When Junsoo and Hyunyoung Bae opened SSAL in 2019, they used all of their wedding gift money to fund their dream of owning a restaurant without outside investors. At the time, they served casual Korean comfort food. The name SSAL means “uncooked rice” in Korean—a tribute to Bae’s childhood memories of his grandmother’s rice shop, where he, his parents, and his uncles would help deliver 100-pound bags to customers.
During the pandemic, Bae pivoted to selling crunchy fried chicken to-go—a runaway success. For 18 months, with only his wife and a dishwasher to help, he served fried chicken nonstop and raised $250,000. That revenue funded a full renovation of SSAL, which reopened in 2021 as a tasting menu restaurant featuring minimalist interior design and works by Korean artists and artisans, including ceramics, brassware, vases, and paintings.
It was an ambitious move during a volatile time, but Bae reasoned that every fine dining restaurant had been set back to square one—and this might be his best chance to aim for Michelin stars. From the very first snacks—like hay-smoked Island Creek oysters dressed with chojang browned butter, and Korean sweet potato doughnuts topped with Tsar Nicoulai caviar—Bae displays an irreverent, innovative approach to flavor discovery.
One of Bae’s signature dishes is a Korean hand roll made with charcoal-grilled Maine eel marinated in soy and paired with koshihikari rice. Instead of crispy nori, it’s wrapped in soft gamtae seaweed, prized for its delicate, threadlike texture. SSAL received its first Michelin star in 2022, and in 2023, the restaurant’s growing wine collection earned a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence. With fewer Korean restaurants in San Francisco than in New York or Los Angeles, SSAL stands out in the city’s fine dining landscape.
Late-night fried chicken—served with caviar and Champagne—is one of SSAL’s most talked-about indulgences. “There’s nothing fine dining about it, but it’s exactly the menu we served during the pandemic, and now it’s part of our history,” Bae says. “The summer months aren’t typically so busy, so we wanted to bring the city’s late-night activity back and see some of our old guests again at a lower price point.”
