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Innovative chef flies high with Lufthansa

Published: 06 Mar. 2009, 22:09

Chef Park Hyo-nam

He may look meeker than a lamb, but he turns into a much tougher beast when he dons his toque and gets into the kitchen.

Fierce and charismatic, Park Hyo-nam, 48, executive chef at the Millennium Seoul Hilton, even calls himself a tiger when he cooks.

“Cooking is a direct service since you receive feedback right away,” he says. “And to cook tempting food that pleases customers’ palates, a chef must have charisma and good leadership in the kitchen.”

The culinary mastermind was recently appointed as Star Chef by Lufthansa, the Germany-based airline that has invited award-winning chefs to provide in-flight food since 2000.

Park was chosen at the beginning of this month as the airline’s first Korean Star Chef, following culinarians from mainly France, the U.S. and India, to create tailor-made premium menus for passengers aboard flights from Korea to Germany.

“We chose chef Park for three main reasons,” said Christian Schindler, the general manager of Lufthansa in Korea. “He’s renowned in his own country, his creations are innovative, different and outstanding, and he is skilled at creating new menus.”

His peers have nothing but praise for him. “Most chefs I know are notorious for their temperament,” said Eric Swanson, the general manager of the Millennium Seoul Hilton. “Chef Park, on the other hand, is gracious and is always in control.”

Considering the long flights, Park felt that passengers should be able to enjoy healthy and vegetarian-based in-flight meals, but coming up with the menus wasn’t easy. It took him more than eight months to create the menus, which involved strict testing procedures.

While cooking is all about speed and temperature, a major obstacle in creating menus is you can’t cook with a flame on flights.

“So it is difficult to maintain taste and quality,” Park said last Tuesday at the Millennium Seoul Hilton. “Instead, the food has to be cooked before the flight and kept warm until it’s served.”

His dishes include sugarcane lamb medallion and lemon thyme sauce as well almond jelly topped with caviar goose liver parfait. He also adds rice to japchae, or glass noodles mixed with vegetables, and produces his own take on galbi, or beef ribs.

Park started out cooking in the late 1970s. After his father’s business failed, Park started working instead of continuing his studies in high school. During his spare time, he took cooking lessons, and his teacher recommended Park as an assistant chef at a hotel in Seoul.

He joined the Millennium Seoul Hilton in 1983, the year the hotel was founded. Since then, he has won numerous awards such as the World Culinary Contest in Singapore in 1996.

He was awarded the Medaille du Merite Agricole, a prestigious decoration awarded by the French government, in 2006.

By Lee Eun-joo Staff Reporter [[email protected]]