Sonsooheon
Premium beef sirloin / Courtesy of Sonsooheon
By Chung Ah-young
The start of the New Year usually means more gatherings with family, friends and business partners but many people end up failing to find the right place in a sea of mediocre options.
For them, Sonsooheon, a high-end grill house featuring Korean traditional cuisine, may be the ideal place for occasions that require tranquility and privacy.
The name of the restaurant, a franchise operated by food retailer Ourhome, means a place that offers food prepared and made with care like a mother at the table. However, the dishes served here are definitely more lavish than what passes as home cooking.
The restaurant offers spacious rooms with a fancy wooden interior that adopts both cutting-edge design and the styles of ``hanok’’ or traditional Korean houses.
It serves a wide variety of dishes that give a modern touch to traditional cooking. But it is better to say that the restaurant is after all a grill house as its best offering is mouth-watering cuts of the highest quality of ``hanwoo’’ or premium Korean beef.
This reporter ordered a special course named “son,” which highlights the premium beef sirloin, beef skirt steak and chuck flap.
The course includes seafood as the ingredients of the appetizer, salad and Korean traditional pancakes to strike a balance with the main meat dish.
It starts with snacks ― dried pieces of fruit such as banana, orange, melon and lotus root which freshen up the mouth, followed by black sesame and rice porridge.
The salad mixing various vegetables with charcoal-broiled pieces of small octopus in soy sauce and vinegar is a bit salty but a good combination. The three Korean pancakes shaped like flowers are each diverse in taste.
The appetizer includes bite-sized cuts of flatfish sushi, adductor muscles blended with seaweed fulvescens and sea cucumber with pomegranate.
The highlight of the course is the premium “hanwoo” beefs with moderate marbling. The beef grilled by a hall manager is so tender and flavorful. Among the Korean grills of beef, the premium beef sirloin is deemed as the cream of the crop but the chuck flap tastes much better than the sirloin in its flavor and texture.
These meats can be better enjoyed with various seasonings such as solar salts, “ssamjang” (Korean processed soybean paste mixed with red pepper paste, garlic and sesame) or soy sauce according to individual tastes. But the best way of enjoying the premium beef is just eating it as it is.
After the beef serving, a spicy and zesty radish kimchi stew, which is one of the representative dishes of this restaurant, has traditional tastes with well-cooked radish kimchi and a few slices of beef. Unlike ordinary kimchi stew made with cabbage, this is sweeter.
The course finishes with a dessert of rice cakes and fruits but this reporter additionally ordered the restaurant’s trademark dessert ― affogato with cotton candy. The cotton candy wrapping a vanilla ice cream melts away with a spill of a cup of espresso. But the dessert gives more visual pleasure rather than the taste.
Sonsooheon is suitable for treating businesspeople or private gatherings that need hospitality with the finest cuisine. It has 14 individual dining rooms, including two VIP rooms and an exotic dining room decorated in traditional Korean style.
Address:
Sonsooheon, 99-32, Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea
Directions:
Between Sinsa Station on subway line 3 and Gangnamgu Office Station on subway line 7.
Phone number:
(02) 3442-2567-8
Price:
Courses from 86,000 won to 152,000 won
Opening hour:
lunch: 11:30 a.m. to 15:00 p.m.
Dinner:
17:30 p.m. to 22:30 p.m.
Parking:
Valet parking is available.
Private rooms:
14 private rooms and two VIP rooms
Total seating:
140 seats
From top, a VIP room, a special course meal named “Son” and affogato with cotton candy