Kellen Kinder

Kellen Kinder

English 8 Capstone Paper

Mrs Kohler

5 May 2020

My Restaurant

I chose the topic of creating a restaurant that is a fusion with Vietnamese and Korean food. I chose this topic because I have always loved cooking. It's one of my various passions and I love to do it in my free time, but there is a lot more history behind it.. I was born in Aurora Oregon where there was not a lot of cooking I could help with because there were limited food options and I did not really care or think about what I was eating. It wasn’t until I moved to Vietnam that my love for food grew rapidly. After a year at my new school, I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about food and why it was so different in Vietnam than Aurora, so I signed up for cooking lessons. At first I hated them,, but after awhile I started to enjoy it more and more. Eventually, I asked our cook in Vietnam if I could help in the kitchen a few times a month and she taught me how to make the right things and taught me new techniques to make the best food possible. This is where my love for Vietnamese food and cooking came from. My love for Korean food is a whole other story. My first experience with Korean cuisine was in Oregon in a small Korean barbecue restaurant. They gave us kimchi and meat and it was all so good. Back then, I had no idea what Korean food was, but now it is one of my favorite foods and I have gone to Korean various times which is where my love for it grew.

I chose to make a restaurant that is Korean and Vietnamese fusion with a menu and logo for my capstone project. I love Vietnamese and Korean both so I could not pick between the two so I decided to do a Korean Vietnamese fusion. All of the restaurants will be a mix of the two cultures. The style of my restaurant is going to be relaxed and very involved in both of the cultures. The message of my restaurant is that there does not have to be one type of food in a restaurant but there can be multiple as long as it flows well. The overall goal of my logo is trying to have a welcoming feel and a vibe that comes off of it to make the customers feel welcome to walk into the restaurant and try something new and be adventurous. First, my logo has to be related to my business, so it is going to be Vietnamese food but in Korean dialogue so it fits into both cultures. Secondly the menu is going to be the main thing that attracts the customers eye by putting detail and having it organized in sections and pages. The final step is making the food that will be served.. The first dish will be a spring roll representing the vietnamese side and inside of the spring roll will be kimchi representing the Korean side. The main dish will be beef bulgogi with rice and some Vietnamese twist I have not figured out yet.

A good restaurant attracts a lot of attention from the public and stands out from the other restaurants by presentation and style throughout the restaurant (Alux.com). First of all, location plays a key role in successful restaurants by making the restaurant visible to the public and having good views from the restaurant (Alux.com). Secondly, the style and nature of the restaurant is important to make it more fancy to make the restaurant seem more inviting and posh (Alux.com). The menu is the first glance at the restaurant, because the menu is usually outside the restaurant before you walk in and is the first look at the restaurant from the outside (Alux.com). Another important aspect of a restaurant is presentation. Whether it is the staff, food or just the layout of the restaurant it all has to be in business fashion but also with a bit of a pop to make it stand out (Alux.com). The logo gives an opening look into your business. A bad logo can shame and put down your business, but a good logo makes your business just fit together and if the good is great then you could even put it in your restaurant (Alux.com).

The logo is another important part of a successful business by giving it a good first impression (Millar). The logo reflects the nature of business, like whether it is a gentle, calm business or if it's more of a cultural business (Millar). Lots of the logos used in business today are also used in products like Nike or clothing companies. A good logo should be similar to business and be connected into the type of business, for example like forks for a restaurant or books for a library (Millar). A good logo should use lots of colors and shapes but still match to make it stand out and have a modern look and to make it more of an out of the ordinary logo (Millar). For my logo I am choosing to make my logo mixed into both cultures to get across to the customers that the restaurant is a fusion. The logo will be Vietnamese food but in a Korean dialogue to make the two cultures combine.(Millar)

The menu is also very important to a restaurant because usually they have it outside the restaurant which means the menu should be stylish to give a good vibe (Cousins). For a good menu you should use a lot of images to give the customers a look at what the food will turn out like (Cousins). Brief words should give a detailed summary of the food that you are describing and give them an image of the food. Including a special section for dietary concerns, this is important because the people with dietary concerns look for those restaurants that can fit their needs and if you do not you lose a whole crowd of people (Cousins). Color is key, but too much can make it look messy and you want to make it have just enough color so that the customers can identify easily what they want (Cousins). Organize your menu with boxes and lines to separate the different sections and foods this gives the customers an easy way to navigate around the menu (Cousins). My menu will have pictures to better describe the food, I will also have sections to the menu like, main dishes and appetizers. I am also hoping to make the menu colorful and attractive to make it more of my style of menu I would like to see.

