Yes, i’m not knocking Ki. Given Jungsik’s alumni, it seems like good vibes in how things branched off to different restaurants. Jua’s signature caviar gimbap is maybe their own take on Jungsik’s gimbap, perhaps like how the cod milt one at Ki is.
I had a friend (just a home chef) make the Jungsik octopus for a dinner party, and we were talking about the head and tarragon, which is why this came to mind.
I think Eater could’ve clarified that the octopus dish may be an homage instead of making it sound like it’s his signature.
Homages by alumni are common - think dishes made famous by Pierre Koffmann, Eckart Witzigmann, Keiji Nakazawa, Michel Bras, etc. by chefs who trained under those luminaries. Eunji Lee’s excellent trompe l’oeil banana at Jungsik from her time with Cedric Grolet is a very cool evolution that’s distinctly Korean tasting, personal, and an all star dessert in its own now. In the Korean modern food world, Jungsik Yim is quite a leader. It’s very different when people take dishes from places they never worked at.
Yeah, I think homage would have been a better way to put it - though I guess kinn’s marketing it as a signature back then certainly didn’t help since we can only assume so much about relationships. Love seeing alumni cement legacies and entirely agree with about non-alums taking dishes.
On another note, how’d it turn out at the dinner party? Worth trying?
Disclaimer: i am a former cook that still knows a lot of people in the kitchen scene.
Staging is absolutely not the same as working in a place. Maybe in many places in Europe where stages are often just unpaid short term employment, but lots of cooks present stages as experience. That is shady.
Hwoo Lee and that ilk have kind of built a reputation/living off of executing restaurant/bar recipes and turning them into content. Unfortunately in the world we live in there is a much better life to be had being a very handsome person with video editing skills and just enough know how than there is to being an actual cook living the life and doing the work.
I think another interesting question is about how food media/PR sell chefs to us. It’s kind of a game. Ki staged at benu and barely worked at Atomix, but those restaurants are often used as evidence of his experience, despite the fact that the restaurant he actually put in real time at was Jungsik…but now that Jungsik has 3 stars that’ll probably change!
I can’t speak for other food content creators, but H Woo is a really good cook and has done a few pop ups where he’s putting our actual restaurant meals. Not many other food content creators have the ability or courage to do that.
Honestly i think these kinds of comments illustrate the gulf between appreciating good food and understanding what a restaurant does day to day.
Not doubting h woo can cook a bit. Just saying I know the average high end restaurant cook could put on a delicious one off events like once a year with the backing of several corporate sponsors, collaboration with two actual lifelong cooks/chefs with years of michelin star experience and successful restaurants, the ready made infrastructure of a kitchen staff and operational kitchen, etc, etc. I do know for a fact that people who have had to work h woo and other influencer pop ups have reported them being absolute nightmares to be a part of.
yes the Jungsik recipe on HMart is totally decent for home cooking. the braise and fry creates a pretty good texture. good enough for a dinner party, at least.
gojuchang aioli can be used for a lot of things the next day.
i’m not really familiar with hwoo lee. staging is a different thing than being a sous/cdp of course, but given the culture and demands of fine dining, it seems mutually beneficial. staging seems to be a quick but important look into the beginning journey of understanding how a kitchen works.
i think it partially comes down to the media / promotion in how the experience is portrayed. regardless of past experience, what matters at the end of the day is how the food is. you can have someone with little notable experience creating something great, or someone oversell and ride another’s coattails and create something unremarkable. i’m not at all in the F&B industry or have any connections, so i’m just speaking from a diner’s pov.
anyway, i think that maybe the focus should a bit be more on how the meal delivered. it seems positive so far from the reviews above.
the
sounds like a very nice follow up to the lamb, morel, and smoked tomato. nice flow to the menu. i think the smoked tomato and then porcini makes a lot of sense, and the porcini with cacao and tea leaf complement with some nice savory and bitter elements to transition to the end.
and finishing with omija, good call. a little sour, not too sweet. i really liked omija tea to end a meal when i visited Seoul for the first time.
imo comparing “taking” a dish from a restaurant one’s staged at and putting it on a restaurant menu is at least an entire gulf (of Mexico) away from making a video cooking that dish at home or in a commercial kitchen or whatever.