34 K-Beauty Products You'll Wish You'd Found Sooner
A satin-finish TirTir cushion foundation that offers an unheard-of 72 hours of wear while blending perfectly to conceal blemishes, redness, and under-eye circles. The buildable formula lets you achieve *just* the right amount of coverage for your needs. It also contains hibiscus and red propolis extracts to help enhance your skin's elasticity. And!!! The oval-shaped puff is great for reaching every inch of your face.
I Dew Care's dry shampoo powder — a *non*aerosol option made with Korean ginseng to help revive limp, greasy hair and add volume. It's a fine, hypoallergenic powder that absorbs oil, sweat, and dirt to keep locks looking fresh longer. Your hair is gonna be soo thankful you finally found this gem.
A TikTok-famous overnight collagen mask to give your parched skin a giant gulp of hydration while you catch some Z's. It'll also help reduce the appearance of enlarged pores while firming the skin and boosting elasticity. Wake up and peel it off to reveal visibly tighter, smoother skin that looks like a dream — a dream you'll wish you had much earlier in life.
Medicube's dual-textured toner pads, which are super easy to use and come soaked in lactic and salicylic acid. They'll gently exfoliate your skin and reduce the visibility of pores. It's earned the #1 spot on Amazon's best facial toner list for a reason.
A Nooni tinted appleberry lip oil for creating the most kissable pout with a moisturizing formula that won't leave your mouth a sticky mess — who knew? It contains vitamins A, C, and E, and soothing apple water for a lip upgrade you can feel good about!
Cosrx Snail Mucin 96% Power Repairing Essence because believe it or not, snails have the healing touch. Bonus: This refreshing formula can be used on all skin types! Reviewers love how well it helps heal acne, inflammation, peeling, fine lines, and more. Try not to grieve too hard for all the time you spent living without it.
And a lightweight Cosrx mild gel cleanser so you can wash your face without the constant worry that you're stripping your face dry. The low-pH formula contains BHA and tea tree oil to help protect your face from irritants while also strengthening the skin barrier.
Torriden hyaluronic acid serum complete with *five* types of HA molecules in a fast-absorbing formula that packs a MASSIVE punch of moisture when you need it most. Your skin will stay wonderfully hydrated and smooth thanks to this lightweight, non-sticky serum!
Laneige's Neo Blurring Powder to help *instantly* matte-ify your skin while still maintaining its natural glow thanks to the blue hyaluronic acid. It even comes in a mess-free, travel-friendly case so you can take it on the go! Your only regret will be not discovering it sooner.
And their super glowy lip balm, aka a silky-smooth balm with a lightweight but high-shine finish. Wear it solo OR on top of your fave lip color for the perf finishing touch. Most importantly, you'll say goodbye to previous sticky-icky lip balms that make your question your life choices.
An Elizavecca carbonated clay mask, which will help your skin breathe easier — this stuff eradicates sebum *without* stripping your face of its natural oils. Reviewers swear by it for stellar exfoliation *and* blackhead removal. It's also just really fun to use when you need a silly lil' pick-me-up. 🙃
The Face Shop's facial foaming cleanser if you wanna simplify your daily routine with a do-it-all face wash that helps you accomplish all your skin goals: cleanse, moisturize, brighten, and remove makeup! You *and* your newfound K-beauty routine can thank me later.
A SeoulCeuticals toner mist that'll earn a *permanent* spot in your beauty routine once you experience its dewy effects. This skincare juggernaut is made up of 98% naturally derived ingredients such as soothing aloe, rejuvenating cucumber, and antioxidant-rich green tea that'll make your skin glow like never before. It hydrates, plumps, and helps treat blemishes while preventing future breakouts.
Mixsoon Bean Essence when you're ready to leave ineffective skincare products behind for good — this revolutionary formula hydrates *and* exfoliates at the same time. Ingredients such as fermented bean, barley, and pomegranate help get rid of dead skin cells while improving your skin tone. Best of all? No sticky residue!!
An Innisfree daily UV defense sunscreen you'll probably always have on hand because it's one of those holy grail products that you absolutely dread running out of. It contains SPF 36 for sun protection, green tea for reducing redness and irritation, and sunflower oil to nourish the skin. Most importantly, it doesn't leave behind a ghostly white cast and will have your face glowing all day long.
