our story
Hello! I’m Sandy Han, the proud owner of CHARIM, a neighborhood shop dedicated to serving clean, delicious Korean cuisine.
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Food has always been my passion. I love cooking, sharing meals, and creating connections over food. My journey with CHARIM began when I realized that cooking and feeding the people I care about is truly my love language.
As much as I wanted my family to enjoy clean, wholesome meals, life’s busy pace often left me without the time or energy to gather ingredients, prep, and cook from scratch every day. That’s when the idea for CHARIM was born.
At CHARIM, my mission is simple: to provide fresh, premium
ingredients and deliver the comforting, homemade flavors of Korean dishes—without the stress or time commitment. We’re here to offer a solution for busy lifestyles without compromising on taste or quality.
Every dish at CHARIM is made in-house, in small batches, to preserve the integrity and authenticity of each recipe. We believe that’s the only way to bring you the true, home-cooked experience.
The name CHARIM means “to set up” or “outfit” in Korean, and true to our name, we want to help set your table every day of the week. Whether you’re stopping by for a quick bite or bringing home a delicious spread to share with your loved ones, we’re here to make every meal memorable.
What sets us apart...
1
Premium Ingredients
When we opened our doors, we made a pledge to use the freshest ingredients available. This means flying in core ingredients from the Motherland and sourcing the freshest and cleanest locally. Our eggs are organic pasture-raised, our chicken is always organic, we use grass-fed tenderloin from New Zealand for our jangjolim.
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Even at the height of the pandemic when things were looking grim, we chose to align with our pledge and believed that our customers would be able to taste the difference. We were right. Even though we were open less than a year prior to lockdown, our customers soon became regulars and kept us afloat during the most difficult times.
2
No MSG or preservatives
Despite the conflicting research on MSG and its effects on the body, it's a personal choice. Everybody, literally every body, reacts differently. Unfortunately, most of what you’ll find in prepared food sections of supermarkets are commercially, mass-produced, designed-to-last dishes laden with MSG and preservatives. "Clean", "mildly seasoned yet delicious", "ingredient forward", "tastes just like my mom's/grandma's", these are words we hope our dishes conjure in your mind as you enjoy our freshly prepared spread. The choice is yours. What you put in your body is up to you. How your body reacts to it is the truth.
3
Zero Waste & Eco-friendly
Piping hot soup poured into plastic containers and eating the contents of that container. This is not acceptable and should not be practiced. We strive to be a zero-waste establishment and only use compostable containers made from corn, sugarcane and wheat fibers. Food touching food fibers. There's no need to worry about chemicals from plastics leaching into your food. Choose to protect your body and join us in preserving Mother Earth for our future generation. Every container counts.
4
Everything is made on-premise
Every single dish, soup, dumpling, snack that we offer at the store is made in-house, on-premise. We do not offer mass produced, commercially made items and repackage them as our own. When we first opened, it was shocking how many "banchan" vendors walked in soliciting their products. Cat's out of the bag, this is one of the industry's big secrets. There's a reason why store-bought banchans relatively taste the same. If there's one thing that we've earned from our customers, it's trust. It took time building that trust and it was built on delivering our promises over and over again and staying true to our vision.
5
No Tap Water, Ever
New Jersey doesn't have the best quality tap water as many of you already know. You may be thinking, it's only water, what's the big deal? Imagine using this water to boil down soup stock for hours and days on end. For this reason we use only filtered spring water delivered to our shop for all of our kitchen needs. Yes, even to soak our beans, rice, seaweed, etc. It's better for our bodies, without a doubt cleaner and a world of difference when it comes to taste.
