Enjoy Michelin-Starred Restaurants at Home

Michelin X Market Kurly Meal Kit Real Review

Photo by Michelin Guide

While creating the Drinkit planned content , I visited several restaurants listed in the Michelin Guide. Every time I tasted exquisite delicacies like fresh pasta or chadol galbitang (beef brisket soup), I thought, "Ah, it would be great if I could enjoy this kind of food at home." Perhaps this wish came true, as the Michelin Guide held a ‘Taste of Summer’ event in collaboration with Market Kurly. This event consisted of ‘Michelin Guide At Home Meal Kit Delivery,’ ‘Michelin Star Restaurants You Can Meet Offline,’ and ‘Docent Cooking Class.’

Photo by Michelin Guide

The ‘Michelin Guide At Home Meal Kit Delivery’ produces menus sold at Michelin-selected restaurants in meal kit form, allowing people to enjoy the dining experience without visiting the restaurants. You can taste dishes from seven restaurants selected in the Michelin Guide Seoul 2022 selection and Bib Gourmand. Among various genres, I chose meal kits from the French dining bar ‘L’Embuscade 81’ and the fresh pasta specialist ‘Egg & Flower.’

A package consisting of a cooler bag containing the meal kit, a table mat, and the Michelin Guidebook arrived. The quality of the cooler bag and table mat, both featuring the Michelin Guide logo, was especially excellent. The cooler bag was spacious and sturdy enough to hold wine or snacks, making it suitable for picnics. When I unwrapped the table mat and placed it on the plain dining table, my anticipation for the food heightened considerably.

Inside the cooler bag, the meal kits were neatly packed along with cooling packs. The phrase ‘I am NOT PLASTIC’ printed on the packaging container caught my eye first. It was impressive that they tried to compensate for the disadvantage of meal kits producing a lot of disposable waste by using eco-friendly containers. Although there were quite a few containers, the red bands labeled with ingredient names and numbers prevented any confusion about which ingredients to cook with.

French Dining Bar, L’Embuscade 81

Located in Mapo-gu, L’Embuscade 81 is a restaurant where you can taste ‘charcuterie,’ a type of French cured meat. They sell items such as ‘confit’ and ‘rillettes,’ which are ingredients slowly cooked in low-temperature oil and stored with their fat, and ‘boudin noir,’ a French-style blood sausage. This meal kit consisted of carrot salad called ‘quatorze r?p?,’ duck spread ‘rillettes de canard,’ pork belly with dried plums, Parmesan sausage with ratatouille, charcuterie, chocolate mousse, and tiramisu. Reading these unfamiliar names once made me even more curious about their flavors.

Most dishes only needed to be transferred to plates, but the sausage and pork belly required simple cooking. I grilled the sausage and pork belly in a pan, heated the sauce, and plated them. Although there were quite a few dishes, the preparation time was not long.

After transferring, grilling, and heating, the French-style feast was complete. I tasted the quatorze r?p?, a tangy carrot salad that whetted my appetite, followed by crackers topped with rillettes. Accompanied by salad and pickles, the salty and oily umami of the rillettes was maximized. Meanwhile, the pork belly dish with sweet and sour plums harmonized well with buttery potatoes. All the flavors were as unfamiliar as their names, but the Parmesan sausage and ratatouille had a familiar tomato sauce taste. The ratatouille played an interesting role, balancing the flavors like salsa. In addition, the charcuterie and dessert created a luxurious yet enjoyable flavor feast that seemed to call for a glass of wine. After tasting each dish, I realized the kit was composed only of menus that even those unfamiliar with French cuisine could enjoy without burden. All the tasting members that day were trying French food for the first time, and despite the unfamiliar dishes, they said they did not feel any aversion.

Fresh Pasta Specialty, Egg & Flower

has covered Egg & Flower before, a place loved for its fresh pasta made only with eggs and flour. Their signature dish is the thin long pasta with seafood, Hong shrimp & squid ink capellini. This meal kit included another signature dish: black pork ragu & squid ink rigatoni, galbi ragu & black pepper reginetti, poached egg and seaweed Caesar salad, Caprese platter, and cookies. The two pasta dishes required simple cooking steps of boiling the noodles and heating the sauce.

Egg & Flower content is here

The first thing I noticed when seeing the completed dishes was the generous portions. Each menu had more food than expected. After plating the salad, cooked pasta, and platter, a plentiful table setting was ready for 2 to 3 people. The first step was the Caprese platter and salad. The salad topped with a poached egg had a soft and savory flavor, enhanced by crispy brown rice and seaweed powder that elevated the umami. It had a different charm from the fresh salads I had tasted before, making me reach for it repeatedly. The pasta dishes using black pork and galbi featured rich ragu sauces. The sweet and savory galbi ragu and the subtly perilla-flavored, spicy black pork ragu sauce reminded me of warm rice, and the combination with short pasta was excellent. Adding Korean elements to Italian food created a familiar yet uniquely different taste, which was very appealing. It was also impressive that the freshness of the taste and ingredients was similar to the dishes tasted at the restaurant.

Photo by Michelin Guide

The dishes from two Michelin restaurants tasted through meal kits. It was satisfying to enjoy restaurant food without going outside or waiting. Receiving the freshly prepared meal kits quickly on the delivery day morning helped maintain the freshness of the ingredients, which was excellent. Just by preparing a bottle of wine, the ‘Michelin Guide At Home Meal Kit Delivery’ can instantly transform your home into a Michelin restaurant. I want to give it 120 points out of 100.

Photo by Bomi Kim

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.