I ask Sang Kim, Why?

He is compact and intense, sitting with a glass of white wine in the patio corner at his favourite hideaway in Kensington Market. He puts down his cigarette and leans forward.

“Do you know why?” Here his face lights up and a soft smile emerges. “I grew up in the Jane and Finch area. We had, let’s say, cultural and financial limitations. It was this guy Wayne Walker. With the money he made, he went food shopping for the neighbourhood. Can you believe that?”

Sang Kim has just arrived from a meeting with a restaurant owner in North York. Once a top restaurateur in Toronto, he now consults with top chefs, restaurateurs and designers in the city. He is elegantly dressed in a white wool sweater on this breezy spring evening. At the memory of his first hero, he relaxes and leans back, taking another sip of his wine. “When the government cheques didn’t make it on time, I remember traipsing behind Wayne at the grocery store,” Kim recalls. “He filled two grocery baskets full of food. He did it all without a word. And without a word, he went to my house and filled up my cupboards with it all. And it wasn’t just my cupboard. This is what he did for the neighbourhood.”

“He was the neighbourhood drug dealer. A modern day Robin Hood. He possessed the kind of heroism that people don’t talk about these days.”

“That’s why I do this,” Kim says.

Sang Kim is a local celebrity in the gastronomical and literary arts community. Google him and you will find a plethora of information on his many accomplishments.

He wears these different yet interrelated hats with passion. He is a published playwright, co-director of SPoT (Small Press of Toronto), writer of Woody Allen Ate My Kimchi which launches in 2013. He is the founder and former owner of sushi fusion successes Blowfish and KOKO! Sharebar. He is a sought-after restaurant consultant, the talent behind Ki Modern Japanese. He runs Sushi-Making for the Soul, a private training and community outreach program, billed as “corporate retreats, charities, dating services and casual family/fun activities.” He co-directs Reel Eats, “a monthly gastronomic, film and storytelling event taking place at some of the top restaurant venues in the GTA.”

But his true passion is in mentoring. He gives without a thought to how much energy he will expend. He is constantly on the go, a tireless advocate of storytelling and sustainable sushi consumption. In September, he launches a TDSB initiative where he visits schools in under-privileged areas and runs writing/sushi-making exercises, educating students on using local and culturally significant ingredients to help them share their personal stories. “At the end of the year, we want to create a narrative cookbook for each class. The idea is to talk about where they come from, but also talk about how we adapt our food expectations in Toronto for 2012 and beyond.”

Sushi-Making for the Soul is also a platform he uses to teach and talk about sustainability in the sushi industry, as fundamentally as if it were a spiritual truth: “For me, sushi is about how we respect, honour and pay tribute to a sustainable, natural environment. How to take from an ecosystem and give back to it. How can one think of sushi without thinking of tuna and salmon? The cost of package and transport? Toronto is #3 in sushi consumption outside Japan. My goal is to help people reconsider this, next time they are sitting in a sushi restaurant.” 

With a self-deprecating humour and a humble laugh at any reference to his many contributions and accomplishments, Kim comes back to the question of why he does what he does, tirelessly, passionately. “It’s about Food. The stories of my life centre around food. With all my experiences, and as I move further along in this, food becomes more of what I see, do, and write about.” His eyes shine, and a wry smile plays at his lips. “It just so happens that with great power come great responsibility,” he says, laughing.