Atlanta Music category interest

When Alyssa Sullivan came to Atlanta in July to see the K-pop boy band ATEEZ perform, eating Korean food was the first thing on her to-do list. The night she arrived, she met up with other out-of-town fans at Hana, a Korean restaurant in Duluth near the concert venue, Gas South Arena. The dinner had been planned online long in advance as a way to meet and bond not just over ATEEZ, but also over Korean cuisine, before the show. It was the first time that many of the diners were eating at a Korean restaurant.

“My group got pretty much everything” on the menu, Sullivan recalled. Her spicy pork was “incredible,” and dishes like kimbap, or seaweed rice rolls, and maeuntang, a spicy fish stew, also got rave reviews. Banchan, traditional Korean side dishes to go with the meal, were passed around.

“It’s really cool to be able to go eat at Korean places and get authentic food before a show,” Sullivan said. “It just kind of makes you feel a little bit closer to the culture that you’re going to see and celebrate.”

K-pop is one of South Korea’s most lucrative and popular exports, generating more than $8 billion in 2022, according to Statista. Atlanta is a major American stop for K-pop concerts — it’s often the only stop in the Southeast. Fans like Sullivan flood the city’s hotels, streets, and Korean restaurants. While the impact of Korean dramas on Korean food’s popularity has been noted, K-pop also brings fans to the table to taste the culture of the music they love. Owners in Atlanta are not only noticing the bump in sales, but some of them have started catering directly to music fans.

At Mukja Korean Fried Chicken in Midtown, which opened in October 2020, many of the staff members have an interest in Korean culture and cuisine, which factors into why they work there, said founder Sean Chang. That interest includes K-pop concerts, where staff often hand out flyers for the restaurant while standing in line for VIP check-in or merchandise. Mukja also offers discounts for fans who show their tickets when ordering.

“We just started it this year, but even with such a small, quick outreach, maybe a week in advance, we still see a 20 to 40 percent bump in sales in a single given day,” Chang said.

Given its location, Mukja tends to see less traffic when a group performs at Gas South than at State Farm Arena — as solo star IU did on July 19 — or at Fox Theatre. Even so, Chang noticed some ATEEZ fans stopping at Mukja to get their fried chicken fix. Mukja also heightens the experience by queuing up playlists featuring the artist in town that week, to fans’ delight.

“They’re singing along while eating and just having a great time,” Chang said.

In the future, he hopes to partner on events with local K-pop stores like Hello 82, just two miles away, or Kpop Story in Doraville. Jodie Enes of Hello 82 says that fans often ask the staff for restaurant recommendations. One of her favorites to recommend is Hanshin Pocha, which specializes in Korean comfort food like bossam, thinly sliced pork wrapped in cabbage leaves, and scallion pancakes called pajeon. Similarly, staff at Kpop Story have a variety of restaurant recommendations at the ready depending on what fans want. For a Korean barbecue experience, they recommend 985 Korean BBQ in Buford. For mul-naengmyeon, a cold noodle dish served in chilled broth, it’s Sambong Naengmyun in Duluth.

Restaurants in the Koreatown area north of the city tend not to focus as much on wooing K-pop fans, Chang said, since they already have a strong Korean American customer base. Plus, as he noted, he and his Korean staff actually prefer American artists or Korean ballads. Chris Kim, manager of the 901, a noraebang (or Korean karaoke bar), can tell a concert’s in town when he sees an influx of non-Korean customers. They tend to order dishes that feature heavily in K-dramas, he said, like tteokbokki (rice cake) or soju, a Korean alcoholic beverage usually made with rice. And when they come in, he estimates that the 901 gets at least a 20 percent bump in sales.

ATEEZ fan Kiki Huddleston from Charlotte organized an informal meet-up at the 901 on the same night as Sullivan’s dinner at Hana. Fans sang karaoke, ate, drank soju, and played K-pop trivia games.

“The concert is the main event, but I’m always [going to] have those memories of going out with other people that I met and having a good time,” said Khiya McKinney, who came in from Dayton, Ohio for the show. She credits K-pop with her love of Korean food. A barbecue restaurant recently opened within a half-hour drive of her home, and she’s already been four times in the last month. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as much Korean food as I have until I got into K-pop,” McKinney said.

Some multigroup fans come so often that they have regular stops. For Sullivan, whose first K-pop concert in Atlanta was SuperM in 2019, her go-to is CM Chicken. For my K-pop friend Ann Bishop, who I met in State Farm Arena’s parking lot after seeing Stray Kids in March 2023, that’s the Super H Mart in Duluth, where she enjoys an off-the-menu half squid ink, half mozzarella Korean hot dog from Oh K-Dog in the food court.

I tend to wing it (though I did go to Super H Mart to stock up on G7, a Vietnamese instant coffee I like). When I drove in from Asheville to meet Ann for the ATEEZ show, my need for an iced coffee led me to Confections Bakery andamp; Café. The clean, crisp decor and mix of savory and sweet pastries reminded me of the desert cafes I enjoyed in Seoul. Ann and I stayed in a rental in Suwanee, and the Confections branch in Johns Creek quickly became our breakfast spot: We had light, flaky croissants and olive breads to go with our cold brews.

A few doors down we found Dan Moo Ji #2 in Johns Creek, where we grabbed a delicious beef bibimbap so massive it lasted us multiple meals. The blend of crunchy veg, light but deeply flavorful beef, and heaps of gojuchang was ideal fuel before the concert. And we even had a chance to practice our Korean with owner Daesun Nam behind the counter, with K-pop videos playing behind him on multiple screens. It was the perfect way to make the trip an immersive experience of music, food, language, and culture.

It’s clear that this trend will only continue to grow in Atlanta and beyond. “With the growing demand for K-pop and Korean food and things of that nature, we only see it growing larger and larger every year,” said Chang.