She is tall with thick black flicks of eyeliner, Capri pants and roll-neck, dark hair assembled into a neat beehive.

A “proper London girl”, with Scottish “bohemian” parents — Mum is a Polish- Jewish ex-model, her late Dad a photographer — she was brought up in Marylebone and went to Grey Coat Hospital comprehensive in Victoria. She lives now in Hackney with her illustrator fiancé, the aptly named Dean Martin, also a 1960s freak.

But despite her styling she is no prissy cupcake queen, as the tattoo snaking from one Ferragamo shoe attests. “I’ve never had a stylist,” she says. “I have no idea how else to dress. Put me in jeans and I look weird. People go, ‘Ooh, she’s trying to be the domestic goddess’ but the scene I come from is as removed from that as it could be.”

No culinary novice, she has “worked in real kitchens”, St John Bread & Wine and E&O among them. She enrolled in Leith’s at 23, after her mother confessed that she regretted never having trained as a professional cook, going on to win a prestigious internship with BBC Good Food magazine before scoring her presenting debut on Channel 4’s Cook Yourself Thin in 2007.

Next year threatens big things: a solo Sky Living series — “cookery-led and based around my life” — a book, Skinny Weeks, Wicked Weekends, “about being good in the week and on the weekend giving yourself a f***-you day when you eat whatever you like”; even whispers of a product line.

“I want to open a restaurant eventually, something rock ’n’ roll,” she confides. “But for now I just want to do the fun stuff and eat delicious things.”

K-Town is open at Concrete, 56 Shoreditch High Street, E1, from 10-12 October at 7.30pm. £35 for dinner and entertainment (£10 for entertainment only tickets after 10pm); advance booking only via bookings@concretespace.co.uk.

GIZZI'S TOP THREE KOREAN EATING SPOTS

1. ASADA L, Holborn “Quite expensive but the food is really good. A great insight into Korean cuisine and very 1980s. It does a really good tasting menu.” 227 High Holborn, WC1 (020 7430 9006, asadal.co.uk)

2 DOTORI, Finsbury Park “Low-key but always heaving. It’s Japanese and Korean so a nice intro if you’re not sure about Korean food. It does great sushi and seafood pancakes and the bibimbap is amazing — rice with raw veg and beef tartare and egg yolk that you swish around in a hot stone pot.” 3 Stroud Green Road, N4 (020 7263 3562)

3. KIMCHEE, Holborn “A really nice easy way to get into Korean food — it’s smooth, safe, clean, Wagamama-esque. They do fabulous pancakes.” 71 High Holborn, WC1 (020 7430 0956, kimchee.uk.com)

…and for street food

KIMCHI CULT, various locations “For fun street food it’s got to be Kimchi Cult, which is basically burgers but with kimchi [spicy pickled vegetables] in them. These guys pop up all over the place.” Kimchi Cult kimchicult.com)

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