Print
When the pandemic hit, throwing the restaurant industry into survival mode, husband and wife Ryan Lee and Lucy Row were two of countless Angelenos who hustled to adjust.
Lee was working as the chef of an izakaya in Koreatown very much indoors, in the basement of a commercial building. Row owned and operated Cafe Lucy, a casual breakfast and lunch spot in Santa Monica that catered to the weekday office-worker crowd. Cafe Lucy closed in March 2020 and Lee, who had been working in Japanese restaurants since 2005, quit his job in June.
As they cast about for new ways to make money, they struck upon an unusual business idea a delivery service for gourmet, ready-to-eat Korean seafood, prepared in Café Lucy’s kitchen. They called it Sonsoo Kitchen “Sonsoo” meaning “hand-crafted” in Korean and hung out their shingle in September. The times being what they were, that shingle was the Instagram handle @sonsoo kitchen.