Irene Yoo is a food content creator, award-winning author of Soju Party, and co-owner of Orion Bar in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Detroit to immigrant parents who arrived in Michigan for graduate school, Irene and her family moved through Long Island and Alabama before settling in the suburbs of Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. As the eldest daughter, she early on assumed many of the de facto roles which came with being a cultural interpreter for her parents: translator, communicator, and surrogate caretaker for her younger sister.
Between Korean school and church, she recalls spending weekends at Koreatown to shop at the Korean grocery stores, and rent VHS K-dramas with her mother. After moving to New York for college (fully intending to California!), Irene began a career in corporate food media, working as a Director and Producer for Food Network and Magnolia Network, the latter which she helped launch.
Wondering why the foods familiar to her from her childhood weren’t being represented, she carved her own spaces to tell gastronomic stories. From doing pop-ups, opening the pocha-style Orion Bar, to writing a James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Irene hopes that her food brings comfort and inspires sonmat for those who encounter it; in her words, “we just made the bar that we wanted to go to all the time.”
