Chef

Kim Sung Il

Discipline: Chef
Based in: Seoul, South Korea
Venue: La Yeon · Restaurant

i. Biography

Coming Up

Since 2013, Kim Sung Il has served as Executive Chef of La Yeon at The Shilla Seoul. Over that tenure, the work has been less about signature for its own sake than about maintaining a contemporary reading of Korean cuisine that stays close to its source material.

Where They Are Now

At La Yeon in Seoul, Kim Sung Il’s kitchen is built on Korean tradition, but it is not run as a museum. The cooking is measured and exacting, with familiar dishes revisited through a modern lens while their structure and lineage remain legible. The result is a dining room that keeps one foot in memory and the other in the present. Ingredient discipline is central to that framework. Kim works with premium, seasonal, and exclusively homegrown ingredients, making sourcing part of the cook’s method rather than a background concern. Korean beef grounds the menu in local supply, seafood follows the season, and fermented condiments aged in onggi pottery provide the depth and complexity that this cuisine depends on. Each component is selected for its place in the system, not just its flavor. The menu changes every three months, which keeps La Yeon aligned with the calendar instead of locked into a fixed set of dishes. That cadence gives the kitchen room to respond to weather, harvest, and seasonal shifts without leaving the tradition behind. Under Kim’s direction, the work is defined by continuity and adjustment in equal measure.