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One look at this highly praised chef makes the question he always gets predictable. Almost everyone wants to know why the triple James Beard Foundation Award nominee of Black and Puerto Rican heritage cooks Korean cuisine.
“It’s always about passion. I tell people it’s something that I love. I love the food and the culture. I never tell people I’m an expert on Korean food. I’m a student of Korean food, and every single day I learn and ask questions,” says Angel Barreto III, chef and partner of Anju restaurant in Washington, D.C.
Passion for Korean Food
The talented chef can’t help but wonder why people are so surprised at his passion for Korean food. In his mind, it should be evident that love for the craft inspires any professional to excel in their chosen field, regardless of race or ethnic background. “My goal is essentially to be a propagator of Korean food, to explain Korean food to people and to do my due diligence in learning about Korean food,” states Barreto.
As the son of parents who served in the U.S. military, Barreto grew up eating Korean food on an American base in South Korea and in his mother’s kitchen. “She really enjoyed a lot of Korean dishes and talked about Korean food at home. “One of my mom’s favorite dishes was budae jjigae. It is a Korean soup called Army stew. It has ramen noodles, hot dogs and kimchi,” the chef says. “It is a really rich stew they had on military bases at the time, eaten by Americans and Koreans.
Besides sharing their love of travel and different cultures, Gloria and Angel Barreto II taught their son not to let the perceptions of others define who he is or what he could do in life. The co-owner of the celebrated Anju restaurant never planned to be a chef. His dad worked at the White House, and Barreto thought he wanted to follow his father’s career path into international relations.
A short stint as an intern at a lobbying firm changed his mind. “I talked to a friend about it and told him I wanted to go to culinary school. I went to L’Academie de Cuisine in Maryland and studied French food. I thought it was a good foundation for gaining knowledge about cooking,” he adds.
After graduating in 2012, Barreto began to explore his interest in Asian cuisine. He joined the staff of The Source, Wolfgang Puck’s first restaurant venture in D.C. and worked his way up from cook to executive sous chef. His cooking skills earned him the chance to serve a seasonal six-course Korean tasting menu at the Source. “It was like a chef’s counter. The guests sat in front of me. We were doing Korean-style barbecue dishes at the table. It was super fun and interactive,” Barreto recalls.
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The response to his Korean tasting menu sparked Source executive chef Scott Drewno to offer Barreto a position with the Fried Rice Collective. In 2017, Drewno and his partner, Danny Lee, opened CHIKO, a fast-casual Chinese/Korean eatery.
They also had plans for Anju, a full-service Korean restaurant. Barreto was CHIKO’s corporate chef and did catering while developing recipes for Anju. “I wrote over 65 recipes for the restaurant to start. I was instrumental in creating all the menus and building the directions for the food along with my partners,” says the chef.
Barreto became a partner in Anju a year ago, partly because of the critical acclaim for the restaurant when it opened at 1805 18th Street, NW, in 2019. “We had lines around the block of people trying to get in. The feedback was initially very, very good. We got a three-star review from the Washington Post,” recalls the restaurateur.
The next year, Washingtonian magazine named Anju #1 on its annual “100 Very Best Restaurants” list and it is still on the list at #13. The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) gave Baretto the 2020 RAMMY for Rising Culinary Star of the Year. Anju was also a finalist for the 2023 RAMMY Upscale Casual Restaurant of the Year.
Despite the praise and the publicity, Barreto still encounters disrespectful or discriminatory slights. Some patrons at Anju assume he is a waiter. He’s had merchants laugh when he buys ingredients in Korean stores.
Some skeptics in D.C. and out-of-state question whether Anju’s African American chef is creating the food. “I have had guests snap their fingers at me or try to hand me their dishes. People will ask my partners, or they’ll ask my Korean sous chef, ‘Who is actually writing recipes at Anju? Angel isn’t doing it.’ Four years into Anju, and I still have to deal with this.”
Exploring Tradition and Modern Twists
Shortly before Anju opened in 2019, Barreto won a culinary competition sponsored by the Korean Embassy. He traveled to South Korea to visit friends and get inspiration from the food he ate there. The dishes he and his partners put on Anju’s dinner and brunch menus won Barreto James Beard Foundation Award nominations for 2020 Rising Star Chef of the Year and 2022’s Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic and Emerging Chef.
“Certain events in your life happen and make sense. Everything I went through in my career, the discrimination and everything, made sense because I was meant to be here. I was meant to be at this place. It was super fulfilling,” says Barreto.
The chef expresses how humbled and grateful he felt for the two James Beard nominations in 2022. He and his mom both cried. “I felt a ton of emotions. I was proud of my team and proud of myself. That was the first time I had ever cried at the restaurant. I went in the back, took a second to myself, and let myself feel the emotions of the moment.”
In 2021, Food & Wine selected Barreto as one of their Best New Chefs in America for his mastery of old and new approaches to Korean cooking. “We continue to try to push the boundaries of what Korean food is and what people know about it. We have food from the 16th century all the way up to modern Korean food,” he comments.
One of the dishes praised by Food & Wine is Anju’s famous fried chicken. “Ours is a little different. We do half of a whole chicken. We get chicken in every single day. We break it down. We brine it, and then we double-fry it. It’s tossed in a gochujang glaze with an Alabama white barbeque sauce on top. That sauce is infused with garlic and ginger,” says Anju’s executive chef.
