Atomix chef Junghyun “JP” Park runs the top-ranked restaurant in North America, but he says he still has a lot to learn. So last week, the Korean-born Park was back in Seoul, attending workshops about fermentation as part of the Hansik Conference.
At Korea House, World Institute of Kimchi principal researcher Chae-lin Park and chef/”godmother of Hansik” Hee-sook Cho kicked off the workshops by discussing the history and significance of Korean vegetable fermentation. Guests, including El Bulli legend Ferran Adrià, took notes on themes like how kimchi was born out of necessity—as a means of preservation when refrigeration didn’t exist, and as a way to make the ritual of eating rice more healthful and palatable.
Attendees, including world-renowned chefs José Avillez of Lisbon’s Belcanto, Varun Totlani of Mumbai’s Masque and Supaksorn “Ice” Jongsiri of Bangkok’s Sorn, listened intently as the kimchi experts talked about how there’s no designated eating order when you are greeted with an assortment of banchan. Guests learned that you should make kimchi with fewer ingredients if you want it to last longer, and that the most important thing is thinking about how flavors blend.
But what the Hansik Conference wants to emphasize, as it encourages chefs from all over the world to experiment with Korean ingredients and techniques, is that you can use all kinds of vegetables, fruits and even proteins to make kimchi. Yes, garlic, ginger, gochugaru and fish sauce are core ingredients for kimchi in Korea, but fermentation is about the freedom to preserve the best ingredients that are accessible to you.
At Korean barbecue restaurant Byeokje Galbi, an institution known for its short ribs, chef Won-suk Yoon walked the visiting chefs through the wonders of Hanwoo beef. He went over the nuances of the eight different parts of short ribs and how the intramuscular fat of Korean beef is ideal for grilling. But even at this beef demonstration, kimchi took center stage as Yoon explained how fermented vegetables cleanse the palate, add nutrients and aid digestion when enjoying meat-heavy meals. Byeokje Galbi, not incidentally, has its own kimchi factory.
The next morning, Onjium chef Sung-bae Park walked everyone through Gyeongdong Market, which features more than 1,000 stalls selling produce, meat, seafood, herbal medicine and much more. We sampled chestnuts, dried persimmons, mushrooms and fish cakes. We talked about how food can cure ailments. Totlani said he had recently found some cordyceps, more expensive than white truffles, in India and was figuring out ways to prepare them.
Then it was off to Onjium, which is a research institute with a Michelin-starred restaurant. Onjium is an inspiring place that creates clothing, architecture and delicious food that honors Korea’s past while thinking about the tastes and the needs of the present and the future. Pickling, for example, is about preserving your favorite foods, so you can enjoy them year-round.
One dish that we ate at Onjium was made with 108 different types of rice, some grown by the restaurant. Park, Adrià, Avillez, Totlani and Jongsiri sat together for lunch. The table discussed how subspecies of ingredients are born. Adrià, who fancies himself a provocateur, reminded Park that he needed to read 180 pages, in Spanish, of El Bulli materials before his conference panel. Adrià told Totlani to think about what makes a carrot taste like a carrot. Adrià asked guests why they don’t smell their food before they eat it. His goal, as always, was to stimulate conversation and make people consider things in different ways.
Before dinner at KwonSookSoo, a two-Michelin-star restaurant with its own kimchi cart, chef Woo-joong Kwon got back to basics as he explained how any vegetable can be the main ingredient for kimchi and how you put in salt to reduce moisture. He went through a demonstration of making a simple scallion kimchi with apple, gochugaru, sansho, plum syrup and fish sauce that you store at room temperature overnight and then refrigerate for about five days. This recipe is notable because there is no garlic. Kimchi, as all the guests knew by now, is about riffing.
Kwon’s demo led to a conversation about how chefs can channel and enhance taste memories when they cook. What are the flavors you grew up with? How do you bring them back and amplify them? And in the case of KwonSookSoo, why not store caviar in your kimchi refrigerator?
The next day, Ellia Park, JP’s wife and business partner, took the stage at the historic Samcheonggak cultural center to moderate a conversation about the future of gastronomy. During this discussion, Totlani explained that he had cooked Western food before realizing that he was proud of his Indian heritage and wanted to celebrate it. Chefs, including Mingoo Kang of Seoul’s Mingles, JP Park and Avillez, talked about the importance of apprenticeship and how technology like A.I. should make chefs want to return to the fundamentals of cooking. Jongsiri advised the crowd not to open their own restaurant because the work is more grueling than glamorous, but he then made his bigger point—that doing what you love can lead to the ultimate success.
Ellia, who invited Observer to the Hansik Conference, was at the forefront of assembling a group of prominent international chefs in Korea last week. Nanro, a nonprofit that the Parks and JY Choi created, got a head start on the conference by bringing in New York chefs Jihan Lee of Nami Nori, Fidel Caballero of Corima, Suzanne Cupps of Lola’s and Yuu Shimano of Yuu for a whirlwind tour of Korean food culture. (Korea overall has become an inspiring destination for the world’s culinary elite. Separate from the Hansik Conference, prolific chef/Culinary Class Wars star Edward Lee, Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert, Labyrinth’s LG Han and Providence’s Donato Poto visited Seoul for different reasons last week. At the same time, both former Saison culinary director Paul Chung and Nunchi’s Lexie Park coincidentally had their weddings in Korea over the weekend.)
As we spoke to all the chefs at the Hansik Conference, it was clear that this was a group of people who are doing what they love.
“Life for me is about connections,” Avillez said during a captivating presentation that touched on everything from tech-driven creativity to how the kitchen “serves as humanity’s shared dialect of creativity and culture.” Avillez stressed that “every cook is an ambassador,” and “every restaurant is a bridge between communities and traditions,” and “every dish is a catalyst for social innovation.” And, clearly, JP and Ellia Park are great culinary ambassadors for Korea.
Avillez’s time on stage, in many ways, summed up the message and energy of the Hansik Conference. Korean food and culture is popular around the world, but this is about the people behind it more than any trend. It’s about understanding, as JP and Ellia Park do, that who you are and where you came from should be a crucial part of the way you aim to change the world.
And as Avillez said, “Dreaming big takes the same effort as dreaming small.”
But imagination doesn’t matter much if you don’t put in the work.
“I have to study,” JP said. “It’s important to understand origins.”
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