The World's Best Restaurants · 2026
Seoul, Republic of Korea
fermented sauces are not occasional accents: they carry savoury depth from opening bites through the Mingling Pot and into dessert.
Plan your table
Mingles builds contemporary Korean cuisine from its deepest flavour infrastructure. Mingoo Kang opened the Seoul restaurant in 2014 after working abroad, then turned his attention to jang, vinegar, kimchi, temple-food learning and the sequence of a Korean table. Fermented sauces are not occasional accents: they carry savoury depth from opening bites through the Mingling Pot and into dessert. The current menu remains seasonal and internationally intelligible, yet its logic is grounded in rice, broth, wrapping, fermentation and the tension between the familiar and the newly composed. Kang's published work and restaurants outside Seoul extend that research, giving Mingles consequence as both a dining room and a source of usable culinary knowledge.
Fermented soybean, soy and chilli pastes organise flavour across savoury and sweet courses, making Korean fermentation a compositional system rather than a signature garnish.
The restaurant's modernity rests on sustained engagement with temple cuisine, seasonal herbs, kimchi, broth and the architecture of a Korean table.
Kang's writing, mentorship and restaurants outside Seoul have carried this fermentation-led language into a wider professional conversation without turning Mingles into a template.
Current leadership and restaurant identity are verified through the live house record; menu detail, continuity and consequence are corroborated across three independent ownership groups. The editorial review does not claim direct tasting of fermentation balance, pacing or consistency on a particular service.
Plan your table