Lunch at SOUL

Made it to a lunch at SOUL 소울 at Yongsan-gu. I didn't exactly check with the girls if they would like to eat at this restaurant. I made the arbitrary decision to book this restaurant for lunch. Well, I kinda know their preferences. But this was mainly because I wanted to check out the neighborhood that isn't full of concrete buildings or anything close to Myeondong (that is not an area I like).

I didn't need to have a fancy meal in a fancy mall or a hotel. Give me some character in the location of the restaurant. Truly, the icing was a long afternoon stroll around the Haebangchon neighborhood located on the steep slopes. Navigate using Naver and get a ride via Uber. We had no problems getting to and fro the area. 

I love it that the restaurant made it casual-chic at lunch. We sat at the counter that wrapped the open kitchen and immediately felt comfortable. We loved its ambience. The lunch menu at SOUL 소울 was excellent. I actually didn't do that much homework before coming to lunch. I simply turned up to read the menu, and was pleasantly surprised by how solid the presentation was, and how well the flavors mesh together. 

I love their rendition of yukhoe with Hanwoo beef. The mul-hoe was cleverly not done spicy, and it used Korean sea bream (domi). Both dishes were gorgeous! I wouldn't have minded seconds for these. Hahahah. Lunch was accompanied by a light bottle of Bourgogne pinot noir. 

S had the Hanwoo striploin, and it arrived in the form of a Korean hansik. Lovely. A total feast for the eyes before she began the meal. There was multi-grain brown rice to go along too. Yay! 

My main of lamb tteokgalbi, which is supposed to be minced meat, came in a 'sausage roll', with the 'crust' being thinly sliced mushrooms. The accompanying cucumbers were presented exactly like the handle of the meat knife it came with. The meat knife's handle holds five colors, and Chef Dae Hyun Yoon explained that the five colors represented the harmony of yellow, blue, white, red and black, like how "we put our hearts, ethics, passion, efforts, and hospitality in our food as putting “soul” in the food." 

We felt it. It is truly so.

We were so tickled that a course of noodles/capellini had chopsticks that matched the colour of our earrings. Hehehe. Those are the details that the servers caught when we sat down, and they opted to match it. S wore a pair of gold earrings, and she got one yellow chopstick! E had on black earrings, and had black chopsticks; mine were diamonds and I got grey chopsticks. Oooof. Too cute. 

This E is an ice-cream/soft serve/gelato person. She's super into it. She's been having a soft serve daily. Oddly, we haven't had many chances to sit down for a bingsu. Too cute that the dessert included bingsu with truffles, leaning on the savory side instead of the sweet. Of course I liked it! 

Chef Dae Hyun Yoon and Chef Kim Hee-eun have put some much thought into the food and the flavors at SOUL. Our lunch menu today indeed told a story of Korean food traditions, and each dish had been uniquely presented with the chefs' contemporary signature touches. 

Chef Kim Hee-eun also does pasta upstairs at the roof terrace — Egg & Flour Fresh Pasta. It's so awesome to have the restaurant's ceramic plates and bowls made by the ceramic studio in the same building. The pleasing aesthetics and clean lines are made by ceramic artist Shin Boegun at Mujagi Studio. We popped downstairs to take a look at the works. Almost bought half the studio home. Heh!