CRASH LANDING ON FOOD

The eyes of the world are on South Korea, and its appetite on Korean cuisine, as a new crop of chefs both within and outside the country reinvent its gastronomy for a global audience

-  Gavin Yeung

The Hallyu wave—the proliferation of Korean pop culture around the world—might have changed the face of the global cultural landscape as we know it, with BTS, Blackpink and Squid Game becoming shorthand for the proliferation of K-pop and K-dramas outside South Korea’s borders, so it’s certainly no stretch to imagine a world in the near future in which Korean cuisine attains the same astronomical levels of popularity.

At the leading edge of this charge are Korean fine-dining establishments dotted around the world that are shaping and remoulding the cuisine into something altogether different, retaining the spirit of the peninsula’s gastronomy while incorporating local ingredients and customs into the fold. Here, we spotlight four restaurants around the world that provide a glimpse of the directions that K-cuisine could take in the coming years.

BORN & BRED 
Seoul, South Korea 

Mention Korean cuisine and more often than not, Korean barbecue is the first thing to come to mind. Yet despite its prevalence both in and out of Korea, the culinary tradition has remained relatively untouched when it comes to innovation. Enter Born & Bred, a four-floor concept just footsteps away from Seoul’s Majang Meat Market, where proprietor Jung Sang-won grew up in his father’s meat shop.