7th Door is the restaurant of Chef Kim Dae-chun and the culmination of his “20-year quest for gastronomic heaven”. This restaurant which opened in 2021 was awarded a Michelin Star in its first year and currently sits at No. 26 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants.
The goal of the restaurant is to explore the art of Korean fermentation and ageing in order to discover new tastes, but also to rediscover old ones too. And so, the name 7th Door came about. The first five doors represent the five basic tastes; sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami, with the sixth being fermentation and ageing. Finally, after walking through six doors you arrive at the 7th Door, the door to Chef Kim’s dining room, where he’s created a menu based on everything he’s learned on his journey. I like the premise, it’s kind of a cool anime-like journey of discovery.
At 7th Door, expect Korean food with a modern take and a strong emphasis on fermentation and ageing. It was well worth it and one of my favourite eating experiences in Korea (of which there were many).
Table of Contents
7th Door’s Tasting Menu: The Galactic Gateway to Tasty Delights
7th Door’s tasting menu was made up of 13 different dishes and many more bites. The menu they hand to you doesn’t tell you too much, but the staff explain to us the concept of the 7th Door and how fermentation and ageing play an important role in the dishes. To help, they brought out a board full of different ferments, like fermented vinegar, cheong and soy sauce, some of which had been aged for 3 months and some up to 4 years.
The main ingredient was cheong. I had never heard of cheong prior to coming to this restaurant, but having tasted it I’ve fallen in love. Essentially cheong is an aged fruit syrup and at 7th Door, they’ve made it from fruits like yuzu and wild peach. Cheong as well as other fermented and aged foods make up the base of many of the dishes on the menu and so without further ado, let’s take a look at the food.
1A – Yuchae Rice Porridge
Two dishes made up the first course of this menu – rice porridge and a selection of welcome bites. We started with the rice porridge which for a first dish was so warm and comforting. They used a spring plant in Korea known as yuchae to season the dish giving it its yellow colour and a smooth umami seaweed-like sauce.
1B – Welcoming Fermentation and Ripening Small Bites
발효와 숙성의 아뮤즈 부쉬
Completing the first course were seven bites to go with the “seven doors” at 7th Door as well as seasonal water. This water is famously healthy in Korea, coming from the maple tree which gives it a slightly sweet flavour. I’m not too sure which bites represents which “doors of flavour” but they all tasted great.
To the right of the water were two wafers, on tasted of potato and the other of dried strawberries. Next, starting at the top of the main dish and spiralling clockwise was a bite made from pumpkin. This was one of my top bites of the night, a beautifully smooth and rich pumpkin caramel, drizzled in black-garlic syrup and with tangy pieces of pumpkin inside.
Below was a croquette made from tofu with a soy-flavoured pickled garnished. Following that was a fresh, sweet and tender octopus with soy sauce and sesame oil on a crunchy piece of seaweed. On the stick was a creamy and tangy bite of aged cream cheese, mixed with dried persimmon fruit and soybean paste, giving a fruity saltiness. Finally, in the centre of the dish was a mandarin marmalade tart with cream cheese on top.
2 – Jeju Super Sweet Corn Bavarois with Sea Urchin
제주 초당 옥수수 바바루아와 우니
In my review of Room 4 Dessert in Bali, I said that there seems to be a trend of serving corn custards on top restaurants’ menus, and here’s a delicious Korean take on it!
This silky corn custard had a fresh sweetcorn flavour that came from a special breed called Jeju Super Sweet Corn, a very seasonal sweetcorn from Korea’s Jeju Island. On top of the custard was a super rich uni and a slightly tangy black truffle and also a mucus-like sauce that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Surprise Bread Course!
Our menu didn’t say we had a bread course, but we got a bread course and I love a good bread course. 7th Door made this bread from 4-year fermented rice grains. We could dip our roll in the slightly sour and fruity yellow sauce made from Japanese apricot cheong, sesame and perilla oil.
