How a Michelin-Starred Seoul Restaurant Is Modernizing Korean Palace Dining — K-Town

Seoul, Korea is such a city of contrast. You have the old and the new. You have palaces next to gleaming skyscrapers. And at this restaurant, Hanchi Gongan, a chef is taking Korean palace dining, the most rarified and exclusive of Korean cuisine, and she's modernizing it, putting it into a fine dining setting. But she's not using Western techniques. She's not using French techniques. Instead, she's leaning on tried and true Korean techniques and modernizing Korean palace food. All right, so this is the first dish. It's called bugak. The technique is super interesting. When you have the glutinous rice that's spread on it, and she doesn't even season it afterwards, right? Because that's sort of a gut reaction. You're like, when you see something like this, you want to sprinkle salt on it, and the glutinous rice is already seasoned. When it gets fried, it just really goes into the deep fryer and it comes right out and it's ready to go. It just almost blooms. These are so addictive. And this is your first restaurant, and you decided to do this sort of palace-style cooking. So tell me why you want to do this cuisine. This is Chef Cho's take on juk. Instead of, you know, rice, it is hazelnut, pine nut, little pieces of shrimp. Even if you were to buy pine nuts today in the supermarket, like, a little pack like this is quite expensive. It's definitely something very regal and upscale and expensive and luxurious, even in a bowl of porridge. Ooh. The first thing I really taste is just that totally unique pine nut, right? Pine nut is such a strange ingredient, and especially when you get inside the porridge, you're getting nice, fresh chunks of shrimp. You know, I look to my right, and there is one of the largest palaces in Seoul. You know, it's the grand palace of Seoul. The grandness of it, right? It's so cool to see that juxtaposition. It contextualizes what Chef Cho is doing. That is really incredible. Such an amazing representation of what Korean food can be. It's fish, but it's been cooked just gently. It's been kissed with just enough fire and flame and heat. But at the same time, it's still kind of, it's still sort of raw. I'm really taken aback, especially with the sauce, the vinegary, lemony, like a hint of the floral persimmon. Abalone can be such a terrible thing if it's not cooked right. But this just melts in your mouth. Holy crap, this is so good. Stunning. Fresh tofu. It's made from a black bean. When you shell it, it's this wonderful green color. It almost looks like pandan to me. So you have pickled sunchoke and mushroom and watercress. It's a little more textured than your standard soybean tofu. It's kissed with this sort of sunchoke oil. But this is sort of lukewarm, it's cold. It's a nice little interlude. It's not about the class difference, but it's about giving people the opportunity to enjoy good food. I tried to bring that interest to the public by making this dish. I'm very excited because actually I've never had this dish. Even though it's a pretty legendary dish. What Chef Cho has done is, made it a little more compact, a little more consistent. What they've done is like cut these elegant little rectangles of various ingredients. Like tofu, this is an omelet with mussels chopped into it. This is the cod that she fried and there's a layer of egg on each side. Meatballs, walnuts, and then there's this sort of white mushroom, looks like kind of hen of the woodsy. I think that's where you get this juxtaposition, get the side by side of modern and old and traditional. This is the hanwoo beef bulgogi. It's made with hanwoo beef. The most exclusive and the most expensive Korean produced beef. This is like wagyu, very fatty, very rich, very small production. So that's what I'm having here and I'm very excited. Wow. It's really hard to make direct comparisons. Hanwoo beef, wagyu, or USDA prime. This is some damn good beef. The marinades are very complimentary, right? Hey, we're having Korean food. We're having a very exclusive Korean dish, right? Because of the soy, the way that the soy and the honey, the sweetness, the savoriness, and also the char. And interestingly enough, it makes total sense in this sort of royal meal because hundreds of years ago in the Joseon dynasty, you would not be able to eat beef unless you were the king. It was so exclusive and so expensive. Very juicy. I think that we tend to approach foreign culture first and then start with the global culture. I think that we tend to approach foreign culture first But what I want young chefs to do is to experience the beauty of our unique culture more deeply. So this is it, this is the final course you get here. It's called bapsang, and it's very royal, it's so elegant, there's little bites here, it's a nice finish to the meal, you know, we're finally getting some rice, and we get some soup, it feels familiar, it feels like something you would get at a traditional Korean restaurant. That jangjorim is amazing. Seaweed soup. Wow, I love how clean that is, precise, the essence of seaweed. This is a mustard leaf kimchi. This is a great final chapter of this meal. You know, I think what's wonderful about this meal is that you have the highest level of a certain cooking, and oftentimes, you know, because of the influence of international fine dining, that seems to be the standard, that seems to be the approach and the methodology. But here, the inspiration is Korean-Palestinian. Thanks so much for watching this episode of K-Town. If you want to see me eating my way through Korea, click right here.