The Royal Family presided from their palace in northern Pyongyang, where the King and Queen never ate the same meal twice. Royal Court Dining was a lavish affair that involved  multiple tables, dozens of side dishes (banchan), and a sea of servants to carefully arrange the plates and bowls. Until the Joseon Empire’s eventual demise, the Royal Family remained unwavering in their commitment to upholding traditional Korean values, including the belief that all meals should be communal and enjoyed together. 

Classically trained chef Debbie Lee — previously the owner of the Ahn-Joo Korean snack bar in Glendale and the lauded Poutine Truck, and a finalist on The Next Food Network Star — is revisiting Joseon-era cookery in tasting menu format at her pop-up, situated in the former Causita space in Silver Lake. Here, Lee has taken up semi-permanent residency in the Sunset Boulevard storefront while she awaits the completion of her forthcoming Korean gastropub, Yi Cha, in Highland Park. “This is what we think the King would eat in the present time,” Lee explains. “Joseon is a representation of what ‘Korean American’ means now. It’s not about being 100% authentically Korean.”

Through the five and seven course tasting menus, plus a few shareable plates offered à la carte, Lee explores a war-torn country’s complicated history and her own personal connection to North Korea. “Back in the day, Pyongyang was the New York City of Korea,” says Lee. “But up until now, people didn’t want to hear about Northern-style food.” 

In South Korea, it wasn’t until the 1970s—nearly two decades after the Korean War—that Royal Court Dining finally re-emerged in Seoul’s restaurant scene. As a growing number of Korean citizens yearned to reconnect with the country’s pre-colonial past, many wished to regain a sense of pride and belonging that had eluded so many of them for decades. 

Joseon is a representation of what ‘Korean American’ means now. It’s not about being 100% authentically Korean.

Lee recalls a similar story, growing up in Southern California. “When Yong Su San [the only other L.A. restaurant currently serving Royal Court-style food] first opened, my parents would drive there from Orange County every month, because it reminded them of how they used to dine back in Korea,” Lee says. “For us Northerners, Royal Court Dining is our version of fancy dining.” 

Korean tasting menus are experiencing something of a renaissance in America, and although this category may seem niche, the eclectic emerging class is far from homogenous, representing some of the country’s most exciting dining. The movement can be found throughout the country: in New York, a Korean culinary universe has been brewing for the better part of the last decade, between fine dining spots like Atomix Meju, Jua, Oiji Mi, and Naro ; while on the West coast, L.A.’s perennial golden child, Baroo, returned to the city in 2023 to much, much, much fanfare. 

“Going through and seeing where the sphere of Asian dining, specifically, Korean American dining is right now, I felt like this was the right time to share my halmoni’s (grandmother’s) way of cooking,” says Lee. “I want to show Los Angeles a different side of Korean food.” Here’s how, in six dishes. 

Juk/Porridge

Juk, also known as porridge or congee, is a staple food in many Asian countries, beloved by both royalty and commoners alike. Known for its simple and easy-to-digest nature, juk was given to the King whenever he fell ill and represents one gaining back their strength. “When I was sick, my mom would just make me plain juk and give me a bottle of soy sauce,” recounts Lee with a smile. “Because that heals all, right?” 

Joseon’s first course aims for something greater than the juk of Lee’s youth, a silky rich slurry with a consistency akin to bisque that coats the tongue with its velvety texture. “Our interpretation of juk uses the lotus root, which for us, represents the new year, creation, recreation, and new beginnings,” she explains. “Normally, you would use chapssal, or glutinous rice flour, to thicken the juk up, but we instead use adzuki beans and make a purée with it, before developing it into the juk to give it its sustenance.”

Hoe, Hwe/ Tartare

“The history behind hwe is that, during the Royal Dynasty, [Korea] hadn’t figured out how to cook with live fire so they would serve the King and Royal family raw meat and fish [as protein],” says Lee. 

Joseon offers two different types of hwe, one with red meat, the other with raw fish. “With the yukhoe, or Korean-style beef tartare, I tried to keep it closer to what the Royal Family would traditionally have,” she says. “But instead of ribeye, we use Hall Farmstead Wagyu to add a bit of unctuousness.” The dish is indeed sumptuous, with glossy Wagyu beef—finely minced with perilla and Asian pear—shaped into a shot glass with a dollop of house made soy egg jam on top. “Many people think it’s a quail egg, but it’s not. It’s just yolk,” explains Lee. “Then we serve it with a bit of seaweed rice paper cracker dusted with gomashio (a seasoning made with unhulled sesame seeds) and kombu salt.”

The second hwe is a perilla-cured Tasmanian sea trout, a wonderfully fresh dish with a crudo-like essence that feels right at  home in Los Angeles. “The trout has history from my first days as a garde manger  for Roland Passot at La Folie in San Francisco. I cured a lot of salmon in those days,” she laughs. “The perilla-cured trout is my spin, but we’ve zhuzhed it up. There’s a yuzu jalapeño gelee and an edamame bavarois (or satiny cream). We’ve added a cucumber pear dashi broth to it, so it’s really light and flavorful. It brightens up while you eat it.”

