Mugunghwa @ Seoul

The mugunghwa, or the rose of Sharon, is the National Flower of South Korea. Meaning “eternal blossom that never fades,” it has been an important symbol of Korean culture for centuries. The flower is a symbol in the flags of government and national organisations, decorations, and badges.

As a custodian of the tradition Korean cuisine, Mugunghwa 무궁화 sticks to tradition but brings a modern twist to royal court cuisine (조선왕조 궁중요리/朝鮮王朝宮中料理) that dates back to the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897). 

Mugunghwa features a modern and stylish décor with a touch of Asian beauty, traditional Korean tableware, and a collection of 43 wines that pair well with Korean dishes.

An elegant fine-dining experience awaits you at Mugunghwa for special gatherings against the backdrop of the beautiful Bukhansan Mountain that transforms with the season.

There has been a revival of this culinary style in the 21st century, thanks to the popular K-Pop culture. It is said that twelve dishes should be served along with rice and soup, with most dishes served in bangjja (bronzeware).

주전부리 Welcome Dish

Like the amuse bouche of the French genre, we were tickled with beautiful snacks to whet our appetites. Jujubes (aka Chinese dates, 대추/大棗/daechu) were dried in-house, very high quality and very sweet; grilled ginkgo nuts (은행/銀杏/eunhaeng); fresh walnuts (호두/胡桃/hodu).

But what was really delicious were the house made rice crackers that were as thin as seaweed sheets that Korea is so famous for. Came with three flavours – seaweed (featured in the photo), sesame and tomato – they will make perfect snacks for watching the Olympic Games with.

우엉강정, 해물물회 Deep-fried Burdock Root Stuffed with Seafood, Assorted Raw Fish and Seafood in a Watery Seasoning

The first two appetisers were a small savoury bite called gangjeong and a traditional mulhoe or Korean raw fish dish.

해물물회 Haemul Mulhoe

해물물회 Haemul Mulhoe or seafood sashimi came with octopus (문어/mun-eo), sea bream (도미/domi), sea urchin (성게/seong-ge), sweet shrimps (새우/sae-u) and came in a tangy, sweet cold soup made from linden berries that was perfect to escape the sweltering heat outside.

This style of mulhoe is very popular along the coastal areas like Pohang and Jeju Island. The sweetness comes from pear juice and the tartness comes from the linden berries and a dash of apple cider vinegar. The perfect balance of sweet and tartness, and the temperature of the cold soup was really welcomed. I thought it was ice floating around, but they were jelly cubes made with linden berry juice.

Koreans call this edible berry bolisu (보리수). The linden berry is also known as Bodhendrum fruit. The linden tree was where Siddhārtha Gautama apparently received enlightenment which gave rise to Buddhism.

우엉강정 Ueong Gangjeong

Gangjeong 강정 is a type of traditional Korean confectionery. It’s made by deep-frying sweet rice batter into crackers, coating with a syrup, and finally covering with puffed rice, sesame seeds, or nuts. Traditionally, the similar technique — deep frying and coating with a sticky syrup — is also used to make various other sweet and savoury dishes.

This is a savoury gangjeong filled with shredded burdock and shrimps. While one might think that this is a spring roll but the moment you bite into chewy, crispy skin made from rice, you know it isn’t.

The sauce is an interesting pesto-like sauce made with perilla leaves and other aromatic herbs in the Korean garden. I liked the gangjeong as-is, the dip was IMHO unnecessary.

무궁화 김치 찬합 Kimchi Box by Mugunghwa

Kimchi 김치 is the iconic Korean fermented food that accompanies rice and as a banchan (side dish). Typically it is provided free (and free-flow), but here the kimchis are made specially by the executive chef, you would need to pay extra for them. But they are well worth it because of the taste and super high quality.

Baek-kimchi or white kimchi is made with natural ingredients in a squash broth and is a non-spicy kimchi variety that tastes mild and refreshing, perfect for beginners; Gat-kimchi is a variety from Joello region and is made from mustard greens. It boosts immunity and was widely eaten during the SARS endemic; Dongchimi or radish water kimchi literally means “winter kimchi” because it’s traditionally made right before the cold winter starts in Korea and helps digestion; and Kkadugi or cubed radish kimchi is a very common kind of kimchi and often used in Korean everyday meals along with baechu kimchi or napa cabbage kimchi.