And some peptide patches for blocking out 98% of UV rays because, hello, you don't have a 10-step skincare routine just to have your under-eyes demolished by sun damage. These look like stickers and have an impressive UPF 50+ rating *plus* they're enriched with hydrating peptides to help brighten your skin. Oh, they're also water- and sweat-resistant so you don't have to worry about them staying put.
An adorable Tonymoly octopus-shaped blackhead remover to help target excess sebum and other impurities that might be clogging your precious pores. After cleansing, rub it on your face to exfoliate *and* eliminate stubborn blackheads and whiteheads!
A Beauty of Joseon eye serum if you've been searching high and low for a product that'll actually do a number on your under-eye bags — it might even lead to tears of joy. It uses a powerful trifecta of retinol, niacinamide, and ginseng to lessen the appearance of wrinkles, boost skin elasticity, and illuminate your skin so you'll be looking extra radiant and glowy in no time.
An Anua heartleaf pore-clearing cleansing oil, which will remove all traces of makeup while sucking the stubborn sebum from your pores, leaving you with skin that's visibly clearer and smoother! Once you see the results, you'll be low-key devastated that you waited so long to try it.
And!!! Anua soothing toner — it can calm irritation and deliver the ~glass skin~ look you've been chasing ever since it erupted on TikTok! It refreshes your complexion by gently balancing your skin's pH so it can better absorb your other skincare products.
Annndd their 10% niacinamide serum that targets dull areas and leaves your face feeling soft to the touch while strengthening the skin barrier. It also contains 4% tranexamic acid and 2% arbutin to minimize the appearance of pores, visibly brighten dark spots, and help even out your skin tone.
A bottle of Peach & Lily's Glass Skin Refining Serum for anyone chasing the TikTok "glazed donut" skin trend with no luck...until now. You've just found the K-Beauty secret that'll leave your face lookin' extra glazed 🍩 while also helping to hydrate, brighten, and firm your skin. Where has this been all your life??
Kahi Wrinkle Bounce Hydrating Multi-Balm, a K-beauty staple that TikTok is rightfully obsessed with because it's an all-in-one magic stick for your face, eyes, lips, and neck. This moisturizer uses collagen and salmon complex to help minimize fine lines and enhance your natural glow. One order of glass skin, comin' right up!
A Krave Beauty matcha hemp cleanser, aka a soothing gel formula worthy of a top slot in your skincare rotation for its calming, hydrating effects. It'll gently remove makeup, sunscreen, and dirt without causing irritation. I think it's safe to say you've met your ~matcha~.
Elizabeth Mott's Thank Me Later Eye Primer I bet you'll tell all your friends about to ensure they don't miss out on this K-Beauty sensation either. It keeps your eye makeup intact ALL day long without any smudging or creasing. Take that, oily eyelids!
And an Elizabeth Mott blurring face primer with SPF 30 because some products really can do it all — this one will not only blur pores but soften the appearance of fine lines *and* protect against harmful UV rays. It's perfect for prepping skin for makeup or you can wear it solo.
A Beauty of Joseon serum that'll deliver the skincare glow-up you've been dreaming of. It contains a heavenly combo of niacinamide and propolis extract to help lighten dark spots and leave you with a dewy complexion that'll have you ready for your close-up.
A kimchii gel cleanser with antimicrobial properties, which can work wonders for reducing bacteria and preventing pesky pimples. The secret? Fermented radish, kimchi, and 2% salicylic acid. Your skin will feel perfectly exfoliated *and* look so much smoother and brighter — if only you found it years ago.
A goami rice toner if you've been spending way too much time mourning dry skin without any solution in sight. This toner will give you a much-needed kick of hydration. It contains vegetable-originated extracts for soft, smooth, and glowy skin that doesn't feel sticky or greasy.
Skin1004's pore tightening and lifting masks to hydrate, tighten, and minimize the appearance of pores and fine lines. Leave it on for 15 minutes and wash it off to reveal your au naturale glow. Mark my words, this is about to become a *must* during your future self-care nights!
The Saem hydrating eye stick infused with the magic of Icelandic mineral water, moss extract, and seaweed extract — it'll revitalize your under-eye area *and* help improve your skin's elasticity and reduce the appearance of dark circles! How have you survived without this for so long?
OR! A nourishing Etude House eye cream when you're seeking a new series regular in your K-beauty routine — that's how well it can hydrate and firm the delicate skin around your eyes! It can also help prevent fine lines while leaving your skin silky soft to the touch.
