Chef
Son Jong-won
Head Chef, L'Amant Secret
- Discipline
- Chef
- Based in
- Seoul, South Korea
Known for
- Head chef of Michelin-starred L'Amant Secret and Eatanic Garden
- Korean-style Western cuisine with local seasonal ingredients
- Signature evolving Egg and Caviar dish
i. Biography
Contemporary cooking here is built from seasonality, fermentation, and controlled recomposition. In Son Jong-won’s work, modern technique is used to clarify familiar flavors from his culinary heritage rather than cover them. Produce sets the first terms; fermentation supplies depth; the meal structure carries memory, pacing, and service into the same frame.
The Route
Technical discipline preceded the restaurant work. Son Jong-won trained at All Saints' Day School and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology before entering fine dining kitchens where repetition, pressure, and exacting standards shaped the craft. Early professional experience at Benu in United States, Quince in United States, Coi in United States, and Noma in Denmark placed that training inside kitchens associated with clarity, restraint, and daily technical rigor. Contemporary Korean cuisine, in this register, is treated as a living practice rather than a fixed inheritance. Son Jong-won’s cooking works from seasonality and fermentation, using reinterpretation without cutting the thread to home-ground taste. The work also extended beyond restaurant service: he became mentor and judge at S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition, appeared as White Spoon competitor at Culinary Class Wars Season 2, and served as executive chef for state dinner hosted by President Lee Jae-myung for French President Emmanuel Macron at Blue House's Sangchunjae (2026–2026). Restaurant, broadcast, and ceremonial cooking require different forms of address, but the craft question remains consistent: how food communicates. As head chef of L'Amant Secret (since 2018), head chef of Eatanic Garden, and regular chef cast of Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, Son Jong-won works across formats where national taste, contemporary method, and guest reception have to meet without becoming decoration.
Present Day
The restaurant’s stated work is to explore the history of Korean culinary culture, innovate its cuisine, and reintroduce it to the world. In practice, that means a meal organized around sequence and season: courses built so that ingredients lead, with contemporary technique serving the structure rather than replacing it. Menu format is part of the service craft. Instead of a conventional written menu, the restaurant uses illustrated cards for each course, allowing Son Jong-won to craft seasonal dishes around the freshest produce. The cards shift the guest’s first contact with a course from instruction to image, while preserving the kitchen’s ability to respond to the market, the field, and the moment. Signature work includes Hanwoo beef served three ways with fermented cauliflower and winter vegetables shaped into snowflakes, noted as an example of the menu reimagining culinary heritage with modern finesse. The plate places meat, fermentation, and vegetable work in the same architecture: beef handled in multiple expressions, cauliflower used for fermented depth, and winter vegetables carrying form as well as season. Other dishes include sea urchin with parae seaweed on the modern tasting menu, and petit fours of chocolate bonbon with makgeolli and dried persimmon with yuzu. These combinations keep local reference points active through brine, sweetness, acidity, and fermentation, while presenting them in a contemporary tasting-menu format. “To me, fine dining is about creating an extraordinary dialogue with guests through both food and service.” Son has said.
Signature
Sea urchin with parae seaweed is a compact statement of the modern Korean tasting-menu approach. In Son Jong-won’s version, the work sits on a direct meeting of marine flavor and Korean ingredient reference, with restraint doing more of the labor than embellishment. The dish depends on balance, clarity, and the pressure between ingredient identity and contemporary presentation.
Distinctions
Recognition has come through restaurant ranking, guide awards, and peer-facing honors: Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list debut at No. 25 for Eatanic Garden (2025), MICHELIN Guide Seoul & Busan Service Award for Eatanic Garden (2024), One Michelin star for Eatanic Garden (2023), One Michelin star for L'Amant Secret (2021), Highest New Entry Award for Eatanic Garden (2025), and New Talents of the Year 2024 (2023). Read together, the record places Son Jong-won’s Contemporary Korean cooking in a field defined by seasonality, fermentation, service, and the ongoing work of reinterpreting heritage without treating it as static.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Son
What does Son Jong-won do now?
Son Jong-won is head chef.
Where did Son Jong-won train or study?
Son Jong-won trained at All Saints' Day School and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
What recognition has Son Jong-won received?
Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list debut at No. 25 for Eatanic Garden (2025).
