FatManSeoul

What would Buddha eat (WWBE) bracelets may not be coming your way, but incredibly delicious and completely vegetarian food is.

Vegetarian food has been growing in popularity in recent years, with new veggie oriented restaurants popping up all the time. Sanchon (산촌) is the granddaddy of them all, having been around in Insadong for decades serving up distinctive temple-style food under the direction of monk-turned-chef Jeongsan. With more than thirty years of experience in temple cuisine, and a boatload of awards, articles, and cookbooks under his belt, he’s turned the restaurant into one of the most elegant places to eat in Insadong, using Buddhist themes and motifs inside a converted hanok to create a meditative atmosphere. Even the bowls and utensils have been carefully selected to evoke the wooden begging bowls used by monks.

Sanchon serves multi-course fixed price meal, starting with a seasonal porridge and running through sixteen courses until you wind up with a cup of tea and basket of traditional rice puffs. If you make it that far . . . the amount of food is enough to defeat all but the most dedicated eaters. It’s a good thing you’ll be in a contemplative mood for your meal, because you’ll be crawling by the end, overwhelmed by the sheer number of dishes.

Things start out light enough. A small bowl of porridge and some sour water kimchi whet the appetite before the main meal begins to appear. Late spring brought us a meal using lots of kale, but deeper in winter we’ve seen black sesame make an appearance, showing off the deep seasonality of the foods here.

Seasoned rice wrapped in steamed pumpkin leaves showed the beginning of the more toothsome elements still to come. Just as you get accustomed to nibbling, heartier elements start showing up – and in intimidating numbers of dishes.

And so it begins! A plethora of small dishes of seasoned vegetables lets diners get a sense of the range of available products that you can draw upon for delicious eating from flora only, without ever touching on fauna. Everything from deeply meaty mushrooms to silken acorn jelly to bamboo shoots and ferns show up on this remarkably diverse menu.

There’s also the first of two courses of jeon, this one concentrating on small, flavorful bites of veggies. They’re just a tad oily, with a meltingly soft chewy interior and a touch of crunch to the exterior, and perfectly bite sized. Some of the texture is owed to the use of buckwheat rather than wheat flour in the mix, which also gives it a slightly heartier texture than usual.

The other jeon course consists of different mushrooms. Mushrooms are always a tricky beast to pan-fry, requiring just the right amount of oil and heat to get a crispy batter that doesn’t gum down from the water released by the mushrooms as they absorb heat. These won’t dissapoint, though, nor will the amazingly complex and mild soy sauce that accompanies them.
Along with other warmer foods there’s a  gloriously flavorful japchae, which in lesser hands can be bland and merely chewy. Instead, this is packed with flavor and has a wonderful al dente texture.

There’s also a wonderfully warm country-style tofu. Like the best hand-made tofu, this one has a rustic density to it that matches well with the mellow soy-based sauce that picks up the nuttiness of the sesame seeds in the garnish.
As if all that weren’t enough . . .

Inside the seemingly decorative basket on the table lies another set of dishes ~ this time, seasoned mountain vegetables. From spicy to bitter to mild and savory, these cover a dazzling range of flavors. You can taste each one individually, or mix them together to create your own bibimbap. Fatman likes to preserve each taste as unique, but to each their own . . .

And what could possibly be a better end to the meal than a hearty but blessedly mild doenjangjjigae? More restrained than the boiling pot of salt you get most places, this one is very carefully balanced so as not to be dominated by the saltiness of the beans. There’s a nice hint of bitter from mountain herbs, some sweetness from squash, and more of their wonderful rustic tofu. When the meal is done, servers turn up with teas or tisanes, and sweet, crispy rice puffs for a light, sweet end to a seemingly inexhaustable stream of dishes. Those of you who just can’t get enough of them can buy more cakes, alongside crackers and snacks, at the connected gift shop.

Sanchon is a marvelous place to take the lachanophobic among us. The food is impecabbly seasoned and balanced, with a whole range of flavors and textures many don’t associate with the vegetal range, and thus is the perfect staging ground for introducing vegetarian cuisine. Trust us, the carnivores won’t even notice that there hasn’t been a scrap of meat on the table ~ they’ll be far too busy chowing down. It’s also a good introduction to a part of Korean cusine that’s not very well known. The value of meat as protein has long been established in Korean minds, despite a long and rich history of Buddhism-inspired vegetarianism. Although Buddhist cusine is available near temples, most of these are still located in the mountains, making it a rustic cusine that’s hard to locate in the urban forests of Seoul. This makes Sanchon especially important as a way to represent a distinctive tradition outside it’s normal habitat. There have been a few concessions to the palate of most Seoulites though, and the restaurant does use ingredients generally frowned upon for monks, such as peppers, garlic, and onions. With an advanced reservation, however, you can request your food as restrained and austere as any monk’s.

Sanchon is around the halfway mark of Insadong. Look for a large sign with Chinese characters (村山) and a cartoon monk that says “temple cooking.” Go down the alley and turn to the left. The lunch menu costs 22,000 won, and dinner about twice that. Dinner, however, comes with a traditional performance that includes Buddhist dances and drumming, so consider it instead of more expensive shows like that of the Korea House. Call 02-735-1900 for reservations.