A dark-spot correcting serum so you can address the hyperpigmentation that's been bothering you to no end. This game-changing serum contains 5% niacinamide, papaya extract, and plant-derived squalane to help fade dark spots and leave you with a smooth, even complexion.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Eater
an hour ago
- Eater
Rice Cakes Can Do Anything
is a senior reporter at covering restaurant trends, home cooking advice, and all the food you can't escape on your TikTok FYP. Previously, she worked for Bon Appétit and VICE's Munchies. In 2023, the Los Angeles izakaya Budonoki, then just a few weeks old, decided to 'dress up' as a different kind of restaurant for Halloween. For one night, the Japanese restaurant transformed into an Italian trattoria with Negroni slushes, arancini, and checkered tablecloths. Someone on staff offered the pun 'Budo-gnocchi,' recalls co-owner Eric Bedroussian. 'We were like, wait, that's actually really good.' Nobody in the kitchen had expertise in making pasta and no one had much interest in making gnocchi from scratch, so the team reached for something more convenient: Korean rice cakes, also known as tteok. Like gnocchi, rice cakes offer a bouncy chew, especially the long cylindrical rice cakes that the restaurant uses. (Tteok can also be found in flatter rounds that are sliced on the diagonal.) The team steamed the rice cakes to soften them, then seared them to create a crisp outer layer. Sauteed mushrooms, a dashi-butter pan sauce, and Parmigiano-Reggiano rounded out the pasta-like vibe. The Budo-gnocchi was 'so incredibly well-received,' Bedroussian says, that it had to become a part of the permanent menu. It hit the notes the restaurant was going for with every other dish. 'It's comforting and it fills you up if you've been drinking a lot,' he says. Once a happy accident, Budo-gnocchi has since become a signature dish at the restaurant, which was named an Eater Best New Restaurant in 2024. The dish has since evolved into a loose template, changing with the whims of the kitchen. The restaurant might upgrade it by finishing with black truffle shavings, or bringing in corn and tomatoes in the summer. 'It can be whatever we want it to be,' Bedroussian says. As Korean cuisine gains popularity across the United States, rice cakes — a popular street food — have established themselves as a promising ingredient for chefs cooking both inside and outside Korean cuisine. While you'll find them cast as other types of noodles (Sunny Lee's baked ziti-like rice cakes at New York City's Sunn's, for example, or chef Beverly Kim's tteokbokki pad Thai at Chicago's Parachute HiFi), chefs especially like the way their playful, chewy texture makes them a natural substitute for gnocchi. This idea isn't entirely novel; in a 2006 New York Times review of New York's Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Pete Wells recommended the rice cakes topped with Sichuan pork ragu and whipped tofu as 'dead ringers for gnocchi.' Chefs in Korea have been working on a similar culinary track for a little while now too. Traditionally, restaurants and street stalls generally use tteok to make tteokbokki, in which the rice cakes are simmered in sauce that's slightly sweet, spicy, and fiery red from gochujang. In recent years, they've been riffing with rosé tteokbokki, which adds cream to the typical tteokbokki base, inspired by both the Italian rosé sauce and Korean-style carbonara. 'Italian food in general has become more popular in Korea,' says bar owner and forthcoming cookbook author Irene Yoo. Given that Korean-style carbonara is made with cream and served with ham or peas, breaking from Italian tradition, rosé tteokbokki is 'an interpretation of another interpretation,' she says. The rice cakes at Sunn's are topped with mozzarella cheese. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet/Eater NY Across the U.S., rice cakes have recently transcended pasta dishes altogether. In New York City alone, there's the culinary boundary-blurring rice cake fundido at Haenyeo; the nacho-like chopped cheese rice cakes at Nowon; rice cakes bulking up galbi bourguignon alongside potatoes at Sinsa; and blanketed with mornay sauce until they resemble gratin at Gurume. At Yoo's Orion Bar in Brooklyn, rice cakes also turn sweet, morphing into churros: deep-fried until puffy and crispy on the outside, then tossed in cinnamon sugar and served with cream cheese-makgeolli dip. 