Our Story
CHĪKO is the first restaurant from The Fried Rice Collective. Chefs Danny Lee and Scott Drewno pair modern cooking techniques with traditional Chinese and Korean flavors.
Scott Drewno
Chef Scott Drewno was raised in the heart of New York’s Finger Lakes wine region, a rural area known for its vineyards and family-owned farms. Watching his mother turn fresh, seasonal produce from local farm stands into bubbling pies and cobblers first piqued his interest in cooking and planted the seed for Drewno’s culinary ambition.
Drewno joined the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group in 1998. At Chinois, he learned to meld French cooking techniques with vibrant Asian flavors, and at Spago, he came to understand the importance of beginning with only the finest ingredients. Drewno then furthered his knowledge and solidified his passion for Asian cuisines at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Vong and Stephen Hansen’s Ruby Foo’s.
In 2007, Wolfgang Puck tapped Drewno as the opening Executive Chef of The Source. The restaurant was honored with numerous accolades including three-star reviews from both The Washington Post and Washingtonian Magazine. The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) awarded The Source “New Restaurant of the Year” in 2008 and “Fine Dining Restaurant of the Year” in 2011. Drewno himself received the coveted “Chef of the Year” prize in 2010 and again in 2016 and was twice nominated as a semifinalist for the “Best Chef Mid-Atlantic” James Beard Award.
Drewno has won many culinary competitions benefiting important causes, including the DC Crab Cake Competition, Pig Out for Diabetes, and DC Central Kitchen’s Capital Food Fight. He won the Washington, DC leg of Cochon 555 (twice), a traveling culinary competition promoting sustainable farming of heritage breed pigs, and won the Cochon 555 Heritage Fire barbecue competition.
He also serves on the Board of the RAMW and is an Honorary Board Member of the DC Food & Beverage Collective. Each year, Drewno hosts fundraising events for DCFBC and the George Washington Univer-sity Hospital Mobile Mammography Unit, two causes he holds near and dear to his heart.
In 2017, he formed The Fried Rice Collective with fellow chef Danny Lee, and they opened their first restaurant, CHĪKO, in Capitol Hill. Hailed by Zagat as one of “DC’s Most Important Restaurant Openings of 2017,” CHĪKO was nominated by the James Beard Foundation as a semifinalist for “Best New Restau-rant” and later awarded a Restaurant Association RAMMY for said category.
Tom Sietsema, from The Washington Post, gave CHĪKO 3 stars (Excellent), stating “The latest definition of crack in Washington is the “orange-ish” chicken at CHĪKO on Capitol Hill.” This was also the third consecutive year that Washingtonian Magazine named CHĪKO one of DC’s top 50 best restaurants, awarding it a prestigious 3 star rating. Due to the restaurant’s overwhelming popularity, The Fried Rice Collective eventually opened three other locations in the United States: one in DuPont Circle in Wash-ington, DC, one in Shirlington Virginia, and the other in Encinitas, California.
Riding the wave of success, Drewno and The Fried Rice Collective decided to open a second concept in 2019. Anju, a sophisticated amalgam of traditional Korean flavors and modern cooking techniques, was recently named the number one best restaurant in DC by Washingtonian Magazine. Anju has been featured in several national and local publications, such as the Food and Wine, Travel and Leisure, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health, Lucky Peach, Zagat, Washington Post, Washingtonian, and many more. Anju has also been nominated for 4 James Beard Foundation Awards.
Danny Lee
In 2006, Danny and his mother, Yesoon, decided to open their own restaurant, one that played to their strengths and represented their culinary traditions and culture. They opened Mandu, DC’s first full service Korean restaurant, near Dupont Circle. Five years later, the family opened a second location in DC’s Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood.
In 2017, Lee started a new restaurant group with Chef Scott Drewno called The Fried Rice Collective. The group’s first restaurant, CHĪKO, opened in July of 2017 on Barrack’s Row in Washington, DC. CHĪKO serves modern Chinese and Korean cuisine in a fun and casual environment. CHĪKO has since expanded with additional locations in DC, Virginia, Maryland, and Encinitas, CA.
CHĪKO has been awarded three-star ratings from both the Washington Post and Washingtonian, and was also nominated as a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Restaurant in the country in 2018. The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington awarded CHĪKO Best New Restaurant at the 2018 RAMMY Awards as well as Best Casual Restaurant in 2020.
The original Mandu location suffered a fire in the summer of 2017. Due to his family’s history in the building, Lee wanted to stay and rebuild, but open as a new concept. In the summer of 2019, Anju opened, with The Fried Rice Collective partnering with the Lee family. Anju serves eclectic Korean cuisine in a vibrant atmosphere, paying homage to both traditional and modern aspects of Korean culture.
Anju immediately garnered a three-star review in the Washington Post, and the Washingtonian awarded Anju with a 3.5-star rating along with naming Anju the #1 restaurant in their 2020 100 Very Best Restaurants issue.
Danny was nominated as a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic in the Spring of 2020. In the fall of 2021, Danny was listed on the Washington Business Journal’s Power 100, being recognized for the anti-racism initiatives he had taken part of or started. In 2022, Danny and his partner were awarded “Restaurateurs of the Year” by the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington.
Lee has been featured in several national and local publications and media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Food Network, Men’s Health, Washington Post, Washingtonian, and many more. Most notably, Danny and his mother are featured in the HBO. Max series Take Out With Lisa Ling, exploring the history of Korean cuisine in the Washington, DC area.