A la Carte: Remembering the magic of I-Ho Pomeroy 

By Rachel Hergett EBS COLUMNIST 

A couple weeks ago, while planning to meet for lunch, a friend threw out I-Ho’s Korean Grill in downtown Bozeman as an option. “Or is it too soon for you?” she asked. 

It was a valid question. Earlier that week, on March 12, the restaurant’s founder and namesake, I-Ho Pomeroy, had succumbed to the brain cancer she had been battling for a year. The loss had made me an emotional wreck. 

“I don’t know that there is a ‘too soon,’” I remember saying. I-Ho shared her love of her community through her food. What better way to honor her legacy than in a place where you can still feel that spirit? And eat her noodles.  

I-Ho’s noodles, you see, are a bit of magic. Deceptively simple, the dish is described on the current menu as “seasoned Yakisoba noodles with broccoli, carrots and cabbage.” These noodles were many people’s introduction to I-Ho and Korean food in general.  

Before the brick-and-mortar restaurants—first on Lincoln Street, then Main Street near the Gallatin Valley Mall and now 321 West Main Street—I-Ho shared the dishes her mother taught her to cook with her new community out of a food cart built by husband Derik Pomeroy, who she met at a U.S. Navy dance in South Korea in 1986. Articles from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in the ‘90s talk about how she constantly sold out of noodles at weekly farmers markets in Bogert Park or casually mention the two and a half hour noodle line at Bite of Bozeman. I still lament the fact that the Co-Op’s cold case no longer carries them, and it has been well over a decade.  

If you order the noodles, make sure to ask for sauce, a slightly sweet soy-based concoction that is a perfect companion. I remember ordering noodles for takeout right after I-Ho moved to the first Main Street location. The sauce was missing. I-Ho heard me ask for more, and then shooed away the staff who were filling a little condiment cup. “Rachel loves my sauce,” she said, and poured what seemed like a huge supply into a soup container, making us both laugh. The sauce lasted about a week in my kitchen, finding its way into every meal.  

While the noodles and sauce are certainly part of her legacy, her humanity is what I miss the most.  

I picture I-Ho, and I smile. My heart is warmed as my eyes well. Tears are streaming down my face as I type this. And it’s good. We grieve because we love and there was so much to love about I-Ho.  

I-Ho was a light in our community, one of those people whose seemingly boundless energy and optimism were contagious. And her generosity of spirit was unmatched. I-Ho loved to help others, something she did through her food, her constant fundraising for various causes and through local government. She was elected as a Bozeman City Commissioner in 2013 and served three terms until her October 2023 resignation. She was the first immigrant and person of color on the commission. A memorial statement from I-Ho’s family posted online and on the doors of the restaurant says that I-Ho “leaves behind an indelible legacy of love, joy, and community.” 

“Since 2001, Pomeroy has held a string of fundraisers and benefits for causes from natural disasters to terrorist attacks, all out of a spontaneous desire, she said, to do something, anything to help,” my former colleague and bossman Michael Becker wrote in a 2007 article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.  

Perusing through the Chronicle archives, I found stories about fundraisers for the Sharing Love Foundation serving hungry children in North Korean villages (including Pomeroy’s father’s home of Won-San), survivors of an earthquake in Haiti in 2010, Japanese tsunami victims in 2011 and the Bozeman-based Ukraine Relief Effort in 2022. Other efforts hit much closer to home, like the fundraiser for Cancer Support Community Montana that was organized by the restaurant as I-Ho entered hospice care earlier this year.  

“She wants to leave the way she lived,” son-in-law John Jahns stated in that article, a sentiment that has me in tears yet again.  

During pandemic lockdowns, I-Ho kept the restaurant open for takeout and touted the immune-boosting qualities of fermented foods like her famous kimchi, a spicy fermented cabbage dish ubiquitous to Korean cuisine.  

I-Ho’s version is made in the restaurant each week and is sold in various stores in southwest Montana. More information can be found online at ihoskoreangrill.com/kimchi. Or visit the restaurant, where kimchi shows up in a variety of dishes—Korean pancakes with tofu and kimchi, kimchi fried rice, kimchi soup. It’s available as a side, an option with the combination dishes, and by the jar.  

This year, I-Ho has been recognized for her efforts in and out of the kitchen. She was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s 2024 Outstanding Restaurateur Award in the Mountain region in January. On March 15, Montana State University announced that it intended to award I-Ho with an honorary doctorate at spring commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 10. 

“You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has impacted our community more than I-Ho,” then-mayor Cyndy Andrus wrote in a nomination letter. 

In the weeks since her death, I have reminisced with so many about this inspiring and extraordinary woman. More than one person said I was their introduction to Korean food, and to I-Ho, and I can’t help but feel grateful for sharing the legacy. Each I-Ho story—be they related to food or golfing or church and I-Ho’s undying faith—underlines the optimism, the joy, the grace and the love she spread.  

There have even been a few stories about the noodles. 

Rachel Hergett is a foodie and cook from Montana. She is arts editor emeritus at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and has written for publications such as Food Network Magazine and Montana Quarterly. Rachel is also the host of the Magic Monday Show on KGLT-FM and teaches at Montana State University.