Modern Korean Restaurants Are Spreading All Over Mexico City (2024)

The smells of Korean barbecue and Mexican street food mingle in the air of Zona Rosa, a central neighborhood of Mexico City. They hint at the longtime mixing of cultures within the busy corridors of Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida Insurgentes, which anchor Pequeño Seúl (Little Seoul). The neighborhood, home to many Korean immigrants since the 1980s, is dotted with small Korean restaurants serving classic dishes to a clientele of middle-aged and older Koreans, along with the occasional Chinese and Mexican patron from Juárez. With handwritten menus in Korean and Spanish, along with their smoky, unpretentious spaces decorated with metal or wooden tables, tile flooring, and soju posters, these restaurants have held down the neighborhood for a generation.

In the last decade, though, the smells and flavors of Korean food have been trickling out beyond Pequeño Seúl. As K-pop and Korean films have become more popular all over Mexico, especially among young residents, Korean aloe vera drinks and instant ramen have also appeared in non-Asian supermarkets. And new restaurants are pushing a variety of takes on Korean cuisine into neighborhoods like Roma, Polanco, and Condesa.

Led by young Korean Mexican entrepreneurs, some of whom migrated from South Korea decades ago with their parents, alongside Korean Americans with diverse culinary backgrounds, the restaurants borrow from dining concepts that have grown popular in South Korea, New York, and Los Angeles. But they’re crafting something entirely distinct, blending the flavors of Seoul with Mexican ingredients to create a narrative that reflects many experiences in Mexico City.

Nestled in a quiet, tree-lined avenue of Condesa, Jowong could easily be mistaken for another of the fashionable neighborhood’s many cafes. The space, which opened in late 2023, is decorated with whitewashed walls, mint-green booths, and minimalist wooden furniture, none of which immediately hints at the dishes that hit tables.

“Our intention is to capture Korean flavors and dishes with the inspiration that Mexico City gives us,” says Marifer Millan, one of five co-founders who share personal connections to Korea and collective experience in renowned New York restaurants like Atoboy, Atomix, Cosme, Locanda Verde, and Eleven Madison Park. “The Mexican influence is natural. There is so much inspiration from the deep-rooted food culture here that it naturally intertwines.”

Dishes pull from both cultures. The crunchy Korean fried chicken arrives with gochujang and grilled pineapple, balancing sweetness, savoriness, and heat like a taco al pastor. Esquites crujientes combines sharp, aged cotija cheese and smoky sweet corn into a marriage of Mexican esquites and Korean corn cheese. The naengmyeon (cold noodles) are mixed with aguachile (shrimp ceviche). Elsewhere, inspiration is a bit looser: Mackerel, a staple of Korean tables, is delicately braised with leeks and radish, while the Masquirilla co*cktail — a blend of sake, white vermouth, coconut, and lemon — whimsically draws on modern Korean skincare routines.

The dishes flow naturally, in part because, as Mexico City food blogger Anais Martinez points out, there are many similarities between the cuisines.

“In both, there’s a lack of protocol with sharing and side plates,” she says. “Mexicans are also receptive to spice.” Those natural affinities have helped Korean food break from its smaller clientele in the last few years.

Millan credits groups like Hand Hospitality in New York and restaurants like Baroo in LA for expanding conceptions of Korean food. Jowong owes some credit to the Korean American scene, but Millan argues the renaissance of Korean food in the U.S. doesn’t dictate the cuisine in Mexico City.

“Most of the newer Korean restaurants are homegrown,” she says.

The roots of Mexico’s Korean community trace back to the early 20th century, when laborers arrived to work in the agave plantations of Yucatán, leaving economic turmoil back home for the promise of stable wages. In 1990, the first modern wave of immigrants arrived in Tijuana, following conglomerates like Samsung and LG that relocated workforces. Anthropologist Sergio Gallardo García says NAFTA led to the establishment of over 2,000 Korean companies in Mexico.

Workers’ partners began preparing traditional homestyle Korean meals — various types of banchan, bibimbap, bulgogi — for their neighbors, and soon more family members and other immigrants followed, creating a community of supportive businesses like supermarkets and restaurants. The immigrant population truly blossomed in the early 2000s, exploding from about 3,500 to over 30,000 by 2021, including 13,000 in Mexico City.

“The Zona Rosa became an appealing area for Korean families due to its central location near trade zones and lower real estate costs resulting from the 1985 earthquake damages,” Gallardo says.

Joo Sung Lee and Keum Ja Kim made their way to the area in 1995, when Lee immigrated to work in textiles. They began hosting dinners for Koreans in their home, but their son Daniel Lee encouraged them to start a restaurant. In 2007, the elder Lee took over Na De Fo, a year-old barbecue restaurant in Pequeño Seúl, and refashioned it into a love letter to his wife, a skilled home cook from Jecheon, South Korea.

“When Na De Fo first opened, it was intended for Koreans,” Daniel says. The exterior was unmarked and the interior felt enclosed, offering privacy to Korean customers working around Centro who were concerned about the city’s rising crime. Although this design was initially effective, it eventually led to stagnating growth. Daniel recognized the untapped potential in the heavy foot traffic that passed by the restaurant. In 2013, he convinced his father to overhaul the design with clear signage, windows, and an open layout, along with a new menu in Spanish, to appear more inviting to non-Korean patrons. The restaurant’s sales doubled in less than a year.

