Dinner at Kani Lab in Seoul

We met up with some friends for a fantastic and over the top dinner in Seoul at Kani Lab tonight. Not only was the food good but the dinner was playful and fun. And let’s not forget to mention there was a water feature and lasers!

Themed as if you were experiencing various stages of weather, the tasting menu was split up into: Day Break, Sunrise, Wave Storm, Wake Up and Milky Way. Along with the food also came a visual experience in a very cool immersive space.

This restaurant is very dark and moody and when you walk in you notice the visually stunning wall dancing with colour over a wavy pond and smoke along the floor. We were a group of 4 so we had a table, but down below as a layout of bar seats facing the colour wall. Everyone was experiencing and eating at the same time as this was sort of a show also. The screen changed throughout depending on what course we were on, depicting sunrise, sunset, and during the Wave Storm, roll clouds and lightning appeared.

Day Break

Popcorn? No! Freeze dried Aperol Spritz to kick off the meal and it was a hit. Our first smoking dish that was a great start.

Served in a picnic basket, this was stunning. And let me preface this by saying, I don’t eat everything, especially not eel cause they are ugly, but I ate everything served to me and everything was delicious. But in reality, still no eel for me.

This course was called picnic. A little salad in a tartlet, a tuna roll called Gimbap and a crab sandwich. Crab will be a recurring theme in this meal.

This next dish had me worried, but I think it was my favourite dish of the night. Monkfish liver, smoked eel, onion and black truffle. The truffle was not overpowering and I think I was more worried about eating the monkfish liver, but to my surprise, it was my favourite taste of the night. Creamy smooth and so damn good. The creamy stuff was an onion sauce. The monkfish liver was freeze dried so when you put it in your mouth it melted… and I even at the eel.

Sunrise

There is a lot going on here, and it may sound a look questionable, but it was delicious. Dungeness Crab, Surf Clam, Mussel, Condium. I don’t know what Condium is, but I’m assuming it is that bread like substance that we were told to use to wipe up the sauce. Apparently made of seaweed. All good, and I’m not a fan of sea weed.

With the above course, we were also presented with a balloon. And when we were done this course we were told to remove the golden crab to release the main ingredient of our next course…

And the answer to the riddle that the balloon revealed, was no surprise: CRAB. The next course was KFC.. Korean Fried Crab. Crab meat formed in a chicken wing with a delicious Korean sauce.

Wave Storm

The sky turned dark and we experienced a storm with lightning and thunder. And the courses continued… Good thing the serving staff had umbrellas.

Soup Noodles to warm us up after the storm. Cuttlefish noodles, lobster, barley and cured egg yolk. This dish was flavourful, but probably my least favourite to eat since the noodles, which were cuttlefish were hard to manage and cut up.

The next dish was super fun, not only was it tasty, snow crab, fennel and seaweeds, but the presentation was spectacular. The server used a watering can which made the center seaweed flow with smoke onto the table and around the plate.

Wake Up

I have no idea what Tilefish is, I don’t even know it was listed until I just reviewed the menu just now. Tilefish, asparagus, gochujang and saffron. I really liked this fish and I even liked the crispy skin on the fish, others at the table didn’t agree with me. Fish: good. Crispy skin: bad.

Crab Magic was next on the list with King Crab, Maitake mushroom and truffle. Again, the truffle was not strong at all, which is a good thing.

This dish was also accompanied by a bread ball that was filled with crab meat and had a Yorkshire Pudding consistency. We were told to use it to wipe up the sauce that we eagerly did.

Milky Way

Now on to the three dessert courses and which did not disappoint. They brought out this vial on a light and I joked, maybe we can drink it. Although I thought it was just for decoration, it was actually for the next course.

The server poured the vial into this dish called Galazy. It looked like it was nail polish with all its glitter. It was frozen passion fruit, guava and mint. It was delicious.

Next onto the bed time story course. In a Beauty and the Beast book it opened to fresh roses and a Glandula (I don’t know what that is) ice cream rose, on top of something that is listed as elderflower, banana, kampot pepper. I have no idea what that all means, but it tasted really good. The dirt under the rose was also edible.

And finally our last course, Cinnamon Caramel BonBon and Mango Pate de Fruit. This was called Lights… and with this course the lights were turned off and the black lights were turned on. The dish that they came on was so coool too, I couldn’t stop playing with it… it pulled apart to show light through a crack. Brilliant!

Final Thoughts

What a fun experience… it was definitely over the top, but I enjoyed it all. Sure the servers would appear in sunglasses when it was Sunrise and rain coats during the storm, but that was part of the fun. They were really good to explain every course and help feel excitement with every course.

The food was all delicious and I left feeling nicely sated, and a lot of this was food that would normally not be something I would pick.