Well “Dram Man” enjoys his hamburgers very much but, as one can see, attempting to find a good one is depressing and probably bad for one as well, especially if Korea starts importing American madcow beef. Instead, I think it is a better idea to try to find the best of what might be indigenous to Korea, thus Korean food. Towards this end, I visited this last weekend a very special restaurant in Bukchon — Kung Yeon (궁연) — that serves recipes from the late Chosun Dynasty as handed down from the last royal cook, who in turn, passed the recipes down to her daughter and so on. There is actually a very serious school of cooking across the street from the restaurant that teaches these same recipes and is run by the same owners of this fine restaurant. Again, these people are as serious about their cuisine as any French restaurant I have ever seen.
The restaurant itself is laid out in a very modern manner that is very understated yet rich in wood tones. They even had some nice Jazz as house music when they were not playing classical music.
Our selection came with a little card, explaining our order and its history as well as very attentive waiters. Each diner recieved their meal upon their own individual wooden tray, including all the little side dishes that are usually placed out on one’s table at average Korean restaurants. Usually I find that God (or the devil) really is in the details, thus I was impressed as to the absolute attention to detail paid to even the smallest entré. The subtlety of flavor and the marriage of elements was as carefully orchestrated as any cuisine I have ever tasted, so much so that I would not be far off in saying that this form of Korean cuisine is as much thought as is food. One dish contained mildly sweet pumpkin with thin slices of hot pepper and soya sauce, which was a surprising but pleasant combination with Kal-chi (fish).
Another dish contained the mildly sweet citrus tang of bitter orange (oui-ja) and fresh peanuts and beans whose flavor spreads across the toungue as smoothly as the first rays of sun on a cool morning. One after the other, each small dish contained one surprise after another. Indeed, the strength of this food is that each small dish contained a unique and perfected combination of flavors that is entirely absent from any other average Korean restaurant I have ever eaten at. Considering such, this food is a revelation of what Korean cuisine could be but so often is not.
It is very strange that, after some years of living in Korea, and considering myself fairly familar with food in Korea that I should discover the best form of Korean cuisine that I have yet to find and it is no surprise, I guess, to discover it is the real, historic food of Korean royalty as well. If one should take in a day of walking through Bukchon and viewing hanok (Korean traditional houses) and the various museums and sights that the area has to offer, there is no greater experience than this restaurant.
We paid 28,000 Won per person, which is less than a night at TGIF Fridays would run.
47 Comments
wah
The Marmot’s Hole has become
Fatman Seoul
http://fatman-seoul.blogspot.com/
And why not…?
Elgin, this was Saturday in Bukchon, and you didn’t invite ME along??? shame…
Actually, the organizers & I had a great Korean lunch too, though far lower-class — an old-fashioned jeong-shik based on Cheongguk-jang stew… yum…
Though I was in Bukchon Saturday, I returned to this restaurant on Sunday. Careful what you wish for, Chilseong Nim is listening . . .
This place really is astonishing in its culinary depth and really is a superlative example of food culture. Too bad we don’t have something like this in the U.S. also.
You mean a food culture? Nonsense! Here in America, we’ve copied the examples of empires before us, and simply appropriated (and poorly copied) the cuisines of other cultures. After all, when you’re running an empire, who has time to develop a unique and interesting food culture?
And anyhow, the US is the country that invented the Krispy Kreme burger… I don’t want to see what the result would be if people here actually tried.
I wonder how much food was left setting on the table?
I do not know much about Korea’s “food culture,” but those kinds of restaurants generally seem to be pretentious fast food joints that try to impress people by cramming the table full of little white dishes filled with average or below average food. Was the kimchi especially tasty? Or maybe you enjoyed the dish of raw carrots?
Maybe it is because of the way I was raised, but I hate leaving those kinds of restaurants with a table of half eaten food still setting there.
My mouth is watering just looking at the pictures. How I miss being able to eat cheap, delicious Korean food every day. There’s one Korean restaurant in my town. My first and last time there, I paid almost $10 for a mediocre bowl of bibimbap. I didn’t know it was possible to screw up such a basic dish. There are hardly any Koreans in town, so I guess the dishes have been altered to appeal to more traditional American palettes.
pretentious fast food joints
Traditional Korean dishes served in the humblest of ilban shikdang do not deserve to be put in the same class of food as McDonald’s and Pizza Hut.
