Tenjimon

Today, I revisited Tenjimon, a restaurant in Gangnam, South Korea. My first visit was on Christmas, and I was captivated by the experience. This time, I chose to return in the summer to explore its seasonal menu, which features different ingredients.

The starter was a Monaka filled with dried persimmon, cream cheese, shiso, and lemon zest. The cream cheese, aged in soybean paste, delivered a rich umami flavor with a hint of saltiness. While traditional monaka typically features red bean paste, Tenjimon substituted it with dried persimmon, maintaining the sweetness while introducing a unique flavor profile.

The next appetizer was tomato noodles with basil seeds, passion fruit seeds, and pickled cherry tomatoes. The noodles had the texture of konjac jelly. This plate had a very strong tanginess from passion fruit and pickled tomatoes.

A steamed abalone dish was presented with a sauce crafted from its own broth. The abalone had been steamed for over four hours, resulting in an incredibly tender texture and a rich, umami-packed flavor.

Longtooth grouper sashimi was served, which is one of Korea's premium fish varieties, with flesh priced at up to $200 per pound. As this fish is in season during the summer, it had a firm texture and rich fattiness, highlighting its exceptional quality.

Deep-fried fugu was served alongside sweet corn and a side of soba. The deep-fried corn stood out with its nuttiness.

Next was grilled miso-aged blackthroat seaperch, a fish known for its rich, buttery flavor. This complemented the semi-sweet miso paste beautifully. The outer layer was lightly torched, enhancing the dish with the nutty aroma of caramelized miso.

This dish featured shabu-style outside skirt steak served with broccolini. The soy-based sauce had a earthy flavor, so I was initally worried that it might overpower a meat. However, the steak's gamey taste held its own, creating a pairing with the sauce.

This is Tenjimon’s signiture menu: Salad made out of 17 organic vegetables. The only seasoning was salt. Even though there was no seasoning, vegetables were deepfried, roasted, grilled, pickled, marinated, and dried, giving rich and unique flavor.

The deep-fried eel pot rice was rich and buttery, with just the right amount of saltiness that balanced the flavors perfectly.

The next pot rice featured sweet corn and crab meat. You may have noticed the recurring presence of sweet corn throughout the menu—this is because sweet corn is in season during the summer, so Tenjimon has decided to use sweet corn as a main ingredient for the summer course.

The crunchiness and sweetness of the sweet corn contrasted beautifully with the tenderness and saltiness of the crab meat, creating a complex flavor profile.

This was the final dish before dessert. While the preceding dishes were mostly buttery, this soup, with a touch of wasabi, provided a refreshing contrast to cleanse the palate.

This was the best dessert I’ve ever had. The sweet corn mousse was incredibly light and airy, with a delightful sweetness. The freeze-dried sweet corn kernels in the mousse added a unique texture, while the grated cheese on top, with its salty richness, created a perfect balance of flavors.