Kurly has announced the launch of two Udon Kaden dishes in the United States from the Seoul, Korea noodle house of Chef Jung Ho Young. Now available at H Mart, Jagalchi, Mega Mart and other retail stores, the rollout further expands its line of frozen meals in the American market.
The products recreate the flavors of Kaden’s best-known menu items for the home kitchen: Signature Udon, a warm bowl built on a clear, deeply savory dashi, and Chilled Udon, its cold, no-broth counterpart.
Jung is one of Korea’s most recognizable Japanese-cuisine chefs, familiar to audiences from the second season of Netflix’s “Culinary Class Wars” and the long-running “Chef & My Fridge” show. After earning his footing at Japanese restaurants in Korea, he trained at the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, then returned to open the izakaya Kaden and, later, Udon Kaden. Jung has spent more than 20 years cooking Japanese food.
Udon Kaden built its reputation on two things: noodles with a taut, bouncy bite, and a broth of kombu, anchovy and smoked mackerel flakes. The restaurant has drawn steady lines in Seoul for nearly a decade, and today operates locations in the capital city’s Yeonhui-dong neighborhood and on Jeju Island.
Signature Udon pairs fresh-frozen udon noodles with a broth modeled on the restaurant’s dashi, finished with bonito flakes. The noodles boil in eight to nine minutes while the broth heats separately in one to two minutes — assemble, and the bowl is done. Chilled Udon takes the opposite path: a concentrated dashi-rich sauce, grated radish and toppings poured over cold noodles, trading the comfort of hot soup for a chewier bite and a denser hit of umami.
Both dishes arrive with a track record. In Korea, where the products launched first on Kurly’s marketplace, Signature Udon (sold there as Original Udon) has drawn nearly 20,000 customer reviews, and the Udon Kaden line’s combined product page has accumulated more than 50,000.
The launch extends a playbook Kurly has refined in Korea since 2017: working directly with chefs and restaurants to turn their signature menus into tasty frozen meals. Kurly USA previously introduced Mokran, the Chinese-cuisine brand of chef Lee Yeon Bok, and is broadening the lineup with Udon Kaden and Yun Seoul, from chef Kim Do Yun.
In marking the launch, Chef Jung hosted in-store tastings in Southern California at H Mart Buena Park and H Mart Irvine NorthPark, and in Northern California at Jagalchi in Daly City and Mega Mart in East Palo Alto.
“Udon Kaden is a defining example of what we do: a chef’s recipe and a restaurant’s identity, thoughtfully recreated as a frozen meal,” said Ryan Chung, head of global business at Kurly. “Starting with Asian grocery retailers, we will keep widening the places where American consumers can bring Korea’s chefs and restaurant brands into their everyday cooking.”
