Todd Dae Kulper has been interested in where food comes from for as long as he can remember.
Kulper – who is the executive chef at Umi, an upscale Japanese restaurant in Buckhead – was born in Korea, but grew up on a dairy farm in Iowa where he helped milk cows and raise cattle and pigs. When he left for college, he thought he wanted to study math, physics and astronomy. But a job in the food industry was calling his name.
Rough Draft Atlanta sat down with Chef Kulper to talk about his upbringing, what goes into crafting modern Japanese cuisine, and his very brief stint at The French Laundry out in California. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I know you grew up on a dairy farm. What was that experience like? Did it make you interested in food from a young age?
Todd Dae Kulper: I was adopted when I was two, so from the time I was two until I was 16 I was living on the farm. It was a great experience. Looking back at it, at the time I would say it wasn’t so much, because I was doing a lot of work – getting up at 6 o’clock in the morning going to help milk cows, feed the cows, feed the calves, and then we had about 2,000 pigs at the same time, so going to help feed those, all before school. And then in the summertime at like, 100 degrees having to bale hay and stack hay in the barn, and stuff like that. At the moment, it was rough and difficult. But now looking back at it, I think it definitely helped build a work ethic and an appreciation for where food comes from. There was a really funny joke when I was 12 years old that my mom would go to the city to buy groceries and she would talk to some woman, and [say], “You know where milk comes from?” And they’re like, “Yeah, the grocery store.” [Laughs] So that was kind of funny growing up.
When you went to college, you were looking at studying physics, math, and astronomy. What put you down the food path?
Kulper: That’s an interesting story. When I was doing that in college, I had a passion for it, but honestly, I think it was the socioeconomic/business part of the university. It wasn’t necessarily the physics department or the astronomy or math department. It was located inside the liberal arts college … at the University of Iowa. I think I had an issue with how they ran that as a business, where they were more about collecting money than they were about higher education. That’s what I think kind of hurt me about it. So I ended up getting a job. I started washing dishes at Red Lobster, and then it all started from there.
Since Red Lobster, you’ve worked in a lot of different restaurants with different cuisines. How do you think that sort of experience with different styles of cooking and food has molded your cooking style?
Kulper: When I first started out, restaurant work kind of seemed like factory work. But I enjoyed the people, I enjoyed the speed, I enjoyed the environment. And coming from that farm, the work didn’t seem that difficult. I was like, you know I can do this. This is not bad. So I kept going with it.
I met a lot of interesting people and through those opportunities of knowing them, got to know some more interesting people that were higher up in the cooking world. I started going to places, finding chefs that I wanted to cook like, and then learning from them. At a very young age, I did jump around a little bit, but it was more to collect knowledge from this person and this person and this person. From all of that, I got to learn all these different cuisines … I have a really large cookbook collection. I just started collecting cookbooks and reading them, and developing from there.
Do you have a favorite cookbook?
Kulper: The cookbook I think that started it all was “The French Laundry Cookbook.” Back in the early 2000s, I got a hold of that thing and, not knowing who Chef [Thomas] Keller was at the time, just started reading that thing back and forth like a Bible. I think that’s what really helped get my technical cooking down in the very beginning.
I’m glad you brought Chef Keller up, because I know you were at French Laundry for a very brief time.
Kulper: It was very minute, yeah.
How was it getting to work with him, even if it wasn’t for very long?
Kulper: To be able to enter that kitchen, and to be able to work with those chefs, and then when he walks in to have your idol just standing right next to you, and be like, welcome, glad you made it – it’s very surreal. I was very young, I was like 23 or 24, something like that. It was definitely a moment in time I’ll never forget, just working with those guys and learning what their process was, and to have them tell you, the worst thing you could ever do in this kitchen is disappoint Chef Keller.
That’s kind of daunting.
Kulper: It was very daunting. It’s like, the way you clean your cutting board, the way you cut a vegetable – whatever you do, you have to do it exactly 100%, or you’re going to disappoint Chef Keller.
How long exactly were you there?
Kulper: I was there for just under a week. It wasn’t very long. It was very, very brief.
How did you land the job at Umi?
Kulper: I was working for the Aoki Group, which would be Doraku. That restaurant was led by Kevin Aoki, who is the older brother of Steve Aoki, the DJ.
We opened a restaurant in Atlanta, right across the street at [Buckhead Village]. I became a free agent. When I became a free agent, I just did my own thing for a couple of months, and then got a call from the guy that owned Umi. They were like, we’d like to talk to you. I did the interview, and here we are today.
Umi’s website describes its cuisine as modern Japanese. What do you think defines a modern Japanese style of cuisine?
Kulper: That’s an interesting question, because we do get a lot of guests that come in the restaurant and they’re like, this isn’t Japanese food. Well, it’s modern Japanese food. The way we look at it is, if you’d actually go to Japan right now, they’re not stuck doing the same Japanese food everyone else does. There’s not just traditional Japanese food in Japan. There’s an aspect of that cuisine they try to modernize as well, and that’s by them taking inspirations from other cuisines, other ingredients and stuff like that, then putting a twist on it but at the same time, making that dish coherently Japanese in essence and in technique.
What are the techniques that are used in Japanese cooking?
Kulper: A lot of Japanese dishes start off with dashi, or the broth, and kind of build from there. So in traditional Japanese cuisine, you’ll take the dashi and how you flavor the dashi will determine how you use it for a dish like miso soup, or a dish like oyakodon – it’s all based in dashi.
One thing that we’ll do at Umi is, we’ll take a preparation from Peru, such as ceviche – marinating stuff or cooking stuff with acid, using that technique and then applying it to Japanese flavors, Japanese fish, something like that. Or on the other hand, we’ll take a Japanese technique in a dish, say the Duck Tataki, for example. We smoke it, roast it, very much a Japanese technique, but then we will apply it with a balsamic vinegar … something like that, where now we’re taking that Japanese technique and applying ingredients that are not traditionally Japanese to it.
How have you seen the menu evolve since you’ve been with Umi?
Kulper: The menu has definitely evolved, but the base menu has kind of been pretty static. Everything on the menu sells at Umi. If we take something off, the villagers would get their pitchforks out, and they’ll come and chase us down and be like, why did you take that off? So the actual bed menu of Umi stays very static. We might add a couple of things here and there, but we’re always running features and specials at Umi that one, challenge us as chefs, and then two, challenge the guests a little bit.
Also for me, it’s to challenge my staff as well. They’re always looking for something new, they’re always wanting to try something different. And they’re always up for a challenge of, can we do a more difficult dish? Can we apply more technique to it? And if so, how do we learn that technique and how do we perfect that technique? That’s something that for me as a chef at Umi, it makes me very happy when my guys start learning these really difficult techniques. They start to execute them, and I’m like – I’m very proud of you guys. This is awesome.