Ristorante Vesuvio

Section 1·After Via Toledo

Ristorante Vesuvio is the new place from Kwon Seong-jun, the Napoli Matfia, winner of the first season of Culinary Class Wars. He closed Via Toledo in Namyeong-dong and opened here in a building of his own. I was able to visit during the soft opening thanks to the chef and had a good dinner with friends.

The second floor is the regular restaurant, and the third has a separate group space that takes one party at a time, a long single table for six to ten, run on a minimum spend rather than a minimum headcount. Where the old place was one six seat counter, the tables have multiplied here, and the easier access is welcome.

On the space itself there was a point where my expectation differed a little. The old Via Toledo had an originality and an Italian character particular to that address. The new place reads closer to an ordinary casual restaurant or a modern wine bar than that. The scale is smaller than I expected, and if you came expecting the weight of fine dining in the tables and the interior, the direction is somewhat different. The third floor is said to be more refined, so it seems fairer to see that and talk again.

Section 2·Eight Courses, One Price

The course is a single eight course menu at around USD 175. It opens with Benvenuti and runs through pizza fritta, carabinero vongole, Sicilian sea bass, Genovese tortellini, pistachio lamb, Amalfi lemon and chestnut tiramisù. The Campania accent built around Naples is clear.

Written out as they appear on the menu in Italian: Benvenuti, Pizza fritta, Spaghetti alle vongole, Branzino alla Siciliana, Tortellini alla Genovese, Agnello in crosta di pistacchi, Limone di Amalfi, Tiramisù alle castagne.

One note on the price. Set the chef's name aside for a moment and look at the composition alone, and the number sits a little ahead of it. Add one more pasta, or lay on a cold appetiser or an amuse-bouche that can be prepared in advance, and the feel of it would shift.

Section 3·The Krug Card

What caught my eye on the wine side coming in was a card devoted to Krug. Everything from a bottle of Grande Cuvée 173rd Edition up to Clos du Mesnil 2009, entry level through to the top cuvées. Fair for a restaurant list, and the list overall is put together reasonably.

Before he was famous and after, the chef has never played games with wine prices, which says he is serious about wine and about the business of dining. Corkage has come down to about USD 36, and there is a new member of staff handling the wine service.

Section 4·Before The Plates

Before going into individual plates I will set down the overall impression first. Even allowing for the soft opening, the food that day fell a little short of the line I had expected. What caught, though, looked mostly like a matter of operations, so I think it is the kind of thing that settles on its own with time.

Even allowing for the soft opening, the food that day fell a little short of the line I had expected.

Sitting down, the first thing I saw was grissini standing in a glass. The original Italian breadstick, and the name comes from ghersa, a Piedmontese dialect word for the long traditional bread. These were uneven in thickness and quite long, so they looked hand rolled. Strictly they are not Neapolitan, but the feel of a proper Italian restaurant comes through in exactly this sort of thing.

The home of grissini is Turin. The traditional forms divide in two: rubatà, rolled by hand so the thickness is irregular and the length runs from forty to eighty centimetres, and stirati, where the dough is pulled out from both ends. What came out that day was uneven in thickness and long enough that it looked like rubatà.

Section 5·Two Tarts

The welcome amuse-bouche is a sea bass and potato tart, one I also enjoyed on my last visit. Edible flowers, caviar and lemon zest go on top. The salt balance was good and both the flavour of the bass and the taste of the potato were alive.

The second is a tomato tart. The tomato is made into water, jelly and powder, three forms, with basil oil and micro basil on top. A very Italian and satisfying bite. The acidity of the tomato was balanced well and the crispness of the shell and the texture of the powder were particularly good.

To add to that, the point that caught repeatedly across the whole course that day was temperature, and these two opening tarts, which are not affected by it, were the only things free of that axis.

Section 6·Loire And Galicia

We started with a white the house recommended. Château de Bonnezeaux's Inter-Val 2023, one hundred percent Chenin from Anjou in the Loire. The domaine goes back to the nineteenth century, closed in the early 1980s and was left abandoned, then revived in 2012.