3 – Today’s Raw Fish
오늘의 생선
Next, fresh croaker fish garnished with fennel-like water parsley sprigs, pickled white melon and a tart and salty sauce made from 2-day aged soybean paste and vinegar. To the left of the main dish was a piece of the croaker’s belly. It had an underlying flavour of sesame and umami fishiness and with a tough texture that dissolved in your mouth as you bit into it.
4 – Fried Shark’s Fin
오늘의 분식메뉴 “샥스핀튀김”
A playful take on an unethical ingredient. Now, I’m not too sure about how 7th Door sources their shark fins but it really doesn’t contribute anything to the dish so maybe next time they should just switch it out for something else. Anyway, this dish is a recreation of a popular snack in Korean schools called Gimmari, hence the 7-Eleven-style paper lunch bag. Gimmari is a crispy seaweed noodle roll and this particular one was black from squid ink and filled with rice noodles and shark fin. Pickled relish was on the side which had a nice mustardy kick.
5 – Roasted Lobster
시트러스청과 랍스터소스가 어우러진 랍스터구이
Another top dish on the tasting menu. Smoky lobster with a puree of potatoes, pieces of sweet potato and asparagus, seasoned with anchovy extract and topped with a generous amount of black truffles. But despite having lobster and truffles, both luxury items, the thing that made the dish so tasty was the citrus cheong and pure cheong sauce. This orange sauce was so smooth and a little thick, coating your mouth in this buttery and slightly bitter orange marmalade flavour
6 – Korean Beef 1++ Striploin and Salted Fish Sauce
한우 1++채끝등심구이, 3년 숙성 갈치 액젓 소스
I’m usually more of a starter/amuse-bouche kind of guy but honestly, the mains at 7th Door are great. And, just like the one before, this Korean beef dish was so tasty. Alongside the steak was an assortment of vegetables, each treated like they were the star component; namul (a type of spinach) seasoned with chilli and soybean paste, kohlrabi, chestnut-tasting burdock in a tangy glaze and carrot puree. Then the steak was insane, so rich and fatty, cutting like butter and the sauce elevated this with its own deep, savoury and slightly salty flavour from the salted fish.
6 – Daechun Kim with Special Pairing Krug
Next were two special bites, one with caviar and one with anchovies. I don’t think I’m the biggest fan of caviar, what I mean is I think it tastes ok but it definitely doesn’t deserve all the hype it gets for the flavour that it brings. Which, I guess made this course a little awkward. At the table-side, the chef plated rice on a piece of seaweed, followed by a spoonful of caviar. He then watched our reactions as we ate the dish and I felt obliged to nod and say “Wow, really nice.”. The bite itself was like a salty, fishy flavour bomb with an underlying seaweed flavour that probably doesn’t justify the price tag.
On the other hand, a much more delicious and less pretentious bite. Rice and seaweed topped with soft anchovy that had been mixed with a salty 3-year fermented chilli seasoning.
7 – Anchovy Noodle
차가운 멸치국수
This dish took me by surprise. An unassuming but delicious bowl of noodles. This specific type of noodles is famous in Korea for its silkiness and you can slurp them so easily. The noodles sat in a cold and smoky anchovy broth which had such a deep, umami and slightly fishy flavour. Next to the broth was green plum jangajji made from seasoning plums with chilli paste and soy sauce.
8 – Omija Syrup with Watermelon Punch
오미자 시럽과 수박화채
Starting off the desserts was a Korean take on a fruit salad. Raspberries and mint garnished the refreshing and smooth watermelon and lemon sorbet. Omija syrup finished the dish, giving a sour but rich sweetness of dried fruits.
9 – Super Sweet Corn and Grana Padano
초당 옥수수와 그라나파다노 아이스크림
Finally, we are on to the last course and what a banger this was, just like the corn dish from earlier. A sweet corn mousse made up the base of the dish, followed by a savoury and slightly salty Grana Padano ice cream. Under the mousse was crunchy corn crumble, salty soybean paste cream and meringue. Flecks of Grana Padano and dried chilli paste powder garnished the dish giving an underlying umami kick, that complemented the creaminess of the ice cream perfectly.
