Bill Soo Jeong'

The Climb

Since 2019, Bill Soo Jeong has been the chef of Paju, and the role sets the line of his current work: one kitchen, one point of view, and a discipline shaped by steady repetition rather than noise. The chapter is still active, but the contours are already clear in the way the room balances control with room to move.

Today

At Paju, the cooking uses New American technique as a base and then threads in Asian, European, and Latin American references without letting the plate lose focus. The result is layered but not crowded, modern but still direct. Bill Soo Jeong’s work is built through editing as much as invention, and the dishes carry that kind of specificity.

Signature

Paju Jr. Burger is Bill's signature dish. It reads as a familiar form pushed through a sharper lens, with richness, texture, and contrast held in deliberate balance. The dish sits at the center of the repertoire because it shows how the kitchen thinks: practical, responsive, and willing to refine one idea until it takes on a clearer shape.

In Their Words That shift changed the rhythm of service and gave the kitchen a different frame to work within. The pop-up was an adjustment to circumstance, but it also became a working format that fed directly into the dish that later defined this period. **** The logic is in the contrast: a rich dish needs lift, and a soft one needs structure. The kimchi coleslaw provides both, doing the mechanical work that makes the plate read cleanly.

Recognition

In 2023, the Paju Jr. Burger became his signature work: a play on a 2020 pandemic takeout sandwich pop-up, built with kimchi coleslaw on pork loin. That recognition marks a point of clarity, not a departure. He added, “The kimchi coleslaw counterbalances the richness and gives it texture.” Taken together, the two lines show how the dish moved from an improvised answer to a defining expression of Bill Soo Jeong’s work at Paju.