A lily blooms in the ghetto
OK2’s spinach salad with mushrooms, bacon and prosciutto. By Ko Juran
Although it is often packed, there’s not much about the place that’s attractive. The crowds of expats seem to be drawn there because they lack imagination or a sense of adventure, not because Itaewon has any intrinsic merits.
From the grim environs of “Hooker Hill” to the dingy tat of the International Market, everything appears to have a layer of grease and dust. The local restaurants often seem to operate with a lower standard of hygiene than the rest of Seoul, and it’s the one place in the city where I have seen the same profusion of cockroaches as one finds in some parts of Hong Kong or New York.
Corn-encrusted mozzarella.
In Korea, the lily is revered because it has a pristine beauty, despite having sprung from the filth and mud at the bottom of a stagnant pond. OKitchen2 is Itaewon’s lily, having recently emerged from the detritus of the area’s main drag to offer food of a quality and complexity that’s almost impossible to find elsewhere in Seoul.
For a start, like OKitchen, its older brother in Gahoe-dong, OK2 is located in a converted hanok.
Who knew there were hanok left in Itaewon? Most of the architecture in this “international village” is so awful it makes Stalin’s Moscow look like Venice at sunset.
Nonetheless, Susumu Yonaguni, the miracle worker behind the OKitchen concept, found a hanok and turned it into a jewel box of a restaurant that will soon have a long line at its front door.
Yonaguni is a compassionate man who seems to have a heart as big as his smile.
Born in Japan and trained in New York, where, he confesses, he was prone to be a Japanese version of Gordon Ramsay, complete with an enormous vocabulary of acidic curse words, he came to Seoul with his Korean wife, Jamie Oh, six years ago.
Oh is a former pastry chef from New York’s five-star Essex House Hotel. She has become a celebrity food stylist in Korea and is the author of several cookbooks.
In 2002 the couple opened the Oh Jeong Mi Food Art Institute to teach aspiring chefs how to be masters of European-style cuisine. That’s when they encountered a problem ― there were not enough jobs for their young stars. The solution was to open OKitchen and allow the students to graduate in the heat of a live restaurant with demanding customers at the other end of their experiments.
The concept was pure genius and laid the foundations for the OKitchen empire to spread its tentacles into the shady reaches of Pear Town.
At OK2, the staff are also graduates of the Food Art Institute, closely supervised by Yonaguni. He has ambitious plans for his proteges.
BBQ pork in polenta. By Ko Juran
For now, thankfully, it is his. Our first course consisted of a bouillabaisse served with a delicious rouille on toast and a spinach salad.
The salad had an olive oil dressing, croutons, mushrooms and tiny bits of bacon plus a garnish of baked prosciutto.
Authenticity is not one of Itaewon’s strong suits. It feels like a crime zone but it’s actually quite safe, most of the clothing pretends to be cheap but is more expensive than Namdaemun and it’s many “international” restaurants largely serve ersatz versions of Thai, Indian or French.
However, OK2’s spinach plate was as authentic a rendition of this kind of Provencal salad as anything I have tasted outside of Aix-en-Provence.
As I digested the appetizers with a glass of house wine, a nice Australian Chardonnay from Westend Estates, I looked out the window at an alley full of souvenir shops with “Korean” knick-knacks made in China.
Maybe OK2 is a sign of hope that Itaewon could one day be a true international village with the style and elan of Manhattan’s SoHo or Paris’s St. Germain du Pres.
I think it all depends on whether Yonaguni is a trend or a crazy man who will soon be dragged down to the Dantesque level that has made Itaewon a byword for sleaze.
I’m an optimist, so I’m going with the former. Especially as OK2’s 20,000 won ($22) prix fixe menu will have people rushing to Noksapyeong, the nearest subway station.
My main course consisted of fresh penne pasta drenched in basil-infused olive oil and served with delicate saury, a fish that, in this case, married the tang of mackerel to the tenderness of salmon and gave birth to the taste of the sea breeze mixed with tuna.
My companion had the barbecued pork with salsa, served in a banana leaf on a bed of polenta.
When this arrived, the leaf made me fear the fell gods of Itaewon’s sulfurous back passages had already beguiled Yonaguni into becoming a fake. Banana leaves are usually a sure sign of dodgy cuisine. However, the barbecue quelled my anxieties.
It tasted just like a South Carolina version I used to have at a Harley Davidson cafe in Delaware. The spices were sharp and fragrant and the polenta became a comforting mash as it soaked up the pork’s juices.
Desserts were apple pie, cheesecake and a tart filled with lemon sorbet and dressed with orange marmalade. The pie and the cheesecake were excellent.
Itaewon and OK2 make strange bedfellows. The former was built on fakes and Yonaguni is one of the most authentic chefs ― and people ― one could meet. I had been thinking of calling for a boycott of Itaewon, in the interest of forcing Seoul to integrate expats over a wider area. Now I am forced to urge all to visit Pear Town’s new lily.
OKitchen2
English: On the menu and spoken
Tel: (02) 797-6420
Address: Boyoung-gil, Itaewon-dong
Subway: Noksapyeong
Parking: Public lot
Hours: 12 to 2 p.m. and 6 to 10:30 p.m., closed Sundays
Dress: New York black
By Daniel Jeffreys Features Editor [danielj@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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