진구절 Platter of Nine Delicacies

Historically being a royal court dish during the Joseon Dynasty, gujeolpan (구절판/九節坂) consists of eight delicate fillings served around thin crepe-like wheat flour pancakes called miljeonbyeong (밀전병). It’s a dish served on traditional holidays such as lunar New Year and other special occasions. As with many Korean dishes, gujeolpan reflects 5 Korean traditional colours, obangsaek 오방색.

Gujeolpan actually refers to a platter with nine sections that’s used to serve this traditional delicacies. You take the miljeonbyeong and put the rest of the ingredients on the crepe, roll it up and eat it. Just like our popiah.

The crepes were made with batter flavoured with sesame, beet and perilla. They are very thin and very soft, like eating miniature pancakes. The fillings included raw shredded ginseng, codyceps militaris, zucchini, minced beef, spinach, julienne pear, and spinach. 

The dip was made with horseradish and tahini, which are very traditional ingredients in Korean cuisine. Be careful as it does give a sting similar to wasabi. Overall, it is a very bland dish although so many ingredients interplay in your mouth. I would recommend the kimchi but my Korean friends would frown at that thought.

My Korean guest highly recommended this dish because it is very representative of Korean cuisine. I would try this for the first time, but not likely to repeat (especially I have been to Korea so many times).

장어만두 Eel Dumpling with Dried Cutlassfish Broth

장어만두 or Korean dumpling with eel filling is a luxe play on the commoner food of 만두 mandu. Unlike the wantons (dumplings) of Hong Kong or Shanghainese xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), which are small and delicate, the Korean mandu are big and heavy with generous amount of filings. They are a meal by themselves.

Mandu can be served steamed, pan-fired or boiled in soup. In this case, it was steamed, topped with espuma of eel stock and parsley, and then served with a delicious broth made from boiling another typical Korean ingredient, the dried fishbones of the cutlass fish, aka knife fish.

I love eels, but I usually have them grilled. This is the first time I had them as a dumpling filling. Eels have soft bones, although not a choke hazard, can still be quite unbearable texture wise. This eel mandu has no such issue as the eel meat had been finely mashed and sieved through. The flavours of umami from the broth and the mandu combined nicely, even though the espuma was rather useless.

농어구이 Grilled Sea Bass with Green Tangerine Soy Sauce

We started with fish for the first of the three main courses. Korean sea bass (농어/鱸魚/Nong-eo) is a flaky fish with clean taste. I am not a fan, as the farmed version is not as flavourful as cod and not as fatty as kinmedai or sea bream. But they are very versatile and meaty, so it is often used in fine dining.

‘Sea bass’ is a generic term, used to describe many different species of marine fish, some of which are bass, but many of which are not. I had an interesting discussion with colleagues on how the sea bass is known by many different names every where (aka barramundi in Australia) but this is a very common and delicious fish in Korea. So how do you turn something so common into something worthy on the table of fine dining? By topping it with many other things.

The chef took dongkimchi and kkadugi, and deep fried them together with squash. Pickles are always a great pairing with seafood. The sauce was made from tangerine and soy sauce so it was savoury and tangy. Served with two small slices of soy sauce pickled radish known as mu-jangajji (무장아찌). Interesting eat but my least favourite course of the day.

해신탕 Chicken and Seafood Soup

It was written as chicken soup, but this soup course was so packed with beefy flavour I could swear that was beef in it. Upon asking, the waiter said the soup was actually beef consommé.

The soup was packed with expensive ingredients like bamboo shoots, abalone, sea cucumber, Korean beef, pine mushroom and a parmigiano wafer.

It is an encapsulation of royal cuisine, which is very complex in its composition even for a simple dish like soup. It would be the Korean version of “buddha jumped over the wall” if you asked me to describe it, although it used beef stock as its base.

The most surprising ingredient of all was the sous-vide chicken breast infused with ginseng cut into medallions. Extremely tender and juicy with that fragrance of ginseng, yummy! However there was only one piece in the soup.