10 – Tea or Coffee and Petit Fours
티 또는 커피, 다과
Finishing the evening was two bites and some tea. On the right was a macaron and on the left was a traditional snack from North Korea. It tasted like a very chewy fried doughnut but was saved by a syrupy glaze made from apple cheong.
11 – Leaving Present – Cheong!!!
청
Most restaurants of this calibre let you take the menu home, but it seems that in Korea, there’s a tradition of giving you a small parting present. And, I couldn’t have asked for a better gift. Cheong seemed to be the thing that tied so many of the dishes at 7th Door together with its funky fruitiness that came in so many different flavours. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be around a kitchen for a while, so I couldn’t make use of the cheong in that sense. So, I just shot its beautiful flavour, vowing that one day I would make my own.
The Drinks
I was a little let down by the drinks here. Generally, I prefer non-alcoholic drinks with tasting menus, but I guess in Korea there’s such a big drinking culture that it’s so rare for someone to not have alcohol. Anyway, I’m here for the food and not the drinks so I asked about their non-alcoholic options. They had two flavours of kombucha and I opted for the blackcurrant one. Unfortunately, it wasn’t made in-house like at Le Du or Noma, surprising for a restaurant that’s so big on fermentation. Also, they ran out of kombucha whilst we were there, which was a shame given it was their only non-alcoholic option and I saw only 6 bottles being ordered.
The Experience
As you enter 7th Door, you walk through a hallway representing the five doors of flavour and the sixth door of fermentation and ageing. On the right is a huge cabinet filled with all sorts of meats ageing, some from 3 to 10 years. Entering through the 7th Door takes you to the horseshoe shaped dining room where you can watch the chefs plate each dish.
The service was fantastic and the staff were so kind and spoke good English, which isn’t as common as you’d think in Korea. Many dishes were served tableside which I loved with theatrics like pouring liquid nitrogen. However, I did think the caviar dish was a little awkward with the chef watching my reaction as I ate it. I didn’t enjoy it too much, but you can’t really say that to the executive chef in the middle of service.
Despite that, the ambience they created was great, funky and low-volume. The only thing that seemed a little strange to me was the other guests. One group seemed to leave early because the father suddenly got an urgent call. I can’t imagine leaving early from a place like this. Furthermore, the couple on our right seemed to be relatively normal at first (even though I couldn’t tell whether they were husband and wife or father and daughter). But strangely, although they were celebrating the girl’s birthday, the guy was working on his laptop throughout the meal. At the dinner table. Anyway, I had a great time; good food and great people watching.
Pricing and Booking Details
This restaurant is an unnecessary pain to book for tourists. If other top Korean restaurants had availability I probably would have booked those instead to avoid this hassle. Basically, as a non-Korean, you have to book via a hotel concierge. You can probably understand how impossible this is to do unless you’re staying at a top hotel that will bend over backwards for you, especially as the restaurant requires a deposit equal to the value of your meal.
In the end, we waited to arrive in Korea to chat with our hotel concierge to get them to book the restaurant. Unfortunately, they were unable to make the booking for us as we were foreigners. But, our receptionist called the restaurant to ask to confirm that our slot on Friday was still available.
With that knowledge, I ended up trekking to the restaurant’s reception and booking directly with them and paying the deposit. Surprisingly I was able to pay the deposit using my foreign bank account! Honestly, the whole process of making a reservation here was so disappointing and such a letdown given that the meal was actually really good. I really hope that in the future they sort this out.
Booking for Non-Foreigners: https://app.catchtable.co.kr/ct/shop/7th_door/menuAllList
Lunch: KRW 150,000 | £96
Weekend Lunch: KRW 180,000 | £115
Dinner: KRW 280,000 | £178
Address: 4층 7th Door, Hakdong-ro 97-gil, Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Thanks for reading and if you want to visit a fine-dining Korean restaurant, I definitely recommend this one if you can be bothered to book it!
If you have any questions, let me know!
