Champagne
Uncle

What I felt most acutely at Sosuheon — the recently crowned Michelin two-star — was the philosophy that Chef Kyungjae Park has spent a lifetime building. Over more than thirty years devoted entirely to sushi, through the Shilla Hotel and Kojima before opening his own space, he led Korea's first Michelin two-star sushi at Kojima and received the Michelin Mentor Chef Award in 2023. Sosuheon's own ascent to two stars this year is confirmation that his philosophy remains as vital as ever.

That impression arrived with the very first tsumami. Each seasonal ingredient was read with precision — umami present but never excessive, salinity calibrated to awaken the palate without overwhelming it, acidity functioning like negative space between courses. Nothing jutted forward; everything supported everything else. What struck me was not the ability to add flavour, but the ability to edit it.

Moving into the nigiri, that delicacy became even more pronounced. The neta was captured at its precise peak. The shari — warm, correctly salted, dissolving with a gentle give — existed not to assert itself but to make the fish more vivid. The technique Chef Park has refined over decades manifests not as spectacle but as a balance so natural the diner barely registers it. Michelin describes Sosuheon as a place where "the refined touch of a master who quietly focuses on forming each nigiri" defines the experience — and sitting before the counter, that description felt exactly right.

One particularly memorable moment was the lobster with truffle. It is a combination where truffle can easily colonise every other flavour, but here it did not. The sweetness and yielding texture of the lobster remained at the centre; the truffle was given the role of layering fragrance, nothing more. Luxurious ingredients were deployed, yet the ingredient itself remained the subject. The ability to allow each element its own character while resolving them into a single coherent flavour — this was perhaps the purest expression of Chef Park's gastronomic thinking on a single plate.

What lingered longest after the meal was the word restraint. Many restaurants reach for intensity to produce surprise. Sosuheon never loses its balance. Umami, salinity, acidity, temperature, aroma, texture, the arc of the course — every element is fitted together with the precision of joinery, continuing like a single unbroken narrative. That balance is harder to achieve than spectacle: Chef Park demonstrates this quietly, and overwhelmingly.

A Michelin two-star does not mean a single outstanding dish. It means a restaurant that sustains a high level of accomplishment across an entire course while communicating a chef's philosophy with consistency. Sosuheon made that standard feel entirely self-evident.

In the end, what was most delicious at Sosuheon was not any single dish. It was the balance that Chef Kyungjae Park never once let go of — from the first bite to the last.

Finding a place to drink wine isn't simply a matter of choosing somewhere to open a bottle. It means finding a place where the food is good, where it doesn't get in the way of the wine — and where, sometimes, it draws out the wine's full potential. On this particular night, that place was Mingles.

We brought one bottle ourselves; the rest we ordered from the menu, exploring as the evening unfolded. And those choices came naturally. As glasses changed, plates arrived, and the pace of conversation gradually slowed, the food at Mingles made its presence known — clearly, without exaggeration.

What struck me most was the harmony. Multiple layers were unmistakably present, yet none pushed forward to disrupt the whole. The flavours ran deep, the textures were delicate, and the aromas accumulated in quiet layers. Complex without being difficult, refined without being excessive. It is rare to find a dining experience where the word "balance" rises so naturally to mind.

Another pleasure was the unrepetitive rhythm. Rather than demonstrating consistent mastery through a single approach, the intention seemed to be giving guests as wide a range of flavour and texture as possible. Soft and sharp, warm and cool, the familiar and the unexpected — each plate arrived in a different register, so the meal felt less like a conventional course and more like a well-edited sequence of scenes.

What made it especially memorable were the dishes that felt genuinely new to the dining scene — flavours I hadn't encountered before, yet rendered with a conviction that made them immediately persuasive. Behind that lay the passion and curiosity of Chef Mingoo Kang. He starts from a foundation of familiar Korean sensibility, then pushes it one step further, translating it into a language that is distinctly Mingles.

The service moved like water. Present when needed, receding when not. The hospitality was genuinely warm — the temperature of the glass, the atmosphere of the table, the intervals between courses all stitched together seamlessly. There was a comfortable tension that only the finest restaurants seem capable of producing.

We came for the wine. We left remembering the restaurant. A night that began as a search for somewhere to drink became, in the end, a reminder of how elegantly great food, great service, and one chef's singular world can align. One more reason to return — and to bring another bottle.

On July 22nd, I sat down to experience the summer menu at Restaurant SAN. At the heart of this Michelin-recognised destination is Chef Seunghyun Cho — a Korean-born cook who spent years refining his culinary language in the world's most demanding kitchens before returning home.

His résumé reads like a pilgrimage through fine dining's inner sanctum: The French Laundry in Napa Valley, Troisgros in Roanne, Piazza Duomo in Italy, and Geranium in Copenhagen. He then made his way to San Francisco, joining Chef Corey Lee at the three-Michelin-starred Benu, where he spent roughly eight years as Chef de Cuisine.

Benu is a restaurant that interprets the flavours of Korea, China, and East Asia through the precision of Western fine dining. Working there, Chef Cho didn't simply acquire technique — he learned how to translate the taste of one culture into the language of another. That foundation of classical French rigour and deep East Asian sensibility is what underpins everything SAN stands for today.

He returned to Korea and opened his first independent restaurant in 2024. SAN is not a showcase for what he learned abroad — it is closer to a personal reckoning: after years away, a careful re-examination of Korean flavour through his own eyes and hands.

Two currents run through the food simultaneously. The first is the precision absorbed from world-class kitchens — the calibration of sauce density and temperature, the contrast of textures, the deliberate arc of flavour within a single plate. The second is the Korea lodged in his memory: jeotgal, dongchimi, milmyeon, dwaeji gukbap. Both are present, and neither overwhelms the other.

The Michelin Guide describes SAN as a restaurant that pairs the intensity of seasonal ingredients with complex sauces while maintaining restrained balance. It singles out the abalone jang, tofu flower, and pork gukbap as signature expressions of Chef Cho's imagination and Korean interpretation. That direction was unmistakable in the summer course.

The meal opens with the coolness and bright acidity of summer produce, then builds gradually — through the umami of seafood, the depth of fermentation, and the warmth of meat and fire — without ever becoming heavy. The sauces are layered but never mask the ingredient. The technique is evident but never intrudes. You sense the years in America and Europe, but every dish ultimately resolves toward Korea.

The space suits the name perfectly. Tucked underground, the restaurant is insulated from the city above. Inside, the architecture echoes forests and ridgelines — tree-ring textures, restrained lighting, dark tones — creating a quiet that allows the food and wine to hold the room.

In 2026, SAN received the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants One To Watch Award — recognition for a restaurant still early in its journey, yet already carrying the weight of everything Chef Cho accumulated across the world's great kitchens.

A chef who spent years in the world's finest kitchens, finally returning to the taste he was always moving toward. The summer at Restaurant SAN felt like both a record of the distance he has travelled and a clear signal of where he intends to go.