Who Is Chef Son Jong-won? Netflix Culinary Class Wars Season 2 Breakout Chef

Discover the culinary journey of Chef Son Jong-won, the visionary behind Eatanic Garden at Josun Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Seoul Gangnam. From his early education in South Korea and advanced studies in the U.S. to training at world-renowned Michelin 3-star restaurants like benu and Noma, Chef Son has mastered the art of fine dining. Today, he uniquely oversees two Michelin 1-star restaurants simultaneously in Korea, delivering innovative and refined experiences to discerning diners. Explore his story, signature dishes, and the world-class dining atmosphere at Eatanic Garden.

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Chef Son Jong-won – Career Profile

Photo of Head Chef Son Jong-won conversing with Eatanic Garden staff (Image source: Josun Lounge)

Name	손종원 (孫鍾元, Son Jong-won)
Nationality	대한민국 (South Korea)
Occupation	Fine Dining Chef
Affiliation	Josun Hotels & Resorts (a subsidiary of the Shinsegae Group)
Position	• Head Chef, L’Amant Secret, L’Escape, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Seoul Myeongdong • Head Chef, Eatanic Garden, Josun Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Seoul Gangnam
Born	March 19, 1984, Seoul, South Korea
Early Life & Education	• Graduated from middle school in Bundang District, Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea • All Saints’ Day School, Texas, USA • Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology – Dual major in Civil Engineering and Optical Engineering (withdrew during senior year) • The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) – Withdrew before graduation
Early Culinary Career	• Interned at Noma – Ranked No. 1 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and awarded three Michelin stars, Copenhagen • Interned at benu – Michelin Guide 3-Star, San Francisco • Worked at benu – Three Michelin Stars, San Francisco • Sous Chef at Coi – Three Michelin Stars, San Francisco • Sous Chef at Quince – Three Michelin Stars, San Francisco
Career in South Korea	• 2018: Returned to Korea – Appointed Head Chef of 'L’Amant Secret', L’Escape, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Seoul Myeongdong • 2021: L’Amant Secret awarded 1 Michelin Star • 2022: Appointed Head Chef and Executive Chef of 'Eatanic Garden' at Josun Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Seoul Gangnam • 2023–Present: Eatanic Garden was awarded and continues to hold 1 Michelin Star

The Life Story of Chef Son Jong-won

Chef Son Jong-won captured public attention at once with his appearance on Season 2 of Netflix’s original culinary survival series Culinary Class Wars, released on December 16, 2025. Yet his rise was anything but sudden. For more than seven years, he has been quietly and relentlessly building his cuisine at the very front line of Korean fine dining. Long before the Michelin Guide took notice, he had already been asking himself a fundamental question: What does Korean cuisine mean today? The traces of that ongoing inquiry still remain on every plate that leaves his hands.

Born on March 19, 1984, in Seoul, Chef Son spent his early years in Bundang, Seongnam. Growing up in one of Korea’s most well-planned first-generation new towns, he completed middle school before moving to the United States. He attended All Saints’ Day School, an Episcopal private school in Texas, where he adapted quickly to the American education system despite joining relatively late. In fact, he excelled particularly in math and science—subjects grounded in logic, structure, and formulas. Looking at his cooking today, his emphasis on structure, repetition, and verification over pure instinct seems to have been shaped as early as this period.

After high school, he enrolled at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, one of the top engineering schools in the U.S., majoring in both civil engineering and optical engineering. Interviews from that time suggest that while he did not dislike studying, he began questioning whether a life defined by constant academic comparison would truly make him happy. His interests gradually shifted toward fashion, and he even seriously considered applying to Parsons School of Design. Then, by chance, he visited The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York. Watching students fully immersed in disciplined practice—precise movements, palpable tension in the kitchens—he felt an unmistakable pull. It was the first time he thought, This is the world I want to be part of. That moment would ultimately change the course of his life.

In his final year at university, he made a bold decision: leaving Rose-Hulman and applying to both Parsons and the CIA. Accepted to both, he chose the CIA. Cooking was no longer a casual interest; it was something he felt was worth staking his entire life on. That intensity carried him through difficult years of proving himself, often against family opposition. While studying at the CIA, he interned at benu, the three-Michelin-star restaurant in San Francisco. The kitchen—also part of the careers of Culinary Class Wars judge Chef Corey Lee’s protégés, including Chef Ahn Sung-jae and Chef Lee Hak-sung—became a place where Son internalized not just technique, but standards, discipline, and attitude. At the recommendation of owner-chef Corey Lee, he made another unconventional choice: leaving the CIA before graduation to remain at benu. He later worked as sous chef at Coi and Quince, both three-Michelin-star restaurants, absorbing the grammar of fine dining through experience rather than theory.

