Restaurant Bium — Seoul's Michelin-Selected Temple Food Restaurant Where a Fermentation Master Cooks Without Garlic or Onion

I’ve eaten a lot of tasting menus that call themselves “vegetable-forward” while quietly leaning on butter, stock, or a hidden anchovy somewhere in the sauce. Bium doesn’t have that option. No meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs, and — the harder restriction — none of the five pungent vegetables Buddhist temple cooking avoids: garlic, green onion, chives, wild chive, and asafoetida. That’s the whole flavor toolkit most Korean kitchens build from, gone. What’s left has to come from vegetables, fermentation, and time.

I went to Bium (비움) to find out what a kitchen does when it takes away its own shortcuts. The answer, it turns out, is one of the more quietly confident meals I’ve had in Seoul this year.

Who Is Chef Kim Dae-cheon?

Before Bium, there was 7th Door (세븐스도어) — the Michelin one-starred restaurant that made Kim Dae-cheon (김대천) one of Seoul’s most respected names in fermentation-driven cooking, built around an extensive program of house-made ferments and long aging. 7th Door landed at No. 49 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026, and Kim also runs TocToc in the same building.

Bium is his second act, and the more personal project. Over several years, he made repeat visits to Jingwansa Temple (진관사) in Eunpyeong-gu, a temple long known for its Korean temple cuisine, to study how monks cook without the ingredients most professional kitchens treat as non-negotiable. He opened Bium in December 2024, on the ground floor of the same building that houses 7th Door upstairs.

Within about a year, Bium had a seat at No. 43 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026 and a place in the Michelin Guide Seoul selection — which means Kim now has two restaurants from the same building on that continental list, one built on decades of fermentation, the other built on refusing to use most of what fermentation usually seasons.

The Idea Behind the Name

“Bium (비움)” means “emptying” — and Kim has said the word gets misread as lack or deprivation, when for him it describes the opposite: a fuller state, reached by removing what isn’t necessary until what matters becomes visible. It’s a fitting name for a kitchen that cooks without garlic, onion, or anything that once had a face, and still manages to not taste like it’s missing something.

The space carries the same idea. It’s built with a hanok sensibility — quiet materials, low light, nothing that competes with the food for attention.

What I Ate

Bium runs a six-course tasting menu structured around a Buddhist framework. It opens with Chojoban (초조반) — literally an “early meal,” and the course arrives warm and gentle, the kind of dish that resets your palate before anything else lands on the table. Around it come small appetizers built to show off fermentation and aging in miniature: something crisp against something soft and glossy, salty against sweet against a clean, sour note, all within a few bites.

From there the menu moves into its main sequence, named Jisuhwapung (지수화풍) — earth, water, fire, and wind, the four elements in Buddhist thought, each one given its own course. It’s not a gimmick so much as an organizing logic: root vegetables and fermented pastes standing in for earth, something brothy and clear for water, a course built around direct heat and char for fire, something lighter and more aromatic for wind. Without garlic or onion to fall back on for savoriness, the depth in each course comes from house ferments and long-aged sauces doing work that a quick sauté usually does in other kitchens — and it shows in how layered a plate of vegetables and grain can taste when nothing is rushed.

The meal closes with tea and confections (차와 다과) — a quiet, unhurried finish rather than a dessert course trying to make one last big statement, which felt right for a meal built the way this one was.

What struck me most wasn’t any single dish — it’s that a menu with this many ingredients taken off the table still tasted complete, course after course, without ever feeling like it was working around an absence.

Practical Information

How to Get a Reservation

• Book through CatchTable — it’s the only reservation channel worth relying on for accurate availability.
• Since the Asia’s 50 Best placement, tables have gotten harder to find, especially weekend dinners. Booking a few weeks ahead gives you far more flexibility than trying for a same-week slot.
• Call ahead for anything last-minute — the restaurant’s own line can sometimes surface availability the app doesn’t show.
• Mention any dietary needs beyond the standard menu when booking. The kitchen already works within a strict framework, so it’s worth confirming rather than assuming.

Why Bium Matters

Seoul’s fine dining scene has no shortage of restaurants chasing French technique or reviving hanwoo and hanjeongsik traditions — Collage and GiwaKang are both recent examples of that run of newly starred openings. Bium is doing something narrower and, in some ways, harder: proving that Korean cooking’s oldest dietary restrictions — the ones written into temple kitchens centuries before “plant-based fine dining” was a category anyone marketed — can still produce a tasting menu ambitious enough to place on Asia’s 50 Best within its first year.

It also says something about Kim Dae-cheon specifically. He didn’t need a second restaurant. 7th Door already had the Michelin star and the reputation. Opening Bium downstairs, built around a harder set of constraints than his first kitchen ever imposed, reads like a chef testing how far fermentation and technique alone can carry a menu once every other shortcut is gone.

Frequently Asked Questions: Bium

Is Bium fully vegan?

Yes. The menu excludes all meat, fish, dairy, and eggs, and also avoids the five pungent vegetables — garlic, green onion, chives, wild chive, and asafoetida — that traditional Korean Buddhist temple cooking excludes.

Who is the chef at Bium?

Kim Dae-cheon (김대천), who also owns and runs 7th Door, a Michelin one-starred restaurant in the same building known for its extensive house fermentation program.

What kind of menu does Bium serve?

A six-course tasting menu built around a Buddhist framework: an opening course (Chojoban), four main courses structured around the elements of earth, water, fire, and wind (Jisuhwapung), and a closing course of tea and confections.

Has Bium won any awards?

Bium placed No. 43 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026 within roughly a year of opening, and it’s included in the Michelin Guide Seoul selection.

Where is Bium located?

1F, 41 Hakdong-ro 97-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, in the same building as 7th Door and TocToc. See it on Naver Map.

How do I book a table at Bium?

Reservations run through CatchTable. Since the Asia’s 50 Best announcement, weekend tables have gotten competitive, so booking a few weeks ahead is recommended.

Curious about more of Seoul’s fine dining scene beyond the usual French and Korean-BBQ names? Escondido covers Asia’s first Michelin-starred Mexican kitchen, and our roundup of Seoul’s six restaurants on Asia’s 50 Best 2026 puts Bium’s placement in context alongside the city’s more established tables.