“The more loyal customers you have, the better your restaurant will be.” This is the secret to the restaurant’s longevity, said Sangheon Lee, the owner of Kang Nam Restaurant, a long-standing Korean restaurant and a landmark in Los Angeles Koreatown.
“Our 42 years of business is all thanks to our customers,” he said. “We spend a lot of time and effort selecting ingredients and preparing meals. This, coupled with our sincerity, has helped us maintain the trust of our customers.”
“Trust between employees is also important. Most of our employees have been with us for more than 20 years. Their dedication has made Kang Nam Restaurant a place frequented by three generations of customers.”
The keys to his management philosophy are ‘relationship’ and ‘sincerity’.
Lee says that if you have a good relationship with your employees, the food and service will automatically improve. Some of the staff at Kang Nam Restaurant have been working in the kitchen for 35 years. Lee believes that his employees recognize his efforts to treat them like family.
Lee values relationships with the customers and has welcomed a wide variety of guests. He has cooked for former Korean presidents when they toured the United States. Institutional heads, bank CEOs, and business executives are regular customers at Kang Nam Restaurant.
Looking back, one of the most rewarding experiences for Lee was when a couple got married at his restaurant because they could not afford a wedding hall at the time. However, they’ve started a happy family since then and now visit the restaurant hand in hand with their grandchildren. Lee says this kind of bond with customers has made Kang Nam Restaurant a representative longevity restaurant in Koreatown.
Another key is how he approaches his business.
From the time he first started as a chef in 1968, Lee prided himself on his dedication to food. He trained as a Japanese chef at one of the top three Japanese restaurants in Seoul at the time, where he started his restaurant career which now spans more than 55 years.
It was 1972 when he came to the U.S. by recommendations from the Japanese Chefs Association to train Japanese chefs in New York City. He then moved to a Japanese restaurant in Ohio, which eventually led him to settle down in Los Angeles in 1981. After two years of working in restaurants, Lee was already preparing to open his own restaurant.
Moving to Los Angeles Koreatown, Lee spotted the current Kang Nam Restaurant building at 4103 W Olympic Boulevard, which had been vacant since a bank moved out.
“As soon as I saw the building, I thought it was so beautiful that I had to make it my own,” said Lee, adding, “The name of the restaurant was a reversal of ‘Nam Kang,’ a famous Japanese restaurant in Seoul where I worked.” In 1983, Lee opened his own restaurant, Kang Nam Restaurant.
Realizing that he couldn’t compete with other restaurant businesses with just Korean or Japanese food, Lee designed a menu that included both Korean and Japanese dishes to attract customers with different tastes.
Kang Nam Restaurant then became a hit in town as soon as it opened. The restaurant was widely recognized as a high-end restaurant that was hard to find in Koreatown at the time. Its signature menu was the stewed sablefish, which is a dish he used to make at home. Gaining popularity among Korean-American customers through word of mouth, Lee later bought the building he had been renting in 1985, and he has been running successfully ever since.
Despite his age after 55 years in the restaurant business, Lee still gets on his truck in the early morning before opening. “I still get on my truck at 6 a.m. to go and buy ingredients and work in the kitchen. I’m still on ‘active duty,'” he said.
Lee also gave up his retirement plans when customers asked him not to close the restaurant, saying they would have nowhere to go. “My goal is to make Kang Nam Restaurant last as long as it can. I’m still here, and we’ll be here welcoming our customers,” Lee said.
BY WONHEE CHO, HOONSIK WOO [cho.wonhee@koreadaily.com]