Daniel has since broadened the family’s culinary influence through his own restaurant group, Grupo Midam. The group’s restaurants serve distinct clienteles in order to “tell different stories of Korea,” he says. Midam, the first Korean barbecue to open outside of the Zona Rosa, targets Mexicans in Lomas de Chapultepec. Xeul, styled after pojangmacha (Korean pubs that offer drinks and snacks), serves Asian communities working in Polanco, with norebangs (karaoke rooms) and a speakeasy atmosphere reminiscent of Seoul’s nightlife. Chingu, which specializes in street food, is aimed at expats and tourists visiting Roma Norte.

The sophisticated Kasína Café takes yet another approach, mirroring modern fine dining and fusion restaurants that have developed in South Korea. It integrates elements of European bistros with traditional Korean flavors, all housed in a contemporary, minimalist space in Roma Norte.

Born and raised in Daegu, South Korea, Minae Seo moved to Mexico City, where her family had operated businesses for more than 30 years. She initially considered opening a Japanese-style pastry shop as a tribute to her Japanese grandmother, but opened Kasína in 2023 after seeing the growing popularity of Korean cuisine. While she was determined to keep the menu authentically Korean, she also made some tweaks.

“Traditional Korean cuisine focuses on giving you a plateful of food rather than concentrating on the minute details or even plating of each dish,” she says. “I wanted my menu to focus on smaller, fine dining-style portions, different from the larger servings found in traditional restaurants.”

Though the menu is rooted in her mother’s recipes and her Korean Japanese heritage, showcased in items like galbi udon (grilled beef short rib noodles), she also includes dishes like a fried chicken sandwich to help those unfamiliar with Korean flavors ease into the experience. Small dishes make the dining experience feel more curated and encourage guests to explore. Unlike Korean restaurants with huge menus that “give their guests everything in one go,” Seo also says she divided her menu into appetizers, mains, and desserts to make it easier for non-Koreans to navigate.

Adaptation is also a theme at Dooriban, another multigenerational restaurant in a busy stretch of Roma lined with galleries, boutiques, and cafes. The restaurant was founded in December 2021 by Ju Hee Park, affectionately known as Mama Park, and her daughters Jin Hee and Seo Ju. It evolved from a home-based kimchi business, launched in April 2020. The family joined forces with Seo Ju’s school friend, Sofía Acuña, a former project director for Grupo Enrique Olvera, and Sofía’s wife Fernanda García.

“When we started the kimchi business, 70 percent of our customers had never even heard of it,” Ju Hee says.

While Dooriban does make efforts to accommodate non-Koreans to generate business, adaptations to Mexican ingredients and dishes also evoke Ju Hee’s own experience navigating Korean and Mexican cultures. Though “never in her wildest dreams” did she believe she’d live in Mexico, she says, she made it her home along with her husband more than 40 years ago when he began training the Mexican national taekwondo team.

“Kimchi Mama Park and Dooriban reflect the experience of coming to Mexico City and trying to keep home alive in a foreign place,” Ju Hee says. “When we migrate, we bring our culture. We use ingredients from where we arrived, but transform them with imagination to feel like home.” But, even as she searched for South Korea snippets, Ju Hee was excited to learn about her new home. “My first memories of Mexico are in the neighborhood markets, [trying] flavors I didn’t know existed. After that moment, I always went out with a notebook, pen, and dictionary. I wanted to write down, ask about, and eat everything,” she adds.

Dooriban features both aspects of that experience. It includes Ju Hee’s recipes for recreating everyday Korean food like bo ssam (pork belly wraps), beef bulgogi (barbecued beef), fried chicken, and japchae (sweet potato starch noodles). But the team also experiments with Mexican dishes, using kimchi in a michelada or kkaennip (perilla leaves), and doenjang (fermented bean paste) in desserts.

While Korean restaurateurs have expanded outward, Gallardo has noticed Zona Rosa changing as well. Establishments now mimic Seoul’s vibrant nightlife with eye-catching neon lights, and they’ve adapted their menus to include smaller, faster versions of Korean dishes.

“In the past, Korean food meant ordering large plates, sitting with your friends, and eating for a long time. There are more quick-serve options now, a shift possibly influenced by the [COVID-19] pandemic,” he says. “Pochas — Korean pubs — are very trendy. They didn’t exist before 2017.”

As modern restaurants seek out new audiences and attract younger diners with fusion elements, it would be easy to forget the older restaurants. But Millan is quick to point out that Jowong and other businesses have only been able to blossom because of the debt they owe to traditional restaurants and the older community in Pequeño Seúl.

“We would not have this chance if not for the many hardworking restaurants before us who preserved the culture and exposed Mexico City to many dishes and flavors,” she says. “We embrace and respect the road paved for us.”

Robyn Huang is a Canadian journalist based in Mexico City covering culture, gender issues, and travel.
Matthew Reichel is a Canadian journalist and documentary photographer based in Mexico City covering the intersection of geopolitics, nature, and travel.