Korean Tajarin, with garlic

The event that has just taken place in the capital of South Korea was two events in one. The Seoul Food Festival has a popular side and a professional one. The first consisted, on Thursday 5th May, of a day with food in the streets, which was not always street food, for sure not the one presented by the ten speakers, including Pascal Barbot and Niko Romito. The Korean organisers and the master of ceremonies Jean-Pierre Gabriel, Belgian with horizons as wide as the planet, chose a nice name: Picnic on the bridge. Bridges abound here since Seoul is an endless series of islands, peninsulas and mainland that all need to be united.

On Saturday and Sunday, instead, in the reception hall of the Four Seasons, there was the Chef Summit, a series of meetings opened by a chef, Niko Romito, and closed by a chocolatier, Dominique Persoone. In between, some faces that were new to me, and some that were not, like Pascal Barbot, the less connected with the world chef. His Astrance in Paris has just a landline. That’s it. Just like everyone else did until 20-25 years ago when e-mails and mobile phones started to be popular. Barbot and L’Astrance still don’t have a web address nor a website, let’s not speak of social networks. Those who want to discover his cooking know where to find him.

And then there’s Shuzo Kishida, three stars in Tokyo, who slices garlic and onion like no other, perhaps only his Japanese colleagues. Paul Pairet and the Ultraviolet world in Shanghai and Mathieu Viannay’s celebration of patè en croute, a classic France enhances with a world renown chef. It is right to live in the present, yet some masterpieces should not be forgotten. As for the sweet side, Keiko Nagae and Dominique Persoone, the former nice and precise, the latter volcanic even though the Korean audience found it hard to grasp the serious side of his various provocations.

The street food, the lessons, the gala dinners but also the meals in town. I’m sorry I didn’t have two extra days to visit at least a couple of Italian restaurants. The Four Seasons has Boccafino, with chef de cuisine Loris Pistillo, while Sebastiano Giangregorio is the executive at Lotte. There will be another occasion. Korean food, as it should be, showed a growing quality that wasn’t planned, and for this very reason I found even more remarkable. A crescendo.

The first dinner was at Congdu. Vivian Han saysNew Korean Cuisine on the business card, knowing that in order to capture the attention of the world, of press and social networks, with the Michelin guide arriving and the 50Best to climb, a massive celebration of tradition is not enough. Hence that three-letter word, new, sounds magic, a picklock so as not to be left behind.

The following day, the magic of a lunch in the home-showroom of Lee Jong Kuk, an eclectic figure, a refined interpreter of his country’s food. I already wrote about him here.

And now Saturday’s lunch. Mingles being fully booked and too far away, I found a place in another place that’s a guarantee, Jungsik, the name and surname of the chef united, Jung Sik. It opened in 2009 and today is also in New York. Jung began by offering new Korean cuisine, and now that he’s praised in Manhattan he’s serving New Korean Fine Dining. The octopus, beefsteak tartare, lobster and chicken are hard to forget.

For dinner, instead, a change of programme. Since the restaurant offer in Buddhist temples was suspended for the holidays, a ritual Gabriele Zanatta masterfully illustrated here, like dining in our monasteries, I reserved a table at Dadam, at chef Jung Jae-Duk’s who learnt the rituals from the nuns and then repeated them in a place seating 260 people divided into many small and big rooms. No fish or meat, or butter, milk and dairy products, a vegan menu that charmed us. Pascal Barbot was impressed «because when you present a vegetarian menu in Europe you never know exactly what to offer, legumes and salads perhaps, yet it’s never fine and authentic dining. Here we dined without realising there was no trace of animals whatsoever».

The Buckwheat noodles with ripe tomatoes and the wild herb pancakes, also with buckwheat, were poetry. It looked like eating beef hanged and then seasoned.

The last stop on Sunday night at Soigné, with chef Jun Lee. Contemporary cuisine of Seoul, a nice lesson on Saturday, a gratifying dinner yesterday, Jun learnt the ropes at the Culinary Institute of America, then in establishments such as the Lincoln Center where the then chef, Jonathan Benno, taught him the art of egg tajarin. He presents them with toasted garlic and parsnip leaves in the usual tasting menu as the à la carte menu is almost abolished, as in every corner of the planet in places of this kind. His selections are a result of the multicultural identity of the Korean capital, a mix of Italy, France and America through with local ingredients. He could even throw away in the garbage the truffle oil while it’s strange to notice that a chef who defined his cuisine as 50% Italian has never acquired experience in one of our restaurants.

This thought acquires even more importance if you think that Jun Lee is also the owner of Doughroom. And not, as one could imagine, the rice, buckwheat or soy noodles you can find everywhere in Asia. Our very own pasta: pappardelle, garganelli, cavatelli, agnolotti, cannelloni… Do not laugh thinking about who knows what vileness when cooking. Stefano Di Salvo, who’s in charge of the Italian offer at JW Marriott, says the food is good. I wish I had an extra half day to taste it myself.