Welcome to Vegetable Universe — A World of Vegetables Rooted in Season and Nature, Maha Kitchen

Through pop-up restaurants and cooking classes, Maha Kitchen introduces Spanish vegetable cuisine while honoring the names of the farms and farmers behind each ingredient—a gesture of respect for those who cultivate precious land to provide healthy food.

Interviewer Parc Jinmyoung
Interviewee Shin Soyeong (Chef, Maha Kitchen)

How have you been lately?
I used to rent outside studios to run my cooking programs, but these days I'm trying to make more use of my own studio in Namyangju. I run a variety of projects—classes on cooking Spanish food with seasonal vegetables, a climate-conscious dining gathering with residents of Hwado-eup, and more. I also continue to present the kind of cooking Maha Kitchen stands for every week at Marché@ farmers market.

There's a small vegetable garden behind the studio, so class participants can experience seasonal ingredients up close.
That's right. Since last year, I've been cultivating a modest garden on the hill behind the studio, which I named Maha Hill. This neighborhood where the studio is located is where my grandparents used to live. It's now become a cluster of villas due to redevelopment, but when I was a child, a stream ran in front of the building and there were mountains wherever you looked. Fortunately, the hill about a five-minute walk from the studio escaped development, but it had been left neglected, practically a dumping ground. Once I decided to start farming, friends and neighbors helped me clear the trash, plant trees, till the soil, and sow seeds. After spring passed, sprouts came up, flowers bloomed, and fruit formed. I think you can expect a bountiful Maha Hill this fall.

You were working in arts programming when you suddenly left to study cooking in Spain.
It really does seem out of the blue, doesn't it? Even now, I can't quite understand my past self (laughs). I was 32 at the time. I had studied arts management all the way through graduate school, so why did I suddenly jump into cooking? Looking back, I think the joy and calm I felt cooking in my free time were quite significant. I had mainly been working to support artists and to build environments where arts education could happen. It was rewarding and I enjoyed it, but I often found myself wondering, ‘Where is my own art?’ I think I was filling that emptiness with cooking. There was something enjoyable and fitting about building my own world while working with nature's ingredients.

Why did you choose San Sebastian of all places?
I had visited San Sebastian once for research on arts management. I was studying cases where companies or institutions used art to discover problems they hadn't previously recognized and solve them in creative ways. Encountering concrete examples of this in San Sebastian, I suddenly wondered whether I could apply the same approach to my own life. As it happened, Luis Irizar, the culinary school I wanted to attend, was also located there. Once I actually visited the school, the courage I needed welled up in what had been a vague ambition. Once I decided, ‘I'll try it, and if it doesn't work out, I'll come back,’ everything that followed went smoothly.

Why did you want to learn to cook at Luis Irizar?
At public culinary schools, theory classes and hands-on practice are usually conducted at the same time. But at Luis Irizar, the entire curriculum is built around practical training at restaurants affiliated with the school. You change restaurants every three months and dive straight into real work. You get to experience everything from neighborhood tapas bars to hotels to Michelin-starred restaurants. I thought it was ideal for someone like me who had no prior experience working in a kitchen.

What did you find most appealing during your two years living in San Sebastian?
The sight of seasonal ingredients for the day laid out in front of restaurants is a trademark of the city. The ingredients themselves announce that day's dishes. Walking through the streets, you'll often come across spaces that look like restaurants from the outside but are actually off-limits to the general public. These are a kind of shared kitchen, used only by members of cooking clubs who pay a membership fee. They're places where people gather to cook together during local festivals, family occasions, or simply in their free time. Cooking clubs are a tradition unique to the region dating back to the 19th century, and they laid the groundwork for the emergence of the Basque gastronomic movement in the 1970s.

What is the Basque gastronomic movement?
The Basque region refers collectively to northern Spain, including San Sebastian, and southwestern France. Blessed with an exceptional natural environment, the region flourished early on under the influence of French industrialization. San Sebastian in particular encompasses sea, mountains, and plains alike, so both fishing and farming developed extensively, and the mild climate made it a famous resort area for aristocrats since ancient times. The people of this region, the Basques, look physically different from other Europeans and have their own language, Euskara. In the 1930s, they faced harsh suppression for resisting the Spanish dictatorship. I think this history helped forge an independent and tight-knit community. It's only natural that the food culture that blossomed in such an environment would be so vibrant.
Around the 1970s, chefs from the Basque region began gathering to share their recipes and research with one another. As stories from these gatherings were reported in the media, the movement came to be known as the ‘Basque gastronomic movement.’ Luis Irizar, regarded as a pioneer of the Basque gastronomic movement, was the founding director of my school (I heard he passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the school closed down along with him).

What led you to focus on vegetable dishes within Spanish cuisine specifically?
I'd always had a strong interest in climate and the environment. Most restaurants in San Sebastian have one-on-one partnerships with local farms. Every morning, farmers bring their ingredients directly to the restaurants. The local heirloom ingredients the farmers would bring in armfuls were so delicious on their own that they needed no separate seasoning or additives. I think it was through the flavors I experienced then that I came to want to cook dishes that convey the true, essential taste of vegetables.
The first thing I did after returning to Korea was open a pop-up restaurant at Marché@ farmers market. Marché is a place where you naturally end up in conversation with people who farm with respect for the land and for life. I began to see the countless connections behind how vegetables make it to our tables. Naturally, this led me to think about the climate crisis and questions of survival, which in turn led me to the conviction that we need to grow and eat more vegetables in order to build soil capable of absorbing carbon.

Even understanding the importance of eating more plants, it can be hard to keep it up consistently. Do you have a vegetarian routine you'd recommend for beginners?
Don't push yourself to eat everything the same day you buy your vegetables. Prepping and portioning after shopping is already quite a chore in itself. Root vegetables, for instance, take time just to cook. To avoid burning out, I think it helps to try just one new thing a day. First, prep your vegetables, and if you have the energy, try making a dressing. Then plan out how you'll combine each vegetable—salad today, sandwich tomorrow, bibimbap the day after. Thinking ahead like this can be a great source of motivation for a plant-based lifestyle. If it's hard to do on your own, using a habit-tracking platform or recording your meals on social media is another good approach.

Do you have any projects planned for this year?
Among the communities I’m part of, there’s one where we farm together. It’s centered around farmer Kim Hyunsuk, who runs a farm called ‘Bonggeum-ui Tteul’ in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi-do, and includes people from various fields such as chefs and cultural planners. We’re planning to publish a book compiling the stories of this community sometime between June and July. We decided to publish this book to share farmer Kim Hyunsuk’s captivating philosophy on life, along with the stories of those who follow in her footsteps, with more people. It also includes vegetable recipes we make and eat together every Tuesday, so please look forward to it.