Maybe it is because of the way I was raised, but I hate leaving those kinds of restaurants with a table of half eaten food still setting there.
Maybe the side dishes get recycled.
Was this supposed to be a review of the food? What foods were served? How were they prepared? How did they taste?
Sonagi,
I am not talking about a good $5 dish of bibimbap. I am talking about paying $28 for a table full of little white dishes that have little pieces of food in them that, as you suggested, could possibly be recycled food.
Even though I like Korean food, I would probably still choose Taco Bell over a Korean restaurant, and I would definitely choose a good Mexican or Chinese restaurant over a good Korean one. That does not mean that Korean food is not good; it just means that I prefer Mexican or Chinese, and I do not mean Korean-style Chinese or even Chinese-style Chinese. I mean good American-style Chinese food.
By the way, what piece of food in that picture is making your mouth water? I only see a tray full of white dishes filled with the same old stuff.
Yes, I know I am in a critical mood today, but I hope people do not take it too seriously.
Guys, this restaurant is no average place. Careful detail was given to the flavor of each dish and each dish was freshly prepared, on-the-spot. This is the only restaurant I have seen so far in Korea that I would place in the category of “haute cuisine” and I do not mean some restaurant run by an Algerian or French businessman but a restaurant that is run by an experienced chef whose work is based upon a cuilnary tradition and history, predicated by a love of great food.
I suspect that some posters have never eaten at a great restaurant before where there is real pride and love taken with the food? (both are present at Kung Yeon)
Follow the links herein and read more about it.
Well, you have me convinced. I emailed the link to my daughter-in-law to be and asked her if we could go there in November when we get to Seoul. She said she hasn’t eaten there, but her and my son might go this weekend, just to make sure it is good, lol.
So, what exactly did you order? Can you suggest specific dishes to order? Please?
This is even worse than what Dram_man dishes out.
We are supposed to believe that the food is really good but we get only hints about hot pepper and soya and pumpkin and beans and peanuts and that it is royal food.
How helpful is that?
This “review”could have been done in 5 sentences.
Salzburg’s Joseph II comes to mind, “Too many notes…”
Though one could choose from the menu at large, if you are unfamilar with this sort of food, try starting with the set menu. They do seem to offer good wine as well though we did not order such.
We choose the set menu since this was our first time at this restaurant but I assure you that we will return to try the rest of it.
Regarding specific dishes to order, they work with whatever is seasonal (naturally). The aesthetic is different from other cuisines in that instead of having a “speciality” of the house, they focus on a progression of tastes, thus the many small dishes which are served and different sections of the set. Mind you, while I personally do not care for certain root-based dishes (toe-duk for example), there is more than enough served in the set menu to satisfy ones appetite. The staff is very helpful and is glad to explain their menu and food preperation. Do ask questions.
Leo, Joseph II was a infamous fool as well . . .
Follow the links and read more about the food if you would like more information on what they offer or pay me money to go back and take notes on everything.
Thank you, R. Elgin. Boy, some of these commenters can be vicious!
I am familiar with Korean food, but since this sounds like it is different, the set menu might be the way to go. I just talked to my son and they ARE going there this weekend to try it out.
Although it certainly seems to have quality dishes, I am not a big fan of “Kings’ food.” The fermented ray definitely is an acquired taste.
Alas, every time we get an international VIP guest, that is where we take them.
I would prefer to take them to an Andong Jjimdak place. Yummmm!
R. Elgin,
My wife and I have gone a couple of times to a very similar restaurant up in Suwon. I can’t remember the name, but it was some of the best food I’ve had over here. Most of the side dishes, I’ve never seen or eaten anywhere else but from what you describe above, I think the menu was very close.
From some of the above comments, one would think it’s Monday, pouring rain, and paychecks were late again.
