In a Buddhist temple complex surrounded by forest a little more than three hours south of Seoul, South Korea, a beloved cook prepares meals for fellow monks, students, and—from time to time—Michelin-starred chefs. Featured in the first episode of volume three of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, monk Jeong Kwan is the only individual to have appeared on the program without helming a restaurant of her own. As a result, Kwan’s poetic, contemplative episode centers on the historic traditions of Korean Buddhist temple food, from the stewardship of decades-old soy sauce to the preparation of pickled radishes and variations on kimchi. Kwan uses vegan temple food to showcase the values of Zen Buddhism—and along the way, she’s befriended some of the industry’s most famous names, including three-Michelin-star chef and Le Bernardin owner, Eric Ripert.
Kwan’s home, Baekyangsa Temple, sits amid unruly gardens on a mountainous sliver of Naejangsan National Park. There, ornately decorated buildings are encircled by porous clay vessels of varying sizes, each filled with aging, pickling, or fermenting foodstuffs. Although the serene setting might align with your expectations of a Buddhist monastery, step inside the temple, and you’ll find Kwan’s kitchen bustling with activity. The spacious room is laden with technologically advanced equipment; often acquired at the encouragement of professional colleagues for academic exploration, even if Kwan still prefers simpler utensils and historic methods. In fact, for dishes prepared without heat, she encourages guests to avoid tools altogether. “You should not stir with utensils but with your hands,” she explains to me, through a translator. “And with your fingertips, all your energy comes from your fingertips.”
It’s this philosophical approach that has drawn a steady flow of dedicated students to Kwan’s temple, including a number of critically acclaimed chefs, such as Aitor Zabala, the two-Michelin-star visionary behind Somni in LA (which is expected to reopen in the first quarter of 2024). In early September, Zabala presented a 17-course tasting menu at the one-Michelin-star Myomi restaurant in Seoul, to coincide with the Frieze Seoul art fair. Afterward, he ventured to Kwan with chefs Ismael Parra and Shane O’Brien. Most visitors are invited for a meal, but Zabala, his Somni team, and Vogue were invited to stay: sleeping on mats in housing at the base of the temple, and observing the meditative 4 a.m. prayers.
“Jeong Kwan’s life is probably the farthest from my own,” Zabala says while working away in the monk’s kitchen. “I come from a city. She lives in a temple in the mountains. But we are bound by a love of food. We have a connection.” Zabala was on a quest for inspiration, specifically around sustainability and working with limited resources. Korean temple food—vegan, without onions, scallions, chives, leeks, or garlic—is the perfect example. Born of seasonal vegetables and self-made accouterments, it is meant to nourish the soul and energize the body without disrupting nature.
Despite being the 2022 winner of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Icon Award, Kwan has no formal culinary training. Her expertise was gained from knowledge passed down over millennia by her fellow monks. She forages from the gardens, plucks fruits from the trees, and lives by the seasons. “I wait for every season, for every season excites me,” she says, before pausing. “The whole idea of temple food is sustainable. You can pick something from the garden but you have to be able to bring it to life in your dish.” Once a year, she acquires pounds of Korean sea salt; she knows it’s time to buy it each May when she detects the scent of pine in the air. When coupled in combination with her own house-made gochujang (red chili paste), soy sauce, and bean paste, the signature flavors of Korean temple food begin to emerge.
Vegetarianism and Buddhism have a long history, and Kwan (who has been a vegan since age 17) only serves vegan food at Baekyangsa Temple, or when she does pop-up dinners around the world. That said, she does not apply pressure on visitors to convert—either at home, or during her frequent lectures at The Culinary Institute of America. Instead, she offers guidance. “Everyone desires good food,” she says. “You have to make a commitment when you turn vegan. You have to have a love for the earth. You have to have compassion for nature. You have to have respect for all living beings. All of that combined has to convince you that you need to change. You have to find peace in your mind toward food. It starts with respecting yourself and transforms into respecting the whole world.”
