Champagne
Uncle

On the 8th of July, I visited Onjium, a Michelin one-star restaurant situated to the west of Gyeongbokgung Palace. To call it simply a Korean fine dining restaurant would be to leave too much unsaid. Onjium is first a traditional culture research institute, founded in 2013, which investigates Korean ways of dressing, eating and living — ui, sik, ju — and attempts to re-articulate them in a contemporary language. The restaurant is where the research of the food atelier, mat-gongbang, is realised as actual dishes. True to its name — which carries the sense of building something properly and wholly — every plate is accompanied by inquiry and interpretation.

The kitchen is led by Head Chef Eunhee Cho and Executive Chef Seongbae Park. Chef Cho is a certified inheritor of Joseon royal court cuisine, having studied at the Royal Cuisine Research Institute before serving as education team leader and adjunct university professor; she was among the founding members of Onjium in 2013, and in 2026 was named Asia's Best Female Chef. Chef Park bridges the atelier's research into the lived experience of a restaurant meal. Together, rather than restoring historical recipes wholesale, they recompose them in relation to today's ingredients and sensibility.

The season is legible in Onjium's courses. A summer progression might begin with grains and vegetables, gather weight through fish and seafood, and settle into meat and rice before closing with fruit and desserts that reimagine traditional beverages. The forms are recognisable — porridge, dumpling, jeon, jjim, noodle, banchan — but the concentration, temperature and texture of each dish have been quietly and precisely calibrated.

Seasonal markers such as corn, local fish, crustaceans, white cucumber and cornelian cherry appear when summer calls for them. Because Onjium's menu shifts continuously with research themes and ingredient availability, the more rewarding way to approach the meal is not to track individual dishes but to observe how a single season moves through the arc of an entire course.

The room speaks as clearly as the food. Exposed concrete, metal and warm timber come together in a space that is modern without coldness. White tables, composed tableware and ceramics bearing the evidence of a craftsperson's hand rest in considered negative space. At the counter facing the open kitchen, the choreography of the kitchen is visible and close.

Through wide windows, Gyeongbokgung Palace, the trees of Seochon and the ridge of Bugaksan extend outward. In the middle of the day, natural light travels deep into the room and changes the quality of glaze and surface on every piece of pottery. To look down at a palace while eating food that departs from centuries-old techniques: it is here that Onjium's space and its cooking make their most persuasive argument together.

Onjium's food neither defamiliarises tradition into strangeness nor fixes it behind glass like a museum object. It honours old records and techniques while drawing them quietly forward to the point where we might find them delicious, today. What I encountered at Onjium in July was less a past version of Korean food than Korean food as it continues to be made — across a long time, and still now.

A restaurant's transformation is rarely announced by a change in a few dishes. What truly signals change is the decision about what to place at the centre — and in which direction to extend the restaurant's existing identity. The shift perceptible at Sutimun since Chef Yunhaeng Heo took over the kitchen in February begins exactly there.

Sutimun was originally built around a sequence dining concept centred on charcoal and moon — a progression through vegetables, seafood, poultry and meat, each course composed like a discrete scene, bound together by charcoal cookery, craft objects and spatial design into a single coherent narrative. The visible hearth and the rhythm of service around it were unmistakably Sutimun's own.

Under Chef Heo, Sutimun has not abandoned that identity. Instead it is deepening it — moving in a distinctly more Korean direction. The current episode is titled 고궁진연 古宮珍宴 — Royal Feast, the Resonance of Time: the culinary culture of the old palace, the work of contemporary Korean craft artists, and the produce of regional growers, brought together over charcoal and rendered as a modern course.

Not reproduction, but translation. Court cuisine is often imagined as elaborate presentation and formal display. But its essence lies elsewhere — in the balanced use of meat, vegetable and seafood; in the ordered deployment of diverse techniques (steaming, grilling, hot pot, pan-fried, blanched, raw) within a single meal; in the accumulated craft of dedicated cooks, transmitted across generations. Chef Heo's approach is less the restoration of historical dishes than the translation of court cuisine's underlying order, harmony and precision into the language of today.

At Sutimun, charcoal is not merely a concept. It sears a surface quickly, locking in texture; it concentrates the moisture and sweetness within an ingredient; it adds a low, persistent register of aroma that steaming or simmering cannot. But charcoal also carries a risk — if the smoke is too assertive, it overwhelms delicate ingredients and pulls every dish toward the same flavour. The grammar of court cuisine, which prizes restraint and balance, could easily clash with an emphatic char.

What impressed me most was precisely that Sutimun does not make charcoal the protagonist. In the dishes that worked best, the char was not the first thing you registered — it was the last: a brief trailing note that arrived after the sweetness and umami of the ingredient had already been drawn out. This is cookery that uses fire not to demonstrate fire, but to clarify what the ingredient already is.

Orchestrating the refinement of court cuisine and the raw energy of charcoal within a single course is not straightforward. Rather than forcing the two together, Sutimun positions charcoal as a punctuation mark inside the ordered flow that court cuisine provides. That restraint is the most persuasive evidence of what has changed under Chef Heo.

Sutimun's transformation is interesting because it has not erased the past in the name of novelty. Placing the time of the palace on the heat of charcoal; finding, in the quick rhythms of Yeouido, the long breath that Korean food has always carried. That is the most meaningful thing Chef Yunhaeng Heo's Sutimun is showing us now.

Four of us visited Hashira, a sushi-ya in Cheongdam. When people think of sushi omakase, a particular kind of quiet tension usually comes to mind — the lowered voices, the eyes following the chef's hands, the brief pause of breath as each piece is set down. That concentration, particular to Edomae sushi, is absolutely present at Hashira.

But Chef Joohwan Yoon's counter is not completed by tension alone.

The four of us exhale together at a single piece, glasses make their rounds, the temperature of the conversation rises. A natural exchange opens up between chef and guests. By the midpoint of the meal, the counter has quietly transformed — no longer a solemn stage, but a small celebration in which everyone is a participant. Chef Yoon stands at its centre.

The shari at Hashira has a presence that insists on being noticed. Rather than retreating quietly behind the neta, it uses acidity and salinity to draw out the flavour of the fish — cleansing the palate on richer, fattier pieces. In leaner fish, sweetness and delicate texture come forward; in oiled neta, the flavour doesn't linger heavily. It is precisely why Hashira is described as a place where the character of the shari is clear, and sake pairings feel entirely natural.

The nigiri leaves its mark not through size or flourish, but through balance and timing. The thickness of the neta, the score of the knife, the weight and temperature of the shari — each is calibrated so that fish and rice move as one. The moment it enters the mouth, the texture of the neta arrives first; the shari follows, dissolving softly as acidity and umami extend into a single, continuous finish. Rather than making any one piece overwhelming, the course is designed to carry you naturally toward the next — a sushi built around the arc of the whole.

But the reason Hashira feels like a celebration is not simply that the food and sake are generous. Chef Yoon is as skilled at reading the breath of the entire counter as he is at forming each piece. He watches the pace at which guests eat, the moment a glass is lifted, the point at which conversation among the four of us reaches its warmth — and places the next dish accordingly. When concentration is called for, he draws every eye at the counter toward his hands. When tension runs high, a natural word or two from him dissolves it.

That evening at Hashira, the four of us fell quiet together over a single piece of sushi — and then laughed again, almost at once. The precision of Edomae technique and the warmth of genuine hospitality found each other naturally within the same counter. The night the four of us shared became something that outlasted any single piece of sushi — a memory a little larger than the meal itself.

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.