01 — Dawn & Prep
Before the kitchen
wakes up.
Every bowl starts at 5am — not in this kitchen, but on a hillside in Icheon where the perilla leaves are still wet.
Perilla from Icheon
We source perilla — kkaennip — from a single farm in Icheon, 90 minutes east of Seoul. The leaves arrive before 6am, still holding the cool of the morning. They're never refrigerated. Their job is to taste like the field they came from.
Icheon's clay soil and mountain water give the vegetables a sweetness that flatland growing can't replicate. The farmer, Mr. Yoon Seong-jun, has been supplying the same family restaurants for twenty-two years.
Korean cooking philosophy requires five colors — green, red, yellow, white, black — on every bowl. The julienne takes forty minutes each morning. No mandoline. The knife work is part of the ritual.
"It hisses differently."
First Press Sesame
The sesame oil comes from a small-batch press in Gyeonggi-do. First press, cold-filtered. It costs three times more than commercial oil and the difference is audible — it hisses differently when it hits the hot stone.
