The win came just a year after Kim was a semifinalist for “best emerging chef.” I visited Sky Kim at her restaurant, Gift Horse, shortly after she was named a semifinalist in 2024.
This piece was originally published on March 14, 2024
The dining room at Gift Horse is decorated in light wood tones with a large bar in the middle showcasing a selection of raw shellfish on ice. Located in downtown Providence, the restaurant’s menu focuses on raw seafood, custom cocktails and a selection of Korean-inspired dishes like a Bulgogi Burger and Pajeon.
I met chef Sky Kim in the dining room on a recent afternoon, where she told me she draws much of her inspiration as a cook from her upbringing in Korea.
“In my family, we did a lot of ceremonies for our ancestors, which involves a lot of cooking. My grandma was really into cooking, like, fermenting, that kind of stuff. … I have three sisters, but one of them is super lazy, and the second one is super young. … So basically, they kind of forced me to cooking with her when I was young because I’m the only one who’s doing stuff, you know, helping [with] stuff. When I was young, I was, like, super chubby. And I loved eating, you know, that kind of, made me want to cook because I loved eating so much. I loved my grandma’s food. I wanted to learn what she does.”
When she was 18, Kim started a career as a food stylist, designing fake food for photo shoots. A mentor recognized that she had a talent for it, but said Kim could only truly succeed if she knew how to cook. So Kim signed up for a three-week cooking school in Italy, where she was in the kitchen for more than 10 hours a day.
“It was really physically hard and like mentally hard thing to do because I never actually professionally did that in a school,” she said. “So at the end of the day, we make everything and then chef tastes what we make that day. He pointed at me, like, ‘she needs to be a cook, her food is better than the others.’ After I heard that, I feel like everything has changed. After I went to Italy, I didn’t know how much I enjoy it. That after I cook and I serve to someone and that person enjoying that food – it just made me so happy and I realized how much I love this.”
Shortly after the cooking school in Italy, Kim came to Providence to train as an intern at Birch, a now-closed tiny restaurant that specialized in New American cuisine. It was owned by Ben Sukle, who now owns Gift Horse as well as Oberlin, the restaurant next door.
Sukle told me about when Kim first worked with him at Birch. “There was a group of interns we had at the time,” he said. “And one was very overconfident. And he was very confident and cocky, and Sky cut him down at his knees right then and there, and it was incredible to watch. I’m Sky’s biggest fan, next to her husband Chris. Immensely talented, absolute ball buster. I’m very lucky to work alongside Sky.”
After a couple of years at Birch, Kim went on to work in restaurants in New York City and Portland, Oregon until she had the opportunity to come back to Providence to work with Sukle at Oberlin. And when Sukle made plans to open a raw bar in Providence, he knew he wanted Sky Kim to be the chef. I asked Sukle what sets her cooking apart.
“The confidence Sky exudes when she’s cooking is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s literally in her blood, in her DNA from her upbringing, and you can really tell. And you can tell when she’s actually, her thoughts, now seeing them on the plates with her own dishes and her own creations to me is the full circle moment I’ve always wanted to have.
Kim told me that the inspiration for many of her dishes comes from her grandmother’s cooking that she learned as a child.
“Sometimes I’m making something, it’s made me just happy,” she said. “The smell is like, oh my God, does it smell like my grandma’s food right now?”
One of those dishes is Hae Muchim, which translates to raw, mixed fish. The version Kim serves at Gift Horse is inspired by her grandmother, but with a focus on the local, seasonal ingredients available in New England: a combination of sweet potato, apple, fluke, cabbage, and Gift Horse gochujang.
The dish is a delicate arrangement of thinly sliced goodies, giving you a distinct array of tastes and textures that work in perfect harmony. It’s like eating a piece of music, with each ingredient filling in part of the sound spectrum. The sweet potato and sesame oil are like strong bass notes, with the cabbage as the mid-range and the sweetness of the apple and the spice of the gochujang as the high notes. And then flitting in between it all is the subtle melody of the raw fluke.
Kim told me that it’s similar to what her grandmother made, but not exactly like it. “So what I do here, I twist a little bit, but I don’t touch the base,” she explained. “If I touch the base, it’s gonna ruin the whole thing.”
I asked Kim what it feels like to be a national semifinalist for “Best Emerging Chef.”She told me that on the day of the announcements, her husband wouldn’t let her touch her phone for hours.
“I was like, what’s going on? What’s happening right now?” she said. “And then I opened the whole thing and I saw my name in the James Beard list and I almost cried. When I started my career as a chef, I never thought that I was ever going to get nominated. I never imagined myself, my name on James Beard. It’s just like, it’s so meaningful for me. It’s an honor and I can’t still believe that I got nominated.”
That interview originally aired in March of 2024. This week, Kim won “Best Chef Northeast” – a category that includes restaurants from all over New England. When she accepted the award Monday night, she said it had been her dream since learning about the James Beard Foundation 12 years before. She thanked her husband, Chris Pfail the chef at Oberlin as well as Ben Sukle, the owner of Oberlin and Gift Horse. Sky Haneul Kim then broke into tears as she switched to speaking Korean in order to thank her parents. “If I didn’t have you, Mom and dad,” she said, “I wouldn’t have been able to get to this place. I’m very thankful and I love you and please always stay healthy.”
