At 5 rue du Dragon, Korean chef Esu Lee begins with banchan, moves to aged fish, and finishes before a massive wood-fired grill. Trained in Sydney, with stints in Hong Kong and at Passerini in Paris, he also spent several months in Korea learning temple food from the monk-chef Jeong Kwan. At Orson, fermentation, raw elements, and fire converse: yin on the plate, yang on the embers.
Esu Lee has traveled far, and the world has offered him a thousand flavors to taste. Born in Korea, he grew up and learned his craft in Australia at Cordon Bleu Sydney, discovered Korean cuisine more intimately during his military service, worked in Hong Kong, then moved to Paris after a conversation with James Henry, now at Le Doyenné. He spent time with Giovanni Passerini, opened CAM—his first Parisian restaurant, which quickly became a coveted spot—then returned to Korea for several months. There, he joined Jeong Kwan, the Buddhist nun and monastic culinary figure revealed to the world by Chef’s Table, to learn what she calls “the taste of the hand”: honoring the ingredient through gesture, slowness, and care.
At Orson, this philosophy meets an entirely different tempo: a monumental three-hearth wood-fired grill, equipped with hand cranks to bring fish, meat, and vegetables closer to or further from the flame. The menu follows the motion of the fire. Begin with a banchan to share, then a sashimi of dry-aged fish with fermented plum and kim, before moving to the embers—catch of the day, John Dory, or dry-aged rib steak. Orzo, doenjang, shiitake, corn, and ’nduja blur the boundaries even further... Esu Lee speaks of yin for the raw and fermented, and yang for the flame.
