First Look: Neko Yubu

Longtime friends Connor Park and Dean Kim cycled through different food options before landing on a heritage-inspired choice for their Dallas-launched restaurant Neko Yubu. 

“Hot dog, sandwich, bagel shop,” Park lists out. “Those kinds of things are already in Dallas. Somehow, Dean found the idea [of] yubu, which is a Korean picnic food.” Some 16 months after opening in North Texas, local demand brings the specialty spot to 1910 Guadalupe in Austin. 

Park and Kim immigrated to the U.S. around 2016 and 2013 respectively, Park says. They first met each other in the sleepy college town of Emporia, Kansas, where a friendship bloomed, fueled by a desire to co-launch some kind of business venture. “We got close to each other,” Park reflects concisely. “We decided to do something together.”

The pair maintains a perfect chemistry, Park explains. The former marketing professional loves the physicality of cooking – growing up in Pohang, South Korea, he learned to make “side dishes, soup, everything” from his mom – while Kim, who works full-time as a software engineer, serves as the idea generator. 

“A lot of people said, ‘Hey, doing business together could be dangerous,’ but I was like, ‘Well, that’s for you, not me,’” Park says assuredly. “I’m pretty confident with him; our roles are totally different. He respects my recipe and food, and I respect his ideas. He gives me ideas, and then I’ll make it happen.”

Though very natural-tasting matcha and warm classics like tteokbokki and miso soup grace the menu, the restaurant’s specialty is yubu: a compact flavor boat of fried, marinated tofu skin stuffed with rice, meat or fish, and various toppings. 

The unfamiliar eater will undoubtedly do a double take when diving into the dish. The tofu taste is nearly unrecognizable, the same way a potato chip doesn’t immediately suggest the starchy, grainy essence of a tuber. But upon further bites, the soft chewiness of the tofu arises and blends with the flavored toppings in a truly rich eating experience. “I was focusing on [making it] well-balanced,” Park explains. “Not too sweet, not too salty, not too bitter.” 

Park and Kim’s efforts give rise to concoctions like butter crab (a “no-brainer” fan favorite, he says), grilled beef bulgogi, carottes râpées (a fancy way of saying grated carrots), and kimchi bacon. But flavor wasn’t the duo’s only priority; they wanted a dish that looked stunning on camera. 

Park and Kim crafted each aspect of the restaurant with a focus on Gen Z audiences and social media virality. Everything, from the engaging topping arrangements to the aggressively cute logo of a tofu-embodied cat – “neko” means cat in Japanese, and “We’re cat people,” Park explains – begs customers to snap a picture and post it online. “We were thinking about all the toppings and to make it pretty [so] people can take a photo,” Park says. “That was our purpose.”

Constructing a restaurant primarily around a single dish felt like a gamble, Park admits. But he grew confident with his customers’ encouragement. “When I first started this business, I got excited but at the same time, scared,” he says. “Thankfully, a lot of people support us. Those kind of things made me very confident with this business. I consider my business very unique.” 

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