Elgin is right on, I’ve been to these “royal cusine” restaurants a few times myself (there are at least 4 or 5 of them in Seoul), and they are most excellent, Korean food at an entirely higher level, competitive with the world’s best. Interest in them has been revived by the hit “Daejanggeum” TV drama about an ambitious young cook in the palace… What you usually order in places like this is the “Jeongshik” (or Hanjeongshik) which just means a general Korean meal. It can be pretty plain in a low-class restaurant; in Insa-dong where I frequently have it at restaurants like “Jirisan” it’s quite excellent for w8000 ~ w12000 per person. These “royal cuisine” restaurants are a big further step up…
Strange Romanization there, “Kung Yeon” — mixing the old and the new — is that what they use on their signs and menus?
But I cannot accept “toe-duk” at all, I’m sorry — deodeok root is delicious when fresh, properly prepared with plenty of sesame-oil along with the pepper, and in the proper context (like, eaten with some pajeon, chased with a shot of cham-soju…)
And by the way, recycling the side-dishes was made illegal a decade ago, for understandable sanitation reasons. Some small restaurant years might cheat on that, of course. But that law has led to quite a bit of waste, good food thrown away… it is a problem. Whenever the waitress brings our Jeongshik, we make a point of immediately handing back the side dishes we know we’re not going to eat — like bizzare types of seafood covered in way too much red pepper — then it’s legal for them to take it back to the kitchen and serve to the next customer…
“restaurant years” —> restauranteers
damn this voice->text program…
Actually, the word is “restaurateur”. And Gung Yeon sounds really good. Thanks for the advice.
Had this style once before and I found it good but not great. Was a really interesting experience though.
Ate at Jirisan for lunch last week. Not bad. But I prefer 김밥천국 over royal food. -_-
I used to think I was not a great fan of Korean food… until I started going to more upscale places. It is amazing how much better just about anything can be when it is done right. I remember think that I hated mook until I had some really good mook. Even marinated cuttlefish can be tasty.
And it is not necessarily all about prices. I have been to some expensive places that were nothing special, and some very good places that were not so pricey (although often there is a correlation).
thank you very much for this post.
R.Elgin, thanks for the tip, this place looks good. Ignore the riffraff — you linked to the restaurant’s site and with two clicks you can see pictures of the food, that’s plenty of visual info.
People who suspect the side dishes in Korean restaurants may be recycled are probably the ones who could not afford the better restaurants because they had to make it on tight budgets.
BTW, I have been wondering for many years why Korean food is not really popular in the West, considering the popularity of other Asian foods such as Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese etc. Would anyone be able to shed some light on that? I once thought maybe because Korean food tends to be hot, but Indian and Mexican foods are hot and popular. So it must be something else.
Gerry
To each his own. I think traditional side dishes are the star of Korean cuisine. Kimchi and namul are wonderfully delicious and healthy! The problem is that so many restaurants are making fushion side dishes like ‘Mexican salad’ and mixing perfectly good veggies with yucky stuff like hot dog pieces.
Gaemee,
I made the original quip because of a story I had read in the papers many years ago. Perhaps it was around the time that the practice was banned. That the side dishes would be re-used had never occurred to me prior to hearing about it in the news.
I love Korean food, and so did most of my foreign friends in Korea, but Korean food just hasn’t caught on here in the States. Most acquaintances here have never tried it, or if they have, they only like the grilled meats. I think the abundant use of red peppers and garlic does put off some people. In Korea, a lunch buddy and I often would often joke, “Find one dish on the table that isn’t red.”
“Korean food isn’t spicy,” an Indian woman told me. “It’s just hot because of the peppers.”
Chinese, Indian, and Japanese restaurants are more popular, Vietnamese probably as popular, but Indonesian and Malaysian are NOT more popular than Korean. Outside of large metropolitan areas, it would be hard to find an Indonesian/Malaysian restaurant, even in a college town. I lived in East Lansing, MI, and Champaign, IL; both cities had more than one Korean restaurant but not a single Indonesian/Malaysian.
