After a tour of duty in Kuwait, Jessica Hurdle, a member of the Air National Guard, decided it was time to open the brick-and-mortar version of her food truck.
The restaurant, Pok Cha’s Egg Rolls, will open June 29th at 131 West Commerce Street in Hernando, Mississippi.
It will keep the Korean theme of the food truck of the same name that honors her mom, the late Pok Cha Chang, says Hurdle, co-owner of the restaurant with Brandon Jenkins.
She told her interior designer, Emily Chastain, items she wanted to incorporate in the restaurant. One of them was a “big Asian fan” like her mother had on a wall when Hurdle was a child. “She went to one of these antique shops and found the exact fan. She didn’t know it was the fan I was thinking about.”
Hurdle has a photo of herself as a child with the original fan.
“I just felt like, ‘Okay, this is a sign. This is so cool. What are the odds?’”
She got the idea to start a food truck in 2018 while on active duty at Little Rock Air Force Base. She visited a food truck operated by a Chinese woman who was serving Asian food. That sparked Hurdle’s memory of her mother’s egg rolls. So she decided to open her own food truck back home in Hernando and specialize in the type of egg rolls her mother made. It was a way to honor her mom. Plus, she didn’t know anybody else operating an egg roll food truck.
She also didn’t know anybody else who made egg rolls like her mom did. Her mother, who was South Korean, put three different kinds of meat — hamburger, chicken, and Spam — in one egg roll.
Hurdle found the perfect location for her restaurant — a 1,200-square-foot space near the Hernando town square.
In addition to the egg rolls, the restaurant will feature “more fusion items,” including kimchi grilled cheese: Mexican shredded cheese and sautéed kimchi between two slices of Texas toast.
They also will serve bulgogi nachos, which are wonton nachos with beef bulgogi a.k.a. “Korean barbecue.”
They’ll offer bibimbap bowls, “rice bowls with fresh veggies and a fried egg on top,” as well as kimbap, veggie rolls that resemble sushi rolls.
She also will feature Korean corn dogs, which consist of panko and sprinkled sugar on the outside and a Nathan’s beef hot dog and mozzarella cheese on the inside. Hurdle first tasted one of these in 2017 in South Korea. “I wanted to bring that to America,” she says, adding, “There was nothing like that here.”
It took a while for Hurdle to replicate the corn dog. “I just could not get the recipe right. It took me about a year of trial and error. And I finally have the recipe I’m happy with.”
She was amazed when she saw how Chastain, who owns Emily Chastain Interior Design in Hernando, transformed the look of the inside of the restaurant. “When I walked in, I felt like a little kid at Christmas time when they wake up in the morning and see all their presents under the tree. That’s the feeling I had. It was just awesome.”
Her food truck didn’t go away; Hurdle is keeping it “for social events. We won’t be going out as much.”
Hurdle doesn’t plan to stop with the food truck and the restaurant. She’s already done her “homework” on how to get their Korean hot chicken wing sauce and bulgogi sauce in the stores. “I’d love to be able to do that,” she says.
Overall, Hurdle is astounded at “the way this thing has blown up.”
She and Jenkins began with the food truck in 2021, and three years later they’re opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant. “We have over 8,000 followers on our social media,” she says. Pok Cha’s “has grown into this really big thing.”
As a teenager growing up in Hernando, Hurdle never would have dreamed this could happen. She went to high school with “only two other Asian people in the school.” She knew other students would make fun of her if she brought “something weird” from home to eat in the cafeteria. “You wouldn’t dare bring kimchi to Hernando High School and bring it out at the lunch table.”
But now, she says, “People are lining up to eat our food.”
Speaking of signs, maybe it was a little birdy who told Hurdle to get into the food business. In 2016, she and a friend were about to sit down to eat at a mall in Japan when a bird flew over and landed on her head. She thinks that bird may have been her mother. “She was Buddhist at one point and she wanted to be reincarnated as a bird. She was fascinated with birds. She loved birds.”
Hurdle and that friend were recently writing to each other on Facebook. “I was talking about how proud my mom would be. She said, ‘But it’s your mother looking over you.’”
Her friend then added, “Please keep your door shut because a bird might fly in.” And that bird might be somebody Hurdle knows. “Your mother wants to visit.”