The Charlottesville 29

A common theme has recurred lately: art as a reflection of its creator.

At Smyrna, Tarik Sengul’s food reflects a Turkish upbringing, years in American kitchens with classical French training, and a new life in Charlottesville. At Sono, Sechul Yang’s food emerges from a Korean childhood and formative years cooking Italian food at Maialino. Neither set out to fuse cultures. Who they are just became what they make.

Likewise, Ramona Martinez’s genre-defying music grew out of her unique experiences and influences and formed a product no one else could create. With a mother who worked for the U.S. State Department, Martinez spent her childhood at military bases around the world – Finland, Russia, Japan, Australia – raised on Americana culture from afar, like the Turner Classic Movies on her family’s television.

If moving to the U.S. as a teenager blossomed her love of American country music, a gig as a radio host cemented it. The music Martinez played on her show spanned the 1920s to the ‘80s, but her favorite quickly became the honky tonk of the ‘50s: Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Patsy Cline. That music, along with her Mexican heritage, international travel, and love of Americana, all became part of Martinez, and therefore, her music. Whether in English, Spanish, or both, it’s always a reflection of herself. “Music, done right, is sincere,” says Martinez. “And I think everyone can connect with music that’s sincere.”

But, as Martinez explains it, the music of Ramona & The Holy Smokes is more than just her. Martinez likens it to a human body: her songwriting creates the soul and skeleton, and the band’s musicianship and experience provide the muscle – Kyle Kilduff, Brooks Hefner, Jay Ouypron, and Porter Bralley.

Among Martinez’s many influences, the first was her father – a musician and performer who sparked her love of singing as a child. So it was special for this father to enjoy Martinez’s beautiful music with my daughter on Father’s Day at Eastwood Farm Winery. Now receiving national and international acclaim, Martinez is an icon of her Charlottesville home. Catch her while you still can. July 10 at The Southern, tickets here. And follow Martinez’s band here.

Charlottesville is lucky to have her.

Fusion can be a bad word to chefs. It’s not the combining of flavors across cultures that bothers them. Many do that. What troubles them is the implication of forcing things together. Combinations that work, chefs think, evolve from experience.

At the NYC restaurant Sono, chef Sechul Yang draws on his culinary training and life experience to produce a cuisine all his own. Sono means “I am” in Italian, and Yang’s restaurant is an expression of who he is. The Korean native who came to the U.S. to attend the Culinary Institute of America spent eight years at one of New York’s most acclaimed Italian restaurants, Maialino. As he rolled noodles, simmered sauces, and braised meats, he began to notice similarities with the food that, as a child, he helped his mother cook at her restaurant in Korea.

Photo by Ben Hon.

Travel 6,000 miles west from South Korea, and you’ll find another peninsula jutting into the sea at the same latitude. The similarities with Italy don’t end there. Food as love. A culture of hospitality. Fermentation. Noodles. Locality and seasonality. Family-style meals built for sharing. And, intense regional pride — people of Jeonju, Gyeongsang, or Pyongan can feel as strongly about their food as those of Tuscany, Campania, and Emilia-Romagna.

Perhaps the deepest culinary connection is a shared appreciation for slow food. For both Koreans and Italians, a key ingredient is time, which coaxes flavors otherwise unattainable. And there’s science behind the tradition.

Take Yang’s addition of Korean slow-braised oxtail to a Roman dish known for speed: cacio e pepe. From a seat at Sono’s chef’s counter, the dish appears to come together in seconds, as Sous Chef Melissa Shaffer folds ribbons of mafaldine pasta into a quick emulsion of pecorino, pasta water, and black pepper.

But the speed is an illusion. Pecorino, after all, is aged milk. It can take months, even years, for enzymes to break down milk proteins into amino acids, yielding a deep umami flavor in cheeses like pecorino.