'I grew up in LA, so I definitely had a lot of churros growing up,' Yoo says. While testing deep-fried rice cakes, 'I immediately thought of that as a taste memory.' For chef Nick Wong of Houston's new 'modern Asian American diner,' Agnes and Sherman, a dish of rice cakes with beef ragu filled the slot for a 'comforting, saucy starch' on the menu, since there's no pasta. It also represents a 'kind of 'if you know, you know' situation,' he says. Wong spent years cooking at Ssäm Bar, so the dish is in part a reference to the ragu rice cakes there, though with pork in place of beef because 'it's Texas,' Wong says, and to account for Houston's Muslim population. More specific to Houston, the dish has another reference: The Korean braised goat and dumplings, also made with rice cakes, was the signature dish at Chris Shepherd's now-closed Underbelly; the dish was beloved for the way it evoked the foods of many different cultures. With a sauce featuring Korean gochujang and doenjang, West African uda pepper, and Mexican chile de árbol, Wong's rendition is emblematic of Houston, where, he says, 'it's hard to tell where one thing ends and another thing begins.' When it comes to his rice cake dish, Houstonians 'just get it,' he says. With all its iterations, Budo-gnocchi is a 'chameleon' too, Bedroussian says. For a recent collab dinner with Indian sports bar Pijja Palace — an Eater Best New Restaurant that's known for its malai rigatoni (pasta with a creamy tomato masala) — the two restaurants served malai Budo-gnocchi. It's a little bit of everything: Italian, Indian, Korean, all through the lens of an LA riff on a Japanese izakaya. Between all those influences, rice cakes are in the middle, bridging the gap. Sign up for Eater's newsletter The freshest news from the food world every day Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Eater
an hour ago
- Eater
Mexican Asian Fusion Is One of North America's Signature Cuisines
In early 2009 in Los Angeles, there was no food experience more exciting than Roy Choi's Kogi truck. You'd wait in a long line in a dimly lit parking lot with a menagerie of trendy people, some of them drawn by the truck's latest Twitter post or Jonathan Gold's review in LA Weekly, others stumbling out of a nearby bar. Then you'd order too many tacos and stand next to your car to eat, perching your sagging paper trays of Korean Mexican fusion on the trunk. The truck felt new and surprising, and the big flavors demanded attention. The cheese oozing out the sides of the kimchi quesadilla rounded out the fermentation, while the salsa roja on top amplified the gochugaru. The blend of Korean and Mexican chiles in the salsa coaxed complementary flavors out of the punchy marinade on the kalbi. Funky one-off specials, like pork belly tteokbokki or the Kogi Hogi torta, constantly introduced new combinations. Leaning on the strengths of Mexican and Korean cuisines, Kogi probably would have worked if the food was only a novelty. But it also tasted definitively of Los Angeles. Choi (and his partner, Philippines-born, California-raised chef Mark Manguera) put many facets of his life into Kogi, including his training in fine dining, his rebellious spirit, and his Korean heritage, but most of all his experience growing up in LA, where Koreatown abuts several predominantly Mexican American neighborhoods. Choi's cooking prioritized innovation, but it still smacked of home. 'I think it became a voice for a certain part of Los Angeles and a certain part of immigration and a certain part of life that wasn't really out there in the universe. We all knew it, and we all grew up with it, and it was all around us, but the taco kind of pulled it together,' Choi told Terry Gross in a 2013 interview on Fresh Air. 'It was like a lint roller. It just kind of put everything onto one thing. And then when you ate it, it all of a sudden made sense, you know?' Kogi, parked in Venice, California, in 2010. Ted Soqui / Corbis / Getty Images Choi tapped into culinary histories that run deep in the American Southwest and California, where immigrants coming north from Mexico built lives alongside immigrants crossing the Pacific from Asia. (Kogi wasn't the first in the U.S. to serve food at this cultural intersection; spots like Avatar's, which has been serving Punjabi burritos in the Bay Area since 1989, are notable precursors.) But the truck marked a turning point for Mexican Asian fusion as an enduring cultural passion among interconnected communities. Over the last 16 years, Korean Mexican fusion has spread all over the country; in Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, bulgogi burritos now seem as natural as coffee and chili, respectively. A legion of chefs have also popularized all kinds of Asian Mexican fusion, serving birria ramen, halal carne asada, and furikake esquites. Years before the term 'chaos cooking' entered the conversation, these restaurants created cuisine that was fun and different, blending foods from distinct cultures in ways that make emotional sense, even when they sound far out on paper. And chefs keep finding new ways to capture how Mexican and Asian foods crisscross in the U.S. and in diners' hearts. Asian immigrants have been forming communities in Mexico, from the La Chinesca neighborhood of Mexicali to Mexico City's Pequeño Seúl, for decades or in some cases centuries. Chefs in these areas naturally adapted their cuisines to local ingredients and dishes; in the process, they started unpacking some of the natural affinities across cuisines that would grease the wheels of fusion projects well into the future. To Cesar Hernandez, associate restaurant critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and a street food aficionado, it makes sense that items like tacos and burritos became go-to formats for fusion cooking over the years. 