Founder Timo Kim’s new Staunton Street restaurant TIENMO gives tteokbokki, gimbap and fried chicken the caviar-and-Champagne treatment.
Offering a much-needed breath of fresh air to what was once one of Hong Kong’s most vibrant preccincts, TIENMO has opened on Staunton Street in SoHo with a simple, slightly mischievous idea: take the Korean street food that every Seoul schoolkid grows up on and serve it with caviar, A5 Wagyu and Champagne.
The food in question is bunsik, Korea’s snack-shop canon of tteokbokki, gimbap, fried chicken and late-night noodles. It’s cheap, fast and usually eaten after school, after work or after one soju too many. At the new hotspot, Kim elevates timeless Korean dishes while keeping them recognisable. He’s also leaving production to the masters, with the all-important rice cakes hand-shaped by an artisan maker in Hongcheon, who ensures they’re irregular enough to give the tteokbokki a proper chew, while the soondae, a glass-noodle sausage, comes straight from Sokcho on South Korea’s east coast.
The high end of the menu doesn’t hold back. Hanwoo beef tartare is rolled into gimbap and topped with Oscietra caviar, while the Jjapagetti, the instant black-bean noodle that Korean students survive on, gets a fancy new interpretation with Miyazaki A5 Wagyu and freshly shaved truffle. We’d suggest that the uninitiated start with the Classic Platter, which sweeps through gimbap, soondae, tteokbokki, fried bites and a Busan-style fishcake soup.
Of course, this is Korean street food at its best, so the Korean Fried Chicken Service is the showstopper. Gather the lads for a whole brined bird, lovingly deep fried and presented on silver-laced pomp, complete with house yangnyeom sauce, curry salt, pickled radish and a caviar-topped crème fraîche.
For us, the Champagne is the cleverest part of the whole enterprise. Hong Kong’s Korean dining has long split between budget BBQ joints and hushed tasting-menu rooms, with little in between. TIENMO sits squarely in that gap, and its drinks list is where it most clearly shows its hand. In Korea, chimaek (chicken and beer) is practically a national sacrament and swapping beer for bubbles may sound like a gimmick, until you try it. The reality is that the acidity and fizz cut through gochujang heat and fried batter just as well as a lager does. TIENMO is running an ongoing collaboration with Veuve Clicquot to make that point, though soju, beer and highballs are there for anyone who’d rather not.
“I have also always loved Korean food with Champagne, especially the combination of something as casual as tteokbokki or fried chicken with a great bottle of bubbles,” says Kim, whose previous careers in K-pop entertainment and finance show in the restaurant’s polish.
The dining room follows the same logic. TIENMO takes up two adjoining shopfronts with around 44 seats spread across tables, a bar, a counter and a few outdoor spots facing the street. The walls are mirrored, the branding is burgundy, and the soundtrack is hip hop and R&B that gets louder as the evening goes on.
Weekdays see lunch specials (12-3 pm) that include a main and a bunsik side, and after 10 pm, out come the green melamine plates, borrowed from old-school drinking dens, along with spicy boneless chicken feet, tofu kimchi and crispy potato pancakes.
SoHo has no shortage of places to start a night, but with those hours, TIENMO is making a serious play to be the place where it ends.
