Street Restaurant Fighter Cast Information - Chef Profiles, Restaurants, Instagrams
On Street Restaurant Fighter, the contestants must prove it with sales! For a chef, the true judges are the customers. The real stage of a chef is not a set, but a restaurant. Instead of facing judges on a set, they compete for real customers in a real-world setting. To prove their business acumen, not just their cooking skills, the TOP 20 chefs and restaurateurs in the Korean food industry have been summoned to the streets, where their past sales records, careers, and fame count for nothing. An unprecedented real business survival show where survival and elimination are determined solely by the customer's choice. Who will ultimately emerge as the winner that survives in the 'real commercial district'?
Street Restaurant Fighter Cast Information
Meet the Contestants of Street Restaurant Fighter & Their Teammates — Chef Profiles, Restaurant Information, & Instagrams!
Culinary researcher and chef Jo Seo Hyeong gained recognition as Black Spoon contestant 'Genius Restaurateur' on Culinary Class Wars Season 1 (2024). Best known for interpreting traditional Korean cuisine from a modern perspective, she uses seasonal ingredients on her menu, and cooks to capture the essence of the four seasons. Good at both cooking and at business, she runs a popular restaurant and bar called Euljiro Boseok, as well as the seasonal side dishes brand Saebyeokjong. There has never been a time when her restaurants were not fully booked. Reservations sell out within 15 seconds upon release, and even the waitlist notification requests are fully booked.
Jung Ho Young, a Japanese cuisine chef of 27 years, is a graduate of the prestigious Tsuji Culinary Institute in Japan. As a first-generation celebrity chef, he is well-known and loved for his variety show appearances on Chef & My Fridge, Boss in the Mirror, and more, who helped popularize Japanese cuisine in Korea. On Culinary Class Wars Season 2 (2025), he participated as a White Spoon contestant, finishing as a top 4 finalist. He is currently the chef-owner of Caden, running a restaurant specializing in udon and an izakaya.
Chef Song Hoon, a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, was a former sous chef at renowned fine dining restaurants Eleven Madison Park, Maialino, and Gramercy Tavern in New York. Widely recognized for his experience and skills, he also served as a judge on MasterChef Korea Season 4. And alongside Chef Jung Ho Young, Chef Song Hoon also competed as a White Spoon contestant on Culinary Class Wars Season 2.
From a former restaurant part-timer to a 40 billion won CEO, Yang Ji Sam is an entrepreneur in the food and beverage industry currently running the successful galbi brand called Chung Ki Wa Town. He believes its average sales are probably number one among franchise brands by a significant margin.
Kwak Dong Hoon is a restaurateur in Busan who develops menu items that can make an ordinary Korean BBQ restaurant become very popular. He is the creator behind the honeycomb pork skin, which became a huge hit, and placed his restaurant Chopilsal on the map as one of Busan's signature pork barbecue restaurants. He also runs a Mexican restaurant called Taco Sounds Club, an izakaya called Chohissatsu, and more. None of his business concepts overlap. For travelers who have visited Gwangalli, there is a high chance that they have included at least one of his restaurants on their itineraries.
Chef Kim Hee Eun, along with her husband Chef Yoon Dae Hyun, runs the restaurants Soul and Egg & Flour located in Haebangchon, Yongsan-gu, Seoul. The husband-and-wife duo earned a Michelin one-star not long after opening, and their restaurants have been on the list for four consecutive years. Kim Hee Eun studied Korean cuisine and recently competed as a White Spoon chef on Culinary Class Wars Season 2, while her husband has experience in Western cuisine. Yoon Dae Hyun was a former sous chef of renowned Michelin two-star Soigné and former executive chef of Doughroom. Together, they have done all sorts of cooking to get here, from making boxed lunches, catering buffets, serving canapés for brands, off-site cooking, and serving everything from gukbap to fine-dining dishes. They have experience in many fields and want to prove that they can also cook easy-to-understand casual food.
Drawing on expertise honed in Japan, Chef Kim Min Seong has been cooking for about 30 years now. Along with his wife Park Min, they currently run a high-end Japanese restaurant called Kuma in Yeouido specializing in wild-caught, large, seasonal fish. They have been a fixture in Yeouido for the past 20 years and their restaurant is a place where you can find a list of fish that people are curious about. From 100kg jewfish, 200kg to 300kg tuna, giant grouper over 20kg, large sharks, and so on, Chef Kim Min Seong handles fish that ordinary seafood restaurants cannot. Full of generosity, their restaurant is practically an all-you-can-eat place. If customers ask for more, they will give them as much as they want.
The husband-and-wife duo, Chefs Shin Ga Young and Lim Hong Keun met while studying at The Culinary Institute of America. They honed their craft by working in renowned Michelin-starred restaurants, including Marea in New York City, Quince, Atelier Crenn, and Flower + Water in San Francisco. The couple currently runs two restaurants mainly focusing on artisan fresh pasta, and try to create a pasta that is not easy to find anywhere else. For the past three years, every time reservations opened, they were fully booked until the following month. And in 2025, their first restaurant, PERIGEE, was selected in the Michelin Guide.
