Joining NANRO Next as a mentor, Chef Kim Hee-Eun cooked her way through fine-dining kitchens across several European countries with her partner Chef Yoon Dae-Hyun before opening SOUL Dining in Seoul's Haebangchon — a restaurant that reads contemporary Korea's varied food culture through a distinctly sensory lens. Their SOUL Dining has held its place in the MICHELIN Guide South Korea, carrying a star into 2026.
She and her partner share a common language: the almost stubborn diligence of asking, again and again, about the origin, variety, and season of a single ingredient. Having carried the fine-dining vocabulary she learned in Europe back to Korea and turned it into a stage of her own, she now joins NANRO Next as a mentor to walk that same road alongside younger chefs.
