You’ll never believe it but I have a restaurant report from Seoul today. I’ve been promising the imminent conclusion of my reports from our five-week trip to the city in February and March for a couple of months, and here I am in mid-July with two more reports still to come after this one. This lunch at Soul Dining was eaten in early March. This was the second of three high-end/Michelin-starred restaurants we ate at on the trip. I’ve previously reported on the first of those meals—at Mingles. At the end of that report—back in April—I’d said I’d have the other two done in the coming weeks. Of course, I meant months. Anyway, here finally is a look at what was an exquisite lunch at Soul Dining. We had lunch there on a weekday in the company of a friend who was in Seoul for a week as part of my program.

Now, when I say exquisite, I mean mostly that the meal was extremely beautiful to look at. Most dishes were composed and constructed with an eye to their appearance. I don’t mean to suggest that it was not also a tasty meal, for it was: it was very good on the whole, very nicely constructed/sequenced, and some of the dishes were excellent. Having said that, I must apologize at the outset to both my readers and the restaurant for the lack of detail on the dishes in this post. As is my usual practice after complex meals such as this one, I had taken brief notes after getting back home from the meal. Alas, after coming back to the US I was unable to find those notes. I suspect they got mixed up with bills from program outings that had to be expensed and accidentally got thrown out with those once I’d finished the paperwork. I reached out to the restaurant in May to see if they might be able to send me some detail on the components of some of the dishes but I never heard from them (I’m sure they have much better things to do than respond to idiot bloggers). And, as you’ll see in the slideshow, the restaurant’s menu does not offer details beyond spare/elliptical dish titles. Still, I hope you will be able to get a sense of the restaurant’s aesthetic from this write-up.

Soul Dining, or Soul, is located in Yongsan-gu and is the project of a pair of chefs who are married to each other: Kim Hee-eun and Yoon Dae-hyun. The restaurant is known for its contemporary articulations of classic Korean flavours and dishes, hybridizing them—in conception or presentation or often both—with non-Korean approaches. Fusion is often the term used to describe this kind of thing but, as at Mingles, we found the food to be more interesting than that descriptor usually signifies. I bring up Mingles because the kind of take that Soul Dining presents on Korean dishes/ingredients is much closer to that of Mingles than that of Kwonsooksoo—the last of our three high-end meals, eaten a week later. What is not close to Mingles is the price. We were there for lunch. Lunch at Mingles ran 280,000 won per person. Lunch at Soul Dining meanwhile ran 120,000 won per person. I can’t find my calculator but I am pretty sure that’s less than half the price.

What did that get us?

Quite a lot actually. As at Mingles all that is offered is a set tasting menu. This is a bit larger (and more expensive) at dinner than at lunch. At lunch our meal would have comprised 8 courses before mignardises and tea. I say “would have” because we added on an extra supplemental course (for 10,000 won each). In addition, for the big savoury course the missus opted for an alternate dish featuring hanwoo or Korean beef. This incurred a supplement of 30,000 won. Our friend and I also had a glass of wine each. But even with the wine and supplements we paid less for three people at this meal than we had the previous week for the two of us at Mingles (sans wine). I guess that’s the difference between one Michelin star (which Soul Dining received last year) and two (which Mingles has had for a while, I think). Said Michelin star is very prominently displayed in the dining room, by the way.

The restaurant is not over-large and is divided into two broad sections: a dining room with a few tables and a larger, brighter area with a broad counter overlooking the kitchen. This latter section is where the main action at dinner happens. It was curtained off at lunch with everyone seated at one of the tables in the other section. As to whether that’s always the case at lunch or was due to preparation for a special dinner that night, I’m not sure. But at the tables we did not get any of the interaction with the chefs that is apparently a standard feature of dining in that space.

Okay, here is what we actually ate:

First Course: Seasonal Bite. This featured marinated flounder with crisped perilla leaves etc. on a cracker. A very nice start to the proceedings.

Second Course: Octopus. A very nice “salad” of octopus with various greens, herbs and flowers atop a sweet-savoury sauce. A very nice sequence of opening dishes.

Third Course: Hanwoo Tartare. The third course kept things raw and cool with a very good tartare with pear and perilla leaf.

Fourth Course: Blooming. A beautiful presentation. Our server informed us that this was the restaurant’s playful take on samgyetang, the classic chicken stew that is a beloved comfort food dish. I don’t know that I would have made the connection if he hadn’t told us but I rather enjoyed this.