I’ve also noticed that many Asian restaurants have Americanized their dishes. At a Thai restaurant, I was served a vegetarian curry with baby corn. I asked the owner and she confirmed that the veggies were not authentically Thai. American Chinese food is way off from the delicious dishes I enjoyed in China. Korean food, on the other hand, is usually authentic. Just compare the clientele. At a typical Chinese or Japanese restaurant,a majority of the patrons will not be ethnic Chinese/Japanese, whereas most diners in a Korean restaurant are Korean. Having spent four years enjoying the real thing in China, I cannot bring myself to eat kung pao chicken, beef and broccoli, or whatever is served at Chinese restaurants here, but Americans seem to love the stuff.
A couple of random observations:
* I have heard that Korean restaurants can be judged by the quality of their side dishes. Some are crap; some are expectionally good; most are likely somewhere in between. Ergo, there are bad side dishes out there (served at bad restaurants) and there are good side dishes (served at good restaurants). I’ve had both extremes and a lot in between…I’d say this rule of thumb holds up quite well, actually. Some of the freshest, most delectable side dishes I’ve had were at a restaurant that specialized in a delicious 산채 비빔밥 (mountain greens bibimbap) in a provincial (national?) park north of Daegu whose name I always forget (no, not Palgongsan: further north, and southeast of Andong).
* It is possible to have good food in cheap restaurants. I don’t quite know why, but when in Korea, I often end up eating at hole-in-the-wall restaurants in market areas. The best 떡만두국 (rice paste-dumpling soup) I’ve ever had is served at an outwardly-looking dive in a busy market area in Daegu. The key seems to be to find a place that does a lot of lunchtime deliveries to local businesses (ajummas with trays on their heads)…you have to be good if you want repeat business like that.
* Above all, whatever you want to eat, make sure you go to a place that specializes in that. The restaurant’s specialty might very well be noticeably better than anything else on the menu. And avoid the crappy restaurants!
Gaemee, Korean restaurants are very popular in L.A. and N.Y., and you can find reviews of them in the LA Times and Village Voice. Obviously the restaurants open where there are Korean communities, then other people try the food. The places in the U.S. I’ve been to didn’t “Americanize” the food except for us paying three times what it costs in Korea.
Good lord, don’t get me started on the price of Korean food here. I went to a BBQ restaurant in Boston after coming back from Seoul after developing a fondness for samgyupsal and laughed when I saw the menu. Prices: samgyupsal- 15.95, dwenjang jigae- 8.95, sangchu (they CHARGE you for it)- 3.95, chamisul- 12.00. I remember the days when I would get all of the above for 5000won in Sinchon.
“Nerdieboy”, that is why people who do not have money in the U.S. buy the cheaper, fast food and end up fat and with diabetes. Our food culture is the American Food Industry, Inc.
By that defininition, must be Geumo-san Provincial Park, NE of Daegu… Just a bit more up the expressway, to the west, is Jikji-sa at Hwangak-san — the cluster of shiktangs outside the temple always had the most amazing Sanchae-jeongshik meals I ever did enjoy… Don’t know why there, but it was. Dunno these days…
It was Juwang-san National Park in Cheongsong-gun. Beautiful place. As a bonus, around the southern edge of the park is Jusanji, the Choseon-era reservoir where Kim Ki-duk’s “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring” was filmed. (Sadly, the floating temple is no longer there!)
The other local specialty—actually, the main specialty—is 약수닭백숙, somewhat like samgyetang (chicken and ginseng soup for those wondering), but made with mineral water from Yaksutang in the northwest corner of the park. After a day of hiking, we gathered up several large bottles’ worth of spring water there and headed back home to Daegu, where my mother- and sister-in-law made one heck of a delicious soup.
I’ve been to Jikjisa. We might have had sanchae bibimbap, but then again it might have been guksu…it’s so many years ago, I can’t remember now!
Thanks for the tip on Geumho-san, though. We’re running out places to see in Gyeongsang-do, but I don’t think I’ve been there yet.
By the way, the smoked salmon bibimbap that KAL offers on some flights (at least ones out of the Pacific Northwest) is superb (at least, as economy-class airplane food goes!).
