Southern comfort, Korean-style
Jennifer and Michele Kaminski missed their mother’s cooking, so they opened a ‘ghost restaurant’ to bring bibimbap — and a voice against anti-Asian prejudice — to Miami
By Dalia Colón | Photos by Amanda Julca
Featured image above: Jennifer, left, and Michele Kaminski, with the to-go boxes for their 2 Korean Girls “ghost kitchen.” The sisters grew up spending time in their mother’s Mishawaka, Indiana, restaurant. Years later, living in Miami and homesick for their mom and her Korean cooking, they started down the path that led to their food business.
The sisters never meant to open a restaurant.
Growing up helping in their mother’s northern Indiana eatery, the last thing Jennifer and Michele Kaminski wanted was to run their own. Too much work.
The girls were raised in suburban South Bend, the middle daughters of four children born to Chom Sun “Sunny” Kaminski and John Kaminski. Their parents had met on an Army base near Sunny’s hometown of Jangseong, South Korea.
American military man meets South Korean woman overseas. It was a fairly common story.
But try telling that to mixed-race girls growing up in 1980s Indiana with no internet to let them know they weren’t alone.
“Can we please just eat meatloaf?” Jennifer remembers begging Sunny when friends stayed for dinner. “Please don’t make anything weird tonight.”
Weird like the Korean melon Sunny grew in the family’s garden because it was too hard to find in American supermarkets. Weird like gochujang sauce, a sweet-and-spicy condiment that’s as ubiquitous as ketchup in Korean households. Weird like bibimbap, a Korean signature dish that decades later would become the centerpiece of Jennifer and Michele’s Miami restaurant, 2 Korean Girls.
Bibimbap translates to “mixed rice” — a bowl of rice, vegetables, protein, a fried egg and, of course, gochujang.
“You take a spoon and kind of mix it all up. It’s hearty, but it’s nutritious, and it’s comforting,” says Jennifer, 41. “But everything to make a bibimbap can be very labor-intensive.”
This is no problem in many Korean households, where the fixin’s for bibimbap are always on hand. But it was a novelty for the residents of Mishawaka, Indiana, where Sunny opened the town’s first Korean restaurant more than three decades ago.
“It was a very proud moment when I opened for my first day. I was so excited to share my heritage and my country’s food. I didn’t know how the restaurant would do, especially being the first Korean restaurant in Mishawaka,” says Sunny, who still operates Sunny’s Korean Garden Patio. She has expanded the business to include sauces and seasonings, which she sells to retailers including 2 Korean Girls.
“I owe my success to my family being there for me and helping me, as well as my customers, who are like family,” she says.
All grown up and living in Miami, Jennifer and Michele found themselves more than a thousand miles south of their mother’s restaurant and her well-stocked Korean kitchen, and craving their childhood comfort food. They could easily find Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese cuisine in South Florida, but Korean food was harder to come by.
So when Jennifer’s friend hosted a culinary entrepreneur pitch night in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District, the sisters on a whim submitted their idea of a bibimbap joint. It would be a ghost kitchen — a restaurant available only for takeout and delivery
“We’re marketing people. We’ve been in marketing and branding for over 20 years. We can put a pitch deck together in our sleep. Let’s just submit and see what happens,” says Jennifer, who is founder and managing director of Social Thinkking (socialthinkking.com/), while Michele is an event sales and marketing professional for some of Chicago’s top restaurants. The name they submitted was meant to be a placeholder: 2 Korean Girls.
“In Korea, a lot of things are very literal. If it’s a restaurant that serves hot soup, the restaurant might just be called Hot Soup Restaurant,” Jennifer explains. “In my head, I’m like, ‘There’s a thousand things we need to do before we settle on a name.’ ”
But after 2 Korean Girls opened in late 2020 in Coconut Grove, it started getting press. The name was a hit. So was the food.
The sisters found themselves emulating much of what they’d learned working in Sunny’s restaurant: Greeting customers. Personally responding to reviews. Using every last drop of gochujang sauce before throwing away the container.
“She’s a very savvy businesswoman,” says Michele, 36. “All those habits that she did, they all make sense to us now.”
When Sunny learned that her daughters were starting a bibimbap restaurant, she was incredulous.
“Are you kidding me?!” Sunny remembers thinking. “I am beyond proud of what the two of them have started and the women they have become. I want to help them in any way I can to make sure they are successful.”
Along the way, Michele and Jennifer have had other mentors, including James Beard Award-winning chef Allen Susser.
“The idea that the 2 Korean Girls concept is a ghost kitchen, with delicious comfort food, is so right to our 21st-century hospitality,” says Susser, who met Jennifer seven years ago when she did pro bono social media work for Miami’s No Kid Hungry campaign, which Susser led. “They are on the cutting edge of the newest technology that is being applied to hospitality. The growth is amazing, and they are going to work their way to the top.”