'They truly are blank canvases for whatever. They play well with other flavors,' he says. Hernandez also points to the common ingredients that unite Asian and Mexican cuisines. 'A lot of these cuisines love citrus. A lot of these cuisines love chiles. And when you can coax those flavors out with the other cuisines, that's when it really works.' For Rhea Patel Michel of Mexican Indian fusion restaurant Saucy Chick in Pasadena, California, the connection between these foodways is elemental. Her background is Gujarati Indian, and her husband Marcel Rene Michel is Mexican American. In combining their cuisines, they found a natural synergy in ingredients like cumin, citrus, rice, and legumes, but they also discovered a connectivity of spirit. 'It's generous, it's vibrant, it's dynamic, and we were really energized by what it could look like,' to bring their food together, Patel Michel says. The Picoso Roll at the Sushi-lito food truck in Tucson. Nick Oza/Eater When chefs in historic Asian communities in Mexico couldn't get access to ingredients from back home, they often developed fusion dishes out of necessity. But the clearest progenitor for many contemporary projects might be Sinaloan sushi, created in Culiacán, Mexico, not out of necessity but creative conversation within the restaurant community. Japanese immigrants to the area, in Mexico's Sinaloa state, started opening sushi restaurants around the late 1980s, often hiring Mexican chefs. But it wasn't until those chefs left to open their own spots, bringing their own ideas and style to sushi — and building on recent sushi inventions from the north, like the California roll — that the genre really developed its modern personality. One foundational operation, Sushi-Lo, brought sushi out to the streets in a cart, and introduced the modern classic, deep-fried mar y tierra (surf and turf) roll filled with carne asada and shrimp. Today, Sinaloan spots both in Mexico and the U.S., like Culichi Town, tend towards extravagance, incorporating aguachile, plantain, beans, melted cheese, jalapeños, or Hot Cheeto dust. And the cuisine only went further when it jumped from Sinaloa to neighboring Sonoroa, edging its way toward the U.S. 'Sonoran-style specialists are more like sushi bars attached to a Wingstop,' writes Bill Esparza, 'with menus touting fried chicken wings and fried potatoes covered in melted cheese alongside the calorie-rich sushi.' Alongside Culichi Town — which has 12 locations in the U.S., including in Dallas and Las Vegas — Sonoran sushi can be found all over the American West, but it especially thrives in Tucson, alongside terroir-defying, cross-cultural icons like the bacon-wrapped Sonoran dog. Unlike contemporary fusion restaurants of the '80s and '90s that became reviled for carelessly throwing together half-assed hybrid dishes and wearing culture as costume, the impetus for Sinaloan and Sonoran sushi wasn't colonial. Even as chefs tended toward monchoso, a sort of thrilling overindulgence, their fusion remained rooted in mutual respect and open collaboration. Neither culture was being absorbed or assimilated, trod on or lifted over the other. 'Mexican food is not fucking precious,' Hernandez says. 'People in Mexico are the first to break the rules. It's part of the tradition.' Roy Choi at work at his latest project, Taco Por Vida, in 2024. Rebecca Roland/Eater That spirit has persisted in Kogi and the projects that followed, even as restaurants spread beyond the Southwest, more Asian cuisines entered the conversation, and chefs developed all kinds of fusion. Almost immediately following Choi's success, chef Bo Kwon created Koi Fusion in Portland, Oregon, in 2009, bringing Pacific Northwest style, a lighter touch on sauces, and an eye for local vegetables to the cuisine. In 2010, Señor Sisig launched as a Filipino Mexican food truck with sisig burritos and tacos, citing Kogi as major inspiration. That same year, the Korilla food truck in New York pushed rice bowls alongside tacos and burritos, drawing winding lines and mostly stellar reviews. Along the way through the many mid-2010s pivots at Mission Cantina in New York, chef Danny Bowien served Mexican kimchi, avocado sashimi, and a Chinese burrito special featuring mapo tofu or kung pao