Weekly Welcome

Ellia Park is the Co-Owner of Atoboy and Atomix. Both restaurants are in partnership with her husband and business partner, Chef Junghyun Park. Atoboy since opening has retained its Michelin Bib Gourmand nod while their newest venture Atomix has been elevated to 2 Michelin Stars in the 2020 Michelin Guide. Ellia shares her early beginnings in Korea, being raised by a loving grandma who would pack her lunch everyday to eventually fulfilling the couple's dream to open a restaurant that brought Korean cuisine into the international stage.

Esther Choi is the Chef-Owner of Mokbar & Ms. Yoo. Growing up in rural New Jersey, Esther spent her childhood following her Korean grandmother around, who was a fixture in her community and known for her cooking. That is not to say, she was fearlessly independent and entrepreneurial early on, selling candy as a young teen to her friends and working in the hospitality business throughout her early adulthood. Soon enough, a pharmacy degree in Rutgers turned into a degree in psychology to a stint at Food Network to having her very own food hall in the coveted Chelsea Market.

Jenny Kwak is the Chef-Owner of Haenyeo, a neighborhood Korean restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Prior to Haenyeo, which is an homage to the tenacious female divers off of Korea's Jeju Island; Jenny and her mom, Myung Ja, had operated Dok Suni in the East Village in the 90's and Do Hwa in the West Village in the early 2000's. Having been in the business of educating guests of Korean cuisine and culture in NYC for over two decades, Jenny documents her journey to opening her first solo venture with her husband and partner, Terrence. 

Ochi Latjuba is the Co-Owner of Wayan, a restaurant done in partnership with her husband Cedric Vongerichten. Wayan offers Indonesian cuisine with a modern French flair. Wayan is named after its meaning in Indonesian, a name given for the first-born. After all, it is the couple's first solo project in NYC after opening eateries in Jakarta. Ochi grew up in Indonesia; where her mother ran a catering business. Later on, she went onto studying at CIA and attaining experiences at Daniel Boulud's Feast and Fetes and Thomas Keller's Per Se.

Maiko Kyogoku is the Owner of Bessou — a restaurant showcasing a modern take on Japanese comfort food. As fate would have it, Bessou is housed in a space on Bleecker Street in the NoHo neighborhood that formerly was Maiko's favorite cash-only Italian restaurant in NYC. Maiko has not had a linear or direct path to restaurant entrepreneurship; in fact the very opposite. Growing up, her father opened the first sushi restaurant on the Upper West Side. She would go on to work in children's publishing, work on Sesame Street to becoming famed artist Takashi Murakami's right hand before fulfilling her aspirations of operating her own restaurant.

Yen Ngo is the owner & restaurateur of Van Da, a modern Vietnamese restaurant in the East Village. "Van Da" is female warrior in the ancient Vietnamese language, an homage to the female figures in Vietnamese cuisine and culture. Van Da, as a restaurant, showcases various regions and vibrant flavors of the country Yen grew up in. From the earliest and fondest food memories to an engineering career moonlighting as a deli waitress to starting a catering company, Yen's story is singular and makes Van Da that much more special.

Moonlynn Tsai is the Co-Owner and Operator of Kopitiam. We interviewed the other half of Kopitiam, Kyo Pang, Co-Owner and Chef of Kopitiam in Season 2. For this season, we wanted to feature Moonlynn’s side of the story of the partnership but also her take on her unique staffing of high school students at Kopitiam and how she tackles the idea of gentrification being a new restaurant that lies on the converging borderline of rapidly developing neighborhoods in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. 

Amelie Kang is the restaurateur and Co-Owner of MaLa Project in New York City. A former Eater Young Gun and a recently minted Forbes 30 Under 30 for Food & Drink, Class of 2020, Amelie grew up in Beijing, standing on a stool watching her grandma pick persimmons, peach, and pear from her garden. Her early exposure to food had her pursue Culinary Arts at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). From her first externship at Chef Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud to managing China Blue in its infancy, Amelie shares her early stories and her journey to opening and operating MaLa Project.

Season 3 of the With Warm Welcome podcast is looking to feature 9 Asian-American restaurateurs and chef-owners, who happen to be women. Season 3 debuts Wednesday, December 11th at 11AM EST.

Sakura Yagi is the COO of T.I.C Restaurant Group, a collection of Japanese restaurant concepts predominantly located in the East Village in NYC. Their concepts include: Hasaki, Sake Bar Decibel, Sakagura, Curry-ya, Sobaya, Shabu Tatsu, Hi-Collar, Rai Rai Ken, Otafuku x Medetei, and Cha An Teahouse.

 While New York does not have an official Japantown like Koreatown or Chinatown has, T.I.C Restaurant Group has created their own little impressive community of Japanese restaurants that specialize in certain dishes. 

In this episode, we follow Sakura Yagi's origin story of growing up as a Japanese-American in NYC to working various odd jobs after college to her fateful homecoming in 2012 as the COO of T.I.C Restaurant Group.