Where Gateau Ghost chef Jayden Park eats Japanese and Korean food in the west end

Chef Jayden Park of cult-favourite café, brunch and now dinner spot Gateau Ghost, isn’t good at standing still. Even though he’s working on a new chef collaboration series and a dinner menu refresh for 2026, Park is already scouting locations across the city for his next project.

“I’ve always been a very future-driven person, even as a kid growing up in Korea,” says Park. “I knew I wanted to be a chef from a  young age. I started training at 11 years old.” In his early 20s, Park’s precociousness earned him the position of personal chef to South Korea’s minister of defence. Then, the chef hurled himself into the deep end, moving to Halifax despite speaking next to no English. That was followed by stints in acclaimed kitchens like Montreal’s Joe Beef, where he was the only Asian team member, the only queer cook and the only one who didn’t speak French.

Related: Where chef Aaron Chen eats in Markham and Richmond Hill

Needless to say, Park is no stranger to growth and the discomfort it can bring. “I got used to putting myself in those situations and figuring it out later,” he says. “That’s been my motto from the beginning, to just take my shot and see what happens.”

But it took the pandemic for him to realize that he’d been chasing titles he thought signified success and trying to fit in rather than stand out. “When restaurants suddenly shut down, those titles didn’t mean anything anymore,” says Park. “The pandemic allowed me the space to be more experimental, to explore things I hadn’t felt comfortable doing before, like pastry. I tried to understand who I am and what I like.”

From lockdown baker to culinary list-topper, Park’s sudden rise is proof that his unapologetically personal approach is resonating. “The success of Gateau Ghost has given me confidence. Now I get to do a little bit of everything at the restaurant—I’m always creating things, and we’re always evolving. At first, I found it overwhelming. It took my sous-chef to point out to me that I don’t just get stressed but excited by the challenge of always trying something new. It’s just my personality. So I’m enjoying the process more, and my staff get excited by it too. It motivates my whole team to contribute new ideas,” he says.

Related: “Pastry helped me embrace my queerness”—How chef Jayden Park baked his way to self-acceptance

In the process of coming into his own as a chef, Park has fostered a closer connection to his community, which is reflected in his restaurant recommendations. “When I first started doing interviews, I used to name restaurants that I thought were cool—but they weren’t the spots I actually eat at most often,” he says. “This time, I wanted to share the real list.”

“It’s always been easier to find good Japanese food than Korean food in Toronto. I think there was a time when immigrants to Canada could score more points in certain fields, like the restaurant industry, so many Korean immigrants chose to open barbecue restaurants whether or not they had any training. And five or six years ago, it was really hard to find quality Korean ingredients in supermarkets. But that’s starting to change now. It’s become my mission to make people more familiar with how good Korean food really is.”

Here, three of Park’s favourite places in the west end for Japanese and Korean food.

Musoshin Ramen

9 Boustead Ave., musoshin.com

“Every time I visit a new neighbourhood, I always like to find a ramen spot. Having lived away from home for 10 years now, I’m constantly craving Asian flavours. I found Musoshin randomly, saw they had good reviews and now I’ve been coming here for years. I love their consistency—they’ve never disappointed me. I also like the intimacy of the tight space. Being so close to the next table isn’t for everyone, but I like it. It’s a cultural thing, I guess.”

Go-to dish #1: Ajitama musoshin ramen with house-made noodles in a vegetable, chicken and pork broth with slow-braised pork belly and a marinated soft-boiled egg

“The key to good ramen is the broth. I usually like one that’s a little less rich and less fatty. Because this one is a mix of different broths, it’s on the lighter side, but it still has the full umami flavour I crave. I always order extra chashu pork and extra noodles. It goes well with beer. I can get Asahi or Sapporo anywhere, but they often carry interesting Japanese beers here, so I usually get whatever the special is on the board, something new I haven’t tried.”

Go-to dish #2: Tonkatsu sandwich with a deep-fried pork cutlet on house-made Japanese milk bread with tonkatsu sauce

“They make their own Japanese milk bread. I love when local businesses make their own products. And I love tonkatsu. Every country has a different form of this cutlet. In Korea, we have dongaseu, which is similar, but it’s a different shape and has a different sauce. I’ve always been fascinated by different cultural takes on a dish—just like with our madeleines at Gateau Ghost. We take the traditional French concept and experiment with how far you can push it before it becomes something else. I like giving familiar dishes different tweaks.”

Gonzo Izakaya

940 College St., gonzofoodcompany.com

“I met the Korean brothers who own Gonzo when I opened Gateau Ghost. It’s on the same block as my restaurant. The vibe inside is very Japanese. It’s like a little izakaya that you’d find in a small alleyway in Tokyo. I miss places like this from Korea too, where there are so many little cafés and bars back to back. That’s one thing I loved about Joe Beef—they had all these sister restaurants back to back. These small local culinary communities are so cool to me.”

