Cho Hee-sook

The Climb

Training at College of Education gave Cho Hee-sook a formal start, but the craft was sharpened in kitchens that demanded consistency. From 1983, she worked as chef at Sejong Hotel restaurant in South Korea, a post that began a long run through major hospitality houses. Her path then moved through some of Seoul’s best-known kitchens and beyond: she served as Head Chef at Grand InterContinental Hotel Seoul, South Korea, chef at Novotel Ambassador in South Korea, and chef at Shilla Hotel's Korean restaurants in South Korea. Each role sits in a career organized around repetition, control, and the accumulation of exact standards. In 2005, Cho Hee-sook became resident chef at Residence of the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., USA, carrying Korean formal dining into an embassy setting while staying grounded in the tradition that shaped her. She later became professor of culinary arts at Woosong University in South Korea, shifting part of that knowledge into teaching, where technique and inheritance could be passed on in a different form. Her present work sits in two positions that reflect both practice and oversight: she is culinary consultant of Hansikgongbang since 2017 and owner-chef and Head Chef of Hansikgonggan since 2019. The titles point to the same throughline—continued service to a cuisine she has spent decades preserving and interpreting.

Today

At Hansikgonggan in Seoul, Cho Hee-sook works from Royal Court cuisine, a tradition defined by formality, restraint, and measured balance. Her own description is direct: “We make this cuisine as simple and light as possible as opposed to modern strong flavored and spicy Korean food, as we keep to the basics of Korean traditional food.” The method favors clarity over force, and structure over decoration. As owner-chef of Hansikgonggan, Cho Hee-sook keeps that vocabulary active while shaping it into a personal register. The food remains tied to Korean formal tradition, but the point is not preservation as display; it is a working style that stays legible in the present.

In Their Words “While keeping the tradition of traditional Korean formal cuisine that I learned from Ms. Lee Mal-Soon, I have steadily studied how to implement my own cuisine that no one has ever tried.” “We make this cuisine as simple and light as possible as opposed to modern strong flavored and spicy Korean food, as we keep to the basics of Korean traditional food.”

Recognition

Cho's honors include MICHELIN Mentor Chef Award (2021) and Asia's Best Female Chef Award (2020).