On a personal level, gimbap came first for chef Jihan Lee, with his mom’s gimbap setting the standard. On a professional level, though, gimbap took a backseat to another seaweed-wrapped rice roll: sushi. After training at New York City’s two-Michelin-starred temple of sushi Masa, Lee and his business partners opened the Japanese hand roll bar Nami Nori in 2019. Even though they’d floated the idea ...
The narrative around gimbap’s rise in the U.S. is framed as a cultural reclamation, distinguishing it from sushi while leveraging Korean cuisine’s growing global appeal. The strongest version of this story highlights chefs like Jihan Lee and Jihee Kim as innovators, bridging tradition and modernity, and acknowledges the dish’s emotional resonance for Korean communities. However, the persistent comparison to sushi—despite pushback—reveals an underlying tension: the need to define gimbap on its ow...