Fifth Course: “Special Dish: Makgeolli Rice Cake”. This was the supplemental dish that all three of us opted for. The rice cakes are made with makgeolli or rice wine and had lovely texture. We ate them with three compound butters served alongside. I am pretty sure one involved seaweed and another sesame; I cannot for the life of me remember what the third involved (and nor can either of my co-diners). This course was served alongside the sixth.

Sixth Course: Potato Pancake. This dish hybridizes Korean potato pancakes with Italian approaches. The potato pancake sat atop a perilla leaf aioli and was topped with an exquisite potato wafer shaped like a leaf. A few veg and an artful sprinkle of beet powder completed the presentation (the beet powder didn’t do much beyond look attractive). Oh yes, we had the option of incurring a 25,000 won supplement by adding truffle to this dish but we demurred.

Seventh Course: Lamb Tteokgalbi. This was the default meat course, as eaten by our friend and me. Alas, this is the dish of which I have the least clear memory. And I’m sorry to say that is because it made the least impression of everything we ate. If anyone ate this at Soul Dining in the Feb-March-April window and knows more about the composition, please do write in below. The missus fared much better with her alternate course. I did very much enjoy—and very much appreciate—the special bowl of traditional seaweed soup they gave me alongside this course to mark my birthday (which had been a few days previous).

Seventh Course/Alternate: Hanwoo Strip Loin. This was an extensive presentation and the most straightforwardly Korean course of them all: perfectly grilled and sliced Hanwoo strip loin was served with mushrooms, greens and seaoned chives for eating it with, ssamjang for dipping and kimchi. This cost an additional 30,000 won. The missus thought it was worth it.

Eighth Course: Korean Noodles. It’s customary to follow grilled meat with cold noodles or noodle soup in Korea and the restaurant presented a very nice take on it with Italian-style noodles in a broth that mixed Korean and European flavours/ingredients.

Ninth Course: Bingsoo with Truffle. Bingsoo more or less means shaved ice and that’s what this was (made with milk). The truffle added delicate, earthy interest. A good end to the meal.

To end Da-Kwa (snack/mignardise) with tea. Mine came on a separate plate with a birthday candle and wish.

For a look at the restaurant, the menu and what we ate and drank, please launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for thoughts on service and to see what I thought of the meal as a whole and to see how much it all cost.

Service was very solicitous and professional. As at Mingles—and later at Kwonsooksoo—the presence of non-Koreans at the table meant our server would only speak to us in English. While this certainly made life easier for my friend and me for basic interactions, it did also mean that the descriptions of dishes/components/cooking methods were very difficult to follow (and I did not want to be rude and ask our server to constantly repeat himself in a language not his first).

The total cost, including wine and supplements, was 470,000 won (or $340). That’s pretty good for three people for a meal of this quality. And keep in mind that if we had not had wine and just stuck with the basic menu, we would have been out the door at 360,000 won (or $260). At that price (less than $90/head)—especially coming from the US—this would be a near steal for what you get. And it should be clear from the pictures that you’d not be in any danger of leaving hungry. At dinner, however, the price jumps by 100,000 per head to 220,000 won. Now I know dinner involves more courses—and doubtless more luxe ingredients—but I’m not sure that I was compelled by this lunch to try that on our next visit to Seoul. That because while this was indeed a very good meal with some excellent courses, it did not blow us away. And at $160/head before wine, I would probably want to be blown away.

I would certainly recommend lunch at Soul Dining for someone looking to explore what contemporary Korean food in this idiom looks like in Seoul—it’s a much better value than Mingles in the same genre, even though the Mingles meal was clearly superior. Indeed, having eaten at Mingles, Soul Dining and Kwonsooksoo in three successive weeks, I would suggest that diners who are interested in exploring different points of the contemporary Korean fine dining contiuum but who do not have bottomless wallets would be better off eating at Soul Dining and Kwonsooksoo for just a little more combined than the price of lunch at Mingles and spending that Mingles money elsewhere. More on this next week when I hope to finally get that Kwonsooksoo report done. Famous last words.

Next up on the food front will be a report on a recent dinner at Oro in Minneapolis which may have been better than our first meal there last November. That’ll be on Tuesday.