SARA UPSHAW WOULD like you to feel at home.

That’s true even if you’ve never associated that feeling with gochujang or perilla leaves or any ingredients at OHSUN Banchan Deli & Café, her new business in Pioneer Square (scheduled to open Dec. 14 at 221 First Ave. S.)

“The whole point is just to bring comfort to people. I want it to be a place where people can come, and they just feel like they got a hug,” she says. “It’s 100% fine if you don’t know about Korean food; that’s why we’re here.”

To Upshaw, the cafe is a logical step on a path that began years back with her food blog, then a cookbook and then popular pop-up events. It’s about satisfying flavors and balance — the dish she hopes will be a signature is a tender pot roast stew with fluffy rice and chonggak (ponytail radish) kimchi. Backing all that is a search for knowledge and identity.

“It’s 100% about me being half-Korean … I’ve always been stuck in between worlds,” she says.

Her focus on food comes from early childhood memories of her halmoni, her grandmother, for whom the cafe is named, the matriarch of the family and the larger community — and the reason Upshaw knows how to feed a crowd.

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Upshaw was born on a military base in Kansas, grew up in Tacoma and has lived in Seattle the past 15 years or so. While she was raised in a Korean community, as a young adult, “I was looking around and was like, ‘I have nothing Korean in my life. What is happening?’ ”

Estranged from relatives who might have taught her in other circumstances, Upshaw began cooking, researching and connecting with others in the Korean community, especially those who were half-Korean or adoptees. Her blog, Kimchi Halfie, recounted experiences and recipes. Eventually, she developed her own cooking style — bold-flavored and Northwest-influenced — and an understanding that even cultural “tradition” means different things in different families.

“Everyone, and I mean every single person and household, makes Korean dishes differently,” she wrote on a successful Kickstarter supporting the cafe.

Her cookbook focused on Korean barbecue, and she knows that’s the form of Korean food most casual diners know — that, and the recent craze for Korean-style corn dogs. The pop-ups, though, were about an essential, time-honored but sometimes-underappreciated specialty: assorted banchan featuring a lot of fermented and pickled foods. Technically, they’re side dishes, but as a group, they can make a meal with rice and soup. Upshaw said on Kickstarter that banchan are what “moves the meal along, like punctuations in a sentence.”

When she’d make the full spread for guests, she’d hear, “What is this? It’s wonderful.” (The cafe will feature noodles and larger entrees and specials, too, plus a pantry of Korean ingredients.)

Restaurateur was not in Upshaw’s original life plan. Her professional background is in other creative work in the corporate world — graphic design, photography and project management for companies including Nordstrom. The blog and cookbook were a side interest.

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Even as a hobby, it doesn’t sound obvious to move from cooking for readers to cooking for eaters. But Upshaw said cooking pop-up meals was fulfilling at a level that words and photographs never reached: “being able to see in real time people enjoy the food and get happy and [then] coming back, which is the biggest compliment.”

Korean delis have been successful in New York and Los Angeles, and, Upshaw says, “If it works [there], it tends to work in Seattle.”

And, while her day jobs weren’t in restaurants, “All my skill sets have brought me to be successful into this moment,” she says, from paperwork to leadership to a life where “I’ve had to be independent [and] figure out my own way.” Creating a restaurant already has involved a crash course in a new industry, from ordering commercial kitchen equipment to commissioning a mural to obtaining a liquor license.

That said, the project also has proffered an unexpected gift of collaboration and connection. “The fact is, we only exist because of our community,” Upshaw says. Business owners and local associations in Pioneer Square, fellow food industry workers, pop-up customers, even people she hadn’t known before have reached out to help her thrive.

Among the strongest supporters are those with special dietary needs. OHSUN is entirely gluten-free, a bonus that came after people kept asking whether she had gluten-free options, and she decided, “Let’s just try it.” The dishes taste the same as recipes made with gluten, she says — and research showed her they’re more historically authentic than some purists believed. More than half the menu is planned to be vegan, too, an emphasis the pop-ups also had, with dishes such as grilled mushroom skewers and a braised tofu platter that customers could choose instead of bulgogi beef.

One meat dish, the pot roast she hopes will be a signature, “represents me,” she says. The extra broth reminds her of Korean jigae (stews); the crunchy, extra-fermented kimchi is her favorite among the varieties she makes; and the rice balances it all out. It’s “a combination of components from my Korean and American identity that I personally make when I need comfort the most.”

The cafe’s location means she expects a mix of customers: residents and local workers, sports fans looking for a postgame snack … but she especially hopes it’s a place that can be a regular part of people’s lives, especially if they don’t have family at home focused on cooking meals.

It’s hard to put down in a business plan, she says, but it’s wholly clear in her mind. “Having this sense of ‘Grandma is making this meal for you’ is really what my goal is at the end of the day.”