Are K-pop and K-dramas spurring the popularity of native ingredients? Japanese produce is common in fine dining restaurants – but Korea’s offerings are just as good, say Michelin-starred chefs
- Last year, Singapore-based TV host and cookbook author Olivia Lee launched Brandfit to promote Korean ingredients like abalone, seaweed and sesame oil overseas
- Now restaurants in Seoul, New York, Hong Kong and more, such as Hansik Goo, Mingles, Mosu and Meta, are incorporating such ingredients – some even exclusively
At Meta, a one-Michelin-starred modern Korean-inflected eatery in Singapore, our main course arrives – strip loin resting on a bed of rice cooked with burdock, seasoned with cold-pressed sesame oil and topped with wisps of a never-before-seen seaweed.
“We use many Korean ingredients in this dish – the rice, burdock, cold-pressed sesame oil and gamtae, a seaweed found in the southern and western coasts of South Korea,” explains chef-owner Sun Kim.
“We also use Korean snow crab white soy sauce to season the crab broth for our egg custard dish to give it more umami,” adds Kim. “And, of course, cold-pressed perilla oil from Korea is added in our opening dish of tuna tartare.”
A native of Korea who studied and worked in Australia before moving to Singapore, where he first plied his trade at two-Michelin-starred Waku Ghin, Kim has been slowly – but surely – introducing Korean ingredients into his repertoire in the last year or so. But the journey, he says, has been fraught with difficulties.
“As a Korean who lives overseas, it’s quite sad that we don’t see Korean ingredients,” says Kim, noting his motherland’s rich yet very much under-the-radar bounty.
In September 2020, a company named Brandfit launched a campaign with the support of the South Korean authorities to promote an awareness of premium agricultural products and artisanal sauces from the country among chefs and consumers in Singapore.
As part of the campaign, a clutch of chefs – including Kim, Julien Royer and Cheryl Koh – were tasked with preparing meals for the media and other chefs using a curated selection of premium Korean fruits, vegetables, seafood and sauces.