Kim Ho Yoon is a chef and entrepreneur with 16 years of experience, and is currently running ten brands and 14 stores as the CEO of Core Society. As of last year, with a team of over 100 people, the company has generated around 16 million dollars in annual sales. The areas they are currently working in include Korean Hanwoo beef, Italian cuisine, Chinese cuisine, hot stone pot rice, bakery, ice cream, and dumplings. Chef Kim Ho Yoon was an opening member and former sous chef of Soigné, currently a Michelin two-star restaurant. And recently, he competed as Black Spoon contestant 'Boss in the Kitchen' on Culinary Class Wars Season 2.
Chef Jung Chan Hee is the current executive chef and culinary director overseeing the three Chinese cuisine brands under Core Society. He has participated in many cooking competitions in China, and has won over 30 gold medals. For what he knows, out of all the Korean Chinese cuisine chefs, he has won the most international competitions and gold medals.
Chef Kim Hoon recently gained recognition from his appearance as Black Spoon contestant 'Trendsetter' on Culinary Class Wars Season 2 making the shrimp lasagna rolls dish. He is currently running trendy restaurants in Yongridan-gil, including Sam Sam Sam, an American-style comfort food restaurant, Teddy Beurre House, and Namdo Dwaejichon. The genre he is handling now has become a hotspot brand that targets Generation Z. In this specific genre, he believes that he has the strongest momentum now.
Chef and entrepreneur Go Seok Hyun started his business with gochujang jjigae, and is now managing 11 different restaurant brands. He is the chef-owner of GoSsiNe Gochujang Stew, Yangmoon, a beef rib restaurant, and more. The company has been seeing upward growth year after year, and is expecting to close this year with 10 million dollars in sales. He started this business because of his love for eating. While it may sound subjective, he says, he only makes food that he can eat at least twice a week.
Chef Lee Jae Hun, a graduate of ICIF (International Culinary Institute of Italy), has been cooking authentic Italian cuisine for 23 years. As a cast member of Chef & My Fridge in 2017, he gained widespread recognition and is known as Seochon's original good-vibes guy. And recently, under the nickname 'Seochon Prince,' he participated as a Black Spoon contestant on Culinary Class Wars Season 2. Around ten years ago, there were not many restaurants in Seochon, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Seoul, and he saw the opportunity to create something from scratch. He opened the neighborhood's first wine bar, hamburger steak specialty restaurant, and burger place. Currently, he is the chef-owner of Ca'Del Lupo, an Italian cuisine restaurant renovated from a traditional Korean hanok.
Choi Sang Hyun is the chef-owner of Deepin, a wine dining restaurant, and currently operates four locations. Deepin Sindang is a wine bar focusing on Japanese-French inspired food. Deepin Oksu is a modern fresh pasta restaurant. The third restaurant, Deepin Euljiro, focuses on Asian cuisine. Recently, he opened Deepin Noir, a high-end restaurant serving a seasonal tasting menu in a dark, intimate setting. Many people think that Deepin is owned by Chef Yoon Nam No, a.k.a. 'Cooking Maniac' of Culinary Class Wars fame, but he is Nam No's boss.
(Note: In December 2025, Chef Yoon Nam No announced his departure as head chef of Deepin to focus on TV broadcasts and to start his own restaurant, Bistronomy Notre.)
Chef Kim Mi Ryeong, a.k.a. 'Auntie Omakase #1' of Culinary Class Wars fame, runs a noodle place in Gyeongdong Market famous for its handmade knife-cut noodles. With 30 years of experience in Korean cuisine, she also runs the restaurants Jeulgoeun Soolsang (Cheerful Drinking Table) in Chang-dong, and Bada Soolsang on Jeju Island, using the finest seasonal ingredients on her menus to pair with drinks. At a traditional market, the price of food is cheap. A bowl of noodles is less than $10, but she pulled up their monthly sales to $150,000 with just noodles alone. Not an easy feat, but she is capable of running a low-margin, high-volume business.
Chef Lee Sung Hoon, a legendary restaurateur from Yeonnam-dong, who captures the taste of Generation MZ. He has launched 15 restaurant brands in Yeonnam-dong so far, including Just Tendong, Dining Yakyung, Yeonnam Kalguksu, and more, which a lot of customers have paid their visits to.
