Last fall, chefs Cho Eun Hee and Park Sungbae brought their Michelin-starred Seoul restaurant Onjium to Genesis House, an experiential New York City flagship for the South Korean car brand. Their focus is ban-ga cuisine—the food of Korea’s historic noble classes—such as suranchae, a dish of seafood in pine-nut sauce. “We are educating diners on the history of Korean cuisine,” the chefs say, “and thus our culture, as well.”
Seafood is the star of suranchae, which is available on both the prix fixe and à la carte menus, and it’s all cooked simply, to let the flavors come through cleanly. The abalone is steamed for an hour and a half, while diver scallops get a two-minute steam so that they’re just “lightly cooked on the surface.”
The octopus is sourced from Spain, and the snow crab comes from Alaska. “We work together with different fish suppliers to find the best seafood options that are sustainable.”
A silky sauce made of pine nuts sourced from Korea is poured over the plate at the table. “We recommend first tasting the pine-nut sauce on its own, and then from there you can enjoy each delicacy on its own or mixed. The point is that it tastes like yogurt when mixed with the egg yolk, seafood, and Korean pear.”
A lightly poached egg sits below the crab, blending in with the milky-white scallops and abalone. The chefs suggest “breaking the egg in the dish so that the yolk mixes with the sauce.”
Slices of Korean pear add crunch and sweetness, and the dish is garnished with manna lichen mushroom, crown daisy, chrysanthemum leaf, and pomegranate seeds. “We hope [diners] have a deeper appreciation for the traditions and painstaking technique that have gone into Korean food for centuries, so that we can preserve our cuisine for future generations.”
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