Smokin' the Fat with Charles Wong of Umamicue

Dec 15, 2023

It used to be you didn’t have too many food options in Chicago bars. Unless the tamale guy showed up with his red cooler, you were hosed.

During one night of heavy drinking at Green Eye Lounge, my only culinary option was to gorge myself on mini-bags of Zapp’s cajun dill chips. At that time, Green Eye was one of the only spots you could get Zapp’s. As a New Orleans-phile, I was happy to make it my dinner.

But also I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Fast forward to a month ago where I was throwing down $10 Last Word cocktails at Spilt Milk staring at the needlepoint sampler hanging over the bar that says, “Don’t cry motherfucker.”

If tears were shed that evening, it’s because I realized Umamicue was doing its regular residency at the back of the bar.

I anted up for golden cracklin’ smoked crab rangoons, maybe the best banh mi I’ve ever had stuffed with Texas-style brisket, zingy pickles, and chili and nuoc chom-spiked potato salad. And so, yeah, if there were more tears, it’s because the food was that good.

That night also turned out to be oddly fortuitous as Umamicue’s owner and chef Charles Wong was planning to propose to his girlfriend, and I got a sneak peak at the ring.

She said yes!

I realized I needed to interview Charles to see if he was worried she was only marrying him for his remarkable brisket (see answer below). Of course that wasn’t the only thing I wanted to know, so we also talked about the restaurant experience that changed his life, what it’s like to switch careers, how Lou Malnati’s loss was his fortunate gain, what it’s like to be big in Tokyo, what it’s like to be an “E-List” celebrity, and so much more.

Enjoy the interview.

Michael Nagrant (MN):

Ok, so it’s 2014-2015, you’re working in finance and you take this legendary trip to Franklin BBQ in Austin and that changes everything for you. Tell me about that moment.

Charles Wong (CW)

I've never been to Austin before and I just heard great things about it and I never experienced Texas barbecue. I think the first time that I was ever in Texas was that visit to Franklin barbecue So, you know, I heard about the buzz online and said, okay, let's go there and check it out.

And then there was a two hour wait. Just a really long line. I don’t think I ever waited that long for food. We said, okay, well we'll just wait. Some our friends just bowed out, went back to the AirBNB to take a nap.

Before that, I just knew bad BBQ. I didn't understand why people would eat this because it's just not really appetizing to me because it's it's dry and it has a lot of sauce on it

And Franklin was totally different. It was super tender almost fall apart and the smoke was there and it tasted a little bit sweet to me too on top of that. So it was a really nice nice surprise and you know with food I think when you have something so delicious that whatever is going on in your mind prior to taking that bite and experiencing the food like that, you don't think about that anymore.

That bite takes you away from any problems that you're having and you're just enjoying it and like you feel like you want to dance even if you don't know how to dance.

It was like that for me with with Franklin Barbecue. I'm like man, this would be awesome in Chicago. There's not a place really like this in Chicago. How can we bring it to Chicago? So that was my initial thought with Franklin Barbecue and then every time I go to Austin I try to go back there if I can.

Were you even a foodie at that time or were you like I just heard about Franklin and let's check that out? What was your food interest at that point?

I guess I was kind of a foodie. I would go to different restaurants to try them out and enjoy it but like I don't think I was really you know as invested as I was after the Franklin barbecue experience.

Did you grow up in Chicago?

Yeah, I was born and raised in Chicago. I grew up in West Rogers Park.

So was your experience prior to that mostly just Chicago barbecue?

Yeah, yeah, Chicago barbecue. That was the only experience for me.

So like a lot of ribs, the slathered kind of thing, not even necessarily smoked, right?

Yeah, where ribs are like boiled. That's some of my family's favorite ribs. And I'm like, this is good, but it just doesn't inspire me at all.

Are you ethnically Chinese?

Yeah.

Did you grow up with char siu (chinese BBQ pork)?

Yeah, I grew up with char siu. My parents were born and raised in Saigon and then when the North took over the South, they defected and then our family moved here. They were sponsored by a church in Tecumseh, Michigan, which is like 70 miles southwest of Detroit.

You’ve included some Vietnamese and the Asian style influences at Umamicue. Growing up around char siu and Vietnamese food, how did you draw on that, if at all, relative to the Franklin stuff. Or did it not matter at all?

I guess I hate to use this word fusion because it gets such a bad rap in the media but if you really think about like, back in the 50s, you know, when the banh mi [sandwich] was coming out, they probably were like, oh, this is fusion, because it was, like, inspired by the French, you know, or like, the noodle was invented by China, and now it's synonymous with Italian food.

So, we're all taking influences from different cultures and making it our own. I always thought about how I wanted to do something unique. This was something LeRoy and Lewis (a new school Austin bbq spot) inspired me to think about.

By the way, I'm heading back and forth from my car to feed the fire on the smoker, so if you hear some stuff, it's just, that.

So yeah, LeRoy and Lewis…they're amazing, amazing guys, and we actually did a collaboration with them when they were here for the Windy City Smokeout at Perilla back in the summer.