Barreto sometimes incorporates other culinary influences into the restaurant’s Korean dishes. He has used collard greens in his kimchi, made a Korean version of candied sweet potatoes and created a dessert with banana milk. “One of the most popular drinks in Korea is banana milk. We’re making a banana milk ice that we freeze and shave. It is served with vanilla pudding, vanilla wafers, bananas and a caramel dulce de leche ice cream; essentially, it is banana pudding,” he explains.
Another frequent choice of the D.C. restaurant’s diners is the battered branzino. Barreto calls his creation a quintessential Anju dish. “It’s a branzino fillet that we pan sear and serve with radishes in a spicy braise. An herb salad is on top made with fennel, basil, mint and sesame oil. On the bottom is yangnyeom, a seasoned soy sauce. I cooked this dish for the president of Korea a couple months ago.”
In February, Barreto joined more than 80 influential chefs and culinary professionals as a member of the U.S. State Department’s American Culinary Corps, formed in partnership with the James Beard Foundation. The new Diplomatic Culinary Partnership’s Blue Jacket chefs, Edward Lee and Barreto, created dishes for a state dinner and luncheon for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee.
“It was a chance to showcase the connection between American and Korean food through our lens. It was a huge opportunity, and I was extremely honored. I also had the chance to bring my parents there too.”
Chef Barreto continues sharing the significance of the April 27 event, where he and three staff members prepared lunch for the honored guests. “This was the first visit for the president of Korea in 14 years, so it was a huge ordeal. It was 300 people with every major Korean corporate head in the U.S. and internationally represented along with diplomats and musicians.”
The luncheon menu featured a Meyer lemon salad with burrata, asparagus and golden beets, a fried branzino fillet with a fennel herb salad and a peach cobbler with sweet cornbread and vanilla ice cream.
Family Food Foundations
Chef Barreto grew up in a family of people who loved to cook. His maternal grandmother Martha Woods was a Mississippi sharecropper who picked cotton until she moved her family to upstate New York. He remembers fishing with her and gathering fresh strawberries and figs for family meals. “When I was younger, we’d always go to family reunions in Mississippi, South Carolina and Florida. We’d see our massive extended family. It was our chance to connect and bond with people who loved and cared about you.”
As he got older, the significance of food, family and culture also played into his relationships with his restaurant partners. Chef Lee operated Mandu with his mother and sister at the exact Dupont Circle location as Anju before a fire closed that Korean eatery. The Lee family still owns another Mandu restaurant on K Street in D.C.
Barreto cherishes what he has learned from Yesoon “Mama” Lee. “I’ll call my partner Danny’s mom all the time and ask, ‘Hey, how do you do this?’ I’ll go to her house, and she’ll show me how she does it. She’ll tell me how her mother-in-law did it and then say, ‘Okay, now you figure out how you want to do it.’”
As Barreto indicates, Anju’s three chef partners demonstrate respect for the past and excitement about the present in their approach to Korean cuisine. “That’s kind of the progression of cooking. It’s from the oral tradition, having fun and translating it to new generations. That’s something we try to do to a degree at Anju. We have a whole section on our menu dedicated to Mrs. Lee’s cooking, and it’s called Mama Lee’s Classics.”
Paying it Forward with Purpose
Teamwork made all the difference at Anju when COVID struck and crippled the restaurant industry in 2020. Although initially overwhelmed by a mountain of takeout orders, Barreto points out that the restaurant survived the major setback in a year that was supposed to be the restaurant’s most profitable. “It goes to show how good of a team we have. We were not only able to get through it, but we were able to improve, perfect our system and master it.”
The restaurateur is equally proud of what Anju’s staff did to pay it forward during the pandemic. They donated meals, raised money for laid-off restaurant workers and supported each other through the crisis. Barreto maintains that the pandemic changed some aspects of the restaurant industry for the better.
“Our industry is so archaic and behind the times compared to other industries. It was a ‘coming to Jesus’ moment that allowed restaurateurs to look inward and ask how can we make this better?”
Even before COVID, Barreto was committed to changing how restaurant workers are treated. “You’ve got to do stuff to take care of your people. That is hugely important to me in an industry that is very grueling and taxing. That means paying people more, offering people more benefits and being a more empathetic leader.”
Anju’s executive chef declares he never yells at people in his kitchen. Instead, Barreto cooks for his staff and looks for ways to uplift and encourage them. “I’m consistently trying to look inward at myself and see what I can do better. As a Buddhist, I pause and think about who you are, what you are doing, and how you can be better. Understand your faults,” says Barreto.
The loss of his beloved grandmother during COVID reinforced his beliefs. “Take care of those around you. Tell people you love them. Be there for people. Help them out when you can.” In August, Anju is hosted a fundraiser for the Southern Smoke Foundation. The nonprofit has donated millions of dollars to struggling restaurant workers.
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While Barreto does hope to expand his impact on the Korean food scene, providing more mental health care for people and breaking the norms of what people see also matter to him. “I was helping local kids in D.C. and a job program. I had to tell them if they have a passion for something, don’t be afraid to do it. Just go into it wholeheartedly, and don’t take no for an answer. Always push yourself. You are going to have people doubt you and question you. That should never hinder you from doing what you want to do.”
Chef Barreto believes that, in the end, life should be about so much more than awards, accolades or achievements. He refers to a favorite quote to illustrate his viewpoint:
“Try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and
inertia and timidity.” — Maya Angelou
Follow Anju’s chef on Instagram @angelbarreto or the D.C. restaurant @anjufrc.