Korean cuisine makes waves at the World Economic Forum
JoongAng Daily
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| Park Hyo-nam, executive chef at the Millennium Seoul Hilton in central Seoul, led a culinary team that introduced Korean cuisine at an event called Korea Night in Davos, Switzerland, in January. |
The tranquil and snowy town of Davos, Switzerland, lit up on Jan. 28 for Korea Night, an event held as part of the World Economic Forum. That evening, the convention hall in the Schweizerhof Hotel, where the event was held, was crowded with more than 800 people, with a guest list that included several world leaders, and each of them was holding a plate of Korean food.
During the five-hour event, guests were served dish after dish of finely prepared and presented modern Korean cuisine.
“Since many foreigners aren’t used to the concept of sharing food from the same plate, we decided to cook the dishes in small portions, like finger foods, so that they would be able to taste it in one bite,” said Park Hyo-nam, executive chef at the Millennium Seoul Hilton in central Seoul. That night, Park was in charge of providing information about authentic Korean cuisine to the foreign guests.
The event was hosted by the Federation of Korean Industries and President Lee Myung-bak, with assistance from the first lady, Kim Yoon-ok.
“It was a blast,” Park said. “Everybody loved it.”
Park started cooking at the age of 17 and was hired to work at the hotel in 1983, when it was founded. Currently, he is the only Korean executive chef working in a multinational hotel chain. In 2006, he was given the Medaille du Merite Agricole (Order of Agricultural Merit), awarded by the French government.
It took Park and his team of seven Korean chefs nearly three months to prepare the menus and concept for the evening, which was “taste of green,” referring to dishes with plenty of fresh vegetables.
This so-called dream team of chefs came up with 22 Korean dishes, from appetizers to desserts. The menu included exotic dishes like king crab wrapped with seasoned cucumber and pear and stir-fried abalone wrapped with white kimchi, and old favorites like grilled galbi (beef ribs), tteokgalbi (beef ribs with rice cakes), bibimbap (mixed rice with vegetables) and dakkangjung (fried chicken with sweet sauce), which is known to be the first lady’s favorite dish. Park said it was the first lady’s idea to add dakkangjung to the menu.
“We wanted to introduce the various types of tastes representing Korea’s eight provinces,” Park said proudly.
With the awareness that many foreigners have a difficult time adjusting to the spiciness of Korean cuisine, the team prepared two types of bibimbap - a spicy one and a nonspicy one. With the spicy version, rice and vegetables were mixed with gochujang (chili paste); in the milder version, soy sauce was used as seasoning instead of the spicy pepper paste.
“Surprisingly, eight out of ten guests picked bibimbap mixed with gochujang,” he said, with disbelief in his eyes. “I came to think that many Koreans, including me, tend to have many misconceptions about the foreign palate.”
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| Samsaek manduguk (three-color dumpling soup), with dumplings stuffed with kimchi, tofu and meat, was one of the appetizers served on Korea Night. Provided by the hotel |
Although the event was a success - President Lee gave the chefs a pat on the back and the guests praised the high quality of the food - the preparation process was not that easy, according to Park and his team of chefs. Park said that “it was like making the most out of a little.”
“In general, it’s very difficult to make Korean cuisine in other countries, where there is a lack of the right ingredients and the cooking tools are different from what we have at home,” he said.
To prepare for the event, Park made a two-day visit to the Davos hotel to meet with local chefs. They helped him assess which ingredients he would be able to purchase in Switzerland and which ones he would have to bring with him on the day of the event.
“The ingredients that were difficult to find there were things like soy sauce, doenjang (bean paste), and sesame oil,” he said. “There were other ingredients that we had to bring with us, like pears and ginseng specific to Korea. However, we were able to get most types of vegetables, such as cucumbers and carrots,” he said.
Another obstacle presented itself when Park was told by the Swiss chefs that his team would not be given full use of the hotel’s kitchen facilities during the event because the hotel still had to provide service to its regular customers. So on the day of the event, the Korean team arrived at the hotel at 4:30 a.m., before the local chefs were scheduled to start working, and prepared the ingredients they would need for the evening. When the hotel chefs arrived at around 6 a.m., the team was ready to turn the kitchens back over to them.
“We didn’t have our own kitchen,” Park said. “Preparing for the event was hard work, but we definitely all learned something. And it’s all part of the process of promoting Korean food.”
The chef also made note of his culinary philosophy that food can be both a remedy and at the heart of a nation’s power.
“If Korea were not as developed as it is now, we wouldn’t have an opportunity to introduce Korean food outside of Korea,” he said. “Food is also a way to maintain health,” he said. “And Korean food proves that.”
By Lee Eun-joo [angie@joongang.co.kr]