Newly crowned as the 27th best restaurant in all of Asia and second in Korea, Ryunique is finally getting the world's attention after its opening at Sinsa-dong in 2011 with much fanfare.
Chef Ryu's avant-garde cuisine is a product of his 8 years of traveling the world and working in some of the most cutting-edge kitchens in Japan, Australia (Rockpool) and the UK (Gordon Ramsay). Needless to say, we were very excited about meeting the chef in person this afternoon.
After stepping through the glass doors, I first thought I have mistakenly gone into an art gallery!
The dining room boasts a raw and minimalist design which is very popular these days for fine dining restaurants.
It was nice to know that there was only one set lunch menu available here (₩48,000) and before we could even brink, lunch already started quickly with the first amuse bouche - soy marinated shrimp with pink garlic mayo.
They have quite an interesting dish here. The soy marinated shrimp was chilled in very low temperature and served that way using a glass of ice.
I was a little (pleasantly) surprised with the firm texture of the shrimp. It tasted fairly sweet and I was wondering whether it's coming from the soy or the shrimp itself. The garlic mayo is pretty much for decoration purpose only as it carried no particular flavor (or very very mild flavor).
This was a special gift complimentary of the chef. Very adorable presentation with the plant looking lovely. The only edible parts here were the fried cheese puff and cream cheese with basil and raspberry on the leaves. For the cream cheese and raspberry, we were supposed to lick them off those leaves.
Our final nibble comprised of two small bites - a fried mustard leaf with seaweed and micro tomato and then a tiny piece of fried crosne. This was easily my favorite nibble from the amuse bouche. The mustard leaf was flavorful with very exciting texture.
This tasted nothing like fried crosne. Packed inside an edible plastic bag made with what I thought was glucose, it had a crunchy and caramelized texture. After all, crosne didn't really taste all that bad!
Following the parade of nibbles, it's time for our soup to arrive and today, we were having
Jerusalem artichoke espuma.
This was almost like a cappuccino, warm, rich and foamy. I thought the bacon, cabbage, fried quail egg and warm jelly were working fairly well with the artichoke espuma but that's coming from an artichoke freak like me (6.5/10).
Next up was our lone starter of the day, a shrimp spring roll. This was not the usual type of crispy spring roll that we all grew up with. Instead it had fillings of minced shrimp and smoked ricotta cheese wrapped around by a pastry roll and served with a tomato and lobster sauce.
This was a bit depressing. The pastry roll was so thick that we could hardly taste what's inside (3/10).
I had the pork belly next. A modern interpretation of the Korean traditional bossam pork belly, Chef Ryu re-invented this dish using sous-vide king shrimp, potato purée, baby spinach and mushrooms. The key here was the special shrimp soy reduction which was sweet and savory.
This tasted a great deal like 'Dongpo' braised pork belly (東坡肉) from the Chinese cuisine. Not a poor dish at all but I was anticipating more surprises there (5/10).
Finally, our prayers were answered with our other main course - an element of surprise for our palates. It was quail done two ways, first with its breast seared and followed by its quail legs smoked.
The quail breast was seared to perfection and the flavors were enhanced by a sauce prepared by braising the bones for 8 hours. But that was just the beginning. The second part of this dish came in a giant glass containers where the quail legs were wrapped with savory bacon and smoked on a bed of hay.
At this point in time, Chef Ryu has already come over and was all set to explain this dish to us. Turned out the smoked quail leg was a dish inspired by his childhood memories, from a recipe in the Korean countryside where he grew up.
This was ohhhh soooo good! Both the breast and leg were very juicy and tender. The leg had the additional flavors from the bacon and of course that lovely smokey flavors from the hay. The cabbage with extra virgin olive oil emulsion, bitter carrot and beetroot purée helped to provide the exclamation point to this all-around wonderful dish (9/10).
We obviously didn't want this to end so quickly but like that famous quote from the "Matrix" movie, it was inevitable. And so they brought us our final dish, a dessert served on a picture frame. Caramel rice ice-cream, kiwi purée, green tea powder, lemon panna cotta, jasmine tea jelly, cake, sweet crumbs and edible flowers, a refreshing end to a pretty impressive display by Chef Ryu and his team (5.5/10).
An interesting meal that had its ups and downs (thankfully more ups than downs). I thought Chef Ryu's talent is definitely there as displayed in the quail dish and it's probably just a matter of time before he puts it all together.
Food Rating: 6/10
Price: ₩₩₩
Address: 40 Gangnam-daero 162-gil, Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South KoreaClosest Metro Station: Sinsa
Tel: +82 2546-9279
Website: www.ryunique.co.kr
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