Korean and Vietnamese are both great cuisines but they have their differences so trying to make a fusion between the two could be hard.This is why finding similarities and ways to intertwine them is so important.. Kimchi is very popular and traditional in the Korean culture. It dates back 4000 years, so it's very important to incorporate it into the food I am going to make by combining two of the most important foods in both cultures (Chaey). Spring rolls are another very important food to the Vietnamese and are about 1800 years old (Carmack). Most recipes of Korean food are quick and easy similar to Vietnamese like kimchi and spring rolls. Noodles and rice are very common in both cultures and are used as sides or in the dish itself (Chaey, Carmack). Vegetables and greens are also both included into most of the food in both cultures (Chaey, Carmack). Both cultures also use meats as the nutrition of their meal and add sauces to give the food more flavor in the food. My Idea for the food I am going to make is an appetizer that is a spring roll with kimchi inside to give it the extra sauce and flavor. My idea so far for the main dish is going to be pork bulgogi with rice noodles and pickled vegetables and fish sauce.

Korean and Vietnamese food are very similar, but also have their differences in style and flavor throughout all of their food. The Korean food tends to be more spicy than other cultures' food and Vietnamese food tends to be more sweet and flavorful than others as well (Carmack, Chaey). Another difference between Vietnamese and Korean food is the meat. In. Korean food they like to grill and fry their meat unlike the Vietnamese they use more seafood and chicken than other meats (Carmack, Chaey). Rice is common in both of the cultures foods but the way they use the rice is different. In Vietnamese cooking they use rice noodles a lot in their soups and normal food, but the korean use different noodles in a lot of their dishes (Carmack, Chaey). Koreans also like to make stews and other pain soups, but Vietnamese have very little stews in their culture but a lot of soups (Berkeley). Another thing that is different about both of the foods is that Korean have two styles of their food,like korean barbecue and regular korean food and vietnamese only has 1 type of food (Chaey). Although they have lots of differences the two types of food are very similar still.

This project has been super fun to work on, learning about one of my hobbies and getting better at it as well, also exploring new things that I have never done before has made me want to cook even more. I learned so much about restaurants and Vietnamese and Korean cultures. I first learned that making and learning how to cook is simple if you put time and effort into making the food perfect. The second best thing about my project is working with a professional in the cooking business. Berkeley Braden is a family friend of mine and he has his own cooking business (Berkeley).I have got the opportunity to work and interview him on what they do and ask them for feedback on my project which Is something I really appreciated. I also learned what it takes to make a good restaurant and how difficult it can be on some people considering most of the starting restaurants do not succeed and are usually bought or go out of business. The last thing I am doing is exploring some of my favorite foods and what makes them so great whether it was sauces, flavoring, meats, veggies or just the people and style of the cultures that make these amazing foods.

Works Cited

“15 Things about running a restaurant business.” Alux.com, Youtube, August 28th 2018https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG0SMjbwU9c, February 28th 2020

Berkeley, Braden “personal interview”. April 27th 2020

Chaey, Christina, “How I Came to Love the Korean Food I Grew Up Resenting.”, Bon Appetit. March 18th, 2019. https://www.bonappetit.com/story/how-i-came-to-love-korean-food. accessed, February 19th, 2020

Carmack, Robert. “Vietnamese Cooking”.Periplus Editions, 2003

Cousins, Carrie “10 tips for delicious menu design.” Design Shack, Publisher, March 5th 2015 .https://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/10-tips-for-delicious-menu-design/, May 3rd 2020

Annyeong, “Spicy Pork Bulgogi Rice Bowl.” My Korean Kitchen, May 19 2019, https://mykoreankitchen.com/spicy-pork-bulgogi/. Accessed, March 7th 2020

Millar, Roy “9 powerful tips for effective logo design ” design Hill

April28,2018,https://www.designhill.com/design-blog/powerful-tips-for-effective-logo-design/, date accessed, April 6th 2020