Lee owns multiple restaurants in Louisville, Kentucky and Washington, D.C. and has garnered several James Beard Foundation Award nominations.

[5] Lee began cooking professionally at age 22 in a French Moroccan restaurant called Chez Es Saada in the East Village of Manhattan.

[11] The next year, in 2014, Lee partnered with YouthBuild and IDEAS 40203 to create a culinary training program based in the Smoketown neighborhood of Louisville.

[18] The same year, Lee participated on the Korean cooking competition show Culinary Class Wars on Netflix, finishing as runner-up.

[4] Edward Lee's approach to cooking frequently blends the flavors of his Korean heritage and culinary traditions with the ingredients of the southern United States including sorghum, ham, and bourbon.

[29][30] Lee also owns Succotash, a restaurant combining Southern and Asian cuisine, the first location of which opened in National Harbor in 2015.

[31] Later, in 2017, he opened a second location for Succotash in Washington, D.C.[32] In 2020, Lee closed his Louisville restaurant, Milkwood, and briefly reopened it as McAtee Community Kitchen, named after David McAtee, which helped feed the West End, Shelby Park and Russell neighborhoods in Louisville during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[33] In 2023, Lee opened Nami Modern Korean Steakhouse in Louisville, which was named on USA Today's best restaurants list of 2024.

[34][35] In November 2024, Lee opened a fine dining restaurant in Washington, D.C., Shia, serving Korean American fusion cuisine.

Shia is environmentally conscious through sustainable practices such as being plastic-free, designing menus and coasters from leftover paper, and dehydrating waste.