Haute ceramics for haute hansik
KOREA HERALD
Cuisine at its most elegant, most refined involves more than just the food itself. It engages an entire sensory experience, from the way it is plated down to what it is plated on.
This is where KwangJuYo, a prominent traditional Korean pottery manufacturer, comes into play.
For KwangJuYo CEO Cho Tae-kwon, ceramics elevate food to another level.
“For food to look beautiful, a harmony between the food and the vessels it is served in must arise,” Cho said.
Nowhere is the integral relationship between tableware and cuisine more evident than in the realm of haute cuisine. It is in this arena — where top chefs, potters, architects, interior designers and ingredients come together — that both Cho and Korean-born chef Corey Lee see an avenue for the globalization of hansik.
The former chef de cuisine at Thomas Keller’s three-Michelin star French Laundry, Lee teamed up with KwangJuYo to create a 16-piece line for his new California-based restaurant Benu. While collaborating with the renowned tableware company, Lee dined at CEO Cho’s house several times.
“The food that he does at his house is just unbelievable,” the 32-year-old owner-chef said.
“It is the highest quality ingredients that you can find, prepared in exceptional ways, served in beautiful porcelain,” Lee elaborated. “To me it epitomizes what fine dining is about. It’s not just focusing on food, but the whole experience and I think that people should be aware that Korean cuisine has potential for that kind of preparation as well.”
In Lee’s opinion, haute hansik should be promoted abroad, especially since certain dishes, namely Korean barbecue, have already garnered a significant amount of mass appeal..
“I think globalizing Korean cuisine is not just about finding that dish that everyone will be into because what that does is ultimately a disservice to raising the awareness and appreciation for Korean cuisine. … What’s really important is similar to what I said before, which is promoting all aspects of Korean cuisine, and fine dining being one of them.
“I think there is an amazing opportunity and potential for fine dining within Korean cuisine,” Lee continued. “It certainly exists already, but there’s also potential for that fine cuisine to evolve into something more modern using different techniques and it’s not just something that should be stuck in terms of royal cuisine.”
KwangJuYo CEO Cho seems to be on the same page.
In Cho’s opinion, a course meal is a top-notch form of fine dining and showcases the delicious nature of hansik. He believes that hansik should be initially promoted abroad as a series of courses rather than piled onto one table all at once. For those who might argue that such a tack mars the tradition of Korean cuisine, KwangJuYo’s flagship store manager Jung Sun-a revealed that meals were served as courses during the Koryeo Dynasty (918-1392). The one-table meal custom, according to store manager Jung, was practiced often during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).
Not one to sit back and philosophize on the globalization of hansik, Cho has been putting his ideas into action since he took over in 1988.
Fearful that KwangJuYo might end up producing wares that catered to a Japanese market, he stopped exporting to Japan and focused on creating ceramics that stayed true to their Korean roots.
During his travels, Cho realized that countries famed for their ceramics had already succeeded in globalizing their cuisine. He noticed that alcoholic beverages played a key role in the dining experience and saw how restaurants offered up a slice of their culture through various aspects of the dining experience. That was when he turned to the food and beverage industry.
From 2003 to 2007, Cho launched four restaurants — the upscale GAON, Hwayo Bar and Dining, the tavern-style establishment Knack Knack and the more casual Knock Knock. A total of eight establishments, branch restaurants included, opened throughout Korea and China.
By 2009, the Beijing branch of GAON, the Pohang (North Gyeongsang Province) branch of Knack Knack and the Apgujeong (Seoul), branch of Knock Knock remained in business. For various reasons, the other branches were shut down.
In addition to his foray into the dining industry, Cho started producing high quality soju under the brand name HWAYO in 2005.
But since its inception in 1963, ceramics has been at the heart of KwangJuYo. That is where the soul of the company resides. To Cho, who grew up surrounded by ceramics and learned about them from his parents, pottery is practically second nature.
