Finding common ground on the need to share and stand together
The conversation opened with a question: what does it take, from a global perspective, to introduce and spread Korean food culture? Around the table were Park Junghyun and Ellia Park, co-founders of Atomix — the New York restaurant that presents Hansik as fine dining — along with Chef Ahn Sung-jae of Mosu, Chef Shin Chang-ho of Joo Ok, Chef Cho Hee-sook of Hansik Gongbang, and Chef Lim Hyun-joo of Myeongbodang, all pursuing new directions for Hansik at home. Joining them as bridges to the wider world were Huh Yong-soo, President of GS Energy, and Heaeun Park, Partner at Altos Ventures. In the end, culture is made and carried by people — and so, the discussion held, there had to be that much more exchange, sharing, and solidarity among them.
What it takes to enter the "global gastronomy market" — content
Park Junghyun and Ellia Park of Atomix argued that with international food-and-beverage professionals now turning their attention to Hansik, the field must keep producing fresh content to meet them. The chefs at the gathering shared their firsthand experiences working in restaurants abroad — how they built their own culinary voice, the road they took, and the know-how they gathered along the way. Chef Ahn Sung-jae of Mosu and Chef Shin Chang-ho of Joo Ok, drawing on years of running restaurants in Seoul, offered pointed suggestions about which ingredients could catch the eye of overseas industry insiders, and which Hansik dishes might reach the general public abroad more deeply. Everyone agreed that the "scene" of Korean grilling — one anyone in the world can grasp at a glance — needs to be built up through strong images and content, and that beyond a broad audience, deeper information needs to reach the food-and-beverage professionals of each country as well.
President Huh Yong-soo of GS Energy and Partner Heaeun Park of Altos Ventures — who often introduce the many sides of Hansik in the natural course of dining with business partners at home and abroad — added another point they wouldn't leave out: it is when the very essence of Hansik is conveyed that Korean culture's value rises with it. There was shared agreement, too, that expertise in Hansik as gastronomy must accumulate first, if there is to be any ground on which to educate and raise the next generation. Content for diners, knowledge and information for professionals, and the research that grounds all of it in what is truly ours — the nanrohoe naturally arrived at a vision for building out this whole system.
