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Simon Chough, chef and owner of Soju, prepares spicy tuna kimbap at his Garfield restaurant in January 2024.
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Weather-related flooding temporarily closes Garfield restaurant Soju

Benjamin B. Braun/Post-Gazette

Weather-related flooding temporarily closes Garfield restaurant Soju

Unless he’s helping out with a pop-up, Simon Chough typically takes Mondays off from working at his Garfield restaurant, Soju.

“This Monday was a bit of a shock,” he says.

Chough received a text from a neighboring business owner alerting him there was water cascading out of the front door of his restaurant, which is now temporarily closed.

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He arrived to see “a cascade of water” flooding from the ceiling into the dining room of his Korean restaurant.

Chough, who owns the building, says that the furnace had stopped working in the vacant apartment space upstairs, causing a water pipe to freeze. It burst as the frigid weather briefly thawed on Sunday.

He says that the dining room’s concrete floor and quick action by an emergency plumbing service saved the restaurant from catastrophic damage.

“They have all these extractors that had all the standing water in the building out within about an hour, which is pretty impressive,” he says. “Then they plugged in a ton of heaters, dehydrators and fans. Right now, there are apparatus spread throughout the building to dry up the space.”

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The restaurant’s kitchen, housed in a single-story extension at the back of the restaurant, is in good shape since it wasn’t directly below the flooding. Chough says that, because this happened on a day the restaurant was closed, his perishable food inventory was low, which mitigated some of the potential financial loss from food waste.

The next step, he says, is assessing the repair needs of the dining room. He’s optimistic they are primarily cosmetic, which means that Soju — with an interior facelift and a minor redesign — likely will be back in operation in a few weeks rather than months.

“The scope isn’t as bad as I thought it was when I first walked in there. We hope we’re not out of work for too long,” Chough says, noting that he plans to compensate his staff for the time they won’t be able to work at the restaurant.

In the meantime, he plans to work on some recipe upgrades, such as using dolsot bowls in a new bibimbap set. (The stone bowls give the rice-based meat, egg and vegetable dish a crispy bottom crust.)

“Maybe we’ll add some sizzle platters to the barbecue, too,” he says.

Chough has also launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover his employees’ lost wages. As of Monday, he had exceeded its $10,000 goal. 

First Published: January 15, 2025, 5:14 p.m.
Updated: January 16, 2025, 3:15 p.m.

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