Before they cook together in Seoul on the 16th of October, Adam Lawrence and KJ Bae of Bornyon on ingredients, instinct, and what each hopes to learn from the other

Next month, Adam Lawrence is travelling to Korea for the first time. It is the country he has studied for a decade, learning the language partly to read its older culinary texts in the original. In Seoul, he will cook alongside Kyung Jun Bae, known as KJ, at his restaurant Bornyon, a kitchen built on wood fire, Korean fermentation, and the seasonal rhythm of the 24 solar terms.

Two chefs, very different backgrounds, one shared obsession with fire, fermentation, and where food comes from. I put some questions to both of them before the upcoming event. Their answers are published as they gave them to me.

First, the restaurant. KJ, what is Bornyon, and what are you building there?

KJ: “Bornyon” is a Korean word meaning something original, inherent, or true to its nature. The restaurant is built around this idea.

At Bornyon, we work with Korea’s seasonal ingredients through the 24 solar terms, seeking ingredients at the moment they express their natural character most fully. We use elemental fire, particularly wood fire and embers, together with Korean fermentation to bring out and preserve those qualities, rather than imposing too much on the ingredients.

Fermentation is an important part of our cooking, especially traditional Korean forms such as jang, kimchi, and fermented grains. We travel throughout Korea, looking for ingredients from different regions and landscapes, with the aim of using what is at its best in Korea at that particular moment of the year.

Ultimately, Bornyon is about showing the true taste of an ingredient, its bonyeon, or essential character, through fire, fermentation, seasonality, and restraint.

Adam, you’ve studied Korea for ten years and now you finally travel there. What does that mean to you?

Adam: I’ve always enjoyed cooking dinners abroad because there is an element of the unknown that I don’t get at home. Korea takes that feeling much further for me. There are ingredients I’ve read about for years that I’ve either never tasted or have only experienced dried, preserved, or already prepared. I know intellectually what they are, but I also know that isn’t the same as working with them firsthand.

After spending so much time studying Korean food and learning the language partly so I could access older texts more directly, finally being there feels significant. Korean dining culture is incredibly complex and, outside of Korea, I still think a lot of that complexity is undervalued. What has always interested me most is the way food, wellbeing, seasonality, and the physiology of the body are connected. That way of thinking has had a major influence on how I cook.

There is also some apprehension in finally going there. When you study something from a distance for that long, part of its attraction is inevitably built around what you don’t know. Being there will challenge some of the ideas I’ve formed, and I think that’s important. I don’t want ten years of studying Korea to make me think I understand Korea.

What excites me about this dinner is that I’m not going there to reproduce Korean food for Korean diners. That wouldn’t make much sense. I want to apply some of the principles that have influenced me, balance, seasonality, how ingredients affect the body, and how a meal progresses, to ingredients and techniques that come from my own experience. At the same time, I’ll finally be able to work with Korean produce and proteins that I’ve never had access to in their proper context.

That combination should create something that feels recognizable without being something the guests have eaten before. And it can really only exist there, with those ingredients, those people, and at that particular moment. That is what makes these dinners exciting to me. You’re not trying to make something that can be repeated anywhere in the world.

Hopefully this is the beginning of a longer relationship with Korea. I would love to keep returning, learning more, and creating experiences that become more informed each time.

What made you want to cook together?

KJ: I was introduced to Adam through a chef friend, Dae, who is the head chef of Noksu in New York. He told me that Adam was working extensively with fire and fermentation, and that he was traveling and researching these techniques and ingredients around the world.

When I was in New York earlier this year, Adam and I had the opportunity to sit down together for about one or two hours. What stayed with me was how interesting our conversation was, and how he approached familiar subjects from a completely different perspective.

Although our backgrounds and environments are very different, I felt a strong connection in the way we think about ingredients, fire, fermentation, and the importance of understanding where food comes from.

I became curious about what could happen when these two perspectives meet, not simply by combining Korean ingredients with Adam’s cooking, but by sharing the ways in which we each understand ingredients, preservation, fermentation, and fire.

Adam, going into a dinner with KJ, what are you most curious about, and what feels like the real test?

Adam: What I’m most curious about is what happens once Chef KJ’s way of cooking and mine are actually in the same room. We can talk about ingredients, techniques and ideas beforehand, but you don’t really understand another cook until you start working next to them. I want to see what he notices first, what he considers important, what he leaves alone and where our instincts overlap or pull in completely different directions.

I’m also curious about the ingredients that change my plans immediately. I can arrive with preserved things from home and a long list of plants I want to find, but I hope there is a point where I taste something and realize that whatever I had imagined beforehand is no longer the best idea. That is usually when intuition kicks in and the cooking becomes meaningful.

The real test is whether I can make good decisions quickly without relying on familiarity. I’ll be working with ingredients I don’t completely understand, in someone else’s kitchen, with a team I haven’t worked with before, and for guests whose reference points are different from mine. Technique can give you confidence in that situation, but it can also become a crutch. The harder thing is knowing when to intervene and when an ingredient already says enough.

I don’t want the food to feel like I arrived in Seoul and imposed my cooking on the restaurant. I also don’t want to dilute what I do simply because I’m somewhere unfamiliar. The challenge is finding the point where both approaches can exist clearly in the same meal.

If we do that well, the dishes should feel less like a collaboration between two separate chefs and more like food that could only have come out of us working together at Bornyon in that exact moment.