pastrami. More recently, Taqueria Azteca in New York rolled out phở birria, Phở Vy in Oakland, California, unveiled bò kho quesabirria tacos, and Baysian in nearby San Leandro whipped up Filipino queso-adobo. Back in LA, Holy Basil offers Thai-style prawn aguachile, while New York-born Baar Baar serves birria-influenced tacos with Kashmiri duck and tostadas with tuna bhel. Hernandez is especially excited about chef Sincere Justice's Tacos Sincero pop-up, born in Oakland in 2022. The chef draws on his experience growing up in LA's San Gabriel Valley (which has large Mexican and Asian American populations) to create eclectic dishes like a konbini-style egg salad tostada, calamansi tinga, and a saag burrito. '[Justice is] a real student of 'I want to try different shit and present it in these formats,' using tortillas and tostadas,' Hernandez says. 'He and a couple other folks are keeping that [multicultural cooking] alive.' All of it is constantly evolving, even within individual restaurants. At Saucy Chick, the Michels are always creating new dishes, like birria de chivo that incorporates masala spices, halal carne asada marinated in amchur and coriander, and esquites amped up with fenugreek and turmeric. Along the way, something surprising has happened during all this R and D. '[I've been] digging deep with my mom and my dad, [asking,] 'How do we make this dal?' or 'How do we make aloo?'' Rhea says. 'I've found myself getting even closer to my culture.' 'Kogi came at that right moment,' Choi told Mashed in 2020. In the midst of the Great Recession, the truck offered accessible, boundary-pushing cooking. 'People couldn't afford to go out all the time. People were struggling, lost their jobs, looking for what their next meal could be. And then this funny little beat-up truck came along, serving this delicious little taco.' The team's creativity and hustle helped them nail the tenor of the early social media era. During Twitter's ascendance, the Kogi team tweeted their locations and specials in real time as the truck rolled around town, drawing mobs of fans wherever they went. 'It felt like a scavenger hunt when we needed some sort of positive direction,' Choi told Mashed. Online appeal has remained an important piece of Mexican Asian fusion, clear in dishes like birria ramen (or 'birriamen'). Generally said to have been invented by chef Antonio de Livier at the Mexico City restaurant Animo, birriamen builds on the internet popularity of the Tijuana-style stewed beef dish. It might be made with instant noodles or higher-grade stuff, ramen broth or consomé, stuffed into tacos or piled onto vampiros — but in almost every case, it's big and bold and attention-grabbing, making it ideal for social media feeds. Aguachile at Holy Basil in LA Wonho Frank Lee/Eater But in other ways, Mexican Asian fusion no longer resembles Kogi's scrappy street food operation, especially when it starts climbing into fine dining territory. At Michelin-starred Los Félix in Miami, the tétela is filled with Japanese sweet potato, the esquites get a hit of basil furikake, there's miso-grilled corn with fish, and corn dumplings come with scallions and trout roe. Anajak Thai Cuisine's Thai Taco Tuesday, a pandemic-born lark, grew into a signature experience; dishes like a carnitas taco and a sashimi-style yellowtail tostada with nam jim-salsa negra marisquera topped with papaya salad powered the restaurant to national acclaim. Today, fusion dishes show up at restaurants that are nominally neither Mexican nor Asian. Birria dumplings appear on the ever-changing menu at San Francisco icon State Bird Provisions, while Chicago restaurant Mfk serves suzuki crudo on a tostada with both guacamole and sambal. This cuisine is everywhere now. It's not uncommon to see culinary combinations at an airport, the Taco Bell Test Kitchen, or floating up beneath the gaze of social media's Eye of Sauron. It has been in the mainstream for more than 20 years, practically forever in the modern food era, fully engrained into the way we eat. Alongside other types of third-culture cooking, Mexican Asian cuisine has largely shed the stigma that fusion picked up in the '90s. Chefs once chafed if their food was labeled fusion. Now, the pendulum has largely swung back. For Hernandez, it's a generational thing; the old distaste has fallen by the wayside as new chefs and new diners have come into maturity. 'Fusion' is just a convenient shorthand for what so many are doing: transforming culinary building blocks, wherever they come from, to create something new — and awesome — from the parts. Hernandez brings it back to a conversation with Justice of Tacos Sincero. As much as the chef's food reflects his upbringing, the specific labels just aren't important anymore. 'Whatever people want to call it, it doesn't matter,' Hernandez says. 'It just has to bang.'
