Letters to Seoul Eats: I am looking Restaurants with Star Chefs!

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Letters to Seoul Eats

I love letters and these days, I’m getting quite a few because of the upcoming G20 Summit. Here’s a recent one. They are looking for star chefs. Any recommendations? Here’s the letter:

Dear Daniel,
I hope you are well. As F— mentioned I’ll be in Seoul this Thursday and Friday. I’d like to find a great food neighbourhood where a great chef is causing a stir and that has a great selection of food shops – delis, markets, wine-shops, patisseries, cafes or similar. Would you have any chefs and undiscovered foodie neighbourhoods in the city to recommend?
Any tips are most welcome!

Many thanks,
Liv

Read what I recommended after the jump
Dear Liv,

Young chef centered restaurants are quite rare in Korea. It’s a cultural thing because young chefs are not considered skilled enough and it is too expensive for them to open a restaurant here. Monocle already covered Jungsikdang’s Yim Jungsik, but the area he’s surrounding isn’t doing much.

I do recommend Star Chef’s Kim Ho-Nam, but the neighborhood he is in isn’t very great http://www.seouleats.com/2010/03/le-grand-cuisine-at-star-chef.html

There is Chez Simon in Samcheongdong. The chef is a very nice guy and he is turning out excellent cuisine: http://www.seouleats.com/search?q=chez+simon The street has other decent restaurants and eclectic shops and cafes as well, so that might be a good place to hang out.

The other option is over by Hong dae. I can’t think of any chef focused restaurants but there is a great range of shops, cafes, rice wine places, and bars. There is a great cat cafe as well. Oh, there were two bakeries over there that were pretty cool as well turning out excellent strawberry shortcakes.

Hongdae is also the arts university, so there are clubs, swing and flamenco clubs, gay and lesbian clubs, and karaoke rooms. I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, but I think it’s pretty cool.

Garasukgil is also very cool as well and it has some great bars. Why don’t you give me a call and I’ll see what I can do to help you out.

Sincerely,
Dan

Come take a cooking class or take a Culinary Tour in Seoul! http://www.ongofood.com

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.