Son Jong-won

Son Jong-won’s cooking is shaped by seasonality, fermentation, and controlled recomposition. Modern technique is used to clarify familiar flavors from his culinary heritage rather than cover them, with produce setting the first terms, fermentation supplying depth, and the meal structure carrying memory, pacing, and service into the same frame. He 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, Quince, Coi, and Noma placed that training inside kitchens associated with clarity, restraint, and daily technical rigor. Son Jong-won’s cooking works from seasonality and fermentation, using reinterpretation without cutting the thread to home-ground taste. The work also extends 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.

He works across formats where national taste, contemporary method, and guest reception have to meet without becoming decoration. As head chef of L'Amant Secret, head chef of Eatanic Garden, and regular chef cast of Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, he moves between restaurant, broadcast, and ceremonial cooking while keeping the same central concern: how food communicates. The stated work of the restaurant 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, with courses built so that ingredients lead and contemporary technique serves 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, an example of the menu reimagining culinary heritage with modern finesse. The plate places meat, fermentation, and vegetable work in the same architecture. Beef is handled in multiple expressions, cauliflower provides fermented depth, and winter vegetables carry 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. Son Jong-won’s fine dining approach is centered on creating an extraordinary dialogue with guests through both food and service.