So in 2014-2015, you were still working in finance, is that right?

Yeah, correct.

What kind of finance?

I was part of investment consulting. So the company that I worked for consulted with insurance companies.

So at that point, did you think, finance is what I'm just doing for a while or for my life. Or did you already kind of have some inkling you were trying to look for something else?

No, that was my career. I was really hoping to stick with that company.

When I first started in finance, this was 2007-2008 with a subprime mortgage crisis…it was hard to find a job in finance and then I just took the first job that I could, but I never really fit in.

It was out in Oakbrook.

I was living in the city.

It was a pain to drive back and forth from the city to Oakbrook on the Eisenhower.

So I left that and then went to another small firm, which I was like, oh, I'm the operations manager, but I didn't find that out until I was reading the job rec and I was like oh, I'm an operations manager. They're like yeah! I'm like okay cool.

Then I was like okay I can make this a career. It was pretty pretty easy and then an old co-worker of mine from the first firm was like, hey I have this firm that I'm working with and it's institutional investors. You help out companies instead of high net worth individuals. So I went there and I had this one terrible client. I asked the company to roll me off the account, but they told me, you have no choice. You need to stay on. So I ended up saying, hey, I'm out of here in September. This would have been about June.

And what year was that?

That was 2019.

Umamicue founder and pitmaster Charles Wong

And at this point you've probably been training on barbecue techniques for a few years, bought a smoker and practiced.

Yeah, so to jump around a little bit so after my trip to Franklin I got back home and I was living in an apartment high-rise in Chicago and I had a balcony so I went to Costco and purchased a Traeger pellet grill and put it on my balcony and started experimenting with brisket and pork. The rig was great because in Chicago, the law for high rises state that you can't have charcoal and you could only use electric or gas. And the pellet grill fit the electric part of it. So it was really awesome.

So I've studied Franklin a little bit. I remember, Aaron Franklin tells that story about how his first brisket was pretty awful. Did you have that experience?

The first one was so horrible that it felt like shoe leather. But, I did the right thing [not to get discouraged] where I was like okay like when you first start your Traeger, do a pork shoulder because it'll make you feel like a great pit master, and then do a brisket where you’ll then realize, hey, you've got a long way to go buddy!

So in 2019 you leave this job. Did you know that barbecue for a living was the next step or were you not sure?

Yeah I knew this is something I wanted to do, so in 2016 I formed Umamicue as a side hustle

I wanted to just kind of see where this went and my first catering gig that I did was for a bank holiday party was for 450 people and I thought it was one of my friends pranking me asking for a proposal and I was like yeah sure I can definitely do that you know.

This was during the Cubs World Series run. I remember watching one of the games. I forget which, like game six or seven and I'm there like trying to do this catering proposal on top of that, and yeah it went well. I said yes before I had any idea about what I was doing and then like I had a couple months to figure out equipment and all that other stuff.

How many briskets do you have to do for 450 people?

We had like seven different appetizers. We hired servers and everything. We shut down half of a nightclub to do it and set up a makeshift kitchen.

I filled up one smoker just dedicated to briskets. It was like 12 to 14 briskets. And then we did pulled pork and we had a smoked fried chicken.

So back then, the smoking rig you have today, is that the rig you got then or is that something you worked up to later?

Yeah, so the rig I got now, we got that in May of last year. I ended up buying a commercial pellet grill. It's called Cook Shack. The first one I bought was an FEC 240, where you could fit 240 pounds of meat on there.

One of my buddies, my coworker's husband sold commercial equipment and he's like hey, I just happen to have this Lou Malnati’s concept that didn't know how to use a smoker and they're just gonna scrap it for parts, but if you want it, just give me $500 bucks [Editors note: new ones cost like $12,500] to go pick it up. He said it probably needs a new door, and I'm like okay great. I gave him 500 bucks and met him at the College of Dupage and picked the smoker up. I was like this looks almost brand new. He said, yeah they just don't want it so we're gonna scrap it.

It just needed a new gasket, but also somebody rewired this smoker to where it wouldn't stop turning its auger so we just rewired it back to its original OEM configuration and it worked perfectly. So I got this deal of a century.

So then I was good to go. That catering party was originally going to be a 350 person party and they're like can you make it for 450? I'm like, oh. shit. okay. yeah. I can do that and then I ended up getting the smaller version of the smoker on top of that.

How does it feel to be doing the thing you dreamt about for so long?

You know, it feels great. I feel like I'm fulfilled and I feel like I can make a difference.

The biggest thing for me is that, my parents, obviously they sacrificed a lot to get here and they provided for us to where we didn't have to think about where our next meal was coming from. We were middle class.

I started cooking out of my parents' driveway. My dad was asking me, so this is just kind of a side thing right. He didn’t understand at first. But he would help me out. And you know I got a check for $19,000 for that catering gig, which was more money on one piece of paper I’d ever seen for me in my life. I never had a great relationship with my dad, but now our relationship is really awesome and there's mutual respect between us from working together. And I couldn't ask for anything better.

