These hand-cut noodles sell out fast at the Tacoma farmers market

When Sun Lee met her future partner June Yoon, she knew he would, some day, open his own restaurant.

“The menu is set when you work for other people,” said Lee. “I hope I’m not biased, but his food is really good. It got to the point that he was ready.”

Yoon’s resume stands up to that sentiment. He cooked in three highly regarded Seattle kitchens — Canlis, Tilth and Joule — out of culinary school at Seattle Central College. In Tacoma, he has worked at Wooden City and Moshi Moshi.

Now Yoon dials into his craft every week inside the prep kitchen of Indo Asian Street Eatery, preparing as many handmade noodles and dumplings as he can muster by Thursday when Mogoso Noodles sets up shop at the Tacoma Farmers Market on Broadway.

The menu is simple: alkaline wheat noodles, made from scratch and knife cut, tossed in a mild chili oil with either beef or tofu, and pan-fried dumplings with a filling of charred chives and juicy ground chicken, sourced locally from Dave’s Meat & Produce. The latter arrives with a nest of expertly shaved scallions, whose rice vinegar dressing negates any call for a dipping sauce.

The crown jewel at Mogoso is the noodles themselves, long and appropriately chewy — the kind of bite indicative of fresh versus dried. (Yoon freezes the noodles ahead of time but cooks them on site, a solution to the limited time and space available both before and during the market.) Topped with cilantro, fried shallots and more of those scallions, the dish comes together with a twirl of your compostable plastic fork and a stab into a pile of beef, slow-braised in a secret medley of vegetables.

The flavors aren’t exactly definable, instead pulling inspiration from his Korean and her Chinese heritage. The noodles lean toward ramen, so there’s a hint of Japanese, too.

“Everyone just kind of lumps into ‘Asian fusion,’ and for some reason, that word — I don’t think it reflects all the different kinds of cooking that well,” said Lee. “When I say fusion, I’m thinking of one place that sells pad thai, fried rice, pho, but we’re fusing everything into one dish.”

She likened Mogoso’s “New Asian” cooking to New American or contemporary American, terms used to describe concepts that don’t fit comfortably under one culinary umbrella but heed advice from a myriad of cultures.

Above all, Mogoso is a noodle shop, they said, and the goal is to create dishes that perfectly balance salt, fat, acid and a little bit of heat. (Customers initially advised the noodles’ chili oil was too hot; if you wish for more heat as I did, ask for a packet of Chinese pepper flakes.)

“If it tastes just like how someone else has it, we’re not going to put it out there because what’s the point?” said Lee. “Our standards are high.”

That mentality stems from their upbringings. Lee’s parents owned a counter-service Chinese restaurant, and Yoon’s mother was a perfectionist in the kitchen.

“My mom is a fantastic cook,” he said. “She’d have me taste things, ‘Is it good? Is it good?’ Constantly asking me. That’s what I grew up with.”

Added Lee, “The most important thing is to try different foods. You never know when you’re going to discover something. It just opens up your mind.”

As the concept evolves, they plan to introduce other styles of noodles that harken to their childhoods — from udon to japchae, the thin Japanese glass noodle, and shirataki, the konjac yam noodle that stars in sukiyaki.

The duo began seriously testing recipes about two years ago, with the intention of opening some sort of mobile food stand and eventually a restaurant. Ideally, they will find a brick-and-mortar in a high-traffic neighborhood with an existing kitchen and room for a full bar, not unlike Yoon’s former employer, Moshi Moshi.

“A lot of things go into a business,” said Lee, a lawyer who works in health care compliance. “I think our main focus is you put out good food that people like. That’s the path that you follow, and things will fall into place.”

For Yoon, the trajectory from culinary school to line cook to chef-owner has been unexpected but fulfilling.

“I never thought it was glorious,” he said, noting a teenage stint as a dishwasher, “but once you get into the culture, it’s like you admire the cooks that can handle a lot, the sous chefs that have so much to do. You get gratification every day.”

Lee added that his passion — and now hers — lies in “seeing people smile — that’s why we cook.”

MOGOSO NOODLES

▪ Details: Tacoma Farmers Market, S. 11th and Broadway; Thursdays through Aug. 27, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., tacomafarmersmarket.com

▪ Visit the shop’s Instagram page for updates

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This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.