One Beast of a Feast This Holiday Season at Hock + Hoof

Lechon baboy – An extravagant feast consisting of a whole juicy roasted hog with crackling, crispy skin, a variety of five delectable Asian-inspired sauces, and six artfully-crafted side dishes makes Hock + Hoof a DTLA favorite for the holidays.

The whole hog experience is available for pre-order by phone, serves 12 people and retails for $880. 

Since downtown Los Angeles is already regarded as one of the most vibrant and diverse culinary scenes in all of the country, it can often make the prospect of opening a new restaurant in the area feel somewhat daunting. After all, with such a stacked line-up of unique, contemporary food establishments already lining the streets, is there really room for another? Thankfully, the bold husband and wife team of Kat Hu and Justin Yi ignored any such neuroses when they opened up their spectacularly successful eater Hock + Hoof earlier this year. 

Born in China, Hu arrived in the US at the tender age of nine and has lived on-and-of in the greater Los Angeles area ever since. After studying at the now-defunct Pasadena Cordon Bleu, her career began at the Ritz Carlton in Dowtown’s LA Live Complex. From there, she took on a sous chef position on San Francisco, where she became more versed in the complex flavors and ingredients of South East Asia.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas native Yi went to Hyde Park, New York as a young man to hone his skills at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. He then returned home briefly, where he worked at Vegas staple Bouchon, then bounced around Los Angeles working for prestigious chef like David Chang, before eventually heading out to the Bay Area. There, Yi and Hu’s paths crossed when they both found themselves stationed at the legendary Patina Group’s San Fran outpost, Roots & Rye. 

From there, the star-crossed culinary couple expanded both their palate and their ambitions via extensive travel. “… From a relationship standpoint and a professional standpoint, our passions definitely matched,” explains Hu. “After working in bay area we came back down to LA and then traveled a little bit, went to Vietnam Cambodia, Hong Kong, Macau… as far as influences… He’s Korean, I’m Chinese, and us growing up eating … (Asian) food and then going to cordon blue, or CIA, (both of) which teach French cooking techniques, it really made sense for us to combine the two flavors and bring something new to the restaurant scene in Los Angeles.”

And, in Hock + Hoof, Hu and Yi have come to accomplish just that, raking in rave notices for their uniquely innovative take on culinary traditions from around the globe. “This isn’t fine dining,” remarks Yi. “We’re not looking for Michelin starts….we just want to showcase our food and have good service and…introduce people to a wide range of items that are actually out there. Many people don’t try…new things and have a comfort zone, like, ‘I want Thai food, but I’ll only eat Pad Thai.’ (Instead), we want to create new flavors….combine them with old flavors and (introduce) them to a new market.” Agreeing, Hu states: “Here in LA, you do have great authentic ethnic food… some of the best in the US, but I feel theres a huge culture gap involving what people don’t understand about ethnic food. We’re doing this for our ethnicity and really wanted to introduce flavor profiles that are indigenous to an American market. Some of my favorite restaurants are Republique or Church and State, with great ingredients that you can only find in France. There are not as many mainstream restaurants that use these indigenous Asian ingredients.

When asked to delve into specifics, Hu and Yi’s passion for the food they serve emerges full-force, as they discuss a litany of dynamic dishes and cuts of meat available on the Hock + Hoof menu. Says Hu: “We use pork jowl… the cheek of the pig. We remove the outer layer of fat and use the meaty part… a perfect combination of collagen or cartilage. It’s a beautiful cut of pork. Another one is beef tongue, which is usually associated with Mexican food or thinly sliced rare tongue for Korean cuisine. But no one has brought that cut of meat into something that’s mainstream. So we braise it with red wine and treat it like we would a short rib, and to our amazement, it breaks down in a certain way because its a huge muscle… to become this amazing cut of beef. Another one we do is the Tomahawk steak. We get great prime tomahawk racks in house we treat it ourselves, clean it fabricate it weight it… the marbling on that meat is insane. It’s weird because we’re not a steakhouse, and most regular restaurants to do not serve a cut like the tomahawk, but that kind of honors the cow in a real way.”

Yi continues on: “One of the dishes we’re most proud of is the Somen dish that we have. A  traditional Japanese noodle that we do with an almond based soup/sauce. It’s a very traditional Asian dish, but we do it in a way that’s a bit more elevated, with almost eleven different components, with different types of pickles and raw elements as well as our house cured bacon. It’s my take on (a traditional) bean noodle Korean soup.” 

Hu goes on to personally lend praise to two other items: “We use the french roasted bone marrow then add a lap cheong Chinese sausage. It’s a take on the steakhouse bacon panko… The flavor is amazing… the smokiness goes so well with the bone marrow. Our customers love that dish. Another one is the duck breast. We use around 8 spices which we mix in house. We use cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, dehydrated tangerine skin and a few others and we make a spice rub for the duck. There’s also a sweet and sour cabbage that I basically grew up eating as a child that my grandmother would make for me. A lot of our flavors really does bring a sense of nostalgia to many people who grew up eating Asian…cuisine.”

Indeed, by paying homage to the food that shaped them as individuals, Hu and Yi have also earned the patronage of the most important critics in any young chef’s life: their parents. “My mom always brings her business partners and friends to our restaurant,” recalls Hu. “She’s extremely proud of me. My mom has a classic Chinese palate so some of these items are a bit different for her. She loves the tomahawk steak and pork belly… but things like the beef tongue she doesn’t entirely understand. But she comes by… I can’t get rid of her. Justin’s mom loves the Somen and his dad loves the beef tongue— A lot of (what we have here) is inspired by our background. ” Justin concurs, adding: “We’re young in this industry. We’re not fifty year old chefs who have been in the industry for 25 years. But clearly we’ve made a big scene, and, for me the best way to tell people what we are is that this is a mom and pop shop.” 

In closing, Hu vehemently makes a case for the authenticity of the ideals behind Hock and Hoof: “This restaurant is really our passion project…I want people to understand that this is something that we wholeheartedly work for. One of us at least is here every day, working at least six days a week, prepping, cooking, doing the dishes. Every aspect of the operation, front and back. Eventually, we are humans and we’ll keep growing is people and hope people will grow with us and see the evolution of us and the restaurant.” If the rapturous reception to their opening salvo is any indication, their hopes will not go unanswered. 

Hock + Hoof is located at 517 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90013. For more information, check out their hockandhoof.com/#(opens in a new tab)website.