To add a little more, the 2012 revival came about with the family putting forward a cousin, Guyonne Saclier de la Bâtie. The vineyards are schist and quartz, farmed organically and fermented with wild yeast. It goes into bottle without fining, without filtration and without added sulphites. The 2e mise on the label marks the second bottling. Because Bonnezeaux is a botrytis sweet appellation, a dry Chenin made here has to be bottled as Vin de France. Natural in nuance and cool in feel, and once the aroma opened up the acidity and the nose both improved.

The first impression, put precisely, carried a slightly musty note at the start. Only once that blew off did the acidity and the aroma come up together.

The second wine was corkage brought by one of the friends I came with, Bodegas Forjas del Salnés' Leirana Albariño. The name comes from a forge his grandfather ran. Old vines in Val do Salnés, the coolest part of Rías Baixas, aged seventy percent in foudre and thirty percent in stainless.

The winery is led by Rodrigo Méndez. It is also known for the story of setting out to make red in a region given over entirely to white, and getting help from Raúl Pérez of Bierzo. Val do Salnés is the coolest of the five Rías Baixas subzones, the closest to the Atlantic, and is counted as the birthplace of Albariño. Leirana comes from old vines planted between 1952 and 1982, on sand and granite at around five metres of altitude. It ferments with wild yeast, ages in seventy percent neutral foudre and thirty percent stainless, and does not go through malolactic.

We received the two wines at once and compared them, and the directions were clearly different, which was good. This one showed warm fruit and a fruity nose, and being Galicia, right up against the Atlantic, the acidity was full and the balance good. The oak touch was not excessive either, and looking at the foudre proportion that makes sense.

To add to that, the reason I rate mainland Spanish whites low is acidity. Galicia, up against the Atlantic, sits outside that weakness, and that is where this wine being good on the palate comes from.

To add to that, the reason I rate mainland Spanish whites low is acidity.

Section 7·Pizza Fritta

The pizza fritta that came third is as good as ever. It has appeared on several recent visits to Via Toledo too. Provolone cheese cream inside, stracciatella and mortadella on top, pecorino grated over at the end.

The cheese has been pushed harder than before and I liked that direction. Three layers stacked, so it follows. The pistachio was nutty too, and it turned out to be the pistachio set into the mortadella.

With the new restaurant he says they bake the bread in house, and two came out. The first, a focaccia, had good air inside and tasted good. The olive oil is Sicilian, and where a Spanish oil runs light in body with the spice coming up behind, this one had high body and was dense. Less spice, and a great deal of fragrant, bright aroma coming up.

The comparison was possible because one of the friends with me that day imports Spanish olive oil, so we could put the two styles side by side and talk about them.

Because it was the new restaurant's opening, I brought out the 85mm lens for the first time in a while, mounted on a camera I used to shoot with.

The seat in front of the counter was good for photographs, and I could shoot the chef cooking from a range of angles. It brought back the first time I took the lenses to Via Toledo about three years ago.

Section 8·The Vongole

After the opening bites came the pasta, a vongole topped with carabinero. He says five kinds of clam go into the blend.

The texture and the cooking of the pasta were good, and the layering of the savour coming off the clams is clearly multiple.

Put plainly, the vongole was a disappointing plate that day. The temperature was a little low by my standard, and the balance between the crumb and the prawn did not hold.

The crumb side was excessive, so it lingered in the mouth, and the texture of the prawn was hard to catch.

I have eaten Kwon Seong-jun's vongole often enough to have enjoyed it a great deal, so this was a plate I had high hopes for.

It is the soft opening, so details like temperature and the amount of crumb look set to settle naturally from here.

Section 9·Sea Bass And Squid

Next was the Sicilian sea bass with a stuffed squid. The flavour and the taste of the bass itself were fine, and grilling it over charcoal meant the smoke married in well.

What I preferred was the stuffed squid beside it. The filling with couscous in it was packed full, the texture springy, and the taste of the filling good. The sauce was creamy while keeping its acidity and fruit alive, so the pairing worked. The skin of the bass was a little hard to get through with a knife.