Adding slow-cooked oxtail boosts the effect. The meat adds umami while its collagen breaks down into gelatin, coating the palate and amplifying the perception of flavor. The result: rather than an unwelcome intruder in a classic Roman dish, the oxtail feels like it always belonged.

The menu is full of these seamless inspirations.

As side dishes, contorni are to Italy as banchan are to Korea, and Yang’s treatment of yu choy draws on both traditions. First, he does as Italians do and chars the leafy greens. Next, as he would in Korea, he makes a quick kimchi of the charred yu choy, with garlic, spice, and sugar, replacing Korean fish sauce – aekjeot – with Italian – garum.

Photo by Ben Hon.

Gratitude as Hospitality

Beyond food itself, Korea and Italy share something even more fundamental to a restaurant: a view of gratitude as a relation to others, and hospitality as its expression.

At Sono, the effect is twofold. In the open kitchen — which extends along much of the dining room — there is an uncommon sense of serenity and grace. For the calm, Yang credits gratitude, which he likens to engine oil in a car. “It helps to control the heat that can happen between the people and the work, and make things go as they are supposed to without burning them all,” Yang said. “I am thankful for my team, always doing their best in the moment.”

And in the dining room, hospitality is an extension of gratitude itself. In Korea, eunhye describes grace received and the enduring pull to return it. In Italy, ricambiare means to return kindness with kindness. In both, the belief that we are indebted to one another produces a longing to experience others’ happiness as their own.

Hospitality, then, is gratitude made visible – a host’s way of honoring the gift of a guest’s presence and seeking to share in their happiness. At Sono, servers deliver food and wine with the anticipatory glimmer of a friend who had wrapped a carefully chosen gift, eager to see it opened.

Thanks to Yang and his team, opening it is joy. Ours and theirs.

Photo by Hannah Sions

“People have forgotten the taste of wheat.”

Joseph Kim is on a mission to change that.

Wine lovers know their grapes. Beer geeks know hops. But, when it comes to bread, Kim says, most of us have no idea what wheat it is made from. “People view flour as a vessel,” said Kim. “Their expectation of flour is that it’s okay to be flavorless.”

What they’re missing, says Kim, is the world of flavor that grains offer. Grain Story Bakery, launched out of Kim’s Staunton home last year, is his way to help.

Kim has long had a passion to discover the best grains for baking. Part of that involves research – scouring books and articles, traveling the country, and studying farmers’ methods to see which bring out the best flavor of the grain.

The other part is test-baking. A common problem with grains is that those with the most genetic potential for flavor are not always the easiest to bake with. There’s science to it. Test-bakers help solve this, and Kim has become renowned for his skill in running trials of flavorful new grains and assessing ways to bake with them. Millers like Deep Roots Milling send new grains or flour blends to Kim, who runs baking tests and provides a report.

Kim’s expertise and work have now culminated in his own bakery, where he bakes breads out of his home and sells them at farmers’ markets. He sources grains directly from farmers and millers, mills grains on site as finely as he can, and bakes within 24-48 hours of milling for optimal flavor. Kim uses favorite grains from his research: Turkey Red, Red Fife, Abruzzi Rye, Oberkulmer Spelt, Khorasan, “Blond” Einkorn, and Pennol. (You can read about them on his website.)

A Dark Bake

For the bake itself, Kim prefers a hard, dark bake. Kim’s goal is to bring out the flavor of each grain. “I really want the grain to be the main character and hope that customers can differentiate the flavor of the bread by the taste of the grain,” said Kim. To maximize grain flavor, Kim hydrates its protein and starch as much as possible. All that water needs to be baked off, which requires a longer bake.

The darkness from doing so also adds flavor through caramelization. Caramelized sugar has a more complex flavor than raw sugar. The longer bake enhances caramelization and hence flavor.

Kim’s breads are available Saturday mornings at the Farmers Market at IX, and sometimes directly from his Staunton bakery. Follow along on Instagram to learn when and where to find it.