Go-to dish #1: Yakitori skewers of beef tongue, chicken gizzard and black tiger shrimp cooked over charcoal

“I love trying different skewers with different parts that I wouldn’t find at another restaurant. I love when food defies expectations. Like chicken gizzard may not sound like something you’d want to eat, then you try it and you’re surprised to find it’s actually good. It changes your mind. I appreciate those experiences. Gonzo opened during the pandemic. At first it was pretty empty all the time, and now it can be hard to get a table. I see a lot of myself in the way they went through big changes and succeeded by always making improvements. They’re about to open a third location with their third concept. I really admire what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.”

Go-to dish #2: Cucumber salad with sesame oil, salted kelp and sesame seeds

“I always order this. It’s a classic: simple but good, with lots of umami and nuttiness from the sesame. It’s a nice balance with the yakitori. This summer, I went to Vin Mon Lapin in Montreal with friends. I worked with the chef there, Marc-Olivier Frappier, at Joe Beef. I really respect him—he’s like a real chef to me. Of all things, the tomato dish was my favourite. It was like, how can such a simple ingredient be this good? I get excited about those moments, and that’s how I feel about this salad.”

Go-to dish #3: Oden, a traditional one-pot dish with fish cakes, daikon radish, hard-boiled egg, a firm jelly-like cake made from the konjac tuber and shirataki noodles cooked in a dashi broth

“This is a typical Japanese dish. You prepare all the components, then cook them in the broth before serving. In Korea, you’d have this broth cooking in the middle of the table, and servers would bring you skewered fish cakes and all kinds of snacks while you enjoy your beer and sake. It’s fun to come here when you’re already a little tipsy. The food is snack-sized, so you can enjoy it even after you’ve had dinner. In Korea, we don’t often stay at one place for the whole night. When we go out with friends, we hop between restaurants and bars. You go to one spot that’s famous for one thing and enjoy that with a drink, then you go to the next spot that’s famous for another. The vibe at Gonzo reflects this dining culture really well.”

Takja BBQ

962 College St., takja.ca

“In Korea, there are a wide range of barbecue restaurants, from casual to elevated. When you’re young and hungry and have no money, you go to an all-you-can-eat one. For a special occasion with your family, you go to a fancier one. The first place my mom takes me when I visit her back home is a barbecue restaurant. Controlling the grill and giving me the best bites is a love language for her. Cooking is like that—when you cook for people, it’s a sweet gesture that you care about them. At Takja, you can really feel this kind of experience. It’s fine dining, but it’s cozy. This spot brings up a lot of personal memories for me.”

Go-to dish #1: Naengchae, a raw seafood appetizer with red sea bream, bluefin tuna and scallops

“The main thing I miss about Korea is all of the really fresh seafood. At the markets, the fish are still alive. You visit a vendor to choose which fish you want, and they cook and serve it to you at your table upstairs. You see the ingredient first, so you know how fresh it is. That’s how they build trust with customers. Naeng means “cold,” and chae means “salad.” It can be done with seafood or other cold ingredients. Here, they recreate it in a really elevated way. I love the seafood from Oroshi, Takja’s sister spot and seafood supplier. When I do pop-ups, I often order their aged tuna or tuna belly.”

Go-to dish #2: Seafood pancake with a daily seafood mix, topped with uni and accompanied by a glass of makgeolli (Korean rice wine)

“A Korean pancake is a savoury street food you’d find at a market, where grandmothers make them at little stalls. You can smell them cooking. I definitely miss my grandmother’s cooking. She makes everything from scratch—she ferments all her own pastes and sauces at home in a container in the ground. She’ll take a bus really far just to get one specific sesame oil because they press the seeds on the spot.

“And makgeolli was never a fancy drink: it was made at local shops for working-class people. This pairing of the pancake and the makgeolli is an old cultural tradition. Because the sound of the frying pancake almost sounds like rain, you often hear people in Korea say, ‘Oh, it’s raining—perfect for pancakes today.’”

Go-to dish #3: Hansang tasting menu with house-dry-aged meats, like Wagyu strip loin and coppa (pork shoulder), accompanied by an array of fermented side dishes and leaves for making wraps

“This table full of food is a very Korean-style dining experience where each person can put bites together to suit their taste. The first time I try each meat, I like to taste it by itself with just a bit of salt and wasabi. The minty kkaennip leaf is my favourite type of wrap—I often use three layers of them. I also use it in stir-fries at home. It’s like Korean shiso but stronger. And for my grilled meat, I love adding jeot, a fermented seafood paste. It’s like Korean surf and turf.”