Kurly, the premium Korean food company, is placing two frozen udon dishes from Seoul chef Jung Ho Young's Udon Kaden into U.S. retail for the first time, with distribution beginning August 22 at H Mart, Jagalchi, Mega Mart and other Asian grocery partners, plus online at Kurlyglobal.com.

The two SKUs — Signature Udon, a warm bowl built on a kombu-anchovy-smoked-mackerel dashi, and Chilled Udon, a cold, sauce-based counterpart — are the first U.S. products from the Udon Kaden brand. In Korea, where both launched first on Kurly's domestic marketplace, the Signature Udon product alone has accumulated nearly 20,000 customer reviews, and the combined Udon Kaden product pages have surpassed 50,000 reviews.

The Brand Behind the Noodles

Udon Kaden operates out of Seoul's Yeonhui-dong neighborhood and Jeju Island, and has drawn consistent foot traffic for nearly a decade on the strength of taut, bouncy noodles and a layered dashi. Chef Jung Ho Young, who trained at the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka and has spent more than 20 years cooking Japanese cuisine, is a recognizable figure to Korean television audiences through Netflix's "Culinary Class Wars" Season 2 and the long-running "Chef & My Fridge." To support the launch, Jung will host in-store tastings at four California locations on August 22–23: H Mart Buena Park and H Mart Irvine NorthPark in Southern California, and Jagalchi in Daly City and Mega Mart in East Palo Alto in the north.

Scaling a Proven Playbook

For Kurly USA, the Udon Kaden rollout extends a strategy the company has refined on its Korean marketplace since 2017: converting chef-restaurant menus into frozen retail meals and building consumer franchise around recognizable culinary names. The domestic version of that playbook has produced at least one breakout: Mokran, the Chinese-cuisine brand of chef Lee Yeon Bok, has sold more than 7 million units on Kurly's Korean platform. Kurly USA introduced Mokran — including its jjajangmyeon and jjamppong lines — as its first U.S. chef collaboration, and is now broadening the portfolio with Udon Kaden and Yun Seoul, from chef Kim Do Yun.

The frozen premium segment has attracted growing attention from food and beverage operators as U.S. consumers demonstrate willingness to pay for restaurant-quality meal solutions at retail. Asian grocery chains such as H Mart have become a preferred launch channel for Korean food brands seeking to establish credibility before pursuing broader mainstream distribution. Kurly's approach — anchoring products to named chefs with existing media profiles — mirrors tactics used by several European and Japanese food exporters to accelerate brand recognition in the U.S. market.

"Udon Kaden is a defining example of what we do: a chef's recipe and a restaurant's identity, thoughtfully recreated as a frozen meal," said Ryan Chung, Head of Global Business at Kurly. Chung added that the company intends to expand retail touchpoints beyond Asian grocery as the U.S. lineup matures.

The U.S. launch gives Kurly three active chef-restaurant brands in American retail — Mokran, Udon Kaden and the forthcoming Yun Seoul — positioning the company as a curator of Korean culinary talent for the import frozen-food corridor. Observers of the specialty frozen food category will note that the chef-collaboration format has proven durable in Korea; the test now is whether equivalent consumer demand exists at U.S. price points and across a more fragmented retail landscape. Retailers and foodservice distributors tracking Korean food imports will watch Udon Kaden's velocity data through the remainder of 2026 as an early read on Kurly's U.S. expansion trajectory.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.