‘We treat our customers like kings and queens’
Hannah Paek, 32, manages Su La, a Korean restaurant in New Malden, which is owned by her parents Seung, 57, and Uei, 55. Hannah is married to Sungkyu Lee, 33, an academic, and they have a son, Jinseo, four, and an 18-month-old daughter, Esther
Recently Su La has had incredible reviews from national newspaper food critics Giles Coren and Tom Parker Bowles. You must be very pleased. We’ve been here for over fi ve years with my parents working in the kitchen and me looking after the customers. To suddenly get so much praise for what we’ve been doing all along is overwhelming. We are just incredibly grateful for all the support. Now we are fully booked most nights and our regulars have had to get accustomed to ringing in advance and booking rather than just walking in and getting a table. It’s great for us – but not all of them are happy about that!
Are most of your customers Korean? Up until recently, most of them were, but now we are playing host to people who have read the reviews and are coming to eat Korean food for the fi rst time. Then they tell their friends and it snowballs. Some of them have lived round the corner for years, but never been in. It’s taken our
Simple and stylish
breath away, but we feel very proud to able to share Korean food with a wider audience.
was surprised to have our
beef ribs BBQ’d at the table. That’s a very traditional way of cooking in Korean restaurants. Each place has its speciality, fi sh or meat and so on. It’s a sociable way of eating. Hot coals are put in a metal holder, the lip of the holder sits level with the tabletop and a metal plate is put on top of it. It heats up and meat is cooked on it. An extractor pulls down from the ceiling to take away the smoke. The meat is then eaten in lettuce leaves with slivers of chilli and garlic.
What are the other traditional elements of Korean food? The main element is balance. Korean food is all about health and wellbeing so we cook with lots of fresh ingredients that are as close to their natural state as possible. There will always be lots of vegetable side dishes and
Cooking at the table Classic Korean interior Tradition is key
pickles. Su La means ‘Royal Banquet’ and so we like to think our customers dine like kings and queens when they eat here.
Tell us about some of the other food we might expect to be served at Su La. Chimchi is a spicy pickle made from vegetables like cabbage, cucumber or mooli, a long white radish. There is always a main soup and no meal would be complete without fermented soya- bean paste, an ingredient that has been used since ancient days. Pa jun is a pancake made from seafood and spring onion which is crispy on the outside and meals come with rice. Seasoned cow’s leg is an authentic Korean dish, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to an English diner.
Did you always want to run a restaurant? Not at all. I was living in Korea and teaching
Bibimbap is a speciality
12
JULY 2011
ONE TO WATCH
PHOTOGRAPHS: Martin and Jess Reftel Evans
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