Seoul Korea is such a city of contrasts. You have the old and the new you have palaces
Next to gleaming skyscrapers and at this restaurant hon Qi Gong Gong a chef is taking Korean Palace dining the most
rarefied 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 Pocock
The technique is super interesting when you have the glutinous rice that's spread on it
And and she doesn't even season afterwards right because that's sort of a gut reaction
you're like when you see something I just 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. So almost balloons. These are so addictive
And this is your first restaurant and you just have to do this sort of Palace style cooking so tell me why you want to
this cuisine
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And she didn't have kindergarten models around Rita Hachi do listen, you know, she doesn't think I get to resolve
This is chef shows take on soup instead of you know rice it is
hazelnut pine nut little pieces of shrimp even if you were to buy pine nuts today and
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
The first thing I really taste is just that totally unique pine nut right pine nut is such a
Strange ingredient and especially you get inside the porridge. You're getting nice fresh chunks of shrimp
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Know I looked to my right and there is
One of the largest palaces we sold, you know, it's the grandness of it. Right? It's so cool to see that juxtaposition
it
Contextualizes what chef Joe is doing
That's really incredible such an amazing
Representation of what Korean food can be it's fish but it's been cooked
Just gently and kissed with just enough fire and flame and and and heat
But at the same time it's still kind of it's still sort of raw
I'm really taken aback and especially with the sauce the 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 is so good
Stunning
Fresh tofu, it's made from a black bean when you shell it. It's just wonderful
Green color that almost looks like pond on to me. So you have pickled sunchoke and
mushroom and watercress
It's a little more textured than your standard soybean tofu
It's pissed with this sort of Sancho oil, but this is sort of lukewarm. It's cold. It's a nice little interlude kitchen
You ate a guy do that
Totally listen to this, you know good on Qi Gong. What's the time? They've been destroyed under their nose and go yourself
Let me see a punch and we've got full did we make it through a few years? Oh, no, don't wait go
I'm very excited because actually I've never had this dish, you know, it's a pre legendary edition
what chef chose done is made a little more compact 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 Shu fried and
There's a 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 woods II I think that's where you get this
juxtaposition
get the side-by-side of modern and
an old and traditional
Hmm
This is the huh. No beef
Pierogi it's made with honey. We've the most exclusive and the most expensive
Korean produce 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 ha no beef Wagyu or USDA prime
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 tolson dynasty
you would not be able to eat beef unless you were the king it was so exclusive and so
so expensive
Very juicy we go when I talk wonder Chopra, he saw sri batter
The robot anchor on the scepter detachable Shiva running go out on my own. Mmm. That was a maggot and a
tourniquet chairmanship to the buoy
We won
Nagarjuna number if talk good keeping the key Manchu kisses all korekara gotta go
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So this is this is it this is the final course you get here it's called pops on and it's very royal
It's so Alec and there's little bites here. It's a nice finish to the meal
You know, we're finally getting some rice and we got some soup
It feels familiar feels like something you would get like at a traditional Korean restaurant
I've Chengdu name 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 often times
You know because of the influence of international fine dining that
seems to be the standard that seems to be the approach in the methodology, but here the inspiration is
Korean Palace dining
Thanks so much for watching this episode of k-town if you want to see me eating my way through Korea click right here