The first dish Bomee Ki and Woongchul Park created together was an unconventional version of a classic French tarte Tatin, made with daikon instead of the traditional apple. The husband-and-wife team have been collaborating on menu items since they conceived Sollip, a Korean-inspired modern European restaurant that opened in London in 2020. Park is responsible for the savory dishes while Ki handles the pastries and desserts, but they often share ideas.
“I was like, ‘Hey, darling, I want to make a tarte Tatin, but a savory version,’” Park tells Observer in late July. “We started thinking about what kind of ingredient we could use. We decided on either daikon or Korean cabbage. We tried both of them, and daikon was the winner.”
“It became our signature dish,” Ki adds. “In Korea, daikon is one of the most famous and popular vegetables.”
“It’s different now,” Park notes of the dish. “It’s more refined. But it started as a simple idea.”
Sollip combines the couple’s South Korean influences with their traditional French culinary training and a shared interest in local British ingredients. Park grew up in Cheonan-si, not far from Seoul, while Ki hails from Gwangju. The couple met in London in 2009 while attending Le Cordon Bleu, although their initial encounter was brief. “A friend introduced us,” Park says. “Nothing happened at the time.”
After finishing his course at Le Cordon Bleu, Park returned to South Korea to work at Milieu, a French restaurant on Jeju Island. He had been following Ki’s personal blog, where she posted photos of her pastry work, and immediately thought of her when Milieu needed a pastry chef.
“She wasn’t working at the time, so she thankfully said yes, and she came down to our restaurant to help us develop the pastry menu,” Park says. “That’s how we started it.”
Ki, smiling, adds, “He started it.”
The couple married in 2013 and soon decided to return to London, with individual stints at restaurants like The Ledbury, Koffmann’s and The Arts Club. They went back to South Korea a few years later, but couldn’t shake their love for the British city. “When I was in high school, I used to enjoy watching Jamie Oliver’s show,” Ki says. “He’s very attractive, and I love that accent. At the time, I thought, ‘Maybe one day I would like to go to the U.K.’”
More seriously, she saw London as a place that embraced different cultures. “We felt there was space here to express our story through food without needing to over-explain,” Ki notes. “That openness gave us the confidence to be subtle and personal in our approach.”
In 2019, Ki and Park, who were by then parents to two young children, decided to take the leap and move to London permanently, with the goal of opening their own restaurant. Previously, Park had imagined himself as a head chef in someone else’s kitchen. But he realized that having your own restaurant requires youth and strength, which he now had in his early 30s. He didn’t want to delay the dream. “I was like, ‘If we are too late, we couldn’t do it because physically,’” he says. “Why wait until we’re 40 years old or 50 years old to pursue that dream? What’s the point? That was the moment I started thinking about moving back to London.”
Park traveled to the U.K. on his own in June 2019 with two goals: finding a place to live and finding a restaurant site. He gave himself three months to do both. He walked thousands of steps each day exploring different neighborhoods, and ultimately found an intimate restaurant space in Bermondsey, not far from London Bridge Station. “Sometimes it’s actually better to know nothing,” he says. “When someone would ask me what kind of property we were looking for, I only knew money-wise and size-wise. Otherwise, I was very open-minded.”
The family officially moved to London in the fall of 2019. They spent the following months designing the restaurant space, developing the menu and creating a business plan, often sleeping only two or three hours a night. The interior aesthetic was important, even if budget constraints didn’t allow Ki to realize her vision right away.
“We wanted the space to reflect the same values as our food—calm, simplicity and a connection to nature,” she explains. “Rather than taking a traditional or decorative approach, we drew inspiration from the Korean concept of yeo-baek—the beauty of empty space.” The hope, for Ki, is that guests feel “both warmth and calm when they enter, not through grand gestures but through quiet thoughtfulness and a sense of ease.”
