Korean Street Food Convoy

Pinterent    Februari 14, 2024    Comment   

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A popular Korean snack chain with more than 300 locations in Korea and around the globe has landed in Kearny Mesa. Chung Chun Rice Dog is currently operating from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., but will grand open this Thursday, June 6 at 2 p.m. Standard hours will be Sunday through Thursday from noon to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 11 p.m.

Former Churreria Cafe owner Nicholas Tran partnered with local restaurateur Alex Sung to launch the Convoy Street location, which is also the brand’s first foray into the United States. Sung, who runs 356 Korean BBQ and Onami in Mission Valley, is licensed to expand the chain across the nation; Tran says their next outpost in San Diego will be in a major shopping mall.

Korean Fried Chicken Chain Returns To Convoy

The treats are based on chicken and pork hot dogs, mozzarella cheese sticks, and spicy sausages that get dipped into a yeasted rice flour batter and a coating of panko breadcrumbs, potatoes, or Korean ramen noodles; squid ink tints a black version of the dough. Fried to order until crispy on the outside and fluffy and chewy within, they get a light dusting of sugar for a sweet-savory effect. Customers can then choose from a range of optional toppings including ranch powder, wasabi mayo, and mango habanero sauce.

With prices running from $1.99 to $4.49, the menu will expand to include a coating based on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and a vegan hot dog option. Sung is also bringing a Korean chain of tteokbokki shops to San Diego, so rice cakes in spicy gojuchang sauce will eventually be added to this store, and future locations will also offer boba drinks.“It rose out of nowhere, ” says Junya Watanabe. The thrill of things is amplified by their unlikeliness. It is always likely that great restaurants will dot the drop-dead gorgeous coastlines, that Michelin-star kitchens will bloom in the shadows of skyscrapers. But when mom-and-pops create a bustling dining culture in the city’s unsexy middle, behind some car dealerships and paint stores, in a part of town not designed for restaurants, where parking is so scarce it’s nearly a mythological construct, turning entire strip malls into food courts of nuanced and authentic cuisines of various Asian cultures—that’s a thrill.

That’s Convoy District, the freeway-bordered triangle of Kearny Mesa bursting with Korean barbecue and bibimbap, Vietnamese pho, Chinese dim sum, Japanese ramen and bento boxes, Taiwanese boba tea and shaved snow, and endless beer-soaked karaoke rooms. In 2020, the city of San Diego officially designated it a pan-Asian cultural and business district, recognizing what locals had already known for quite some time.

Good Selection Of Meats At Prime Grill At Convoy Street, San Diego. (©alex Lee)

“Every week I get calls from some of the biggest restaurant groups in San Diego inquiring about space, ” says Alan Wong, who helps run his father’s 40-year-old business, Stanley Wong Insurance Agency, whose clients include many Convoy restaurants. “They’re coming. That’s exciting, because while it’s great for Convoy to be the area for cultural relevance, the more multicultural you get, the more sustainable you are in the long term.”

Convoy is now basking in, and trying to navigate, its own success. The bones of Kearny Mesa weren’t designed for hot pots or mochi donuts—or consumer pursuits of any kind, for that matter. Like the rest of San Diego, the land was part of the Kumeyaay Nation, colonized by Spain, and changed hands to Mexico and then the United States. In 1917 the US Army established the 2, 130-acre Camp Kearny (the San Diego Union called Kearny Mesa “San Diego’s great war city”). During World War II, the mostly industrial- zoned streets served the Pacific Fleet, training marines in artillery and sailors in flying. The largest defense housing project in the country at the time (3, 000 homes on 12 acres) was finished here in 1941.

Two years later, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Originally enacted in 1882, the wildly racist CEA had numerous disastrous effects on the local Asian community. In addition to outlawing immigration from China and preventing Chinese immigrants from gaining US citizenship (and forcing those without proper ID into labor camps),  the act dictated where they could live, and how they could earn a living. In San Diego they were permitted to live only in the city’s Chinatown (now called the San Diego Asian Pacific Historic District), an eight-block area on the southwestern edge of what is now the Gaslamp. And, as Chinese historian Murray K. Lee told Voice of San Diego, they were relegated to labor and service jobs on farms, in laundromats, and in restaurants.