Before Zabala, and even before Ripert, Kwan was visited by three-Michelin-star chef Corey Lee of Benu in San Francisco. He arrived in 2014 after requesting a lesson on temple food from the Korean Ministry of Tourism. His stay was relatively brief, but while there, Lee learned how to make perfect kimchi—and upon returning to the U.S., he began to spread word of Kwan’s skill. Ripert then returned a year later with his entire production crew, staying for a week to document Kwan as she produced her various sauces, and soon after, he invited Kwan to host a dinner at Le Bernardin in New York, where she began to receive greater international recognition.
When Netflix approached the monk to participate in Chef’s Table, she initially refused, but then a switch flicked, and she realized she could use the platform to showcase how temple food serves as a vehicle for Buddhism. Participating in the show then opened her eyes to the wider culinary world—but also presented a new challenge. “Until the show, I had no idea how Western chefs were cooking or what their lifestyle was,” she says. “It was the first time I was introduced to the life of chefs and their inspirations and what drove them to creation.” Still, Kwan admits she did not think of herself as a cook, and felt like she didn’t belong alongside the show’s talent.
Indeed, Kwan’s way of speaking about food often includes metaphor and a certain narrative flair. “You have to know the history of a vegetable, how it was grown and in what environment, in order to find the perfect method to cook it—to utilize the energy of every ingredient,” she says. “My definition of cooking is not putting a recipe together. It is knowing the history and nature of each ingredient and finding the right path for it. It’s about knowing what stage is the best time to pick a vegetable and whether it should be paired with soy sauce or salt. Sometimes, it is overripe. You’ve passed the optimal time. The challenge for a cook is to be able to bring it to its most optimal condition, to bring the best out of it. That is cooking.”
In addition to Zabala, writer Hoo Nam Seelmann and photographer Véronique Hoegger were bunking at Baekyangsa Temple and documenting Kwan. For years, the monk had shied away from releasing a book. “She said to me that there are already so many books about cooking. They are all so similar. I do not want to add one more,” Seelmann explains. The author proposed something different—a culinary biography with recipes, one that delves into Kwan’s practice as much as her cooking.
With Kwan’s approval, Seelmann and Hoegger moved to the temple for many months. In addition to learning about the cuisine, they sought out ways to represent the spirit and specificity of Kwan. Their book, Jeongkwan Snim, will be released this November by German publisher Echtzeit, with an English translation already in the works. “We are disconnected from food today,” Seelmann continues, about their biggest takeaway. “She is trying to connect us back to it.”
Travel has become an integral part of Kwan’s work: both spreading the word on temple food, and exploring global vegan cuisine. Though she’s been known to visit diners in NYC with Ripert, she speaks highly of Thomas Keller’s vegan tasting menu at The French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley. “When I experienced it, I was pleasantly surprised that there is such sophisticated, elegant vegan food in the Western world,” she says. She notes the same of Alain Passard and his restaurant Arpège in Paris, adding that, “I was thoroughly impressed by how his vegetables were cooked. All he seasoned with was salt.”
When she’s not traveling, she’s preparing food for the temple in case periods of ingredient disruption arise. She finds this—and all cooking—to be meditative. “Meditation is a continuous study. It’s a journey to find yourself throughout life. You cannot separate yourself when you are selecting ingredients for a certain dish,” she says. “Meditation and your mind have to be put together with the ingredients. You find yourself as you find the ingredients.”
In front of Kwan’s domestic quarters at the temple, a 500-year-old Taeng-ja Tree sprouts fruit. “Time is working,” she says as she observes it. As we walk past jars of persimmon vinegar, pots of 28-year-old soy sauce, a fermentation lab, and student chefs preparing soft and firm tofu, Kwan adds: “As a newborn comes into the world, no one teaches them how to breathe. They simply know. This is a way of proclaiming that they are independent, that they exist. We are alone in this world. We have to value ourselves.”
