44 Restaurant Review
FOOD & DRINKS
Chili Fries
The Mushroom Burger
A Hidden
Blessing Burger in Haenam
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
February 2021
L
iving in rural Korea can be tough, especially when the homesickness sets in, but Blessing Burger in Haenam has become our home away from home and Friday night tradition. We don’t often get Western food down here, but this hidden gem, right in the heart of Haenam, more than satisfies that craving. From the delicious burgers to the irresistible milkshakes, we always leave feeling happy and well fed. The owners, Joseph Choi and Yuna Kim, are always so lovely and welcoming and were kind enough to grant me time to do this interview for the Gwangju News.
Interview by Maria Moschini Joseph: I studied music, audio production, and Korean traditional music, and Yuna’s major was Chinese language and literature. I worked at the Busan Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra and for many fusion music bands. Yuna Kim: When I graduated from university, Joseph and I got married, and I worked as a department teaching assistant and at a sushi lunchbox factory in Toronto.
Maria Moschini: Hello and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Firstly, where are you both from and what made you decide to move to Haenam? Joseph Choi: I am from Busan, but Haenam is Yuna’s hometown. When we came to Haenam, I had just finished school in Toronto, Canada, and was working as an audio engineer / music producer. At the time, Yuna’s brother asked me for help with his business, which I did not want to do, but he wanted to work with me because he needed someone whom he trusted. We are Christian and he also wanted us to go to church as a family, so we decided to live in Haenam.
Maria: What’s the Blessing Burger philosophy? Joseph: We really like conversation with customers, and we hope that customers can be comforted and share the joy of eating our food. So, we really like it when customers say that they are happy and comforted after eating. When we started here, we dreamed of influencing the local economy, and at that time, we had a lot of ideas and thoughts, but we realized that we were setting our sights too high. Yuna: You know, these days everyone wants to go higher in life, and in the beginning, we wanted to go higher or “sharper” (to use a musical term) and gather many local people here, but that was our greed talking, and now we are thinking a bit “flatter” by concentrating on one person at a time and not 100 or 1,000.
Maria: Before you started Blessing Burger, what sort of work were you both doing?
Joseph: We do not want to become commercial; we want to stay original, so we are focusing on one customer at a
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