Trust the fermentation
How Mingles redefined korean fine dining without asking for permission
hi friend, i’m hungryhelen—
i write about food, feelings,
and the brilliant humans behind your favorite meals.
because every snack, spiral, and second act has a story worth telling.
this week’s story has been simmering for a while.
it starts at a dinner table.
but not the kind you forget in the morning.
June 2024📍Seoul, Korea
six girls, my bachelorette.
we walked into Mingles, unsure what we’d find.
back then, it had two Michelin stars.
we were loud (oops!),
got a gentle reminder to tone it down,
but still—we felt welcomed, not just tolerated.
fast forward: March 2025.
Mingles makes history—
the only restaurant in South Korea to earn three Michelin stars.
but this isn’t a story about winning.
it’s about what it takes to build something that doesn’t exist yet—
and the quiet strength of staying rooted when everyone’s asking you to translate.
The Bite
Chef Kang Min-goo was a teenager when he discovered the Michelin Guide.
He didn’t speak the language, but he understood the dream.
He decided, quietly, that he’d be in it one day.
After culinary school, he left Korea to learn from the world.
He started in Spain, training under Martín Berasategui, where precision was everything.
He learned balance. Stillness.
How to plate ambition without ego.
Then came Nobu—first in Miami,
then in the Bahamas,
where he became the youngest head chef in the group’s history.
But somewhere along the way,
he realized he could cook the world’s food
—just not his own.
So he went back home.
In 2014, he opened Mingles in Seoul.
A small, serious restaurant named for the thing he wanted to do most:
mingle Korean tradition with global technique,
honor fermentation and temple food,
and still make room for invention.
Early days weren’t easy.
Diners weren’t sure how to categorize it.
Was it still Korean food if it came in courses?
Was it fine dining if it smelled like doenjang?
But Kang kept going.
He studied temple cuisine with the Buddhist nun, Jeong Kwan (yep, the same JK featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table).
He learned from Korean culinary matriarchs like Cho Hee-sook.
He returned to the language of jang
—soy, chili, fermented bean.
Not as a condiment, but as the foundation.
One dish, known simply as the Jang Trio, captured that vision perfectly:
three fermented sauces—turned into a dessert of layered, savory-sweet ice cream.
It became a signature not because it was shocking —
but because it resonated.
A dish that made you pause.
A dish that made you remember.
The Shift
Maybe you’re in a season of building quietly.
No spotlight. Just trust in the work.
Mingles knows that rhythm.
It earned its first Michelin star in 2017, the year Michelin arrived in Seoul.
A second followed in 2018.
Then a move to a new space in Gangnam
— still intimate, still restrained, but with more room to breathe.
Then a pandemic (yep, feels like we almost forgot that happened).
Then a second restaurant, Hansik Goo, in Hong Kong
— opened mid-pandemic, with Kang directing remotely from Seoul.
Every move felt like a risk.
But he kept betting on the same dream:
if the food was honest enough,
it would find the people meant to taste it.
His team grew.
Tables reduced.
The menus shifted.
The flavors deepened.
But the heartbeat stayed the same.
And on March 2025, the third star arrived.
In a video released by the Michelin Guide, Kang receives the call.
You can see it in his face — the disbelief, the overwhelm.
He smiles, covers his eyes, breaks into tears.
After two decades of chasing precision—
he finally arrived at something that felt like peace.
But instead of triumph, he spoke of pressure.
“I feel even more responsibility now.
Because three stars aren’t the end.
They’re a promise — to keep going. To keep growing.
To keep honoring what made it matter in the first place.”
The Nudge
What Mingles taught me: beyond the food, beyond the stars
—is that not everything has to happen fast.
That you can build something slowly, with stubborn gentleness,
and still move a whole culture forward.
That dinner reminded me:
hospitality isn’t just service.
It’s presence.
It’s how a team of excellence handled six girls on a bachelorette.
How they gave us room to be who we were,
without compromising who they were.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
Not to polish ourselves into perfection,
but to keep getting closer to something honest.
If you’re building something right now.
A dream, a dish, a version of yourself—
remember: it doesn’t have to explode to matter.
It just has to stay true.
And if you ever forget, go to Mingles.
The food will remind you.
forward this to someone who needs to be reminded that staying rooted—
might just be the most radical thing you can do.
trust the fermentation.
p.s. if you’re interested in a list of Seoul restaurant recs from our trip—
let me know by hitting like, or go old skool and DM me.
with gratitude and leftovers,
hungryhelen
@yourhungrybff