Chef

Junsoo Bae

Discipline: Chef
Based in: San Francisco, California, United States
Venue: Ssal · Restaurant

i. Biography

The restaurant is treated here as a record of practice rather than a bid for rankings. In Junsoo Bae’s own framing, the work is not built around chasing World’s 50 Best or the Michelin Guide, but around making the restaurant reflect his life. That sets a useful standard for reading the cooking: technique, familiarity, occasion, and memory are organized into a meal that carries personal material without abandoning fine-dining control.

Coming Up

Training moved through language, culinary school, and the basic labor of restaurants before it reached high-profile kitchens. Junsoo Bae trained at Kaplan International English and Culinary Institute of America, then worked as a dishwasher at Pizza Hut in Pohang, South Korea. That first role matters in trade terms: dish, steam, pace, and repetition are part of the operating system of a kitchen, and they come before authorship. The next stage of formation placed the craft inside demanding kitchens with different standards of precision. As an extern at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, then as a stage at Per Se and a stage at noma, Junsoo Bae worked through kitchens where discipline, repetition, and restraint are part of the daily vocabulary. The résumé reads less as acceleration than as accumulation. New York and Napa added production roles with different pressures. As sous chef at Gramercy Tavern until 2017, then line cook at The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa, California from 2017–2018, Junsoo Bae worked across distinct restaurant cultures before becoming chef-owner of SSAL in 2019. The current work narrows those references into a personal restaurant rather than a borrowed idiom.

Where They Are Now

At SSAL, the cooking uses fine-dining structure to carry familiar forms and table-side occasion. Spring onion pancakes, yuzu-glazed duck liver mousse, and sous-vide short rib finished at table-side coal grills show the restaurant’s range: comfort food handled with polish, richness cut with acidity, and meat service given the heat and visibility of coal at the table. The fine-dining format is used for more than finish and sequence. Junsoo Bae wants the meal to function as a full special-occasion experience, with familiar dishes, new flavors, and an educational moment held in the same evening. The craft challenge is balance: keep the guest oriented while introducing a different register of flavor, service, and explanation. The center of the work is the negotiation between recognition and surprise. Korean references, trained kitchen exactitude, and guest-facing service are not treated as separate categories; they are made to sit in one menu. SSAL’s structure gives Junsoo Bae room to connect where he began, what he studied, and the kitchens that shaped his standards.

Career - Chef-owner — SSAL, San Francisco (2019–present) - Dishwasher — Pizza Hut, Pohang, South Korea - Extern — Blue Hill at Stone Barns - Stage — Per Se - Stage — noma - Sous chef — Gramercy Tavern, New York (until 2017) - Line cook — The Restaurant at Meadowood, Napa, California (2017–2018) Education: Kaplan International English; Culinary Institute of America

Signature

The signature set moves between Korean comfort, fine-dining technique, and deliberately recognizable forms: spring onion pancakes, yuzu-glazed duck liver mousse, sous-vide short rib, Cheeseburger, and gimbap. In Junsoo Bae’s hands, the range is not a gimmick; it is a way to place familiar eating, technical control, and occasion on the same table.

In Their Words “Looking back, I think it was during my middle school days. As a young boy, I always loved eating delicious foods. I believed that becoming a chef would allow me to live a life full of good food and joy, so I decided to pursue that path.” “A lot of restaurants are existing to achieve something, but instead of chasing World’s 50 Best or the Michelin Guide, I want to make the restaurant reflect my life.”