Kim kocht Restaurant

Review

The Kim chronology

Photo: Heribert Corn It is well known that Sohyi Kim can work hard. When a restaurant project in which she was ripped off by her partners almost cost her her livelihood, she started a catering business, gave courses, provided food at an organic supermarket and worked day and night. In 2001, she tried again with a restaurant, in a former copy store, with home-made furnishings, home-made sauces and home-mixed teas. She worked day and night. The success was enormous, soon a cooking studio was added, soon she was cooking on Kerner, wrote cookbooks, received toques and stars, became a star in Korea, the waiting times for a table in her tiny restaurant became absurdly long. Three years ago, the restaurant on the Naschmarkt and the restaurant in the Merkur on the Hoher Markt, Ms. Kim omnipresent, day and night. Day and night were soon no longer enough, Sohyi Kim had to take a back seat. The restaurant on Lustkandlgasse was closed, the restaurants on Naschmarkt were sold, Merkur remained. Sohyi Kim shifted her focus to management, "but I was so crazy about cooking".
Which is why she quietly and secretly opened a new restaurant at the beginning of September: in a former record store, only ten seats, only surprise menus (four-course lunch for 40 euros, twelve-course dinner for 100 euros) and cooked by a team of career changers, "just like me", says Kim - a geologist, a real estate agent, a flautist and a DJ. The restaurant is already well booked now, when everything is still quite secret. People arrive at 7 pm, drink an aperitif and watch Ms Kim finalize her dishes on a glass cabinet with a worktop. Kobia sashimi on almond paste with lime oil and tomato chutney, refreshing, fruity, invigorating; then twice tartare, hand-cut fillet, dry aged, with chili nuts, nori algae, wasabi cream, tuna with sweet potato cream and sesame, sensational; then sautéed potato with sweet-sour-spicy mango salad, stimulating, great, fried octopus with white beans, mussels, chanterelles and dashi stock with seed oil - a typical borderline Kim course, eccentric, challenging, super; then halibut in a fermented sesame leaf with wild sesame pesto, the best dish on the menu, visually and aromatically captivating, an interpretation of green curry with sole and fermented garlic, a dish I like to have every day, and finally, very briefly, spicy seared beef with grammel chili sauce, one of Sohyi Kim's sauce highlights. It takes four hours, you have to spend a bit of money on it and in return you get a journey through Kim's past, present and also a bit of the future. I can recommend making these four hours your own present. Summary: Sohyi Kim cooks a ten-course menu for ten people in an exclusive setting. You should strive to be one of these ten. Kim, 9th, Währinger Str. 46 Tel. 0664/425 88 66, Wed-Sat 12-15, 19-24 h

More in Asian
Food & Drink in Vienna