Jungsik

Jungsik bills itself as specialising in New Korean cuisine. When planning the trip to Seoul it seemed like a good place to check out to compare with other Korean food experiences and a New York Times review of the NYC branch in February added to the anticipation. Sunday lunch was booked and on the day, a quick taxi ride meant I would be in the Gangnam-gu district in plenty of time. Despite a few false starts down increasingly narrow back streets the taxi driver eventually found the address. As we drew up he pointed to an anonymous looking building to show where the restaurant should be but I was none the wiser. 

It was a cool, bright day, so with time to spare ahead of the reservation it made sense to have a stroll round the immediate area. I ended up in Dosan Park, a public garden, established to commemorate An Chang-Ho who was an independence activist in the early 20th century. The sheltered park was mostly very peaceful until a large marmalade cat chose its moment to disperse a huge flock of magpies. Brief mayhem and it all settled back down before I sauntered back to the general area of the restaurant, even though I had no idea where it actually was. Luckily, a car park attendant was able to help and after a trip to the third floor in the anonymous rusty building I was there. The lift had been no more informative for non-Korean speaker about the location of the restaurant than the sign outside. 

The entrance to the restaurant and hostess station was directly opposite the lift. The main dining room consisted of two tables for two people, a table for 10 and a table for 8. The larger tables were already in full swing for lunch. There are also couple of smaller rooms off the main area with single tables for private dining. The mood is quite formal with linen tablecloths on the tables. The tall windows at the end of the room were shaded with dark Venetian blinds although occasionally there was a flicker of shadows from magpies chasing each other in Dosan Park. 

It is possible to see some of the kitchen activity although a frosted glass window screens the majority of the view of the pass. The lunch menu was a choice between a 4-course menu for 40,000 won or the chef’s 5-course tasting menu for 70,000 won. Some of the individual dishes on the a la carte meant that the four course option was more attractive option. Bottled water was ordered and it was a bit of a surprise to end up with Harrogate Spring Water on the table, but not unpleasant. 

Orders taken and three amuses bouches were delivered to the table. The first was a small portion of homemade tofu with soybean paste. It looked tempting but the tofu managed to be next to tasteless and it needed the soybean paste to redeem it. The next was a lobster chip with curry sauce. This was the star of the three. The light lobster crisp had a deep satisfying lobster flavour and the curry sauce packed a nice spicy flavour with some heat too. The third amuse bouche of cured salmon combined with cucumber, green fruit (grape) and wasabi dressing steered towards a light, refreshing way to round things off before the actual meal. Bread was excellent. Warm Korean green pepper and cheese baguette rolls were so tasty that I ended up asking for more. 

The first course was Junksikdang Mushroom. This consisted of a slow-cooked egg, dashi sauce, kimchi, mushrooms, cucumber and a parmesan chip on top. The parmesan chip was wonderfully light and airy and its flavour combined well with the mushrooms and the dashi broth. The kimchi added punch in a supporting role. The flavours combined well but had a sharp edge until the star of the dish was properly introduced. Bursting the egg yolk into the mix tied everything together where the lusciousness of the egg made the dish much more decadent. The egg and the kimchi combined particularly well. This was a lovely start to the meal proper. 

In a departure to any other menu in a finer dining restaurant the next course was a bibimbap course. I’d only learnt how to eat bibimbap properly on the flight over (Thank you Air Asiana). My choice was the sea urchin dish. This combined sea urchin with kimchi, kim puree, fried millet and onion.  Stirring all ingredients together to make a uniform mix before eating is totally contradictory to how a middle class English kid is raised so I couldn’t resist holding some of the sea urchin aside from the other ingredients. In the context of this meal, the total dish was a bit dry although the sea urchin provided a wonderful marine wallop when it came through in any forkful. I would love this as an early morning dish after a night on the beer.

The main course was a choice of fish or meat and I went for the Five Senses Pork Belly. The pork had been slow cooked for 13 hours and the resulting belly meat was incredibly tender and had a delicate, thin crispy crust to make it special. As the core of the dish, the flavours of the pork were wonderful. The other senses were “sweet” in the form of raisin sauce, “sour” coming from the pickled chilli on top of the meat as well as the hot and sour broth and “hot” from the overall dish. The broth also contained cucumber, mushroom and seaweed and was a wonderful pairing with the pork. This was a really tasty feelgood main course. 

Sweet course was billed as raspberry cremeux with litchi. This was a set raspberry milk dessert with raspberry sauce, litchi sorbet and cinnamon crumble. The unannounced portion of the dessert was spinach sponge whose green colouring that looked like an alien presence on the plate. Unfortunately it tasted pretty alien too. The raspberry portions of the dessert were alright but nothing to get excited about and the cinnamon crumble was okay too. The one element of the dessert that worked was the litchi sorbet and it was absolutely superb.  

Post-dessert, the restaurant offered a range of teas or coffees and I went for a brown rice tea that was very tasty with a flavour reminiscent of celeriac. The final presentation with the bill was almonds dusted with sugar powder. 

Overall verdict. 
Taken as a whole, the meal at Jungsik was really good and appealed to my more Western tastebuds even though the dishes contained very Korean components. This is very different to Korean food as served in most Seoul restaurants but it was a very nice variation on a theme. Service was reasonably friendly and this was a great way to pass an afternoon

Would I revisit Jungsik?  
In a heartbeat. The mushroom and pork dishes were wonderful and the overall impression of the meal was that there were other dishes on the menu that sounded equally interesting justifying another visit. It would also be good to try the New York restaurant to see how well it compares.

Overall Rating - 4/5