As the sisters work their way to the top, they’re using their ever-growing platform to educate consumers about Korean culture, just as Sunny had done decades earlier.
“I made my menu approachable, delicious and customizable,” Sunny says. “I feel that really helped my customers be more open to trying new dishes.”
Her daughters have the added advantage of social media. When 2 Korean Girls customers posted videos of themselves eating bibimbap incorrectly, Jennifer and Michele took it as feedback.
“People were actually deconstructing the bowl,” Michele says. “You’re supposed to mix everything. Everything is intended to be enjoyed together.”
So now the take-out packages come with directions.
And the sisters’ education campaign goes beyond the food itself. They’re using their platform to speak out against the recent surge in anti-Asian racism, through rallies, fundraisers and charitable donations.
“It is important for everyone to be a part of a justice movement,” Jennifer says. “If you want to love our food [and] love our culture, help support the people that are being victimized and being attacked. And I think that goes for all cultures,” Jennifer says.
Gone are the days of disguising their Korean culture with meatloaf.
“I would be willing to guess that probably a lot of minority cultures in the U.S. feel the same way, having to apologize and make other people feel comfortable for who we are, what we do and what our culture is,” Jennifer says. “To apologize for the smells, the flavors, the colors, the energy, everything that comes from it. No more.”
The sisters have gifted Miami with a restaurant that is apologetically Korean.
Says Michele, “I really am my mother’s daughter.”
Cucumber Kimchi
2 Korean Girls & Sunny’s Gourmet Products
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
½ cup Kimchi Seasoning
1 tbsp. teriyaki Sauce
1 tbsp. garlic
1 tbsp. ginger (optional)
1 cucumber
Thinly slice cucumber
Add Kimchi seasoning, Teriyaki sauce, garlic and ginger (optional)
Gently toss and coat to mix
Sesame Spinach
2 Korean Girls & Sunny’s Gourmet Products
Yield: 4 – 6 Servings
Ingredients
4 cups fresh spinach
2 tbsp. oil
1 tsp. toasted sesame seeds
1 tsp. sea salt
1 dash cracked Pepper
1 green onion, chopped
In a large pot, bring approximately 8 cups of salted water to a high boil
While water heats, prepare an ice bath for spinach
Leave water at high boil for about a minute, then turn off heat and add spinach quickly
Stir until completely submerged for about 1 minute and then remove spinach, drain in colander and immediately place spinach in the ice bath
After about 2 minutes, drain in colander and gently squeeze out any water
Place spinach in a medium mixing bowl and add remaining ingredients
Mix well until coated
Let rest in refrigerator for 1 hour before serving
Sweet & Sour Carrot and Radish
2 Korean Girls & Sunny’s Gourmet Products
Yield: 4 – 6 Servings
Ingredients
1 cup white vinegar
½ cup cane sugar
1 tsp. sea salt
1 daikon radish, peeled and julienned in small to medium size sticks
2 carrots, peeled and julienned
Mix white vinegar, sugar and salt together until dissolved
Combine radish and carrots in a large mixing bowl
Pour vinegar mix over radish and carrots and mix well until coated
Let it rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour before serving
Kimchi Fried Rice with Chicken Bulgogi
2 Korean Girls & Chef Allen Susser
Yield: 1 serving
Ingredients
4 tbsp. oil
6 oz. chicken thighs
1 tbsp. pureed garlic and ginger
4 tbsp. Korean teriyaki sauce
2 cups Napa Cabbage Kimchi
2 cups dried cooked day-old Korean white rice
Scallions
Toasted Black & White Sesame Seeds
Slice chicken thigh into 2” pieces
Heat 2 tbsp. oil in wok over high heat
Stir in chicken
Add pureed garlic and ginger
Add Korean teriyaki sauce
Stir fry until cooked through
Spoon chicken into bowl and keep warm
Heat remaining oil in wok over high heat
Add Kimchi to char
Mix in rice until coated
Put Kimchi Fried Rice into a bowl, top with Chicken Bulgogi in the middle and sprinkle with scallion and toasted sesame seeds.
Dalia Colón, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia journalist, is a producer and co-host of WEDU Arts Plus on Tampa Bay’s PBS station and produces WUSF Public Media’s food podcast, The Zest. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Colón was a staff reporter for Cleveland Magazine and The Tampa Bay Times. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, on NPR, and Visit Florida. She lives in Riverview with her husband, two young children and cocker spaniel, Max.
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2021 Issue of FORUM Magazine. Visit our collection at the USFSP Digital Archive by clicking here.
