24seasons

Jongno's Seasonal Counter

Jongno District carries a different culinary weight than Gangnam. Where Seoul's southern districts have built their reputations on tasting-menu formalism and international press, Jongno's dining rooms tend to sit closer to older institutional knowledge: the kind of cooking that references court tradition, temple food, and the seasonal logic that organised Korean agriculture for centuries. At 97 Saemunan-ro, 24seasons works within that northern framing, using the traditional Korean calendar's 24 solar terms, the same system that once told farmers when to plant and harvest, as the conceptual spine of its menu approach.

That structural choice matters more than it might first appear. In a city where modern Korean restaurants have proliferated rapidly, the ones that earn sustained attention from serious eaters tend to be those with a clear intellectual framework behind their cooking. Seoul's OAD-tracked restaurants, including Mingles, Jungsik, and Kwonsooksoo, each carry a distinct organising principle. At 24seasons, that principle is calendrical, the idea that a dish's meaning is inseparable from when it appears.

The Banchan Table as Architecture

Modern Korean fine dining has largely inherited the banchan tradition from the joseon-era table, where accompaniments were not afterthoughts but the structural grammar of the meal. The number, variety, and preparation method of banchan signalled hospitality, season, and social register simultaneously. A well-composed banchan table could communicate more about a kitchen's philosophy than any single centerpiece dish.

At 24seasons, that logic appears embedded in how the menu moves through the year. The solar calendar framework suggests a kitchen that is constantly rotating its preparations, matching fermented, preserved, and fresh elements to the moment in the agricultural cycle. Fermented vegetables appear in different states depending on where the season sits: early kimchi has a brightness that aged kimchi does not, and a kitchen committed to the 24-term structure will read those differences rather than flatten them into a single year-round preparation. This is cooking that treats time as an ingredient.

The practical implication for the diner is that two visits six weeks apart should, in principle, produce meaningfully different tables. This distinguishes the 24seasons approach from restaurants that use seasonal language loosely, where the menu changes quarterly, if at all.

Where It Sits in Seoul's Modern Korean Tier

Seoul's modern Korean dining scene has diversified into several recognisable tiers since the city's first wave of fine-dining Korean opened in the early 2010s. At the leading bracket sit the multi-Michelin-starred rooms: Jungsik, Gaon, and Mingles. Below that, a layer of Michelin one-star operators, 7th Door, Onjium, Eatanic Garden, Zero Complex, competes for the same specialist diner. Then there is a wider field of OAD-recommended restaurants, many of which earn their recognition through a tighter editorial lens than the Michelin guide applies.

24seasons holds an Opinionated About Dining Asia Recommended designation from 2023, which places it in a category where the audience skews toward food-literate repeat visitors rather than first-time international tourists. OAD's methodology relies on votes from frequent diners rather than anonymous inspectors, which means a recommendation signals resonance with a particular, self-selecting crowd. For context, alla prima and Soigné occupy nearby territory in Seoul's innovative dining category, and the presence of 24seasons in OAD's network alongside those names locates it in a coherent peer group.

Chef Tony Yu's kitchen does not carry the same international visibility as Kwonsooksoo or 권숙수 in Gangnam-gu, but the Jongno address and the solar-calendar framing suggest a deliberate orientation toward a locally-grounded audience. For comparison, Seoul's Soigné and the modern Korean diaspora format seen at Atoboy and Naro in New York City demonstrate how this cuisine reads across very different contexts, but 24seasons operates squarely within Seoul's own reference system.

Korea's Seasonal Cooking Tradition, Made Explicit

The 24-term solar calendar, jeolgi in Korean, is not a modern invention applied retrospectively to restaurant branding. It structured Korean food preservation, pickling cycles, and ceremonial eating for hundreds of years. Dongji, the winter solstice term, traditionally called for patjuk, red bean porridge. Gyeongchip, the awakening of insects in early spring, signalled the arrival of specific greens. Each division had its foods, and those foods had their preparations. Temple kitchens at places like Baegyangsa Temple in Jangseong-gun have kept versions of this seasonal discipline alive outside the commercial dining system.

Translating that discipline into a contemporary tasting format requires more than naming dishes after solar terms. It requires a pantry that is genuinely rotating, a fermentation program that produces ingredients at different stages of development across the year, and a kitchen team that can execute different preparations rather than a fixed repertoire with seasonal garnishes. The credibility of 24seasons' concept rests on how deeply that logic runs through actual service rather than sitting on the menu as narrative decoration.

For diners who have eaten at Mori in Busan or engaged with Korea's broader regional cooking tradition, 24seasons offers a Seoul-centred version of the same underlying question: how much of a dish's identity is determined by when it is made?

Planning a Visit

24seasons is located at 97 Saemunan-ro in Jongno District, a central Seoul address with good transit access from the Gwanghwamun and Gyeongbokgung subway stations. Booking in advance is advisable; the OAD recognition and limited public information about capacity suggest demand that outpaces walk-in availability on most evenings. For wider context on Seoul's dining scene, see our full Seoul restaurants guide, along with our guides to Seoul hotels, bars, wineries, and experiences.