Residents of Vienna can’t get enough of Kim Cooks

August 29, 2008 by Dennis Amith

Chosun reported, “One of the most fashionable restaurants in Vienna, where even the Austrian prime minister had better book three months in advance for dinner, is called simply Kim kocht. The owner is a 43-year-old Korean woman named Kim So-hee, who originally went to Austria in 1983 to study fashion. After graduating from university, she worked in the fashion industry for seven years, but felt fashion was not her calling. “People who run restaurants never starve,” her mother used to say, being a restaurateur herself.”

“So Kim hired a chef from Korea and opened a Japanese restaurant in Vienna in 1996, but that partnership was short-lived and she decided to become a cook herself. She bought boxes of salmon and practiced making sushi and sashimi every night. “I am the kind of person who never gives up until I’ve accomplished something,” she says. In 2001, she was ready to proclaim it in her restaurant’s name: Kim kocht (Kim cooks).”