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John Park, aka Hungry Asian, loves learning the stories behind restaurants and their food.
John Park doesn’t want to be called a “foodie.” Considering how often he talks about good food, he’d much rather prefer to be called a “food evangelist.”
“I understand why people call it foodie, but to me over the years it’s morphed into this thing that feels like a negative connotation,” he says. “It makes me sound like I’m a food snob.”
The thought couldn’t be further from the truth. Park has always had a deep connection with food and is happy to try just about anything anywhere, including his latest obsession with restaurants and taco trucks along Williamson Road (and he’ll never say no to schoolhouse pizza and cheap beer at Community Inn!).
His notoriety with the subject took off about three years ago, thanks in part to his Twitter feed, being in the right places at the right times and attending different events. Nowadays, your social feed may include photos of happy people in a restaurant, with Park’s forehead at the forefront as his “Hungry Asian” selfie brand. (He’s also been known to showcase food photography in this magazine.)
“I don’t consider any of what I do ‘networking,’” he says. “If I go somewhere, I don’t want to just sit there and be incognito. I want to make connections.”
The same mentality applies to restaurants. Whenever Park visits a new spot, he learns about the owners or chefs and the story behind the business. For him, it isn’t just talking about the food, but also about how it came to be.
Take our lunch spot, for example, where we enjoy banh mi subs from Viet Sub. When Park first heard of the restaurant, he wanted to learn more about the owners and their story. He was fascinated by someone coming from the corporate side of business and switching up their entire life to run a successful restaurant. For Park, the details add to the story of their food.
Park is particularly excited about how far Roanoke’s food scene has grown in the last few years, thanks in part to fine dining spots such as Local Roots, River and Rail, Fortunato and many others. He believes good food promotes good business, which comes full circle to encourage others to “step up their food game.”
When often asked for recommendations, Park needs more criteria than “good pizza.” For example, he’ll ask what your price point is or if you’re looking for particular flavors, deep-dish versus thin crust and other suggestions to narrow it down. This way, he can give you the best recommendation possible. He’ll often take guests to the best of both restaurant worlds, choosing fine dining for dinner and a cheap brunch the next day, or vice versa.
Though he enjoys cooking, Park never considered being a chef, understanding that running a restaurant requires more than simply liking food. “I know enough about the restaurant industry to not get involved with the restaurant industry,” he says. “To do a restaurant justice, you have to be there all the time…You can be trained very well to do something but if you want to open a business, you need to be prepared to run a business. It’s not about the skill or talent level.”
Park moved to Roanoke in 2004 after graduating from Virginia Tech and works full-time as a financial planner at Ameriprise Financial. While he loves his job, he wanted to put his spare time to good use. He’s made a conscious effort to invest his time into Roanoke and continues to do so in more than just the food scene, wanting to make a positive impact on the area. He runs a weekly Monday Fun-Day event which encourages people to come out and meet new friends; Tuesdays are for Pub Runs, where groups go for a run on the greenway followed by a nice, cold beer. Park also helped start the annual Food Truck Rodeo as well as the Pop-Up Dinners taking place in Grandin at random intervals. These dinners feature visiting talents from other cities, including two previous Hell’s Kitchen chefs.
“It’s not about me, it’s about Roanoke,” he says. “I enjoy doing it, but it’s about the people…Hopefully as we do more of them, we’ll get more high-profile chefs which equals more exposure for the region.”
… for more from our November/December 2017 issue, Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
