Korean Chefs Ready for World Cooking Contest
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
South Korea's acclaimed chefs of Korean food, or hansik, gathered together Friday in a ceremony to vie for a championship in hansik cooking at an upcoming global competition.
Participants at the Hankook Ilbo headquarters, a total of 72 cooks from 36 teams in three age categories, vowed to do their best at the second edition of the World Korean Food Competition and Festival. The event is hosted jointly by the Hankook Ilbo, Sports Hankook, Koreatimes.com and The Korea Times.
The Korean delegation will compete with contenders from other countries at the final stage, which will take place Sept. 26 through Oct. 5 in the Culinary Institute of Art in New York.
Winners of the 30-million-won ($24,300) global competition will join New York's Korean Day Parade, and will work for the next one year as special envoys for promoting Korean cuisine worldwide.
The nation's most acclaimed experts, as well as promising young talents, of Korean cuisine participated in the four-day regional qualifications, which ended Wednesday in Seoul. Winners of each qualification were praised in displaying excellent authenticity and creativity in a full-course meal required to prepare for the live competition.
In Seoul, professors Choi Young-ho and Kim Hee-yeon of Myeongji Technical College won the qualification's adult category with a nine-course table-d'hote comprising specialties from all of the country's provincial regions and royal cuisines. In the central region contest, sisters Seo Soo-jung and Soo-mi won with a dish named ``cheongsachorong," chopped ``bulgogi,'' a famous Korean barbecue dish, stuffed into a pumpkin flower.
Grand Ambassador Hotel chefs Cho Gwan-haeng and Jung Won-hee won in the southwestern competition with grilled lamb chops in a Korean-style chili sauce. The pair of Kim Myung-bok and Kim Woo-young of Foseca, a local catering firm, topped at the southeastern qualification with a course meal highlighted with chicken abalone soup.
Including the top qualifiers in the contests, the top three teams in each category gained berths to the international competition. Contest winners said they will be committed to elaborate their work before the final competition.
"At the Seoul contest, we were more restricted to the original style of dishes, but it will be totally different at the world contest," Prof. Choi said. "This time we aim to re-composite our meal course, giving each meal a story to tell, so it will give judges a new eating experiment."