PREVIOUS PAGE
Zaha Hadid’s
Dongdaemun
Design Plaza.
Above: Stylenanda
Pink Hotel’s
laundromat-style
shop. Opposite:
girls wearing
hanbok outside
Gyeongbokgung
Palace. Below,
clockwise from front:
Jungsik’s banchan
of foie gras mousse
and sweet pear
jam in a tofu chip;
smoked salmon
mousse cone; and
salted oyster ssäm.information about a destination, you can navigate
the subway, or a taxi driver can drop you within
a few blocks. Beyond that, a street number is more an
evocation than an indicator of a place. Even Sky needs
the help of a couple of shopkeepers to point us in the
direction of Stylenanda, which turns out to be a high
concept, five-storey grab bag of all that’s considered
cool by Korean youth. On the first floor, there’s a
buffet with oodles of its own 3CE cosmetics, on the
second floor is a bathtub filled with rose petals and a
bed frame suspended from the ceiling, on the fourth
floor, a retro laundromat-themed boutique, and on the
fifth floor, the Pink Pool Café, which specialises in
fairy floss. “The founder is in her thirties,” Stylenanda’s
pink-haired manager tells me, with a hint of awe that
someone so old could create something so cool.
On the southern side of the Han river, which
bisects the city, is Garosugil, an artsy shopping street
known for its ginkgo trees and high-end restaurants.
There are huge apartment blocks everywhere in Seoul,
but on the south bank they’re taller, shinier, newer.
Garosugil is part of Gangnam-gu, which literally means
“south of the river”; Korean pop singer Psy’s “Gangnam
Style”made the district famous when it went viral in
- Gangnam is known for its preponderance of
celebrities, particularly of the K-pop variety; as Sky
puts it, gesturing to a billboard featuring a band of four
poreless teens, “our major export product is boys”.
The sun is setting by the time we peruse an
ultra-modern art gallery, which turns out to be an
elaborate front for a brand of hand cream, and visit
a comic-book café lined with reading cubbies. At this
hour pojangmacha, or tent bars, are popping up on
street corners, their proprietors slinging Kloud and Hite
beers and fried chicken to roving troupes of men in
suits. We’re headed to a decidedly more upscale venue:
Jungsik, the restaurant that pioneered modern Korean
fine dining in Seoul and later brought it to New York.
Chef Jungsik Yim opened his restaurant nine
years ago in Apgujeong-dong, a neighbourhood
so sleek and moneyed it’s often referred to as the
Beverly Hills of Seoul. (There’s even a nightlife
destination called Rodeo Street.) Diners come
to Jungsik from all over the world – Chinese and
American, particularly, seem keen to capture the
careful plating for social media – and the servers
do, too. An Australian waiter explains the food is
French-Korean fusion, but don’t let the f-word put
you off. Beginning with delicate banchan, the small
dishes of pickles and vegetables customarily served
as sides, Jungsik offers a refined incarnation of
Korean cuisine that nonetheless stays true to its
punchy and compelling flavours.
Much of the credit goes to the chilli, gochugaru,
which plays a central role in the national cuisine.
Gochugaru is combined with salted shrimp,
garlic, ginger and spring onion and rubbed onto
cabbage to make kimchi, and it gives gochujang,
the fermented chilli paste, its characteristic heat
and colour. These staples pop up in unexpected
ways at Jungsik. Gochujang flavours an aïoli served
with a tender, crisp-fried octopus tentacle. Spicy
kimchi accents uni served on seaweed rice topped
with fried quinoa. “Kimchi is the way to understand
a family,” Sky says. “A bride’s first duty after marriage
is to learn how to make her mother-in-law’s.”
Chef Jungsik Yim’s kitchen prepares kimchi once
a week according to a family recipe, and its version
tastes pleasingly fizzy on the tongue.
Later I experience a heartier take on Korean
fare at Mokmyeoksanbang, a restaurant on Namsan
Mountain, south of the city centre. Climbing the➤