I'm semi-first generation. My mom was born in Poland and she came here when she was a teenager. My grandparents didn't really speak English. So I kind of grew up in that environment. The conversation you're having with your dad is a conversation I've very much had with my own parents at times

Yeah. Right. Exactly. I guess on top of that, the history of , you know, when the Chinese immigrated here, they weren't really allowed to get jobs. So they had to open up their Chinese restaurants.

And they were like, well, why are you doing this? We were put down to do this. This is not what you should be doing.

And so that's a little bit part of what Umamicue is like, you know, showing people that that bad rap of like, Asian food is dirty and cheap isn’t true. We want to just elevate barbecue a little bit, but also make it familiar to people maybe who aren't familiar with Chinese and Vietnamese food to try.

So the night I visited Umamicue was the night that you proposed to your fiancé. I also know how great your food is, so I’m wondering are you worried that she's only with you because you make great brisket?

Well, she's from St. Louis, though. She's more of a pork person. More of a rib person.

But no, she's been with me for like four years. And, you know, she's been through some of the tough times.

So, I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world for her to still be able to support this dream of mine where margins are shrinking, and hours are long, and, things are unpredictable.

What has been some of some of the most surprising upside of this journey for you that you couldn't even foresee when you committed to the idea of making barbecue a living?

I think it's having people come up to me and say that our food is delicious and they've never experienced that before.

I guess I'm like an E-list celebrity now. I don't know if there's such a thing. But, I had some people, where we were written up in the Tribune and then had people come up to me with the article and say, hey, can you sign this?

I'm like, “Like me?”

They're like, “yeah.”

I'm like, “Okay, cool.”

They should have asked you to sign a frozen brisket.

Haha. Yeah.

On that same note, I went to Tokyo and wanted to try this A5 Wagyu brisket place and they were already following us on Instagram. They knew a place from Chicago all the way in Japan!

So you've told me a couple stories about how sometimes running a business doesn’t go well, but generally speaking, has it felt like it's mostly been forward momentum or did you have inflection points along the way where you're like I have doubt?

Or have you been pretty pretty consistently feeling like yeah you know, things have happened but ultimately I've never been scared this isn't gonna work out. How do you think about that journey?

I'd be lying to you if I was like, oh no, this is like slam dunk. You know, it's linear.

We're not just skyrocketing up, skyrocketing up.

Like it's a grind sometimes.

You're feeling, did I make the right decision?

I debated is having a, a steady paycheck, health insurance that's super cheap…Is that more important? Is having stability and time with my fiance and our dog, is that much better?

But then in the back of my mind I was thinking like, hey, what if I did this? What if it was really successful? I would always have that thought in my mind, if I didn't do this.

Versus like, the reality where it’s like hey, we're grinding, There's some highs, there's some lows, but trying to pinpoint like what went wrong, what was the reason why we didn't do as well as we did the previous day or the previous time, so yeah there's definitely thoughts about like am I making the right decision? But you know you end up talking to someone or someone stops you along the way about what you're doing and they're like hey that was really awesome what you made, you know we're coming back again and then it’s just for that second you're like shit I'm back to my Franklin days where I just tried that first brisket. It's like okay let's keep going you know. I just need a little bit to push me further.

Who have been some useful mentors or people that have helped you in this journey?

Margaret and Vinod from Thattu have been really supportive and I could always call her. Two of my really good mentors, before, you know, when Umamicue was just a thought, are Thomas and Andy from Perilla.

I don't know if you've ever been to Perilla.

I have, I love it. I love their podcasting too.

When I first started Umamicue we did our first pop-up there in February of 2020. It sold out and we're like oh, let's do a brick and mortar and then something [COViD] happened and we had to pivot and what not. They gave me so much of their time.

So, last year I said hey, listen guys, you know, you have never asked me for anything and all you guys do is just give me your knowledge. So I asked them to be partners of mine. I gave them some equity in Umamicue and they accepted it. And I'm like, I don't need any compensation from you guys.I just really value your time and your expertise.

So yeah, they're now partners of mine.

That's amazing.

And generous.

Of course they were generous with their time as well. So, I guess this means you probably like their food at Perilla, yeah?

I love it, yeah.

That brings me to a question I was gonna ask which is, hit me up with maybe a couple current favorite restaurants that you're really digging right now.

So I recently went to Warlord, which is, which is really awesome.

Daisies is really good.

One thing that I'm embarrassed about that I didn't go to sooner was Lula Cafe, which is outstanding.

Also Thattu, Boonie’s and my friend Joe, he's doing some great things out there.

You literally named all my current new favorite restaurants. They're all killing it. I am so obsessed with Warlord. I've never seen anything like it. I've been doing this for like almost 19 years now. It's just, there's like a freedom there. I don't know what you see in it as a cook, but I mean, how did that feel to you when you were there?

Live fire cooking, it’s just so primal. You see a fire and you just want to stare at it. You really can't do that inside your house or you would set the smoke alarm off, and if you unplug the alarm and forget about, you could die.

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Umamicue does a regular residency at Spilt Milk and you can find more details on their website.

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