Keunkiwajip's sweet and salty soy sauce and its crab dish
Han Young-yong, owner of Keunkiwajip poses in his office located at the back of the restaurant in Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Kim Ji-soo
By Kim Ji-soo
A soy sauce-marinated crab dish at Seoul’s Keunkiwajip restaurant, which won one Michelin star in the first Seoul edition of the guide published last year. / Korea Times photo by Kim Ji-soo
Enter the Keunkiwajip Korean restaurant in Samcheong-dong area in Seoul, near Cheong Wa Dae, and you’re welcomed by the smell of a special kind of soy sauce. The proprietary soy sauce is a key component of the one-Michelin-starred restaurant’s dishes. In fact, the first Michelin Guide Seoul edition, which was published last year, attributed its selection of the restaurant to the fresh local crabs and the soy sauce marinade.
The soy sauce is made from 100-year-old family supply. Han Young-yong, 47, the owner of the restaurant, said every spring, the restaurant takes some of the family soy sauce and expands on it to be used by the restaurant for that season. The restaurant’s soy crab dish is made every day for the ever increasing number of customers, both foreigners and Koreans.
Han said he has seen about a 20 percent increase in reservations after Keunkiwajip received the Michelin star. Asked if he faces pressure from the increased attention and responsibility, Han said he continues to prepare food as he has always done.
“The food we make here is done with care, because we cannot harm the minds and energy of both the preparer and diner,” Han said, as he prepared tea in his office, which is filled with traditional items and situated at the back of the restaurant.
Han is not only a cook, but also a tea expert and a writer. He recently published an essay about how to welcome and feed guests, detailing 12 meals, always accompanied by tea, that he has prepared and enjoyed with his friends and mentors, including poet Ko Un. “A meal with tea is the best meal ever,” Han said.
In the essay’s introduction, he writes about destiny and the people he meets and shares food with. “Food is about energy, communication and wavelengths; that is why we have to consume seasonal food,” he said.
One can almost detect his Buddhist beliefs in the way he promotes eating seasonal food; he says by doing so, one absorbs the energy of the spring, fall, winter and summer. That statement also shows the care that Han gives to his restaurant’s dishes. For instance, his restaurant uses only top-quality rice and fresh crabs. When told of the great taste of the rice dish, Han proudly said the restaurant serves only freshly made rice, cooked only within the hour.
He said he was surprised that the Michelin inspectors were able to detect the quality of the family soy sauce; he thought they may have done a lot of research on quintessential Oriental sauces, such as the restaurant’s soy sauce.
“With our soy sauce, you can taste not only the saltiness but also the sweetness and the three other common flavors,” Han said, adding that because of the soy sauce’s mild saltiness, it is easily consumed without making the diner feeling thirsty afterward.
Asked if he has a hard time making batches of the soy sauce, which is, as mentioned earlier, made from the family soy sauce and then fermented for another 10 years, he simply said, “I am fortunate to have this family treasure.”
A Korean-style dining room at the restaurant Keunkiwajip. The restaurant also has tables. / Courtesy of Keunkiwajip
During the interview, Han was dressed in hanbok, the traditional Korean attire, which he has been wearing since 1982 when Korean schools became liberal and started allowing students to avoid uniforms. In the essay, he wrote of how his mother, Namgoong Haewol, refurbished her late husband’s hanbok for her son, Han, to wear. He didn’t want to wear it at first, until he realized that his mother simply wanted to see him grow up proud and dignified. Akin to his dedication to the traditional attire, he succeeds his mother’s cuisine and attention to traditional culture in particular food.
“You know traditional culture is the purified essence (of a country),” Han said.
Aside from the soy crab dish, the restaurant offers other traditional Korean dishes, such as “galbijjim” or braised short ribs, fermented skate and steamed pork slices served with kimchi, grilled eel, dumplings and soup made with assorted mushrooms and perilla seeds.
Traditionally, the soy crab dish was made with river crabs, but now it is made mostly with crabs from the Yellow and southern seas of Korea. Keunkiwajip uses crabs from the Yellow Sea.
Preparing the dish is a simple but laborious process. First, the crab is marinated in the restaurant’s 10-year-old fermented soy sauce for a day. Then, the next day, the crab is taken out of the marinade, which is then boiled with various herbs, including Solomon’s tea and the fruit of the Chinese matrimony vine, and cooled. The herb-and-soy-sauce mixture is poured over the crab which is fermented for seven days.
This marinated cold crab dish is a Korean delicacy that is enjoyed on special occasions. The dish can be also be prepared with red chili pepper marinade. At Keunkiwajip, the soy crab dish is priced at 40,000 won, the kejang bibimbap at 30,000 won and the grilled eel at 30,000 won.
Han is a native of Naju, South Jeolla Province, and the youngest son of six children. The restaurant was first opened in Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, and then moved to its current location near the presidential office in 1998. Han succeeded his mother in January 1999, after leaving his job at the Korean food department at Hotel Shilla.
Han’s plans are both compelling and ambitious. Having earned a doctorate in fermentation at Hoseo University, he wants to further study fermented food to diversify and expand the traditional Korean food market, to find a way to turn soy sauce into salt so that more Westerners can become familiar with the taste of soy sauce and to promote nutritious dried Korean food, such as dried radish greens. He also wants to promote the ocean as an important source of food ingredients.