The Verdict
The best restaurants built by foreigners in Asian cities share a particular quality: they are not translations. They do not render the host culture through the lens of the visitor's cuisine. They are instead acts of immersion — the result of a chef who learned by doing, by living, by submitting to a tradition rather than reinterpreting it from the outside. Evett is that restaurant in Seoul. Chef Joseph Lidgerwood arrived from Australia with a formation that spans The French Laundry in California and The Ledbury in London — two of the most technically serious kitchens in the world. What he built in Gangnam is neither Australian nor French nor British. It is Korean, in all the ways that matter.
Lidgerwood's defining commitment is fermentation. He makes his own meju — the fermented soybean blocks that are the foundation of doenjang, ganjang, and gochujang, the holy trinity of Korean flavour. This is not a gesture. It is a multi-month process, undertaken with the seriousness of a traditional Korean meju artisan. The results are present in everything: the depth of the broths, the complexity of the glazes, the fermented notes that run through even the lightest dishes like an undertow. What arrives on the plate is technically precise in the European tradition, but the flavour register is distinctly Korean — deep, layered, occasionally confrontational, and completely without apology.
The foraging practice is equally central. Lidgerwood works with specific Korean farms and foragers, sourcing wild plants and seasonal mountain vegetables that many Korean chefs themselves rarely use. He brews his own condiments and sauces, applies French pastry technique to Korean fermentation culture, and produces a menu that surprises on almost every course without ever feeling arbitrary. The sixteen-seat intimacy of the dining room amplifies all of this — you are close to the kitchen, close to the other diners, and close, it feels, to the thinking behind the food.
Two Michelin stars by 2025 confirmed what regulars already knew: Evett is one of the most original restaurants not just in Seoul but in Asia. Lidgerwood's decision to make meju with his hands, rather than simply buying excellent fermented ingredients from suppliers, is what separates Evett from the many other technically accomplished tasting menu restaurants in Gangnam. He is not a chef who cooks with Korean ingredients. He is a chef who has spent years learning how Korean ingredients are made.
Why It Works for Impressing Clients
Evett carries a specific kind of credibility: the two Michelin stars, certainly, but more compellingly the story. This is a restaurant where the chef built the pantry from scratch over years, fermenting soybean blocks in the traditional manner while holding a two-star kitchen together. That story — of commitment, of mastery earned slowly — resonates in the boardroom. Booking Evett for a client signals not just access to Seoul's fine dining scene but taste that is genuinely informed. The cooking does the rest.
Signature: The Meju Donut
Among Evett's most discussed creations, the Meju Donut has become something close to iconic in Seoul's fine dining conversation. Fried glutinous rice dough — the texture somewhere between a Krispy Kreme and a Korean tteok — is filled with anchovy dalgona cream, black garlic, and fermented depth that arrives in waves. It is technically a snack. It is actually a thesis statement about what Korean fermentation can do when treated with the obsession of a three-Michelin-star-trained chef. Other standouts include the hand-foraged seasonal preparations and the broths built from months of fermented stock reduction, which rank among the most complex on the peninsula.
Pairing & Drinks
The wine pairing at Evett is crafted with the same unconventional precision as the food. Natural wines from small European producers, selected for their fermented character and structural affinity with the menu's flavour register, sit alongside Korean craft spirits and artisan makgeolli. The matching reveals unexpected parallels between European natural wine culture and Korean fermentation tradition — a comparison Lidgerwood makes deliberately and with considerable skill.