Korean food gets Michelin-star makeover in Seoul restaurants

Enlarge this image

Chef Joseph Lidgerwood prepares to cook beef over a wood fire at Evett restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 7. Jun Michael Park for NPR hide caption

Chef Joseph Lidgerwood prepares to cook beef over a wood fire at Evett restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 7.

SEOUL, South Korea — How do you reinterpret a simple traditional dish into food that wins awards and commands a high price at a fine dining restaurant? Here's an example:

For a final course at Evett, a restaurant in Seoul's trendy Gangnam district, Australian chef Joseph Lidgerwood grills a chunk of Korean beef over a wood fire.

Then, he distills an inexpensive bowl of white rice and a dollop of brown doenjang — a paste of salty, fermented soybeans — reducing them to a small white puree with brown stripes, to accompany the beef.

Lidgerwood confesses that "the thing that I always wrestle with at fine dining restaurants is that sometimes it never tastes as good as the traditional Korean stuff."

State of the World from NPR What's the Recent Hype Behind Korean Fine Dining?

He says he asks himself, "this tastes amazing, how can we bring this back to Evett? How can we make this into a dish that can be served at a location like this?"

While foreign-run, Evett is part of Seoul's burgeoning gastronomic scene driven largely by South Korean chefs.

Their success in fine-tuning Korean food helped them scale the heights of haute cuisine, adding the taste of success to the many other trophies of South Korea's cultural power.

Life Kit How to start cooking Korean American food

And en route to the top, Korean chefs and their creations have gotten a strong boost from other South Korean cultural exports, which have whetted international appetites for other Korean cultural genres.

In New York, two of 12 Michelin star awards last year, and three of 19 in 2022, went to Korean restaurants.

"Something that I never thought would happen in my lifetime, especially to Korean food, is happening," muses Cho Hee Sook, often referred to as the "Godmother of Korean cuisine."

She got her start in the 1980s, when the only fine dining in South Korea was in hotels, and chefs were considered a lowly profession.

Evett, meanwhile, has been in the Michelin Guide since 2020, with one star for its high-quality cooking.

Enlarge this image

The main dining hall of the Michelin one-star-rated restaurant Evett. Jun Michael Park for NPR hide caption

The main dining hall of the Michelin one-star-rated restaurant Evett.

Lunch at Evett costs about $114 per person, dinner about $119, not including wine.

"I'm not from Korea, but I have a love affair with Korean ingredients," says Evett's chef Lidgerwood. His aim with all his dishes, he says, is "to present them in different ways, to make people kind of look back at the past."