Gangnam Korean fine dining October dinner with dongchimi mulhoe: MUSEO

I had a date with my partner in Gangnam for the first time in a while. We had lunch at a Western restaurant, the weather had turned lovely, we strolled around a bit, and it was such a perfect day! Looking for somewhere to keep the good mood going through dinner, I heard about a dining restaurant famous for course-meal dates in Gangnam and looked it up.

I worried a dining restaurant might overlap with our Western lunch, but MUSEO is built on Korean food, with a menu designed so that foreigners can experience Korean cuisine too. I'm Korean, but I'm not someone who eats much Korean food, haha, so I thought a course-style dinner might be fun and booked ahead for dinner :)

Where is MUSEO, and what are its hours and reservation rules?

MUSEO is at B1, 20 Gangnam-daero 47-gil, Seocho-gu, Seoul. Lunch is listed as 10:00-14:30 and dinner as 17:30-22:00. Reservations through Catch Table are a must!

• Location: B1, 20 Gangnam-daero 47-gil, Seocho-gu, Seoul
• Hours: 10:00-14:30 [lunch] / 17:30-22:00 [dinner]
• Parking: about 4 free spots in the alley right next to the restaurant (double-parked); if full, use the paid parking next door
• Restrooms: shared building restrooms, separate for men and women (passcode required)
• Reservations: Catch Table reservation required

Is there free parking at MUSEO?

There's space for about 4 cars in the alley next to MUSEO, but in practice it was hard for guests to use. When I got there, the staff had already double-parked cars neatly in a row~ It seemed like almost no spot would be left for customers, so I used a nearby paid lot and walked over. If you're driving, please keep this in mind!

MUSEO's entrance and dining room atmosphere

Since MUSEO is known as a Gangnam course-meal date spot, I'd read lots of descriptions calling the overall mood cozy and comfortable~

After parking, I looked around for MUSEO, and the place with the prettily sparkling entrance was it :)

I booked for 17:30 for dinner. MUSEO reopens at 17:30 after its break time, so you can't arrive 10 minutes early and wait inside; you can only enter right on time, so keep that in mind :) Photos of MUSEO's signature dishes were also posted at the entrance~

The inside looks completely different from the outside! The interior is mostly black, and the central hall has a big round table where several people can sit together~ It looked like there were 2 more rooms at the back, and on the day I visited the back rooms were all full, so there were lots of guests!

I sat at the end of the main table and had the dinner course after booking in advance :)

MUSEO's menu and the one-drink rule at dinner

The menu, from the left, was Premium Lunch, Standard Lunch and the October Dinner Course. The dinner course changes with the seasonal ingredients each month, so the lineup seems to shift a little!

The dinner course at MUSEO requires one drink per person~ That's because dinner is designed as a meal to go with drinks! Even a light beer counts as your one order, so as a beer lover I picked beer~ (There are non-alcoholic options too!)

As a Korean dining restaurant, the drinks menu centers on distilled spirits, makgeolli (rice wine) and cheongju & yakju (refined rice wines).

Wine pairing is also available, so there were plenty of wines too.

What's in MUSEO's October dinner course, in order?

MUSEO's dinner is a course designed for about 2 hours, but mine took about 2 hours 30 minutes that day~ From the light starters, through the signature dishes in the middle, to the ice cream finish, nothing was lacking! I'll show you in order :)

Vegetables with Namhae anchovy doenjang (soybean paste)

The first course was cool, light vegetables served before the meal to help keep blood sugar down. The doenjang (fermented soybean paste) served with them is developed and made by MUSEO itself.

This doenjang is even sold as a gift item on MUSEO's Naver Smart Store, so it was a nice chance to dip the vegetables in it and taste it. It's a set of doenjang, gochujang (chili paste), soy sauce and sesame oil~ and they were all part of today's course too.

Putting it on the napa cabbage like this suited my taste best!

The egg course

Like a Japanese omakase, the first dish of MUSEO's dinner was steamed egg, and it tasted closer to Korean steamed egg than Japanese. The aroma of the king prawn and golden enoki mushrooms on top came through nicely, so it was a memorable dish~

Small bites

MUSEO's small bites were all things you pick up and eat by hand.

