In the heart of Los Angeles, Escala is doing something few restaurants dare: it’s not choosing between Korean and Colombian cuisine—it’s celebrating both, one plate at a time.
I’ll admit it—when I first heard about a Korean-Colombian fusion restaurant, I was skeptical. We’ve all seen fusion gone wrong, right? That awkward kimchi pizza or bulgogi burrito that makes you wonder if some culinary boundaries exist for a reason. But Escala isn’t playing that game. They’re not slapping gochugaru on arepas and calling it a day.
What they’re doing is way more interesting.
The Accidental Cultural Match
Korean and Colombian cuisines have more in common than you’d think. I know, I know—on the surface, they seem worlds apart. But dig deeper and you’ll find parallel universes of fermentation, bold seasoning, and rice as the non-negotiable foundation of every meal.
Both cultures are obsessed with pickled things. Koreans have kimchi, Colombians have aji and curtido. Both use fermentation not as a trendy preservation method but as a way of life. And here’s the kicker: both cuisines aren’t afraid of heat, whether it’s gochugaru or ají peppers lighting up your palate.
The chef at Escala—who grew up between Koreatown and a Colombian neighborhood in LA—told me something that stuck with me: “My abuela and my halmeoni basically cooked the same meal structure, just with different ingredients.” Rice, protein, fermented sides, soup. The template was identical.
LA’s Secret Superpower: Overlapping Diasporas
Los Angeles isn’t just diverse—it’s specifically, beautifully weird in how its immigrant communities overlap. You’ve got Koreatown bleeding into neighborhoods with massive Colombian populations. There are blocks where you can get both banchan and bandeja paisa within a five-minute walk.
This geographical proximity creates something most cities can’t replicate: accidental cultural exchange. Kids grow up eating both cuisines. Families intermarry. Someone’s Colombian boyfriend falls in love with jjigae. A Korean friend’s mom starts making empanadas because her neighbor taught her.
Escala didn’t create this fusion out of thin air. They’re documenting what was already happening in LA’s streets, homes, and grocery stores. That’s what makes it work. This isn’t some chef’s abstract concept—it’s lived experience translated into food.
The restaurant sits in a strip mall (where else?) that perfectly captures this collision. To the left, a Colombian bakery. To the right, a Korean beauty supply store. Escala is literally and figuratively in the middle.
What Korean-Colombian Fusion Actually Tastes Like
Okay, but what are we actually eating here?
Their gochujang-marinated pork belly served with Colombian-style hogao sauce is stupid good. The pork is caramelized with that Korean sweet-savory-spicy thing happening, but then the hogao—that tomato-onion sofrito—cuts through with bright acidity. It shouldn’t work. It absolutely does.
Then there’s the arepa situation. They’re making arepas with sesame oil in the dough. Subtle, but it changes everything. Top that with bulgogi and some pickled daikon slaw, and you’ve got something that would make both my Korean friends and my Colombian coworkers argue about who gets to claim it.
The Kimchi Empanada Controversy
I need to address the elephant in the room: their kimchi empanadas.
Some people think it’s genius. Others think it’s sacrilege. I’m in the genius camp, but I understand the criticism. The key is they’re not just stuffing empanada dough with kimchi and cheese (though that would probably be good too). They’re using aged kimchi as the base for a filling that also includes Colombian hogao and potato—ingredients that appear in both cultures’ cuisines.
The fermented funk of kimchi plays against the sweetness of Colombian-style onions. The potato adds substance. The empanada dough, fried until golden, gives you that textural contrast Koreans love in their fried chicken and Colombians love in their buñuelos.
Is it traditional? Hell no. Is it delicious? Absolutely.
Beyond Food: Becoming a Community Hub
What surprised me most about Escala: it’s become an actual gathering place for both communities. Not just a restaurant where people eat and leave.
They host Korean language classes for Colombian kids and Spanish classes for Korean kids. The owner told me they started this because parents from both communities kept asking if there was a space where their kids could learn each other’s languages while eating familiar food. Now Wednesday nights are basically a bilingual party with small plates.
The restaurant employs staff from both backgrounds—not as a diversity checkbox, but because you need people who understand the soul of both cuisines. Their head server, Andrea, is Colombian but grew up in Koreatown. She’ll explain what gochugaru is in Spanish, then switch to Korean to joke with the ajummas at table seven.
The best fusion restaurants aren’t just mixing ingredients—they’re mixing people. Escala gets that.
The Economics of Ethnic Fusion
Let’s talk about something most food writers skip: the business model here is actually pretty smart.
LA has hundreds of excellent Korean restaurants. It has dozens of great Colombian spots. But Korean-Colombian fusion? That’s basically a category of one. Escala created their own market niche by serving two communities simultaneously while also attracting the adventurous foodie crowd who’ll drive across LA for something new.
Their pricing strategy is interesting too. They’re not charging Michelin-starred fusion prices. An empanada is $4. A full plate with banchan runs $16-18. That’s accessible enough for both communities’ working families—the core demographic—while still being a destination for wealthier food tourists.
What This Means for LA’s Food Future
I think Escala represents where LA’s food scene is actually heading, beyond the hype and the chef-driven tasting menus downtown.
The city’s immigrant communities aren’t staying in their lanes anymore. Second and third-generation kids are mixing their parents’ cuisines with whatever they grew up eating in their specific LA neighborhood. That might mean Korean-Colombian. Or Thai-Armenian. Or Salvadoran-Filipino.
These combinations seem random until you look at LA’s actual geography and realize they’re inevitable. When communities live next to each other for decades, their cuisines start bleeding together.
What makes Escala work—and what’ll make the next wave of LA fusion work—is that it’s not cosplay. The chef isn’t some white dude who did a semester abroad and came back with “inspiration.” It’s people with legitimate cultural stakes in both cuisines, making food they actually grew up adjacent to.
The Verdict: More Than Just Fusion
So is Escala worth the trip?
Yeah—but not just for the food, though the food is reason enough. It’s worth going to see what happens when a restaurant decides to honor complexity instead of simplifying it. When it says “our community isn’t just Korean OR Colombian, it’s Korean AND Colombian,” and builds a menu around that reality.
The food is delicious. The concept is smart. But what I keep thinking about is how my Colombian friend Luis brought his Korean girlfriend there for their anniversary, and how her mom came from Korea to visit and ended up chatting with Luis’s mom about fermentation techniques despite neither speaking the other’s language.
That’s not fusion cuisine. That’s fusion community.
And in a city as fragmented and sprawling as Los Angeles, where it’s easy to stay in your bubble, that feels almost radical. Escala isn’t just serving food—it’s creating a space where “either/or” becomes “both/and.” Where you don’t have to choose sides because the whole point is celebrating both.
If that’s the future of LA’s food scene, I’m here for every bite.