Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
Newcomer and steady seller hotel restaurants
By Kim Rahn
It is not easy for a restaurant to keep up with guests’ changing tastes and remain popular. Some choose renovations and new menus to provide variation, while others survive the competition.
Here are four hotel restaurants in Seoul that have chosen the first option of change, and four others where loyal guests continue to come.
Grand opening after renewal
The Novotel Ambassador Gangnam opened its buffet restaurant last October after a three-month renovation.
With the new name The SQUARE, the restaurant, led by executive chef Maurice Gerard Mosinniak, provides cuisine from all over the world. The open kitchen offers fresh dishes including sushi and sashimi, pasta and pizza, dim sum and noodles.
One unique feature is the dessert towers ㅡ the cheese tower has seven to eight types; the ice cream tower adds various toppings, and the fountain-shaped chocolate tower is a children’s favorite.
The restaurant has 210 seats with four private dining rooms for all dining experiences from family to business. The interior design was by Wilson Associates, combining metal, wood and marble.
The breakfast buffet is 29,700 won, lunch, 49,500 won on weekdays and 51,000 won on weekends, and dinner, 59,400 won. For more information call 02-531-6618.
The Grand Hyatt Seoul’s Japanese restaurant Akasaka also reopened in October with a comprehensive renovation of its kitchen.
By Kim Rahn
The new Akasaka, directed by chef MikioTakaish, has emerged with an intensified focus on the basics of rice, water, salt and miso (Japanese soy bean paste) as integral components to its new courses ensuring both freshness and the proper chemistry with other ingredients.
Fresh ingredients imported from Japan guarantee an authentic Japanese dining experience, with matching tableware from Japan adding to the authenticity.
Akasaka offers a selection of dishes including teppanyaki, sashimi, sushi and kaiseki as well as premium sakes. For more information call 02-799-8164.
The Lotte Hotel Seoul moved its buffet restaurant, La Seine from the basement to the first floor in January. It has added new features such as a chefs’ on-site service and foreign chefs’ dishes from their own countries at the studio-type open stations.
Dishes like boiled hanwoo beef and Geumsan ginseng sushi, which are not common buffet items, are available to meet guests’ needs. A time service event is also held every day to offer limited dishes, including lobster and fresh abalone, when the bell rings.
The restaurant can accommodate 290 guests, with 11 private rooms. In a modern and trendy interior, color-changing LED lighting is installed to change the mood for each season. For more information call 02-317-7171.
The Plaza Hotel reopened its Japanese restaurant last November after the whole hotel underwent a renovation, with the new name Murasaki.
To offer an authentic premium Japanese menu the restaurant had kaiseki master chef Minami Hama and made its staff members inspect Michelin three-star restaurants abroad. Guests can see chefs making sushi at the counter, the longest among Korean hotels with the capacity of 15 people at a time.
Celebrating the reopening, Murasaki presents the Spring Special Kaiseki Menu until April 30 at the price of 230,000 won.
The dishes are made of seasonal ingredients to meet the restaurant’s concept of a healthy diet. Emphasizing aesthetic beauty, the kaiseki chefs use various ingredients to produce visually stunning dishes, giving the feeling of being in a spring garden. For more information call 02-310-7100.
Oldies but goodies
The Renaissance Seoul Hotel’s New York-style steakhouse Manhattan Grill is a popular place for business meetings, social lunches and family parties with private dining rooms and a bar area.
The restaurant’s music, mood lighting, wine displays, high-back leather chairs and shear metal curtains take guests from Seoul to New York in a minute.
The Broadway and Central Park set menus are two popular choices. They include salad, appetizers and desserts in buffet style or soup and a main dish at the price of 47,000 won and 52,000 won respectively for lunch.
For dinner, they are available at 99,000 won and 125,000 won, with the set menu using premium wagyu and hanwoo tenderloin steak for the main dishes. For more information call 02-2222-8637.
The Seoul Palace Hotel’s Buffet and Cafe, the Goong, has been recognized for its high quality food and reasonable prices.
The restaurant focuses on the quality of ingredients rather than the range of food. But it doesn’t mean it has a small selection ㅡ it offers 14 different stations including a healthy vegetarian option, seafood section offering abalone, sea cucumber and king crab, and an open-kitchen where teppanyaki and other freshly cooked meals are available.
The interior harmonizes ivory marble, hardwood and birch decoration. An outdoor terrace with grape myrtles, maple trees and bamboo as well as five private rooms are also available. For more information call 02-2186-6885.
At the Grand Hilton Seoul’s Japanese restaurant, Mitsumomo, traditional Japanese dishes from Kansai and Kanto provinces are prepared by master chefs from Japan.
They offer classic dishes such as sushi, sashimi and tempura, sukiyaki and shabu-shabu, along with specialties including grilled fillet of beef with teriyaki sauce and a set meal featuring 13 culinary masterpieces.
This April Mitsumomo presents special menus featuring golden bream, which is known in Japan as the “king of fish.” For more information call 02-2287-8888.
The Ritz-Carlton Seoul’s Chinese restaurant Chee Hong offers distinctive dining created by head chef Cho Kyeong-shik combined with a contemporary atmosphere.
Cho, an expert in Shanghai and Cantonese cuisine, is the only non-overseas Chinese head chef at a Chinese restaurant in any of Seoul’s five-star hotels.
The restaurant’s representative dish is shark fin, which is not shipped in preservatives. Oysters are also used in making the shark fin sauce, creating an outstanding mixture of fresh shark fin and sauce.
Another popular dish is “jjamppong” (Chinese-style noodles with vegetables and seafood), which makes guests loyal to the restaurant. The secret is in the broth made from a combination of beef, pork and shark and boiled for 10 hours. For more information call 02-3451-8273.