Jeongwon Korean Bbq Buffet, San Diego

“Once those racist ordinances got lifted, it was like, ‘Cool, let’s move, ’” says Wesley Quach, director and business advisor for the Asian Business Association of San Diego.

One of the Chinese families who moved was the Homs, who had started their grocery store, Woo Chee Chong, in Chinatown in 1899. Ask a dozen veterans of Convoy when the food scene started, and most of them point to Jennings Hom opening a Woo Chee Chong location at 4625 Convoy Street in 1979. It was a partnership with Frank Wong, a commercial real estate developer and a crucial recruiter of mom-and- pop businesses to the area. “People say there would be no Asians in Convoy if it weren’t for the Wong family, ” says Quach.

Frank Wong’s daughter, Eva Hum, explains the impact of Woo Chee Chong: “That area was just empty land until they built that store. People were moving out of the old neighborhoods and into more prosperous neighborhoods, and they wanted grocery stores that catered to their own community. They had a cooking school; they were really innovative.”

Sinjeon Food Sys

After 16 years, Woo Chee Chong closed in 1995. In its place is the Dumpling Inn and Shanghai Saloon, long famous as one of the first restaurants in San Diego to serve xiao long bao (soup dumplings). This one small strip mall contains shops for boba, sushi, shaved ice, Korean hot dogs, and dim sum takeout. At the strip mall across the street, 14 of the 15 storefronts are restaurants or specialty food and drink shops (Shabu Shabu House, Tofu House, Crab Hut, O’Brien’s, RakiRaki, and so on). Convoy has expanded, but an argument could be made that these two strip malls are both the historical and the modern heart of San Diego’s Asian food scene.

Grocers like Woo Chee Chong have always been key to Convoy’s evolution as a three-dimensional food destination. The stores draw families from across San Diego who can’t find proper Asian ingredients at a Western grocery store. While here, they often eat at the local restaurants. The stores also provide the raw ingredients for people who taste, say, tonkotsu (pork ramen) and want to try re-creating the dish at home, creating a deeper understanding of the cuisine. The area has national chain grocers like 99 Ranch Market, H Mart, Nijiya, Marukai, and Mitsuwa, plus local success story Zion Market, which opened in 1979 and offers mostly Korean food.

“It’s pretty amazing, we’re seeing a bit of a renaissance in Asian food, ” says Kevin Hwang, whose father, Kyu, has built Zion into a chain with seven locations across the US. “David Chang, Roy Choi—now you see these guys cooking Korean.”

Seoul Tofu House 4229 Convoy Street

“It’s where all the churches were, ” Hwang suggests. “I think if all the churches were in Rancho Bernardo, then this market would be there.” More than a few people point to the holy houses—like Korean United Methodist Church, opened in 1978—as a reason why the neighborhood has plenty of bulgogi (marinated Korean beef). The function of church as a refuge is obvious, but crucially so when you’re new to a place, in search of community, trying to establish new traditions without abandoning sacred ones. Maybe the almighty deserves some of the credit for creating food scenes like this.

And there is no scene quite like dim sum. Opened in 1992, Jasmine Seafood became Convoy’s unofficial dim sum palace, a giant temple to food. Dim sum is one of the most communal forms of eating on the planet: Huge groups—multiple generations of families—gather at the tables while servers promenade with steam-heated carts filled with snacks in bamboo baskets: char siu bao (barbecue pork buns), siu mai (silky pork and shrimp dumplings), chicken feet, spare ribs, coconut milk pudding, sponge cakes. You peruse, pick, and share. A Cantonese phrase that roughly means “heart’s delight, ” dim sum started in the teahouses of Hong Kong, where Jasmine owner Allen Chan was born.

When I put the same question to him—“Why Convoy?”—he says: “San Diego’s Asian communities are not like other cities—they’re spread all over. Convoy is centrally located in the county, so people started coming here to meet on the weekends. That brought in traffic and local businesses. And then whenever an Asian moved to San Diego, they would come to this area. During the past

Delicious Cold Noodles At Prime Grill At Convoy Street, San Diego. (©alex Lee)