One of my grand life-ideas has been to open a high-end Korean restaurant that would take common Korean dishes and make them haute cuisine. This has been done with other regional cuisines with great success. Morimoto has created upmarket Japanese food in his restaurants. (He has, by the way, created a version of tubu kimchi (tofu kimchi) for his Hawaii menu; even he is not immune to hybridizing his menu for local tastes.) Roy Yamaguchi has done the same thing locally with Hawaii Regional Cuisine. While undoubtedly cooked with more care and flair, many of his menu items wouldn’t be out of place on a local plate lunch hole in the wall.
Korean food seems to be ripe for this kind of swish rediscovery. While in Korea there are ample places to eat upscale versions of Korean food (i.e. Yongsusan), in the US there doesn’t seem to be a push for high-end Korean restaurants. There are exceptions, however, and it seems they are highly successful.
Today I ran across this article on Momofuku Ssam Bar. David Chang has created a bbo ssam (pork shoulder wrap) dish that, judging from the accompanying photo, barely resembles bbo ssam. The most fascinating thing about the dish: the price. If people are going nuts over this dish and are willing to pay top dollar, I think a haute Korean restaurant would do quite well. Of course David Chang has already made a name for himself, but I still think with the time and energy you could sell all kinds of amazing Korean dishes at exorbitant prices.
Don’t go stealing my idea.
Wine and bbo ssam? The soju gods are wincing.
one scoop kimchi 