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A New Spot Treats Its Kimchee Pairings Like Wine
Photo: Evan Sung/Evan Sung
When Soogil Lim was a biology student at Inha University in South Korea in 2002, he took a lab class dedicated to removing so-called “stinkiness” from kimchee in order to better export it to the rest of the world. Twenty-two years later, having abandoned biology for fine dining, Lim is instead now opening the first restaurant in America to offer dedicated kimchee pairings with its courses. “It’s not that we succeeded in making kimchee less stinky,” he says, “but people have come to appreciate kimchee for what it is.”
At Raon, which is set to open toward the end of this month on E. 59th St, Lim and his wife, Sasook Youn, have created a $255 victory-lap tasting menu for the ancient preparation, pairing and incorporating different kimchee into seven of the menu’s ten courses. “It’s a little bit risky,” says Lim, who spent seven years at Daniel before opening a more casual spot, Soogil, the East Village in 2018. “But I think the public is ready for this.”
Along with gochujang, kimchee is almost a household ingredient in America. It’s K-Food 101. However, when most Americans think of kimchee, they think of baechu kimchee, the scarlet-colored, still-odiferous and spicy Napa cabbage. “But,” says Lim, “there are hundreds of types of kimchee. There are regional variations and seasonal ingredients. No two families make kimchee the same way.”
Youn, who handles the front of house, explains that the goal of the pairings “is to treat kimchee with the same respect and attention we give wine.” As it ages, kimchee plays differently with others: Anything between two weeks and one month old has a strong salty taste, paired best with pork belly and soups. At three months, kimchee’s sweetness intensifies, and it is muscular enough to complement Korean BBQ or noodles. After a year, kimchee can develop enough complex gamchilmat — the Korean answer to umami — that it is best used in heavier stews and with strong-flavored fish like mackerel.
Lim makes everything at the restaurant himself — “I hadn’t worked so intensely with kimchee since college” — and talked me through four of the pairings that he thinks best demonstrate his restaurant’s approach.
Photo: Evan Sung
Tuna and caviar with baek kimchee
This is an homage to the Gyeongsang Province in southeastern Korea, where raw tuna is a specialty. Lim wraps diced apples and week-old kimchee, called baek kimchee, in a scarlet blanket of raw tuna atop a circle of tartare. It’s finished with a quenelle of Ossetra caviar, but despite the luxurious trappings, at the heart is the subtle tang of the month-old Napa cabbage. “In this dish, I don’t use the gochugaru (chile powder) because I didn’t want to overshadow the delicacy of the fish. It shows how subtle kimchee, which we normally think of as very assertive, can be.”
New York bo kimchee
Traditionally, bo kimchee, which is wrapped kimchee, was a specialty of Kaesong, considered the New York City of Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty and now part of North Korea. It featured various ingredients like octopus, abalone, mushrooms, jujubes, and chestnuts wrapped inside a sheet of baek kimchee and left to ferment. In this version, Lim nods to the past but with a modern sensibility. A salad of fresh octopus, abalone, langoustine, Korean pear, and dongchimi watermelon radish rests under a translucent gelée made of a beef broth sharpened with dongchimi juice, which is crisp and slightly fizzy. “The beef and dongchimi sauce,” explains Lim, “is a nod to naengmyeon, traditional North Korean cold noodles often served in a similar broth.”
Uni gimbap and jang kimchee
Ganjang, a naturally fermented soy sauce, is much less well known than gochujang, its spicier thicker cousin. But it is perhaps even more integral to Korean cuisine. Here, Lim uses it to make a deeply flavored kimchee that pairs particularly well with the creamy richness of uni in a traditional gimbap. Since jang itself has already been fermented, it immediately imparts a deep flavor into the cabbage without much time. In this case, the kimchee that accompanies the uni is only a week old — a baby in kimchee chronology — yet the gamchilmat harmonizes with the elements of the gimbap: rice; pollock roe; a cold steamed egg made with langoustine juice, uni, and smoked trout roe, wrapped in wild seaweed.
Foie-gras mandu with mukeunji
Mukeunji kimchee is the oldest, strongest kimchee. Made with Napa cabbage, radish, garlic, ginger, gochugaru, and the anchovy sauce aekjeot, mukeunji is traditionally aged for over a year. Lim pulls his at six months and turns it into a jam, combining the mukeunji with caramelized onions. That deep, funky, sour-and-sweet flavor pairs with, and cuts through, the richness of a foie-gras dumpling filled with duck breast and fatty liver, all topped with a duck consommé. The dumpling itself, a sort of multicolored ravioli made of beetroot and spinach, nods to the colorful sleeves that are part of traditional Korean clothing. Lim suggests his diners try one bite of the dumpling without the jam before sampling it with. “It shows just how powerful kimchee can be,” he says.
Photo: Evan Sung
This post has been updated to correct the menu’s price.
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