In recent years, South Korean culture has heavily influenced lives of the daily Filipino. More and more South Koreans have settled in parts of the Philippines, and introduced us to K-POP, digital perm, and of course, Korean BBQ. Save for a few Korean restaurants in the country, most of them are Korean BBQ restaurants offering servings of pork belly to last you a lifetime. As a country that’s been exposed to a culture and heritage as rich as South Korea’s, though, we’re due for a reinvention of our perspective of their cuisine.

South Korean cuisine is highly traditional and unpretentious, but it has continuously evolved through the years due to cultural and social trends. Despite this, even the most basic meal has always consisted of a lot of elements for it to be considered complete. The concept of bringing contrasting flavors together are what truly makes South Korean cuisine memorable, and this is one of our inspirations for Gaja Korean Kitchen.

Aside from it being a direct translation of gaja, the sentence ‘let’s go’ is an ideal that we want to bring to our patrons. Let’s go—a quick invitation that leads anywhere and everywhere. It’s something you can say to friends or family, where you’ll always end up remembering not the smallest of details, but rather the company you’ve kept. Just like how a South Korean meal won’t be complete without different elements, the South Korean culture is profoundly influenced by the concepts of family and friendship. Bringing people together is just one of the ways that their practices resound even in the modern-day setting.

It takes a special kind of conviction to present a cuisine with such remarkable history attached to it. We are set to anchor on the very core of what South Korean cuisine is all about and mold it with the Seoul lifestyle—a perfect encapsulation of the Gaja experience.