Korean food is peasant food. And some aspects of it is truly retarded. I never understood why Koreans liked to eat steaming, hot stews in the middle of summer. The SE Asians had the right idea with their vegetable and meat rolls wrapped in rice paper.
The food that the royalty ate was merely a wannabee mimick of Imperial China. No one eats dishes with names like Silver River Dragon Phoenix Pheasant in Korea.
Thanks to Sonagi and Michael for the comments. So it seems at least in some parts of America the Korean food is starting to gain some support. A few months ago I also heard the business commentators at Fox channel talk kimchi, and they all seemed to know what it was, and I was a bit surprised.
Heh… I don’t really see how baby corn is any less authentic Thai than the chili pepper (neither or which are truly indigenous to Thailand).
I never saw baby corn in any dish I ever ate during my three trips to Thailand.
I never saw baby corn in any dish I ever ate during my three trips to Thailand, nor did I ever see baby corn in any of the hundreds of meals eaten in a variety of restaurants in China.
You must have gone at lunch - I just called to make reservations for 4 on a Saturday evening, and the set menu is actually 48,000 won / person.
TGIFridays, though the food is crap, isn’t that much, unless your drinks come with little fancy umbrellas.
Thanks Simone for the information. We did go to lunch. I need to check to see what the difference is between lunch and dinner. They certainly do not change portions, thus I am a bit curious why the difference.
The 28,000 per person was the cheapest set menu.
Again, your point is what? Unless you’re absolutely hung-up over needing to feel like you’re eating the ‘genuine article’, (or just hate baby corn), I fail to see how using what’s available automatically equates to ‘americanization’. And anyhow, Thais Americanized their food a couple hundred years ago, when they started using chili peppers… Why should they stop there?
At any rate, while it might be slightly different from what you might find in the ‘old country’, what do you really expect? Restauranteurs (unless they also grow their own produce) have to work with what’s on the local market if they want really fresh food, which usually means going without the more ‘exotic’ ingredients. That doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘Americanization’ in my book (unless they start adding mayonnaise to stuff… that’s just gross.)
Zonath, the baby corn was merely an example. Plants and animals, like people, migrate and naturalize. Many Asian countries have incorporated chili peppers into their cuisines. Thankfully, they haven’t done the same with baby corn. My dining companions agreed that the food didn’t taste good and it didn’t taste like the food I had eaten in Thailand. In most of the Korean restaurants I’ve eaten at in the US, a few ingredients might be changed, but overall, the flavor is Korean. Both ethnic and American restaurant owners can and do form cooperative relationships with food producers. The local supermarket in that particular city had a huge Asian produce section with bitter melons and fresh lemon grass, rare for the midwest.
I like Korean food. I like Mexican food. But I do not like the increasingly popular trend in Northern California Korean restaurants of using jalapenos in Korean dishes. Decent-quality red peppers are extremely cheap here. Why substitute jalapenos?
Note that I have yet to see jalapenos in my Indian food. It’s only my Korean food that’s being tampered with. But now that I think about it, I have sighted jalapenos in the Vietnamese pho restaurant. They are not in the food itself, but are kept instead in small jars at each table. The Korean-American clientele add them to pho (soup), but I haven’t seen any Vietnamese-Americans eating them.
It appears that Korean-Americans in Northern California have developed a taste for jalapenos. Has this trend made it back to the mother ship? Are jalapenos showing up in your food in Seoul?
The “best” authentic Korean food you can get is at a Korean mommy’s table. Go fetch a Korean colleague or friend and coerce them to invite you to their mommys’ place, i.e. kitchen table. It’s cheap, too. A little present for ajumma and you can taste the variety of different regional specialities, if you’re wise enough, to pick your friends from all provinces
“…if you’re wise enough, to pick your friends from all provinces”
Hah hah hah!
A: “What are you doing tonight?”
B: “I’m sampling Jeolla-do cuisine”
A: “Huh???”
B: “I mean, I’m having dinner at Cheol-su’s house.”
Sugar Shin, the closest I’ve ever come to eating Korean mom’s food every day was the three months I spent in a boarding house. I even learned to enjoy a Korean-style breakfast because the side dishes were so good.