Seoul’s First Michelin Guide Gives Three Stars to Two Korean Restaurants

The Michelin Guide published its first selection for Seoul on 7 November 2016. Twenty-four restaurants received stars. Two were given three, and both serve Korean food, a result that Korean chefs and officials had hoped for and few had dared to predict.

The two three-star restaurants

La Yeon is the Korean restaurant on the 23rd floor of The Shilla Seoul. Under chef Kim Sung-il it serves a refined version of traditional court and banquet cooking, with a view over Namsan. Gaon, in Gangnam, belonged to the KwangJuYo group, a maker of ceramics and traditional spirits, and chef Kim Byoung-jin served his menus on the group’s own porcelain. Both presented hansik, classical Korean cuisine, in a formal sequence of courses that was then still new to the city’s restaurants.

Two stars and one

Three restaurants received two stars: Gotgan, the restaurant of the veteran chef Lee Jong-kuk; Kwon Sook Soo, where Kwon Woo-joong serves each guest at an individual small table in the old aristocratic manner; and Pierre Gagnaire à Séoul, at the Lotte Hotel.

The nineteen one-star restaurants included the names that would shape the following decade. Jungsik, where Yim Jung-sik had invented what came to be called new Korean cooking, was one. Mingles, opened by Kang Min-goo two years earlier, was another. Balwoo Gongyang, run by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, brought temple cuisine into the guide for the first time. The guide listed 140 establishments in all, with 36 Bib Gourmands for simpler places serving noodles, dumplings and soups.

Why it mattered

Michael Ellis, then the guide’s international director, praised the range of technique in Korean kitchens: brining, pickling, fermenting, frying, grilling and seasoning. For a cuisine whose international image rested on barbecue and kimchi, the recognition of its formal tradition was significant, and it came at the moment when Korean film, music and design were finding audiences abroad.

The guide’s production had been supported by Korean tourism bodies, which drew some criticism, and local critics disputed several choices. The years since have largely confirmed the guide’s reading of the city’s talent, if not of its ranking.

Ten years later

Neither of the first three-star restaurants holds that rank today. Gaon closed at the start of 2023, and La Yeon was moved to two stars. Mingles, a one-star in the first edition, is now the only three-star restaurant in the country, as the tenth edition confirmed in March 2026, and the guide has grown to include Busan.