Le Grand Cuisine at Star Chef

Each Meal at Star Chef starts out with a bowl of broccoli with bits of caramelly garlic. The radiant green will prepare your eyes and stomach for the feast ahead. Star Chef is a place I go to to indulge in gastronomic wonders. I mean the menu hasn’t changed in a long time, but it’s nice to know that you can get great food in the city.

The wine menu is something that needs some work. There aren’t many exceptional bottles on the menu. Since we were going to have the whole trout tonight, we first went with a reisling. It really couldn’t hold up to the spice. I recommend a cocktail or a beer instead.

The wine is what it is.

Here is the mushroom and beef salad. It is a humongous salad- easily enough to feed two people till they are full. The slightly citrus and creamy notes of the dressing paired well with the savory, grilled morsels of beef. The mushrooms added a earthy note too the dish. The whole cloves of roasted garlic really stand out here. There was one slight problem, the zing of the chili peppers on the dish killed the subtle notes of all the other elements here. Next time I will ask for them on the side.

Yummy and large…29,000won.

The shrimp were in a hot and sour sauce. Meh, not my favorite- but because shrimp isn’t my favorite thing to eat. The batter is light and the sauce is velvety and that’s all I’m going to say about that. 28,000 won.

Erdinger Beer on Draft

Here’s the tour de force dish at Star Chef. It’s a whole fried fish topped with cilantro, paper thin onions, and greens in a lemon ponzo sauce. It’s overwhelmingly beautiful and the taste is worth going back for over and over again. Chef Kim only uses the freshest fish and he skillfully fries it so it tastes greaseless. (Market Price ours was 46,000)

The cheeks are the best part.

2010.3.19 | 지도 크게 보기

Josh Hall from www.winekorea.asia and I went to Star Chef near Maebang Station with another mystery guest. We had the full spread of awesomeness: the beef and mushroom salad, fried shrimp, and whole fried trout. It’s on the Orange Line, Maebang Station Exit 4.

Star Chef: 서울시 강남구 도곡동 417-2/ Seoul, Gangnam-gu, Dogok-dong 417-2 (click here for the map – Korean only)

02-529-8248 RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED

About the Author

Daniel

Daniel Gray is a Korean adoptee that returned to Korean in 2005 because he wanted to try and find his birth mother and to learn about Korean culture. He started a restaurant review blog in 2007, www.seouleats.com, that became a local and international hit. He and his blog has been featured in the New York Times, Monocle Magazine, The Kimchi Chronicles, Bizarre Foods, Rudy Maxa, Olive Magazine, Euronews and much more. He now is a partner at O’ngo Food Communications (www.ongofood.com), which is a culinary tourism and consulting company that offers Korean cooking classes and restaurant tours to travelers. Their food tours and cooking classes are ranked as one of the top attractions in Seoul according to tripadvisor.

Korean Eats