Eater
an hour ago
- Eater
It's the Ramen Burger's World
is a senior reporter at covering restaurant trends, home cooking advice, and all the food you can't escape on your TikTok FYP. Previously, she worked for Bon Appétit and VICE's Munchies. Keizo Shimamoto's ramen burger made the news before he sold a single one. In 2013, Shimamoto had become fixated on burgers with fried pucks of ramen for buns, which he encountered while studying ramen in Tokyo. After tinkering with the dish, he announced on his popular ramen review site Go Ramen (which he styles Go Ramen!) that he'd briefly bring it to Smorgasburg, New York's then two-year-old food festival. It blew up online, earning Shimamoto an invite to appear on Good Morning America. By the time he made it to Smorgasburg later that day, the ramen burger was primed to become an icon. 'In my mind, I was just going to do this one-time event — that's it,' he says. He was wrong. Even though Shimamoto didn't have the right grills or the proper setup, and it was raining that first day, the burger was a hit. It was a sight to behold with layers of scallions and arugula, and its secret shoyu glaze, packed between Sun Noodle ramen. Over 200 people lined up for just 150 burgers. The next time he showed up at Smorgasburg, he sold 360 burgers in three hours, leading to a residency for the whole summer. From there, it just kept going. In 2014, Shimamoto leveraged the burger's success into a New York City ramen shop, Ramen Co. By 2015, he was selling 1,200 to 1,500 burgers at each Smorgasburg appearance. In 2016 — the same year Red Robin launched its own rendition on the burger — Shimamoto opened Ramen Shack, where he served the ramen burger and much more. 'I wasn't creating it to have it go viral. The ramen burger is kind of a mash up of me.' 'I wasn't creating it to have it go viral,' Shimamoto says. He just wanted to put his own spin on a concept he enjoyed. The ramen burgers he ate in Japan were usually made with pork, but having grown up eating In-N-Out in Los Angeles, Shimamoto saw burgers as synonymous with beef. As a Japanese American, he adds, 'The ramen burger is kind of a mash up of me.' The first time he nailed the sauce, he recalls, he jumped with joy in his living room. When the ramen burger hit Smorgasburg that first rainy Saturday, he couldn't have predicted the lines, let alone the rise of social media or the very idea of viral hype food. Instagram was still mostly a venue for collating and sharing experiences rather than the marketing and promotion tool it is today. The dining public was somewhat easier to entice. In that context, the ramen burger's impact was surprising. It brought about 'this sheeple effect,' says Smorgasburg co-founder Eric Demby. 'Trying it and obtaining it [became] the goal.' Following the KFC Double Down (launched in 2010), internet sensations like the Turbaconducken, and the rise of the Cronut (released in May 2013), the food world was on the cusp of a major overhaul. Right when social media was starting to turn dining experiences into social currency, the ramen burger's novelty created a fervor. Whether he planned to or not, Shimamoto helped usher in a pessimistic new age of food, one in which producers developed formulas to guarantee social media success. The ramen burger became the poster child for a flood of mashups that had gone and would continue to go mainstream: the sushi burrito, the sushi pizza, the sushi burger, the spaghetti doughnut, the scallion pancake burrito, the Yorkshire burrito, birria ramen, birria pizza, and so on. Judging by what makes it to my feed today, these techniques still work. We might see fewer ramen burgers now, but we're still living in the ramen burger's world. Before 2013, the rising stars at Smorgasburg were operations like Salvatore Bklyn ricotta, Mast Brothers chocolate, and Mighty Quinn's barbecue. 'A lot of vendors that came through were taking off,' Demby says. The festival was about vendors getting creative with food that you couldn't get anywhere else. In that sense, the ramen burger fit right in. Prior to its appearance, Smorgasburg didn't have a burger vendor, Demby recalls; burgers were too commonplace. 'And then the ramen burger came along and we were like, There's our burger,' Demby says. 'It's not a burger burger.' But Shimamoto's work also represented a break. Most other vendors traded in the sincere-seeming foods of the artisanal, hipster moment. This was the era of 'farm-to-table' dining and back-to-the-land authenticity, which, at times, could be precious to the point of parody. 'There was this focus on how you made it,' Demby says. While Shimamoto invested the same sort of time and attention into his product, the ramen burger's quality and flavor were almost beside the point for many consumers. Mike Chau, one of the city's original food Instagrammers, sees the ramen burger as a turning point; the burger's success led to an 'escalation' of people not only waiting in lines but also 'getting food for the sake of posting about it,' he says. Instagram, which had launched in 2010 and hit its first 100 million users in 2013, was beginning a period of rapid growth. (Chau distinctly remembers the ramen burger's first weekend, but with his wife days just away from giving birth, 'the line was so long that we just gave up,' he says. If you live in NYC, you probably recognize that kid: Chau runs the popular account @foodbabyny.) With its ability to draw customers primarily interested in posting online, the ramen burger quickly began to outshine its neighbors. 