KJ, Adam comes to Korea steeped in Joseon-era culinary thinking but from the outside. What are you curious to see?

KJ: First of all, I feel genuinely grateful and excited that Adam has chosen to study Korean cuisine so deeply. Even among Korean chefs, there are many who have not had the opportunity to explore these traditions at such depth, so it was very meaningful to meet someone from outside Korea who has taken such a serious interest in them.

What impressed me was that his interest did not feel superficial. He seemed to understand that Korean fermentation is not simply a technique, but a way of developing depth, flavor, time, and character in an ingredient. That was particularly interesting to me.

I am very curious to see how he interprets Korean fermentation through his own perspective. I want to understand what he sees in jang, kimchi, and other Korean fermented foods that perhaps we, as Koreans, might take for granted.

I am also interested in what he discovers when he compares Korean fermentation with the traditions of Northern Europe or other parts of Asia. From his perspective, what makes Korean fermentation distinct? What characteristics does he notice that may be difficult for us to see because we grew up with them?

For me, that exchange of perspectives is one of the most exciting parts of this collaboration.

Adam, what are you carrying to Seoul, and what do you hope to find there?

Adam: Most of what I’m bringing was harvested or started during the summer, so the ingredients already carry a very specific season and place with them. There’s green walnut wood syrup, pawpaw and fragrant Solomon’s seal jam, buckwheat ganjang, spicebush cheongju, cherry blossom-infused bourbon made in the style of hon-mirin, pawlonia kombucha, three-year-aged purple barley miso, fragrant chilies, ponderosa pine cambium, and quite a few other things that are still being added.

I’m interested in using those as a foundation rather than arriving with a completely predetermined menu. Once I’m there, I want to respond to what I can actually find.

There are a lot of ingredients already on my radar: 고들빼기 (Korean lettuce) and 씀바귀 (toothed ixeris) for their bitterness, 더덕 (deodeok) and 잔대 (ladybell root) for their roots and aromatics, 둥굴레 (Solomon’s seal rhizome) and 황정 (king Solomon’s seal), 산초 (Korean pepper) and 초피·제피 (Japanese pepper), wild chrysanthemums like 구절초 (Korean chrysanthemum), 산국 (boreal chrysanthemum), and 감국 (medicinal wild chrysanthemum), as well as fruits like 으름 (akebia fruit), 머루 (Korean wild grape), 다래 (hardy kiwi), 산수유 (cornelian cherry), and 오미자 (schisandra berry). I’m also very interested in vegetables and greens like 토란대 (taro stem), 질경이 (Asian plantain leaf), 배초향·방아 (Korean mint), 갯기름나물·식방풍 (coastal hogfennel), 왕고들빼기 (Indian lettuce), 산부추 (wild Korean chive), 고비 (royal fern), 참취 (aster greens), 곤드레 (Korean thistle greens), 곰취 (Fischer’s ragwort), 어수리 (Korean cow-parsnip greens), 수리취 (synurus leaf), 머위 (butterbur), and 돌나물 (stringy stonecrop). But I’m probably even more interested in finding things I don’t know yet.

Over time I’ve developed a pretty broad arsenal of techniques, and that gives me some freedom when I encounter a new ingredient. I can look at its bitterness, aroma, texture, sugar, acidity or tannin and decide whether it makes sense to grill it, ferment it, extract it, dry it, infuse it, age it or leave it almost completely alone. The technique is there to clarify what is already interesting about the ingredient, not to overpower it.

What I’m hoping for is that the things I bring become points of reference rather than the center of the meal. The menu should really take shape around what I find in Seoul and how those ingredients behave once I start working with them. That unpredictability is part of what makes the process exciting.

A dish from each chef

These are not the dishes they will cook in Seoul, but dishes that show how each of them thinks.

KJ Bae, Bornyon: Autumn Gizzard Shad, Korean Pear, and Apple Gochujang

For this dish, KJ uses young gizzard shad from Tongyeong, which come into season in autumn. He carefully removes the fine bones and seasons the fish with fragrant green citrus and fermented sansho pepper pickles.

Underneath, he serves Korean autumn pear from Uljin, grown in the coastal winds, together with a kimchi made from young mustard greens and young radish. The kimchi is dressed with fermented green plum vinegar and perilla oil.

He finishes the dish with a tart apple gochujang, made by fermenting ripe autumn apples to create their own natural acidity.

Adam Lawrence: American Eel in Lacquer

American eel glazed in a lacquer made from buckwheat ganjang, green spicebush cheongju, and cherry blossom hon-mirin. Accompanied by cherry leaf, burdock, and swim bladder. The sides are nettle and moon snail, crispy and poached native hop shoots, ground ivy in a ground ivy drinking vinegar.

Three fermented elements, the buckwheat ganjang, the green spicebush cheongju, and the cherry blossom hon-mirin, are timed to be ready at the same moment, then brought together into one lacquer. It is a technique Adam calls convergent fermentation, of his own creation. The eel becomes glossy and intensely flavoured, and the dish draws Korean, Japanese, and American traditions into a single plate, unified by wild ingredients.

 

Adam Lawrence is a client of Haut de Gamme. The dinner at Bornyon takes place in Seoul in October. Journalists who would like to cover it, interview either chef, or attend, write to me at andreja.lajh@hautdegamme.net.

Dinner bookings:  https://www.catchtable.net/shop/bornyon