Le Chef Bleu, Chungjeongno: a three-hour French anniversary dinner
Money is not unlimited, so every anniversary I think hard about where to eat. The usual list is fine dining in Cheongdam or Hannam, French home cooking in Seochon, a hotel restaurant in Apgujeong. I work in Gangnam, so Seochon is good and hard to reach. Cheongdam and Hannam fill up the minute bookings open, and lately, maybe because of Culinary Class Wars, they can feel a little dull.
What I wanted was time. An anniversary is for sitting with someone you love for a while, and an hour at a hot restaurant is poor value for that. I eat fast, an occupational habit from years in sales, so a place that makes me slow down and talk matters more than the food alone. French home cooking, with its long dinners, seemed like the answer. I had also wanted, for years, to eat a proper French onion soup, ever since the scene in the Solitary Gourmet film where Goro eats one in Paris.
Le Chef Bleu is run by Laurent Dallet, formerly head chef at the French embassy, and his wife Lee Mi-ryeong. It started in Bangbae in 2012 and this is its third home, in Jungnim-dong between Seoul Station and Chungjeongno. For someone working in Gangnam it is far easier than Seochon.
Before you go
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Booking | Catchtable, in advance. You choose the course when you book. The 7-dish Gourmet Menu is ₩125,000; there is a 6-dish course at ₩100,000. Wine is available by the glass |
| Time | Plan for close to three hours. Not for anyone who wants to be out in thirty minutes |
| Getting there | Chungjeongno station about 8 minutes on foot, Seoul Station about 10, at the foot of Manrijae. From Seoul Station, walking along Seoullo 7017 is a good route. Public parking on Cheongpa-ro, then 3 to 4 minutes on foot; the alley is too narrow to wait in |
| Korean name | 르 셰프 블루 |
The walk in
I liked the approach, though some people might find it a little rough. Old shops in front, new apartment towers behind, the whole block waiting on a redevelopment plan. Coming from Seoul Station it looks tidy; coming from Chungjeongno you pass a lot of very old buildings. It feels strange for a minute, and then you open the door and the contrast becomes part of the pleasure. A French chef’s course dinner in the back streets behind Seoul Station, not in the middle of Gangnam.
The restaurant has two floors. The entrance is on the first and the main room is upstairs. We had booked late and were given the first floor, which I minded for about a minute. A group had the second floor that night and it was lively up there; downstairs it was the two of us, quietly, for three hours. It turned out to be the better table.
The owner told us that bleu, in French kitchen slang, means a beginner. The chef named the place that way so he would not forget how he felt when he started cooking. After hearing that, every plate looked a little different.
By the window on the first floor there is a large potted plant and a painting of a motorcycle on a bare concrete wall, under a white round lamp. Half French country house, half restrained city room. The wall faces the parking area behind, so the picture is doing real work. If we ever get to know the place well enough I would like to give them a painting for that wall.
Gourmet Menu 125
We chose the ₩125,000 seven-dish course. When there is not much difference in price I order the most expensive one; it is where a kitchen puts everything it has. A full bottle felt like too much, so we had a glass of white and a glass of red.
The chef explained each dish in detail and I do not remember all of it. I looked things up afterwards, so some names or ingredients below may be slightly off. The feelings are accurate.
Three amuse-bouches to start: a mini pancake with salmon gravlax and an orange-tinted sauce, a baked choux puff, a small pastry with chocolate. A tiny red Eiffel Tower stood on the plate, which made me laugh, and the chef mentioned that it was not for eating. The gravlax was softer than the smoked salmon I expected, and the sauce held the salt back so the three layers on the pancake became one. The choux was full of cheese, and from that first bite the meal was unmistakably French.
Then the onion soup, the reason I had booked. Onions cooked down for what must have been hours, a deep caramel sweetness, cream on top to soften it, a single yellow flower on the surface. Every French restaurant has an onion soup. This one was not like the others.
The entree paired a shrimp ceviche with a stuffed pastry, plated with white cubes, parsley oil and a circle of balsamic reduction, and one purple flower. The citrus of the ceviche pulled against the butter of the pastry, and the pull was the point.
Opening the papillote is a small pleasure: steam rushes out of the paper and the herbs reach you before the food does. Inside, clams already opened, fish cooked soft, tomato, a green herb sauce that had become a broth. The fish had soaked all of it up. I had thought papillote was a playful name; it is the proper one. You learn.
The white was a Loire Chardonnay, Moulin d’Argent, with a blue rooster on the label, the coq gaulois. Its cool acidity was right for the papillote broth.
Lobster bisque next, deep brown, with a piece of lobster and a purple flower. Hours of shell in the first spoonful, and cream folding in as you go, so the last spoonful tastes different from the first.
Then escargot, six in their shells in a six-hollow ceramic dish, filled with parsley butter. This was nearly my first time and I was a little nervous. The nerves were pointless. A warm nutty aroma, a texture like a very tender sea snail, parsley butter soaked into the flesh. Escargot is not famous because it is strange. It is famous because it is good.
The main was filet mignon in a red wine sauce with an asparagus spear, potato gratin and enoki mushrooms, and here I added the glass of red. The steak was medium and good, but the sauce had run into the gratin first, and the potatoes soaked it up and became the thing I kept reaching for.
The pace was close to three hours. The group upstairs left while we were still there, and by the end the building was quiet around us. Nobody hurried. A plate arrives, you talk, you take a bite, you talk again, and there is no anxiety about when the next one is coming. I did finish each plate in a few minutes and then wait, which was a failure of manners, but there it is.
After
We walked along Seoullo 7017 afterwards, because we had eaten enough to need it. From behind Seoul Station toward Namdaemun the night view is good, and it is the natural way to end an evening here.
I’d recommend it for a wedding or dating anniversary, to anyone in their thirties or forties who has wanted French home cooking for years without a reason to go, to people who need a place with enough occasion for a long, serious conversation but not so much formality that it stiffens, and to anyone working in Gangnam for whom Seochon is too far. Next time I want the course that ends with the dessert we did not get to, and I would like to bring a friend from abroad who loves France.
My rating: 5/5.