한우 안심구이 Grilled Korean Beef Tenderloin

The rare and exclusive Hanwoo (한우/韓牛) or Korean beef was the highlight of the meal. This was a really tasty piece of steak (1++ tenderloin) with excellent marbling. Luckily it wasn’t a large piece because the greasiness from the marbling was quite overwhelming. The beef was browned perfectly and those Maillard bits packed all flavour.

Beef is a serious business in South Korea: local butchers typically identify 120 different cuts (as opposed to the western 20 or 30) that run from the tenderloin to obscure parts of the tail. Hanwoo beef is considered the most luxurious of its offerings, but although renowned in South Korea it is less known outside the country as so little of it is sold abroad. Hanwoo marbling is graded between 1++, 1+, 1, 2, and 3, with 1++ equivalent of a BMS 8/9 and constitutes about 10% of the production.

The fatty beef was given slight reprieve from the side dish of Korean chives salad (부추 무침/buchu muchim) with beancurd skin (두부껍질/dubukkeobjil). We don’t get this chives in Singapore, koochye is not exactly the same with broader leaves. These chives are really slender yet strong tasting.

On the sizzling plate was also some grilled wild pine mushroom (송이버섯/songi-beoseot), baby corn, asparagus and spicy pollock roe (명란젓/myeongnan-jeot). I love these spicy pollock roe – they are salted egg sacs of the pollock fish, and they are filled with umami and savouriness. Definitely helped to variate the greasiness of the beef.

무궁화의 여름 Summer of Mugunghwa

This is a summer special and a North Korean specialty noodle called mul naengmyeon (물 냉면) or cold noodles in chilled broth. Topped with sliced of Korean style pork ham and julienned pear. Came with four condiments for you to micromanage the final taste – vinegar, mustard, pickled cucumber and pickled radish.

The broth here was made with pear so it was slightly sweet in a very nice manner. And there were floating bits of crushed ice made from pear juice so the broth did not get diluted as the ice melted. The noodles was chewy but not to the extent that you would need scissors to work through them.

복분자증편, 인절미아이스크림, 옥수수타락편 Black Raspberry Rice Cake, Bean-powder Ice Cream, Milk Jelly with Corn

The dessert course consisted of three small well-thought of dessert that highlighted a Korean ingredient or traditional dessert.

Bean-powder Ice Cream (인절미아이스크림/Injeolmi Ice Cream) is made with 인절미/injeolmi which is quite similar to our Chinese muaychee, but instead was added to ice cream to give it a chewy texture. Served with puffed rice and sweetened red bean paste.

Corn pudding (옥수수 타락편/Corn Tarakpyeon) with a sweet rice cracker with red bean bits. The pudding had the texture of creme brûlée and was delicious.

The final of the three bite dessert was the Black Raspberry Rice Cake (복분자증편/Bokbunja Jeungpyeon). I really enjoyed this one as it reminded me of those childhood sweet cakes. Jeungpyeon 증편 is one of the rice cake varieties and is known for its bubbly texture inside, very much like Teochew white sugar cake 白糖糕. The bubbly texture came from the fermentation process between the yeast and sugar.

차와 다과 Korean Traditional Tea and Sweets 

And finally, the petit four and tea. Three pieces of traditional confectionery sweets called Hangwa (한과/韓菓) for the send-off together with a cup of traditional wheat tea.

First up, a puffed rice or yeot-gangjeong (엿강정) similar to sajima 沙琪玛. Topped with a piece of dried apricot, it was sticky and jammed btween my teeth. Next up a candied jujube stuffed with chestnuts or daechucho (대추초) and topped with pecan similar to what Shanghainese called “soft heart” 心太软. And then yakgwa (약과/藥菓) is a traditional fried dough pastry similar to Indian gulab jamun but only not as sweet. Besides its subtle sweetness, yakgwa bears hints of ginger and cinnamon, and a favourite among the elderly (me included).

The service was impeccable, and the waiter spoke really good english to explain everything to me. It would be a very good restaurant to be introduced to the finer side of Korean cuisine instead of those traditional hansik places where you would have to depend on your Korean friends to explain the things you are eating. And once you are familiar, this would not be where you would come back for the traditional stuff.

Mugunghwa 무궁화
Hotel Lotte Main Tower 38F, 30, Eulji-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, 04533 Korea 
Tel +82-2-317-7061/7062

Visited Jul 2024

Michelin Seoul Guide Selected 2024