'A lot of people came to Smorgasburg for the ramen burger and then they discovered the rest of Smorgasburg,' Demby says. Other vendors took notice. It became obvious that it was crucial to stand out from the competition, both in person and online. 'People all started to look for their shot to make something like [the ramen burger],' Chau says. A few years later, the raindrop cake debuted at the festival. The ramen burger changed Smorgasburg — and Smorgasburg changed food culture. As eating increasingly became an activity and an aesthetic promoted through social media, people began to chase culinary spectacle over substance outside of food festivals. Virality became a new way of engaging with food in nearly all contexts. Ruby Tandoh writes in her forthcoming book All Consuming that the rise of Instagram 'allowed you to bypass thinking altogether and just look.' The ramen burger's formula for a viral food still holds true. Writer and pastry chef Tanya Bush recently theorized in i-D that the first step toward virality is manipulation (you give a familiar food a tantalizing new appearance) and the second hybridization (you mash it up with another food that people already know). Nail those two steps, as the ramen burger did, and you increase the likelihood of a dish that people will make an effort to seek out. It may be cynical to paint purveyors as shrewd manipulators of the attention economy and diners as disloyal clout-chasers. But it's the game. No one is really fooled anymore. Viral food trends don't seem as organic now, according to Allyson Reedy, author of The Phone Eats First Cookbook, a compilation of 'social media's best recipes' published earlier this year. Unlike 2013, when foods like the ramen burger could make the news basically unintentionally, viral food is now more clearly 'a manipulation,' Reedy says. 'It's more strategic and intentional.' Perhaps that's why the ramen burger became so polarizing. Before the dish was even a year old, it was already drawing ire along with imitators. By 2025, Taste Atlas, the publication whose food rankings are calibrated for social media engagement, put the ramen burger at No. 7 on its list of the 'worst rated foods in the world,' right between jellied eels and blood pancakes. It still routinely makes the rounds on Reddit's r/stupidfood forum. Some consumers decided the ramen burger was the moment internet food culture jumped the shark (even while its contemporary, the Cronut, skated by on Western esteem for French pastry culture). Shimamoto himself has been let down by social media-famous food. In the early days of Instagram, 'even if [food] was [made] for the 'gram, people were still putting their heart into the flavors,' he says. Now, 'it's really hard to judge' what he sees on social media, Shimamoto says. 'If you can get remembered for something, you'll have customers for a long time.' Shimamoto's cooking was always about more than virality. While the novelty of the ramen burger was the bun made of noodles, the 'heart and soul' was its shoyu glaze, he explains. 'That juice from the meat and the sauce, and then that texture from the noodles, is really what makes it.' While the burger might have gotten people in the door at Shimamoto's restaurants, he hoped to flex his broader culinary skills on bowls of ramen too — something on which he was an expert, as his blog proved. In Serious Eats, Sho Spaeth once described Ramen Shack as 'the most exciting place to eat ramen in the United States,' though the ramen burger's success 'always risked occluding [Shimamoto's] true skill as a ramen-making savant with seemingly perfect taste-memory.' In 2019, Shimamoto closed the New York City location of Ramen Shack. In 2022, he closed the Ramen Shack location in Orange County, California, as well, citing staffing changes and personal health issues. While he says that he never grew to resent the ramen burger, the business around it could be 'overwhelming at times, with everyone trying to get a piece of the pie.' Smorgasburg's approach to choosing vendors has also crystallized over the past decade-plus. Food that works at Smorgasburg has to be good, Demby says, but it also has what he calls a 'moment of theater.' 'You've got to get known for something,' he says. 'If you can get remembered for something, you'll have customers for a long time.' The ramen burger has much more competition now, but interest in it has remained relatively steady since 2017 (though vastly decreased from its 2013 to 2016 heyday). 'I didn't close my shops because I thought that the ramen burger was no longer sellable,' Shimamoto says. Whenever he posts the ramen burger on Instagram now, commenters tend to reminisce about the good old days. And whenever his kids or friends request one, he'll make the ramen burger — just on a smaller scale now. 'To this day, it's still great,' he says. Sign up for Eater's newsletter The freshest news from the food world every day Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