During his interview with The Korea Herald, green tea was served in elegant cups. Shaped like a flower bud, the slim clay strainer bearing emerald tea leaves peaked out from the mouth of the cup, giving the vessel its pointed shape while also allowing the drinker to remove the strainer without burning one’s fingertips. In essence, that solitary cup demonstrated KwangJuYo’s ability to fuse practicality and beauty into a single piece.
“Korean tableware is not ornate. It makes the food stand out. It takes a step back,” the 61-year-old CEO explained the charm of Korean pottery.
Cho himself is deeply involved in the design of KwangJuYo’s products, which include two lines: the more upscale KwangJuYo and the more casual AOLDA. Relying on traditional methods and glazes as the foundation for KwangJuYo’s designs, Cho and his company dedicate themselves to the recreation and modernization of Korean pottery.
“In the same manner that clothing styles change in the world of fashion, in the way that so many designs are made to create fashion through apparel, tableware is the same,” he explained.
 |
 |
It took him a year to find just the right mud for their new dal hangari line. When he finds a particular line strikingly beautiful, he goes to the factory and works with a prominent potter to give his ideas shape before handing samples over to the design team.
Yet, the heart of his designs and those of his design team, who also come up with ideas on their own, seem to center on food.
“Ceramics cannot develop without the development of food,” Cho said.
KwangJuYo’s naeyeoljagi, a hybrid cross between a hot plate and an earthenware pot, serves as a quintessential case-in-point.
The product line comes in various forms, in a shape similar to the more familiar ttukbaegi (the pot that jjigae is generally boiled and served in) and then in the form of a plate. The plate form, perhaps, is the most innovative, offering up a beautiful and practical solution to those who want to enjoy their Korean barbecue but without the smoke and fire.
Basically, beef can be grilled and then served up piping hot, straight off the fire, on this round black plate, which is supported by an underlying ceramic plate and comes with a lid. Both the supporting plate and lid come in various colors and designs.
“The lids give an element of presentation,” said KwangJuYo store manager Jung. They also keep the heat in.
According to GAON Beijing’s CEO Lee Tae-hyun, the naeyeoljagi “plays a role in showcasing an upscale dining culture to an international audience via the tradition of our ceramics.”
At the Beijing-based restaurant, which serves up fare like red ginseng chicken soup and abalone galbi jjim (braised short ribs), main dishes are often plated on KwangJuYo’s naeyeoljagi, says Lee.
In fact, according to Lee, GAON Beijing serves all their food on KwangJuYo and AOLDA tableware, including wares specially made for the Beijing restaurant by KwangJuYo’s potters.
The restaurant, which recently won three awards, also serves up KwangJuYo’s HWAYO soju both in its pure, unadulterated form and as a cocktail. Hwayo, says Lee, is served in KwangJuYo’s bangwool (which means bell in Korean) cups.
“Everyone enjoys the history and the background behind the creation of the bangwool cup,” Lee wrote in an e-mail interview.
The cup, according to KwangJuYo chef Kim Byoung-jin, was specially made for HWAYO. Inside the long foot of the cup, which has small vents to allow sound to escape, a small bell is hidden, so that when you have downed your shot of HWAYO, you can shake the cup in celebration.
According to chef Kim, who created the course menu for KwangJuYo’s Napa Valley dinner party in 2007, guests at the California event took their bangwool cups home with them. The design for cup, says Kim, was inspired by a vessel from the Kaya Period and was modified by KwangJuyo to include a bell.
The piece serves as a classic example of how KwangJuYo is able to take tradition and bring it into the future. It also demonstrates the company’s awareness of the fact that drinking is not just about the fiery liquid in the bottle. It is about the whole experience.
Imagine dipping back a glass of that silken, pear-scented rice wine, savoring the smooth and fragrant roll of it on the tongue and then ringing your glass as your throat braces the brief heat of the soju.
