🇰🇷 South Korea · Korean cuisine · b. 1957
Korean Seon Buddhist nun whose temple cuisine has become a reference point in global fine dining.
Jeong Kwan is a Korean Seon (Zen) Buddhist nun and a chef in the tradition of Korean Buddhist temple cuisine (사찰음식, sachal eumsik). She lives and cooks at Chunjinam, a small hermitage attached to Baekyangsa Temple in the Naejangsan mountains of South Korea's Jeollanam-do province. She is not a restaurateur in any conventional sense — she does not own a restaurant, does not accept payment for her cooking, and cooks primarily for fellow nuns, monks and visitors to the hermitage — but since the mid-2010s she has become one of the most internationally influential figures in vegan and plant-based fine dining.
She entered Buddhist orders as a teenager after the death of her mother and learned temple cooking under the celebrated Korean temple-cuisine teacher Songbeop Sunim. Korean Buddhist temple cuisine is strictly vegan and avoids the five 'pungent vegetables' (onion, garlic, leek, chive, scallion) on the doctrinal grounds that they overstimulate the body and obstruct meditation; it relies instead on extensive fermentation — soy sauce aged in onggi pots for decades, doenjang (soybean paste), gochujang made from temple-grown chiles, fermented vegetables, mountain greens, mushrooms and the seasonal produce of the temple grounds.
She came to international attention in 2015 when Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin visited Baekyangsa and subsequently invited her to cook a dinner at Le Bernardin in New York. She was featured in Season 3 of Netflix's Chef's Table (2017) in an episode now widely cited as one of the most influential pieces of food television of the decade. Since then she has cooked at Eleven Madison Park, at Le Bernardin, at the Vatican, and at dozens of other international stages — always returning to the hermitage.
Her cooking is widely cited as a foundational reference for the contemporary plant-based fine-dining movement; Daniel Humm has spoken publicly about her direct influence on his decision to convert Eleven Madison Park to a fully plant-based tasting menu in 2021.
Cooking is meditation, and the food is an extension of the cook's mind. Jeong Kwan rejects the idea that great cooking requires either rare ingredients or technical complexity: temple cooking uses what the season and the temple grounds provide, prepared simply, with the long, slow contribution of fermentation. She has said often in interviews that there is no distinction between the cook, the eater, the ingredient and the natural world — all are aspects of the same reality.
Small Seon Buddhist hermitage where she lives, practices and cooks. Not a commercial restaurant; visitors arrange meals through the temple.
These recipes from our database reflect the korean cooking tradition that Jeong works in. They are not direct reproductions of Jeong's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“There is no chef, no ingredient and no diner — only nature passing through.”
— Chef's Table, Netflix (2017)
“Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you let go of the ego, real creativity comes out.”
— Chef's Table, Netflix (2017)
Enters Buddhist orders as a teenager after the death of her mother.
Begins formal study of Korean Buddhist temple cuisine under Songbeop Sunim.
Becomes resident cook at Chunjinam hermitage of Baekyangsa Temple.
Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin visits Baekyangsa and invites her to cook in New York.
Cooks a celebrated dinner at Le Bernardin, New York.
Featured in Season 3, Episode 1 of Netflix's Chef's Table — a turning point in her international recognition.
Cooks at the Vatican; named to Time 100 Next.
Widely credited as a direct influence on Eleven Madison Park's plant-based reinvention.
Receives the Icon Award at Asia's 50 Best Restaurants.
Jeong Kwan is a Korean Seon (Zen) Buddhist nun who lives and cooks at Chunjinam hermitage of Baekyangsa Temple in South Korea's Jeollanam-do province. She is one of the most internationally recognised practitioners of Korean Buddhist temple cuisine and has been a major influence on the contemporary plant-based fine-dining movement, but she is not a restaurateur and does not accept payment for her cooking.
Korean Buddhist temple cuisine (사찰음식, sachal eumsik) is the strict vegan cooking tradition of Korean Seon Buddhist monasteries. It avoids meat, fish, dairy and the five 'pungent vegetables' (onion, garlic, leek, chive, scallion), and relies on long-fermented soy sauce, doenjang, gochujang, seasonal mountain vegetables, and mushrooms. Jeong Kwan is one of its leading living practitioners.
No. Jeong Kwan lives and cooks at Chunjinam hermitage at Baekyangsa Temple and does not operate a commercial restaurant. Meals at the hermitage are arranged through the temple and are not a paid service in the conventional sense. Her occasional cooking at international restaurants (Le Bernardin, Eleven Madison Park, the Vatican) has been at the host venue's invitation.
Daniel Humm has spoken publicly about Jeong Kwan as a direct influence on Eleven Madison Park's 2021 decision to convert to a fully plant-based tasting menu. She had cooked there before the pandemic, and Humm has described her cooking and her philosophy as one of the central inspirations for that reinvention.
Jeong Kwan has spoken publicly about entering Buddhist orders as a teenager after the death of her mother. She has described cooking, since then, as inseparable from her meditation practice — not as a separate vocation but as one of the central forms of her religious life.
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