It was a dismal night in Seoul. Rains were falling heavily after a full day of snowfall. We arrived by taking the metro to the Anguk station and then had to fight off the rain and wind to get to the traditional Korean-style house where Yongsusan Biwon was located.
For the past 30 years, Yongsusan has prided itself for serving a brand of traditional royal cuisine from the rich Korean heritage. Its recipes goes a long way back, even comparing to the history of their century-old house.
Rather than studying hard on each of the menu items, we decided to simply take one of the dinner set which would allow us to try some of the different house specialties here.
As I don't read Korean, the following descriptions came straight from the dinner menu and I sure hope that they were properly translated.
First up was a soft pottage served with a water kimchi. According to our server, the creamy pottage was made with abalone but surprisingly it lacked any kind of taste. The water kimchi, unlike the kimchi we were more accustomed to, was sour but not spicy at all. All and all, it was a weird combo (2/10).
But it was just the start of our nightmare.
The servers did not explain much about but I would assume that these was a trio of amuse bouche or starters before the meat courses.
On the left side was a translucent mung bean noodles, crunchy pickled cucumber, sweet marinated beef julienne mushroom sprinkled with black-green seaweed. Then, there was the Kaesung style mixed vegetable salad of crunch bean-sprouts radish spinach and slices of dried persimmon on the right and finally a fresh tuna served with caviar on a bed of lettuce and onion in a sweet vinegar dressing (on the upper right corner of the picture).
None of these three dishes really pleased me at all. I had trouble even recognizing the so-called "fresh tuna" if I didn't have a copy of the menu on my hand. It tasted more like a beef jerky in texture. Very cold, blant and chewy (2/10).
The fresh mixed salad of crisp green vegetables and fruit in wild sesame sauce was a little better. The key was the wild sesame dressing, which was quite refreshing.
After a medley of unimpressive vegetable dishes, here came the meat courses starting with the Bossam (on the right), which was a dish of steamed pork wrapped in pickled greens. There was a salty sauce (as the menu indicated) to go with the pork.
Bossam is a popular Korean dish but once again I did not find it interesting at all. Also there wasn't a whole lot of cooking techniques required there (2/10).
On the left side of the plate was the gold strands of seafood with crisp asian pears and cucumber in a mustard dressing. I couldn't exactly tell what seafood was involved in this dish except some small oysters and squids but it was way too mushy for my liking. The dressing was okay tasting a bit like kimchi but a little sweeter.
Then we had the grilled brochette of chicken served with assorted mushrooms. I thought this was the best dish of the night by a country mile (4/10) but still did not consider it to be good enough for us nor the royalties.
Pan fried meat, fish and vegetables was actually minced meat and fish stuffed in vegetables, more specifically green peppers and then deep fried. We didn't finish this one (0/10).
I had better stuffed peppers in Hong Kong from the street vendors.
Minced beef seared with barbecued sauce was our next course. It was two beef patties with a tasty barbecue sauce fried on a hot wok. This one was okay but again we expected more from a kitchen prided to be serving royal cuisine (3/10).
By the time, when they were serving us the crispy tofu stuffed with minced vegetables in a black bean sauce, we were almost ready to pack our bags and leave. The tofu here was a bit on the hard side and the minced vegetable as the stuffing lacked the seasoning nor the textural contrast to make this dish even worthawhile (1/10).
Finally, something that was worth some phototaking. But it's the dragon fire-pot not the food it was carrying unfortunately. According to the menu, it was a "Dragon fire-pot of various vegetables, fish and beef slices cooked in its boullion".
In a nutshell, it's a vegetable broth with mushrooms. There was no sign of any
fish or beef slices mentioned in the menu (2/10).
Now, the main courses arrived, firstly with the famous Bibimbub. We have had better bibimbubs elsewhere (3/10).
But at least the bibimbub was better than the hot noodle soup (1/10).
Throughout the meal, I had the burning question of how this could be considered good enough as a royal cuisine. I admit I did not order the more expensive dinner set to begin with but nevertheless I still expected a certain level of standard to be met.
Food Rating: 2.5/10
Food Rating: 2.5/10
Price: ₩₩₩₩
Address: 148, Wonseo-dong Chongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Closest Metro Station: Anguk
Tel: +82 2-591-9674
Website: www.yongsusan.co.kr
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