About us
A neighborhood Korean tea house and banchan kitchen — long lunch banchan bar, slow tea service in the afternoon, and one quietly excellent stew on the dinner menu. Cooked by Joon Park, who trained in Seoul before staging in New York and Chicago. Hearth & Pass is what she opened when she came home.
Chef & Owner
Joon trained at Onjium in Seoul and staged at Atomix and Atoboy in New York before five years on the line at Parachute in Chicago. Hearth & Pass is what she opened when she came home to Iowa.
She writes the menu around what the kitchen got that morning, brines kimchi in the basement, and cooks every dolsot herself.
Sous Chef
Marcus runs the prep board and the lunch banchan rotation. He was at Smithfield in Pittsburgh for three years, then a year at Hanok in Brooklyn working the wood-fired grill before he and Joon connected at a butcher conference.
He handles every grill order during dinner service.
Pastry & Tea
Hye-jin ran the tea program at a small tasting room in San Francisco before moving to Iowa with her partner. She picks every leaf in the tea cabinet, makes the patbingsu syrup from scratch, and folds the hotteok dough fresh each morning.
General Manager
Devon keeps the dining room calm. He came up through hotel F&B in Minneapolis, ran service at a 60-seat counter restaurant in Madison, and joined Hearth & Pass when Joon decided she needed someone who actually liked seating charts.
If you book a private event, you're booking it with him.