A Home Run Ball (a chocolate snack ball) filled with creamy monkfish liver that wasn't fishy at all!

A light bite where tangy mackerel sat on plain bread, and the bread kept the fishiness in check, which I liked.

The bite topped with Gongju chestnut had a white powder-like, crumbly ingredient on the outside that was really refreshing and not sweet, so the combination worked well.

Dongchimi mulhoe and Hoengseong hanwoo tteokgalbi (Korean beef patty)

My personal favorite of the MUSEO dinner was the dongchimi mulhoe (chilled radish-water raw fish soup)! This is where MUSEO's signatures start coming out in earnest, and when we compared notes after finishing the course, it was our number one haha.

The tuna was cured really tenderly, and the yuzu jelly and sauce served with it were the kick! My partner doesn't really like raw fish but still ate it happily and said they'd love a mulhoe like this, so it suited their taste, which was a relief haha.

The Hoengseong hanwoo tteokgalbi (grilled short rib patty) served alongside was piping hot inside even though I ate it after the mulhoe. It was the hottest dish so far, so it felt like eating food freshly cooked, which I loved! You hold it by a wooden stick, and with the sauce next to it the hanwoo flavor felt even richer.

Wando kelp butter with grilled baguette

The smell of baking bread drifted through the restaurant and I wondered, "Is the next dish bread?" Then a baguette arrived, and the sauce with it was butter made with Wando kelp.

The butter holds the umami of the kelp, so it isn't salty but rich purely in savory depth, which I liked!

Goheung Spanish mackerel

Another MUSEO signature: grilled Goheung Spanish mackerel~ Hijiki (seaweed) surrounded it, and the fish was cooked so tenderly that it was very easy to cut.

They recommended putting it on the bread from earlier for a different taste, so I tried exactly that! The mackerel added a different kind of umami than when I had butter on the bread.

Gangneung potato with truffle and caviar sauce

Next they gave us a sauce topped with caviar~

The Gangneung potato dish is said to be MUSEO's main signature. It has "ice cream" in the name, but that's because you can hold it on a stick like ice cream. It isn't actual cold ice cream but warm fried shredded potato~

It isn't mashed potato but julienned potato that's fried, so with each bite I enjoyed the way it pulls apart in strands~ Truffle was grated on top, and the subtle truffle aroma was lovely too.

Buckwheat noodles with gopchang gim (wild laver), buckwheat crisps and uni

Next, the meal continued with noodles~ The noodles are made of buckwheat too, and they sprinkled on fried buckwheat crisps as a side. Every bite of noodles came with crunchy buckwheat chips, which was fun to chew, and the uni (sea urchin) on top was in such great condition! It wasn't greasy and the uni was sweet, handling both the clean and the rich creamy parts, a wow dish!

Naju pear and lemon ice cream

The Naju pear & lemon ice cream was our second favorite of the MUSEO course haha. After the grilled mackerel and the nutty buckwheat noodles, they prepared a cool, tangy sorbet as a palate cleanser in the middle, and I liked how the course was put together.

Chicken drumstick with mung bean porridge

For the main of the MUSEO dinner you could choose between steak and chicken drumstick (jangaeng)~ I'd had a hearty Western lunch and wanted a light Korean dinner, so I chose the drumstick.

The drumstick came with the leg and thigh sliced separately and ready to eat, and the leg bone came away with just a touch of chopsticks, so it was easy to debone~ The mung bean porridge served with it had a very high mung bean content, so I think mung bean lovers would enjoy it haha.

Sindongjin rice ice cream

The finish was Sindongjin rice ice cream with the sesame oil from the MUSEO sauce set I showed at the start~

They drizzled sesame oil all over the top and added fig, a seasonal fruit, so it was a perfectly clean dessert to end on.

Once you enjoy the final dessert, today's MUSEO dinner course comes to an end~

Who is MUSEO's Korean fine dining dinner best for?

This was my first Korean fine dining in Gangnam, and what impressed me most was that I could enjoy the Korean food I already knew, reinterpreted in MUSEO's style. As I saw on the day I went, lots of foreign guests come here, so if you have a foreign friend and want them to experience Korean food, I think this is a Korean fine dining spot worth recommending haha.