The whole concept is fresh and works, primarily because the HWAYO itself is so good — in fact it tastes something like a cross between sake and soju — and because it suits the festive nature of the bangwool cup.
Chef Kim — the chef behind the meals that Corey Lee raved about — understands the role that tableware plays in the dining experience.
“You cannot separate food from tableware,” the 33-year-old chef said. “If food is tasty but it’s plated in plastic, then that food becomes cheap.”
On the flipside, when you serve it as a series of delectable courses on fine wares, like what Kim did for Benu owner-chef Lee, food takes on an extra gloss.
For the meal he served Lee in early February, when Lee came to Korea to be appointed goodwill ambassador for Seoul and to see the final sampling of the dishes for Benu, Kim plated everything on KwangJuYo tableware, using the beauty of empty space, as in the celadon-colored curved plate and in the white, delicately etched dessert plate, to heighten his hansik.
He drew from the innovative beauty of a traditional three-tiered four-cornered banchan hab to serve Lee dessert when he came to dine at CEO Cho’s house during the Amazing Korean Table festival in late fall.
The banchan hab consists of three rectangular banchan dishes, one piled on top of the other and covered with a lid. According to KwangJuYo’s flagship store manager Jung, the original design dates back to the Joseon Dynasty and was used by aristocrats.
Aristocrats, says Jung, would have their servants carry banchan (side dishes) in this hab and then when they entered a jumak (a Korean watering hole) to tip back a glass or two, they would lay out their banchan and dine.
“Now you can use it for tea time or put desserts in it,” said Jung.
Yugi, or traditional Korean brassware, could be a boon to hansik restaurants according to Jung, because it does not break. Jung added that bibimbap, nengmyun and one-table meals are most appropriate for yugi. In the past, brassware, says Jung, was reserved for special members of nobility and for ancestral rites. Furthermore, it was used in the winter.
For now, the sales of KwangJuYo’s brassware and ceramics are domestic. The company’s collaboration with Corey Lee, however, may change all that.
“A distributor that I work with who imports high end porcelain is very interested in working with the pieces,” Lee wrote in a follow-up e-mail interview. “They are interested because they think it looks and feels unique, and there will be a market for it.”
The pieces that Lee is referring to are part of a 16-piece set that consists of three concepts: a black finish, a matte white finish and a transparent finish. Part of it was designed by Lee and made by KwangJuYo while some of the pieces are part of KwangJuYo’s own collection.
“Some are made for specific dishes,” wrote Lee. “For example, there is a bowl with a small cavity in which I will cook a custard and serve it with lobster consomme flavored with seaweed.”
But why KwangJuYo?
“Kwangjuyo is a company that, for me, it’s a very iconic Korean company, because again, living abroad, so much of my understanding of Korea was through things involving food and my parents had a set of KwangJuYo dishes,” said Lee.
“So, even their aesthetic and their style is something that I would associate with Korea… So it always occupied a certain place for me and in my memory of what Korean culture and style is about,” he added.
“For me it was obvious that KwangJuYo was the person I wanted to collaborate with because, one, they have just beautiful style. The craftsmanship is on par with world porcelain Meissen from Germany or Renault from France. But it’s also something that’s Korean and I want to use that and bring that to the States.”
Details
Benu is slated to open this summer in San Francisco.
KwangJuYo is sold in department stores and in stores located in Cheongdam-dong (02-3446-4800), Gahoe-dong (02-741-4801) and Icheon (031-632-4864).
GAON Beijing is located on the 5F, East Tower, Twin Towers, B-12 Jianguomenwai Avenue in the Chaoyang District. For more information call 86-10-5120-8899.
Knack Knack is located in Pohang. For more information call (054) 274-3808. Knock Knock is located in Galleria Department Store in Apgujeong-dong.
For more information on KwangJuYo visit www.kwangjuyo.com
(oh_jean@heraldm.com)
By Jean Oh
