Miss Kim - Heejin No
In this episode, host Ollie Lloyd talks to Heejin No, founder of Miss Kim, the Korean food brand making authentic Korean snacks and kimchi easy to buy in the UK.
Korean food is everywhere right now. Gochujang sits on supermarket shelves, Korean fried chicken is on high-street menus, and K-pop and K-drama have made a generation curious about what’s on the table. But as Heejin explains, a cuisine only really lands when people can understand it. Miss Kim, named after her grandmother, is her answer. “Food is about love,” she says, “and caring for others.”
Heejin spent more than 20 years in the art world as a curator and art advisor before turning to food, and that eye for detail runs through the brand. Before a single pack was designed, she took her branding team to the British Museum, a Korean restaurant and the local Korean supermarkets to immerse them in Korean history and art. Every colour, pattern and motif comes from traditional temple and palace architecture, yet the packaging was designed so that her British husband’s 90-year-old relatives could pick it up and instantly understand it. “I consider the supermarket my museum now,” she laughs.
Rather than starting with the obvious gochujang sauce, Miss Kim launched with ultra-traditional Korean snacks: lotus root bugak and nurungji (crispy scorched rice), dishes long enjoyed by Buddhist monks that take days to make at home. These sit alongside a shelf-stable kimchi fermented for four weeks. Heejin pushed Korean manufacturers to drop the additives they rely on for shelf life. Her range also turned out to be naturally vegan and gluten-free, which unexpectedly won her a loyal following among coeliacs.
Ollie and Heejin also explore why Korea has invested so heavily in exporting its culture, and why authenticity doesn’t have to mean rigidity. Kimchi toasties, kimchi pizza and even kimchi carbonara are, she points out, everyday food in Korea. “Korean people cannot live without kimchi.”
Miss Kim is available at Whole Foods Market, Selfridges, Amazon and misskim.co.uk. For anyone wondering how Korean food will move from trend to pantry staple in the UK, this conversation offers a founder’s-eye view from someone who knows both the culture and the shelf.