As Sollip was about to debut in early 2020, the pandemic hit. It wasn’t until August 29, 2020, that the restaurant could actually open. They began with à la carte offerings, but the U.K. soon went into lockdown for a second and then a third time. By the following spring, Ki and Park were finally able to present their original vision: a thoughtful tasting menu showcasing modern European techniques with Korean inspiration (Sollip’s four-course lunch currently runs £78, while the seven-course dinner is £152).
The focus at Sollip isn’t overtly Korean. Instead, the inclusion of ingredients like kimchi, gochujang and daikon is just a natural extension of Ki and Park. “Our identity is Korean, even if we have experience and education in French techniques,” Ki says. “We love our countries and we know our strong point is Korea, but we don’t try to make every single moment have a Korean influence.”
“You have your own knowledge from your life experience and then your chef experiences, and then you have your food memories,” Park adds. “So as a chef, your food is coming from all of that.”
The current menu’s standout dish is handmade Korean noodles, made from chestnut flour sourced in Italy and a sourdough fermentation created from scorched rice. It is presented elegantly in a bowl with perilla seed oil. It’s an unusual dish to find in a one-Michelin-starred restaurant in England, but one that feels singular in the best way possible. Sollip used to serve a bread course, but the chefs eventually swapped it out.
“In Korea, either you eat rice or noodles,” he says. “We tried different noodle recipes, but we wanted to go as simple as possible. That’s how we landed on perilla seed oil, which is one of my favorite ingredients in Korea. But we can’t get it here in London, so we get it directly from my mom. She sends us two boxes every single month. It costs a lot!”
The sweet dishes often include a traditional French madeleine, which Ki augments with flavors like basil. She describes her approach to dessert as “rooted in restraint,” and says she hopes to leave the guest with a memorable impression. “I care deeply about clarity in both flavor and form, so I often focus more on what to remove than what to add,” she says. “Each element must have a reason to be there and feel essential. I go through many tests and tastings until I feel absolutely confident.”
One of her favorites is the black pain perdu, which typically appears on the menu during the wintertime. She uses seoritae, a type of Korean black bean, to create ice cream and presents it alongside caramelized pecans, burnt vanilla and charcoal brioche. “I’ve always loved pain perdu and wanted to reinterpret it through a Korean lens,” she says. “It’s comforting but precise—something that feels like Sollip.”
The overall experience of Sollip reflects the combined intentions of both chefs. Each focuses on different aspects of the restaurant, but the duo always work as a team, especially when it comes to balancing home life with work.
“While our responsibilities are divided, we share thoughts on almost every detail and make decisions together,” Park says. “We also rely heavily on each other’s feedback when it comes to the menu and often develop ideas side by side. [And] when one of us feels worn out or starts to lose momentum, the other steps in with support or a push.”
“We share the same values and direction, but we’re very different in personality,” Ki adds. “That difference actually works in our favor [because] he’s instinctive and bold, while I’m more detail-driven and reflective. From the beginning, we were clear about one thing: to minimize the challenges of working as a couple and maximize the strengths.”
They always leave their emotions at home and never bring them into the kitchen, a rule they’ve followed since day one. “It might sound too good to be true, but I genuinely find working with him easy,” Ki says.
It’s often felt like an uphill battle for the couple, from the challenges posed by the pandemic, to staff shortages once they were able to open, to raising young children away from the help of their parents. And it still is a struggle, thanks to rising costs of living. But risking everything has been worthwhile. Sollip earned its first Michelin star in 2022 and has found success as both a local favorite and a restaurant that Korean visitors seek out when dining in London. “Korean people have cheered us [on] a lot and they keep saying, ‘We are very proud of you,’” Park says. “It makes us happy, but humble at the same time.”
At the end of August, Sollip will celebrate its fifth birthday—a milestone Ki wasn’t sure they would reach. She calls it “deeply emotional,” especially as she and Park have reflected on their journey to get here.
“I feel even more affection for Sollip now than I did in the early days,” she says. “It is a space shaped by all the people who have passed through it, both staff and guests. And I feel the same about London. This love naturally leads to wanting to do better and to create a space where both our guests and our team can feel fulfilled.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
