Kim Do-yun, chef of Yun Seoul, poses at his restaurant in southern Seoul. Courtesy of Yun Seoul

Michelin-starred chef Kim Do-yun of Yun Seoul, known for his expertise in noodles and extraordinary dedication to sourcing ingredients, proudly embraces the quirky label "weirdo obsessed with ingredients" given by his customers.

Deep inside his restaurant, Kim has a lab-like refrigerated storage space where he keeps over 500 ingredients labeled by year of production and place of origin — various pickles, dried vegetables, beans, grains, seeds, dried meat and dried fish with some aged up to seven years. Limited to seeds alone, his collection includes some 90 different kinds of sesame and perilla seeds.

Kim says each ingredient, gathered from all across the country and even abroad, are like invaluable books in a library.

"I try to keep some ingredients produced that year to study. I compare 'gosari' (bracken fern fiddlehead) produced and dried seven years ago and that of this year and examine how its texture and taste became different," Kim said during an interview with The Korea Times at his restaurant in southern Seoul, April 9.

"There were some incidents that my staff mistakenly used up some ingredients produced in a certain year. It was like the same pain that a book collector would feel when one's rare, invaluable books are missing."

He has put the most effort into his wheat samples collected from his travels across France, Turkey, Italy and various Korean provinces, as they are the key to his noodles.

"Since Korea has unfavorable environmental conditions to produce wheat, I had a hard time to find the right wheat that I can use for my noodles," he said.

Yun Seoul's signature perilla oil noodle / Courtesy of Yun Seoul

Dedication to noodles

Yun Seoul, which earned one Michelin star in 2022 and maintains the accolade, offers various cold and hot homemade Korean wheat noodles, house-aged fish dishes as well as umami-rich Korean beef dishes.

Kim attributes his fascination with noodles to a quest for creating additive-free varieties that preserve a natural fragrance, exemplified in his renowned nutty-flavored perilla oil noodles.

"I spent over 17 years of my 30-year career dedicated to noodles. Most of the Korean noodles of today use mass-produced imported flours and thus cannot have aroma and contain additives. Noodles with additives can be chewy, but they are hard to digest. Modern people's stomach ulcers are caused by these additives. I wanted to change this in the Korean culinary scene by making healthy noodles containing no additives but with the same chewy texture," he said.

He has meticulously developed a recipe where the noodle is the star of the show, rather than just a supporting player for the toppings. In order to create a noodle with the right fragrance, the chef roasts soybeans and mung beans and then combines them with whole wheat flour.

"Many restaurants use pre-made products and concentrates for better taste. I hate it when places don't even boil the broth and just add MSG (monosodium glutamate, which is a common flavor enhancer). I dry ingredients and make my own broth from scratch. That may be time-consuming and not so profitable, but I think all chefs should at least try to find their own unique flavors without relying on MSG or concentrated flavoring," he said, stressing that the key to completing a dish is ultimately the "scent" and a good aroma comes from the ingredients.

A lab-like refrigerated storage space keeps over 500 ingredients labeled by year of production and place of origin at Yun Seoul in southern Seoul. Courtesy of Yun Seoul

Dreaming of Korean food museum

The self-taught chef, who didn't receive academic training at culinary schools, has a strong background in hands-on experience working for various Japanese, Italian and French restaurants in Korea since 1992.

Kim said the beauty of Korean food comes with time, giving an exmaple that a good "meju" (dried, brick-shaped fermented soybean lump) take at least four years to produce. "Quality in fine dining takes time. Rushing the process simply doesn't cut it. Slow, dry-aging builds a depth of flavor you won't find elsewhere. This philosophy of patience extends to my cooking style. Gosari dried fast using a dehydrator cannot have the same taste and texture from the slowly dried one," he said.

Kim now plans to build a research lab and museum showcasing various Korean food ingredients in five years.

"Like Spain's restaurant-turned museum elBulli1846, my dream is to have a venue to research and archive Korean food culture," he said. "I want to showcase the history of Korean food ingredients and demonstrate the diversity of Korean cuisine."

Kim urges aspiring future chefs to approach food with a sense of authenticity and deep understanding of where it comes from.

"A cook who only tries to cook modern Korean food with superficial knowledge and thinks of making it short should not even think of being a cook as a profession. In my 20s, I arrogantly thought that I was the best when it comes to cooking and that I had nothing more to learn, but in my 30s, I realized that learning for a cook is endless," he said.

"When using ingredients, they should understand how the ingredients came to be and be grateful to the people who grew them. When using beef, they should know what kind of feed the cow was given and how that feed affects the quality of the meat."