Beverly Kim’s path to becoming a James Beard Award-winning chef began at the Barnes & Noble in Downers Grove in the 1990s, back when she was a student at Downers Grove South High School and still “trying to figure out [her] own place in the world,” she said.

One of her sisters suggested she would be a great chef since she “had a knack for helping [their] mother in the kitchen,” so Kim bought the book “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America” from the James Beard Foundation to learn about the industry.

She didn’t know anyone in the culinary field, but her parents – immigrants from Korea – frequently cooked at home. “Food was their love language, and it was our way of connecting,” Kim explained, because her parents’ primary language was Korean, and their children’s was English.

Despite cooking’s role in her childhood home, pursuing a culinary career was an untraditional choice in the Korean American community, and Kim said her parents were nervous she “wouldn’t be able to make it” in the profession. However, reading the “Who’s Who” book whet Kim’s appetite for the culinary field, and she was all in from there.

She wrote to numerous James Beard Award-winning chefs, asking to shadow them. “Some got back to me…and I landed an internship working in the dining room at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago,” Kim said.

She did “garde manger” work, like assembling fruit plates and assisting the salad station. This internship included low-level work in the grand scheme of the culinary world, but Kim gained exposure to high-level, French-inspired cooking and said she “fell in love with being on [her] feet creating.”

GETTING COOKING

Kim attended culinary school at Kendall College and then spent the next seven years “sacrificing, doing the daily grind – day in and day out, and working [her] way up,” which paid off when she earned the Executive Chef position at Opera at age 27.

Opera served Chinese and Asian Fusion cuisine, which appealed to Kim, who felt Asian American food was “underrepresented” at the time. She was ready to “start focusing on Asian food” and bringing her Korean American identity into her work.

Once she did, her career skyrocketed! “You have to follow the thing that moves your heart,” Kim said, “because then the opportunities come faster.”

She became “Chef de Cuisine” at Aria, a sushi and Asian Fusion restaurant at Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel. Then, in 2011, Kim competed on the television show Top Chef.

ELEVATING HER CULINARY CAREER

Soon after her 4th place finish on Top Chef, Kim set her sights on opening her own restaurant, which became a joint venture with her husband, Chef Johnny Clark. In 2014, the couple opened Parachute, which featured Korean American cuisine, in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago. It received its first Michelin Star one year later.

In 2019, Kim and Clark opened Wherewithall, also in Avondale, which was inspired by European bistros and featured what Kim described as “an accessible, casual, prix fixe menu.”

That was a big year for the culinary couple. They also received the Best Chefs: Great Lakes James Beard Award for their exceptional cuisine at Parachute.

The husband-and-wife chefs were seemingly unstoppable, even managing to keep their restaurants solvent during the pandemic. However, when Wherewithall experienced a pipe collapse, they were “inspired to try something new…to evolutionize,” Kim said. “We leaned into my husband’s background – Ukrainian – this time and opened Anelya.”

Anelya is named after Clark’s grandmother and, as described on its website, “represents a crossroads of nostalgia, heritage and the modern cooking styles” of Clark and Kim. It “started as a popup to provide humanitarian aid to the region but has become a way to preserve our culture.”

Kim and Clark recently reimagined Parachute as well. Now titled Parachute HiFi, it is a “listening bar, which is very big in Japan and Korea, with hi-fidelity equipment to listen to vinyl while having great food and cocktails,” Kim explained.

FUSION OF WORK, FAMILY, & PHILANTHROPY

Kim articulated the importance of having a strong support system, which she has in Clark, in the “challenging [culinary] industry. High moments are about two percent of the time, and most of the time, you’re just really grinding,” Kim said. “It’s easier to be grinding when someone is by my side grinding with me.” Kim and Clark not only run two restaurants but have three children, ages 5, 7, and 14. When Kim became a mother, people encouraged her to step away from the culinary industry, concerned she could not effectively manage both roles. She not only proved the naysayers wrong through her continual culinary successes but also established The Abundance Setting, a nonprofit supporting the advancement of working mothers in the culinary industry.

RETURNING TO HER ROOTS

A highly acclaimed chef, Kim could work anywhere but chose to stay in Chicago. “Why I never left Chicago is because of its unmatched midwestern sense of hospitality,” she said. “People are kind, thoughtful, well-intentioned, and have integrity.”

Kim also likes being close to her hometown, one that brought her some of her best friends to this day.
She encourages current Downers Grove residents to visit her restaurants. She said, with gratitude, “We’re a small business, and it means so much when people come out and support us.”