The cooking itself was neither good nor bad, and the skin was quite tough. This plate was disappointing on temperature too.

Section 10·Oxtail Tortellini

The Genovese tortellini was the most complete and best balanced plate of the course that day. Genovese, despite the name, is not the pesto of Genoa but a Neapolitan ragù built by cooking onion and meat down for a long time, and here he used oxtail.

The truffle aroma was good, the creaminess was good, and with the oxtail inside the tortellini the balance was excellent. The single peppercorns set one by one on top cut the richness very well, and that was the kick.

This plate feels finished exactly as it is.

The second bread is a sourdough he says they make in house. It was baked well with good density, but the focaccia earlier was more to my taste.

Section 11·Etna And Lamb

Before the main I ordered a bottle of red. I asked the chef for something light under about USD 145, and what he recommended was Terrazze dell'Etna's Carusu 2016. The price was just over USD 70.

Etna Rosso DOC, eighty percent Nerello Mascalese with twenty percent Nerello Cappuccio, produced at Randazzo on the northwest flank of Etna. The winery was founded in 2008 by Nino Bevilacqua, an engineer from Palermo, together with Riccardo Cotarella, and the vineyards run from six hundred to nine hundred and fifty metres. The description was of a light Pinot feel, a clean Nebbiolo where the tannin does not stick out, and the aroma was very good indeed.

Some cheese and a damp note lead the aged nuance, and for a 2016 that is close to ten years in bottle, so the impression makes sense. It drank light, so it went well with the food.

The main is lamb. It was a main I had settled on liking at Via Toledo, and the lamb on my last visit there was so good that I told the chef I hoped he would take it to the new restaurant. Coming here, he had carried it over.

Rack of lamb in a pistachio crust, a morel stuffed with lamb and sausage in the centre, and on the right a salad of purple carrot sliced into tagliatelle ribbons with carrot juice and dried carrot powder. The cooking of the lamb was good and the meatiness judged well, and that day the mushroom flavour particular to morel was unusually alive, which made it better.

That said, this plate was slightly disappointing on temperature too.

Section 12·All Lemon

The pre dessert is Amalfi lemon. Naples is famous enough for lemon that he built the whole thing from it. Lemon sorbet in the centre, lemon balm at the side, lemon curd underneath, and a sauce reduced from lemon verbena tea and limoncello.

Lemon basil oil, lemon zest and dried lemon peel go on top of that. The red dried piece is not lemon but dried carrot, there for colour. It was a dessert with more layers and more complexity than the look suggests, and the acidity and taste particular to lemon were good, so I enjoyed it.

The sorbet had already begun to melt when it arrived, though, and it went soft quickly while I ate, which was somewhat disappointing.

The chestnut tiramisù is eaten by digging a spoon in from the bottom.

This version has become more refined, and the sweetness and the weight of the chestnut are good.

The chestnut tiramisù is well known and I have eaten it plenty of times, so this time I think I liked the lemon dessert more.

Section 13·Amaretti And After

Last is amaretti, a traditional Italian sweet. The texture is like a macaron but with more of a nutty richness, and the sweetness on the outside comes at you directly. There is a strawberry and berry compote inside, so there is complexity and the sweetness is judged well, which made it a decent close. Bite only half and the filling can come out, so I recommend taking it in one.

Since this was a soft opening and I was there as a guest, it is not that there was nothing disappointing. What caught repeatedly across the course on this visit was temperature, and going from one six seat counter to three tables, the serving flow and the timing look like they are still settling. He showed excellent temperature control at Via Toledo, so I take this as something time will resolve.

The composition was also not much different from my last visit to Via Toledo, which is a natural enough flow given it has only been a month or so since the move, and since the chef said he wants to head toward Italian fine dining, Vesuvio's own colour going on top of it is a story for later.

Even so, there are plates already fixed and even better than at Via Toledo, like the tortellini, and proven cards still alive, like the pizza fritta and the lamb, so once the operation settles I think this will become a classic Italian dining room that represents Korea.

I expect to visit the third floor soon, and I am looking forward to it all the more.