Photo of Head Chef Son Jong-won inspecting the dining hall tables at Eatanic Garden (Image source: Josun Lounge)

In 2018, Chef Son returned to Korea to join L’Amant Secret at L’Escape Hotel in Myeongdong as head chef. Initially planning to stay only a year or two, he soon realized that true completeness was impossible with half-hearted commitment. In 2020, he gave up his U.S. permanent residency to remain in Korea—a decision soon justified by results. In 2021, L’Amant Secret earned one Michelin star. This led to his appointment in 2022 as executive chef of Eatanic Garden at Josun Palace, Seoul Gangnam, during its major renewal. In 2023, Eatanic Garden also received one Michelin star, making Son Jong-won the only chef in Korea to have led two separate restaurants to Michelin one-star status. It was around this time that search terms such as “Chef Son Jong-won Michelin,” “Eatanic Garden Son Jong-won,” and “L’Amant Secret chef” began to naturally converge.

His cuisine leans toward restraint rather than flamboyance. Anyone who has dined at his restaurants more than once understands this clearly. He avoids excessive decoration, instant gratification, and dishes that require heavy explanation. Instead, he favors flavors that linger quietly and plates that feel structurally complete. Menu development begins not in the kitchen, but with pencil and paper. He sketches not only dishes, but tableware, service flow, and the overall guest experience. Seasonality is his most important compass. In spring, he reads the texture and moisture of vegetables; in summer, the energy and temperature of seafood—translating the character of each season onto the plate. This reflects his belief in responding to the present moment rather than chasing trends or concepts.

For Chef Son, modern Korean cuisine is not a reproduction of tradition. It is a contemporary reinterpretation of Korean flavor logic and culinary thinking. Ingredients such as abalone, beef, dongchimi, jang, and fermentation remain familiar, but the approach is unmistakably modern. Abalone and beef sirloin are cooked separately to their optimal states, thinly sliced, layered, and refined through repeated cycles of cooking, chilling, and reheating—a process that reveals his obsessive attention to detail. At times, his food has been described as “Korean cuisine made by a foreigner,” a critique he never denied. Instead, he accepted it as an honest description of where he stood at that moment.

The dishes born from his hands mirror his personality: reserved, quietly tense, yet driven by a willingness to challenge himself. He believes that good food emerges only after passing through doubt, revision, and anxiety. Even the pain and self-doubt inherent in that process are, to him, part of cooking itself. As he has said repeatedly in interviews, cuisine is never an individual achievement but the condensation of a team’s collective time and energy—a belief that further solidifies his standards.

Chef Son no longer lingers on binary judgments of whether food is “Korean” or “not Korean.” His cuisine has become a genre of Korean fine dining in its own right. Just as kimchi evolved by absorbing outside influences, he believes food culture has always grown through change. The experiments and questions he continues to wrestle with today may one day become another form of tradition. A chef who proves himself through results rather than rhetoric, who quietly raises the bar while exploring the present state of Korean gastronomy, Son Jong-won is increasingly likely to remain a central figure in discussions of Korean fine dining—not only now, but ten years from now. Where his cuisine will ultimately arrive remains unknown, but its direction is clear: not trends, but time; not display, but accumulation; not spectacle, but an intense and deeply personal obsession with Korean food.

Video capture of Chef Son Jong-won personally explaining the main dish during dinner at a booth table in Eatanic Garden, Summer 2022

On a personal note, I have been visiting Josun Palace and Eatanic Garden regularly since 2021, and I still remember my first impression of Chef Son following Eatanic Garden’s 2022 renewal. Despite his gentle gaze, his voice carried a surprising depth. Before he became widely known, the Son Jong-won I encountered at Eatanic Garden was calm, serious, and impressively restrained in both speech and behavior. Even from a fellow man’s perspective, his devotion to food inspired not just admiration, but respect. I never doubted that he would become a star chef. The popularity he enjoys today feels entirely earned. I sincerely hope to see his cuisine reach even greater heights and to witness a future in which Chef Son Jong-won is celebrated by diners around the world.

I’m a professional hotel reviewer based in South Korea.
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