Eat and Travel Weekly / A New Culinary File of Seoul

Publication : Eat and Travel Weekly

Date : April 2016

Title : A New Culinary File of Seoul

Revival of Food

The year 2003, when Jewel in the Palaceopened a new era of Korean dramas, was important to Korea.

Since then, as Koreans began to understand more about the history of their ancestors, Korean food also began to be more widely noticed.

At that time, the popularity of “royal court food” began to soar suddenly, but there was a problem.

Royal court food has so many dishes and grand formalities. Also, tableware was not considered important. If you had royal court food, you must have realized that tens of splendid dishes are served in only two to three kinds of tableware. It was difficult to create new royal court dishes, so the popularity of the royal court dishes did not continue. GAON restaurant, born in the era of Jewel in the Palace, abandoned complicated formalities and combined tableware and food to revive royal court food. We have created a culture of harmonizing “Korean food and tableware.”

This footstep is related to its owner. A Korean pottery artisan’s “KwangJuYo” was founded by the late Cho So-su in the 1960s. Since the 15th century, there were kilns for royal porcelain in the Gwangju area of Gyeonggi-do, but the Korean traditional pottery disappeared as the royal family collapsed. The traditional pottery was revived in the modern era. KwangJuYo revived at the kilns of the demolished royal family, which helped develop the classical figure. It aimed to be positioned as royal tableware from a thousand years ago with a historical heritage. This is only one half of our business.

The other half of the business was started by Cho Tae-gwon, Cho So-su’s son. GAON was born to make cuisine for both food and tableware with seasonal characteristics and to revive Korean food with ancient tableware.

GAON created a chapter of new experience that made guests appreciate tableware before their meal. The staff of GAON served an appetizer, an entrée, chilled vegetables, and a soup in tableware of various colors and shapes. For example, a round dish that looks like a New Year’s gift box is engraved with auspicious patterns. The server does not open its lid immediately but waits for the guest to appreciate it. When opening the lid, the guest will see four different appetizers lined up. The dish holds the feast of Korean seasonal food. The four appetizers are seasonal delicacies with very clean taste including cherry tomatoes produced in Chuncheon City of northern Korea and fresh Seasoned Japanese Angelica, which is blanched in boiling water and seasoned with a little bit of salt. It also includes the octopus from Seokcheon, the most famous octopus in western Korea. The chef purchases it, kneads it, and marinates it in Red Chili Paste, and it is very fresh and soft when served at dinner. Lastly, Black Pork from Jeju-do is served. When it is boiled with black garlic and soybean sauce and then cooled, it is very soft like tofu, unlike other pork.

Not only the ingredients, but the tableware is different every season. Between winter and spring, the server brings a big, white, and flat dish. There is a little temple on the lid with the dish symbolizing snowy landscape in winter, and steam rises from Braised Abalones when opening the lid. They are steamed with soybean sauce that was aged with seaweed from Uljin-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, for eleven years, being a premium dish with delicate taste of Korean food.

Generally, the dish gets the main spotlight, but sometimes, it is made to be simple intentionally. The simplest dish is the sweet rice beverage from Wanju-gun, which is famous for a variety of shellfish. The white rice beverage does not have any additives, but the porcelain in green jade originates from the Goryeo dynasty, which existed a thousand years ago. The replica is engraved with cranes and has a half-century history. The tableware made with wood becomes darker and darker as time passes, showing the trace of history, and it is used very carefully.

These days, Korea still believes the dish is more important than the tableware. It is a bold challenge to combine different tableware for each dish, and it is difficult to appreciate all the tableware before a meal. GAON, however, has contributed to improving the image of Korean dishes and Korean tableware based on the craftmanship of ceramic art for thirteen years.