Sohui Kim

Chef & Partner

Sohui Kim is a classically-trained chef, restaurateur, and celebrated cookbook author. Born in Seoul, Korea, Sohui immigrated to the Bronx as a young child. Sohui was an ABC Darien High School Scholar who started her college career at Bowdoin College but earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in New York City. Once she found life’s passion in the culinary arts and cooking, Sohui honed her skills under several lauded chefs, including Dan Barber and Michael Anthony at Blue Hill, Peter Hoffman at Savoy, and Anita Lo at her Michelin-starred restaurant Annisa.

In 2006, she and her husband Ben Schneider opened The Good Fork in Red Hook, a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant serving seasonally-inspired global comfort food which ran for almost 18 years. Today, under new management and ownership, it exists as The Good Fork Pub. In 2015, the couple opened Korean BBQ and karaoke hotspot, Insa in Gowanus, which went on to receive a glowing two-star review from the New York Times and earned her a nomination for the James Beard Foundation’s prestigious Best Chef: NYC award in 2019. Along with Insa, Sohui is also Chef/ Partner at Gage & Tollner, the historic oyster and chop House reopened in Downtown Brooklyn in 2021. Sohui was nominated once again for the James Beard Foundation Best Chef: NYC in 2023. She wrote The Good Fork Cookbook in 2016 and Korean Home Cooking in 2018, both published by Abrams Books. Sohui is also a consulting chef for Virgin Voyages, the cruise division of the massive international hospitality brand, wrote all food menus for the first ever Korean BBQ restaurant concept on a cruise ship called Gunbae, currently operating on four ships. She is working on a children’s book called Toy Cookbook with Penguin Random House. She lives with her husband and business partner Ben Schneider and their two awesome kids in Brooklyn, NY.

Ben Schneider

Contractor & Partner

Ben is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side during the 70's and 80's, spent several years in between as a child in Sicily with his parents, who were anthropologists (and Italian food experts) studying Sicilian culture. After attending the University of Michigan, he spent a decade in Chicago working as an actor and a cabinetmaker. In 2001, he moved back to New York and met Sohui Kim when she attended a show he was in with Okwui, her best friend from the Bronx. After impressing her sufficiently with his mother's recipe for Osso Buco, she agreed to marry him and they moved to Red Hook. In 2005, he put his carpentry skills to good use by building The Good Fork, the restaurant he and Sohui now run together. Since then, he has also learned how to create a beverage program, pair wine, make espresso, manage the front of the house and wait tables, something he surprisingly never did throughout his 30 years of acting experience.

YONG SHIN

Chef & Partner

Yong is Korean-born & Middle East-raised. He was fortunate to grow up in a family of foodies with an excellent cook for a mother. Art school brought him to NY but shortly after graduation, he fell into cooking in a serendipitous manner. Under the guidance of Sohui, Yong learnt the basics of cooking at The Good Fork. After two years, he started cooking at Franny's, where he learnt the importance of seasonal cooking, as well as the art of making & eating pizza. He also fell in love with the practice of fermentation: the heart of Korean cuisine.

At Insa, Yong has the opportunity to work with a familial team in both the front & back of house, as well as farmers & purveyors who provide the quality that makes Insa so unique. The platform that Insa provides for Yong & the team is broad: a place where inspiration can be presented on a plate of deliciousness, a place for collaboration with friends and most importantly, a place to celebrate each other: aka. Korean Fun Time Place for Celebration.