Dish in focus: Jeonbok at Sol

Growing up on a family farm outside Seoul with both his mother and grandmother laid the foundations for Kim’s ingredient-driven cooking. He later honed his technique at one-Michelin-starred L’Amant Secret in Seoul and three-Michelin-starred Odette in Singapore. At Sol, Kim blends Western methods with the flavours of Korean home cooking to create a menu that feels contemporary yet nostalgic – and Jeonbok, a dish built around abalone and seaweed, is one of its clearest statements.

The dish appears on both the lunch and dinner tasting menus, offering familiar flavours reinterpreted through Western techniques and chef Kim’s eye for texture, plating and wine pairing.

In a bid to bridge French and Korean culinary language, he sets it in butter as “a nod to French cuisine, where seafood – like lobster or langoustine – is often paired with seaweed butter”, and pairs it with two Korean seaweeds, maesaengi and miyeok, chosen as much for contrast as for continuity.

Maesaengi is delicate, seasonal and demanding to work with; miyeok, the seaweed most will recognise from Korean “birthday soup”, is more common. Kim admits, “Unlike standard seaweed, it took time to perfect the preparation method so that it retains its unique texture and flavour within the sauce without getting lost.” The result is a deep, umami-rich base that carries the dish but never feels heavy. To anchor the dish in its Hong Kong setting, he brings in locally sourced bamboo shoots and cabbage, so the plate reflects both coastal Korea and the city where he now cooks.