As soon as I take a bite, I travel back in time. It is a well-known effect. It is called the madeleine, inspired by one of the many passages of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, which many quote and few have read. A familiar flavor, one that caresses you, that brings you back to a precise moment in life, to the memory of a person or a place. A stargate. The strange thing is that I am in South Korea, in a restaurant with dim lights and elegant cutlery. And the memory is distant, almost thirty years back in time and more than 9,000 kilometers away in space. Seoul, 2025 – Ascoli Piceno, second half of the 1990s.
I have just taken a bite of a stuffed cucumber, after a day spent visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace and the nearby Hanok village; yet at the same time I am at the white table in my grandmother’s kitchen, seated at the head of the table, just back from school, and on the plate there are zucchini stuffed with ground meat.
On6.5 is a restaurant in the center of Seoul, if one can even speak of a center in these megalopolises with frayed borders and shifting centers of gravity. It proposes a Korean cuisine that seeks to tell the story of kimchi in a new guise, both to locals and to those who find themselves in South Korea for vacation or work. I speak with Jae Won Choi, the founder of the restaurant together with chef Jung Soo Lee, who tells me that Korean cuisine is too tied to a “classic” image of red kimchi, the spicy one, made with cabbage,
“But in reality, there are many different kinds, each with its own unique charm.”
Thus Jae begins to introduce me to kimchi, to Korean food and wine culture, and above all, to his vision of cuisine.
Jae Won Choi and chef Jung Soo Lee come from a Michelin-starred background, the first as head manager at Evett, the second – after an experience in Paris, also at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school – at Bicena. Two renowned Michelin-starred restaurants in the South Korean capital. The two experiences created the most suitable blend for a cuisine that respects tradition but is able to evolve toward more contemporary and international horizons, thanks also to a twist born from the union of local techniques with Western ones: “We create dishes that are new yet familiar for local guests, and familiar yet new for international ones.” A vision able to highlight the strengths of Korean cuisine: “Korean cuisine is rooted in fermentation and in the richness of seasonal vegetables. Fermentation is capable of creating a profound interaction between acidity, sweetness, and umami. Vegetables make it possible to always have ever-changing varieties of kimchi. The fusion of these two elements creates very fascinating K-Foods.”
At the center of their concept is kimchi, so much so that On6.5 calls its dishes kimchi-tapas.
A living food that develops new flavors over time, building a flavor scale with dozens of octaves depending on the ingredients used and the preparation times. Anyone who has had even a single meal in South Korea finds themselves — happily or not — dealing with the omnipresence of red cabbage kimchi: among the banchan as a side dish to any main course, or spread out on the stalls of market vendors. But kimchi is much more: “Red kimchi is certainly the most common and tends to be spicy, sour, and rich in umami, which makes it indispensable on the Korean table. On the other hand, kimchi prepared without chili powder has a cleaner, more refreshing flavor, like dongchimi, a white radish kimchi served with a fresh, clear broth.”
The restaurant is extremely quiet, with a minimalist yet warm design, the tables spaced apart, and large street-facing windows dotted with vases that almost recall the patterns of an archaeological museum. Hanging on the central wall is a metal disc, backlit like a great eclipse. The waiters carefully explain each course. The dining room manager visited Italy last year, one of those Grand Tours that tourists from other continents make when they come to our country. We talk about spiciness: “You eat spicy food in Italy too. But it is a different kind of spice, more direct. Ours is almost always a fermented spiciness, and therefore developed, one that evolves and does not stop. Even in the mouth. It is a bit like a sip of wine, which transforms.”
The white cucumber kimchi, Oi-seon, the stargate one: a dish that originated at the royal court, made of salted cucumbers cut into rounds, stuffed with beef and vegetables, and served with broth. On6.5’s version includes in the filling Korean yuzu syrup and sautéed beef, accompanied by a cold broth inspired by naengmyeon, the noodles traditionally eaten cold. If white cucumber kimchi is a space-time portal, fried kimchi is a spaceship: one of those dishes that fills your mouth with flavor and makes you take off. Without intellectual fuss. Jae tells me that “it is inspired by kimjang, the traditional, collective practice of preparing and preserving kimchi. Instead of the classic fermented shrimp sauce, we fill the salted white kimchi with shrimp, then roll it up and fry it. The dish is served with two sauces: a sour cream infused with dongchimi broth, presented like a Mont Blanc, and a spicy mayonnaise mixed with two types of fermented kimchi and soy sauce.”
Traveling and eating in South Korea, a constant presence in restaurants and markets is tteokbokki, rice cakes usually seasoned with gochujang — a fermented sauce of red chili pepper, glutinous rice, meju (a block of fermented soybeans), and barley malt.
Another standard-bearer of Korean gastronomy that, in the kitchen of On6.5, is transformed and given new meaning.
Instead of the usual bowl or sizzling pan, tteokbokki are served in a caquelon like those used for fondue: they are then covered with mozzarella, while on the side they are accompanied by skewers of vegetables and sundae (the typical local sausage that resembles our blood pudding), battered and fried. The dish thus becomes an act of assembling: the skewers are dipped into the spicy sauce in which the tteokbokki float, while the mozzarella stretches and melts inside. Melted cheese is a very widespread trend in contemporary Korean cuisine. It is not exclusive to fine dining, nor to restaurants open 24 hours a day or to market stalls, nor, of course, to traditional cooking. It tells of a very natural evolution of the local gastronomic culture: an openness to foreign influences, to changing tastes, and to international fashions that in our part of the world might sound almost heretical. Until a few years ago melted cheese was not used; then, with the opening to people and ideas from the rest of the world, it became much more present in the country’s cuisine, even going so far as to create new versions of ancient dishes, such as cheese dakgalbi which, as the name suggests, is a version of dakgalbi (to simplify: “spicy chicken”) cooked with mozzarella and other melted cheeses, until it becomes a kind of primordial spicy and cheesy broth.
Cold noodles with perilla oil, an aromatic plant typical of Asia that grows in summer, are another traditional dish that here at On6.5 is reimagined: “We use fresh handmade noodles seasoned with perilla oil and seasonal ingredients. It is a traditional dish that we have also worked on while following the inspiration of some dishes I discovered during my culinary travels. We present it at the table, where we mix the noodles with vegetables and condiments in front of the diners. The possibility of varying the ingredients with the seasons makes it a refreshing and ever-new experience.”
When Jae says that his ambition is to prepare dishes that to international guests feel familiar yet new, I realize the experience I have just had. It is not easy to feel at home while being 9,000 kilometers away, with dishes I had never tasted before.