Actor and TV personality Hong Seok Cheon, the original Itaewon business legend, has been running restaurants in Itaewon for about 20 years. After coming out, he was initially cut off from broadcasting activities, and started his first restaurant, Our Place, in 2002 in order to make a living. With his ability to read trends, and stay ahead of them, he opened up a series of successful restaurants, including My Hong, My Chi Chi's, My Thai, My Thai China, My X, My Chelsea, and more. He is widely credited for his contribution to revitalizing and changing the image of the once dark and dirty Itaewon neighborhood into a trendy commercial hotspot. But with rising rent costs and due to the financial struggles caused by the pandemic, Hong Seok Cheon closed his last remaining restaurant, My Chelsea, in August 2020. He has learned how to succeed, and also understands why people fail.
Chef Park Min Hyuk, known as Chef Edward Kwon's disciple, previously worked together at the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai. He is currently the chef-owner of Wine Bar Kick (와인바킥) and operates the lifestyle and food brand AUCHOIX (오슈와). And is also a content creator running the popular channel Striker Chef (공격수셰프) on YouTube with over 395k subscribers.
Chef Liu Fangning (a.k.a. Yoo Bang Nyeong), with 56 years of cooking experience, is a master of one of the four great schools of Chinese cuisine. In 1972, he started as a delivery boy, and was beaten for forgetting to bring chili powder, as things were like that back then. He powered through and continued to hone his craft, joining Plaza Hotel in 1983, where he worked for nearly 30 years and served as executive chef of Taoyuen. He has cooked for presidential events at the Blue House, and even served meals to Hyundai Group Chairman Chung Ju Yung. He does not have much of a formal education, as he spent all of his time in the kitchen to learn and experience. And now, he has become Chef Liu Fangning, who runs the successful restaurant chain Xin Chai. As far as he knows, "chef" is a French word which sounds too sophisticated to him. "I just want to be a regular cook," he says. "I still have to learn."
Chef Lim Ki Hak, the first generation of French cuisine chefs in Korea, has been running the French restaurant L'espoir in Gangnam for 19 years. He originally majored in vocal music, not cooking. Against his parents wishes, at 25, he decided to choose a new career path and left for culinary school at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. He gained experience under mentor Chef Olivier Muller and at Chef Daniel Boulud's DB Bistro in New York and Chef Gray Kunz's Café Gray. In Korea, he worked at Grand Hyatt as well as Park Hyatt. In this field, he is known as a master who never wavers from his original path and helped make traditional French cuisine feel more approachable in Korea. His signature dish, onion soup, begins with unexpectedly humble ingredients but requires hours and hours of cooking for its depth of flavor and balance. To learn more about Chef Lim Ki Hak, he is featured as one of the chefs at the forefront of Korean fine dining on SBS's 2-part documentary series The Korean Chef (2026).
Global franchise CEO Kim Kwan Hoon, the legend of Dookki Tteokbokki, currently operates 450 restaurants in 10 countries with annual sales of 270 million dollars. At first, he ran a tteokbokki club, and ate tteokbokki from all around the country and learned a lot of recipes. One day, he thought, "Tteokbokki is so delicious. Why don't I promote it overseas?" And that is how he established the brand and started promoting tteokbokki globally. If you ask Gemini "Who is most famous for tteokbokki?" his name will come up second. He currently has about 250 restaurant chains in Korea, and over 200 shops across 10 countries, including The Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, the USA, and so on.
Chef Edward Kwon, at the young age of 32, was the executive chef of Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, making him a seven-star chef. Actually, a seven-star hotel does not even exist, but because many say the hotel is on another level, it is widely marketed as one by the pubic. He started his culinary career at the Ritz-Carlton in Seoul, and gained experience as a global head chef by working at the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay, Sheraton Grand Hotel Tianjin in China, and later in Dubai. Upon returning to Korea, he served as host and judge of the cooking survival show Yes Chef in 2009, earning the nickname 'Korean Gordon Ramsay' due to the show's similar format to Hell's Kitchen. Chef Edward Kwon specializes in Western cuisine and is currently running a contemporary French restaurant in Songjeong, Busan, where he approaches the menu design very professionally by using as many local products as possible.
Chef and TV personality Lee Yeon Bok is a Chinese cuisine master of 53 years who overcame a great deal of adversity, starting from his days as a delivery boy at age 13 to standing at the top of his field. At the age of 17, he became the youngest staff member at the high-end Chinese restaurant Hohwadaebanjeom located in the Savoy Hotel in Myeong-dong. And at age 22, he became the youngest head chef to work at the Taiwanese Embassy in Korea, where he served for eight years. After spending ten years working in Japan to earn a higher salary, he returned to Korea and opened the Chinese restaurant Mokran in 1998, which he is still running now. Chef Lee Yeon Bok gained recognition with his appearance on Chef & My Fridge in 2015. With his years of culinary experience and witty humor, he was successively cast in various variety shows and began a full-fledged broadcasting career as a celebrity chef. It had been a long time since he last went on a survival show, but when he heard this was a business showdown, he thought it would be fun and gladly accepted. "Lee Yeon Bok is still alive and kicking," he says, wanting to show everyone this.
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