Jeon/Egg-Battered

Jeon holds special significance in Korea. No dinner at the Royal Court was complete without some version of the egg-battered fritter, whose contents could range from sparrow meat (chamsae-jeonya) to boiled beef intestine (daechang-jeonya). But beyond the palace, jeon was—and still is—a festive food enjoyed by both commoners and nobles alike, a dish that’s prepared before holidays and special occasions like Chuseok, Korea’s mid-autumn harvest festival.

For Lee and her team, the jeon course presented a fun opportunity to play around and reimagine an age-old recipe. “If you translate ‘jeon,’ it translates either to ‘pancake’ or ‘egg-battered,’ and of course, me being the pub girl, I was like, Well, I love gamja jeon,” she says. “It’s our version of a latke, honestly. We take Asian yams and garnet potatoes and turn them into a little cake.” It’s deep fried to a deep golden brown, and plated with  pool of bright orange gochujang-carrot purée speckled with herb oil. The finishing touch? “We top it off with some Calvisius caviar for that umami effect.” 

Jjim/Braised Stew

“In Royal Court Dining, there is always a jjim course that comes after the King’s barbecue. It’s one of his last courses, so it’s kind of the main event, right?” says Lee. At Joseon, there are two versions of jjim, one with red meat and one with fish.  “We decided to go with one traditional-style jjim, which is basically kalbi jjim, but we’ve upped the ante. First, we reduce the sauce and make a glaze. We took all of Alex Weiser’s winter vegetables and heaped them onto the plate. And beneath the meat is a cauliflower wasabi purée. A lot of the time, kalbi jjim uses dangmyeon, or cellophane noodles, but we decided instead to deep-fry mung bean vermicelli then sprinkle it with gochugaru seasoning before placing it on top [of the beef].” What results is certainly a stately dish. 

“The other isn’t necessarily a jjim, but we turned it into our version of jjim, a riff on jjim. The King would have a whole broiled mackerel or some kind of white fish at dinner,” she explains. “So, we take a striped bass and filet it, then we turn the skin crispy. And instead of an actual [meat-based] sauce to braise it in, we braise tomatoes in gochugaru galchi jorim, along with Korean dae-pa, leeks, and other aromatics to create that kind of stew-y flavor for the fish.” It’s served with a side of scallion soubise, and sprinkled with   a bit of house-made gomashio seaweed salt. 

Bossam

Besides the two tasting menus, Joseon also offers family-style plates à la carte. Consider the bossam, a boiled pork behemoth that could easily feed three-to-four people. Served ssam-style (be prepared to do some serious freestyle wrapping), the luxurious  meat platter comes with Berkshire pork belly drizzled in what Lee’s kitchen has dubbed, “a porky pork glaze” laced with plum, and is plated alongside a rotating cast of seasonal accompaniments. The pork is first braised, then deep-fried just before serving, to ensure the skin is extra-crispy. “The goal was always to make our bossam a little more interactive, to go beyond just a few little dipping sauces here and some pickled cabbage there,” Lee says. 

“This is what my halmoni used to tell me, whenever I was  grossed out watching her pick out all of the hairs from [the pig’s] belly and then remove its skin,” Lee says. “Back in the day in Pyongyang, all the coal miners would eat bossam as soon as they got out of work because they believed that pork belly fat held medicinal value and had the power to clear out nasal pathways. Funnily enough, I’m asthmatic, and when I had a bad breakdown once, the emergency room doctor asked me, Do you eat pork? To which I replied, What? And he said, Well, you should get some fatty pork or eat bacon soon because the oil will help clear out your lungs. And I thought to myself, wow, it wasn’t just a fable that my halmoni told me!

Guksu/ Noodles

Although plenty accomplished in her own right, Lee isn’t the only food superstar in her family. “Before the war broke out, my great-great-grandfather was sort of the King of guksu and naengmyeon in Korea. So, I come from a long lineage of noodle houses. To this day, I still regret not asking my halmoni for the noodle machine she brought all the way from Seoul when she moved to Koreatown. I guess I didn’t understand what it was at the time, so I was just like, Sure, my cousin can have it!” Lee laughs.

Dinners at the Royal Court always ended with either a noodle or rice dish, so for Chef Lee and her team, offering both options to diners always felt like the natural choice. “Sujebi-style kalguksu came first, a noodle soup in which the dough is rolled out by hand, then torn into small, bite-sized pieces,” Lee says “I have such fond memories of watching my halmoni go through the whole Sujebi-style process. For Joseon, I knew that I wanted to make a version of her noodles. And luckily, my chef de cuisine, Grace, came up with a great idea: What if, instead of doing your typical hand-torn noodles, we turned that dough into little gnocchi?  And that’s what we did! We made kalguksu with the texture of gnocchi, then spooned the pouches into a rich, flavorful seafood fume packed with manila clams, before finally topping it off with a deep-fried, tofu ricotta-stuffed squash blossom.”

Kat Hong is a food writer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on InstagramTwitter/X, or Bluesky, or check out her very professional website. While you’re at it, follow Resy, too.

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