Made in the Mojave. Carried from Somewhere Else.
Richard Lee grew up in Queens, New York — the son of a Korean father and a Brazilian
mother, raised between three cultures on on Long Island. His father, a member
of the generation of Koreans who left everything behind, had walked out of
North Korea as a boy, made his way to Japan, and learned to repair electronic
typewriters — machines with a brain, precursors to the personal computer by a
few decades. That skill brought him to America. It also, eventually, put
Richard in the computer industry for decades.
Richard’s father strongly desired to be an American, even though in the coin toss of life he was born in North Korea less than a decade before the Korean War. Surviving
all the untold trauma of that period, he remained fixed on reaching America. To leave North Korea back then, a man could only obtain a passport by joining the military. So he became a military police officer — and it was that level of discipline that Richard grew up with, like it or not.
With that passport he traveled to the nearest civilized country: Japan. There, NCR
trained him to repair electronic bookkeeping machines — the precursor to the personal computer — and then shipped him to their biggest customer in Belo Horizonte, Brazil: a mining company. In Brazil, he was introduced to a woman who, like him, was learning English. That friendship became a relationship. Richard’s mother, a devout Catholic, would not leave Brazil without getting married. His father, who wanted nothing more than to lock in a job in New York, agreed. He landed that job in Manhattan. She moved to Flushing, Queens. Richard and his sisters were born in Queens and raised on Long Island.
For a third-culture kid, the consolidation of cultures was somewhat manageable because Richard’s father had simply moved on from Korea — too many painful memories. He spoke Portuguese, loved Brazilian food, and loved Richard’s
mother. After America, Brazil was the family’s next country to love and claim. But he never let go of Korean food. Growing up, the family frequented both Korean and Brazilian restaurants. One Korean restaurant that established Richard’s love of bulgogi — the thinly sliced, charcoal-kissed barbecue beef — was Woo Lae Oak.
At home, his father was the cook of the house. Richard often had dinner twice: whatever modest thing his mother prepared, and then what his father made for himself when he got home from work — sticky rice with soy sauce and tofu, fish head, off the bone beef. As Richard got older, he came to love and appreciate the quiet fusion his father practiced: Korean discipline, Brazilian warmth, American ambition, all on one plate. Long before fusion cooking had a name outside of households like theirs, it was simply Tuesday dinner.
That education extended beyond the house. Being raised near a Korean community meant early introductions to kimbap — the seaweed-wrapped rice rolls that are sushi’s
closest Korean cousin — long before sushi itself became accessible. When it did, Richard found his way to the best sushi counters in Manhattan and across the Hudson to Fort Lee, New Jersey, which quietly became one of the great Japanese dining destinations on the East Coast. By the time he reached adulthood, the palate built at his father’s stove had been refined across Korean, Brazilian, Japanese, and New York tables. He became a serious eater in two of America’s most demanding food cities — New York and Los Angeles — before
choosing to plant himself in a literal food desert.
That’s not a contradiction. That’s the point. The Mojave has almost nothing. Which means what 29 Loaves brings to it matters more.
His father had a rare gift: he could taste something once, go home, and reverse-engineer it. Richard inherited that too. When something moves him at the table, it becomes an inspiration. Having 29 Loaves as a platform means he gets to act on it — and share it.
Richard has been based in Twentynine Palms since choosing it deliberately. The high desert topology, the quality of light, the agricultural rhythm of the land — it
reminds him of Minas Gerais in ways that are difficult to explain and impossible to ignore. The topography, the foothills and the distant mountains are part and parcel of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The heat is real. The night sky is unreal.
He is not hiding from New York. He is not pretending to be something rural. He is a technologist and a founder who built one of Manhattan’s first managed service
providers from scratch in 1995 on a one-dollar bet with his father, grew it into a respected boutique firm serving law firms and design studios, and never stopped building things.
29 Loaves makes New York-style bagels — hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked before dawn — in the Mojave Desert. They are not a novelty. They are the real thing, made by
someone who grew up eating the real thing, who understands the difference between a bagel and a NY-style bagel, crunchy exterior and chewy interior.
The spreads, the flavors, the names — Napalmalade, Vine & Vigor, Velvet Crush, Goldfinger — all carry something. A reference, a memory, a place, a provocation. Nothing is named casually. Richard is blending the terroir of the Mojave with food memories of an active palate.
Richard thinks of 29 Loaves as a startup, not a bakery. It is a craft food company built with the discipline of someone who spent decades in enterprise technology — with
systems, with intentionality, with a long view.