The year she turned 25, she joined Eunhasu, the Korean restaurant at Sejong Hotel, and began cooking. Before that she had been a middle school home economics teacher. In 2006, she was head chef at the Korean ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. In 2007, as a Woosong University professor, she was invited to an Asian cuisine festival at the Culinary Institute of America.
In 2009, she made the menu for the exhibition Celebrities’ Healthy Lunchboxes. In 2010, she was named as one of five domestic cooks at a Cheong Wa Dae meeting on the globalization of Korean food. In 2012, she presented Korean cooking at the Jeonbuk Gourmet Master Class. In 2015, she advised on the menu of a Korean dinner at the U.N. in New York. In 2016, she presented on Korean menu composition at a forum on promoting Korean food culture. In 2017, she returned to the kitchen from teaching and advisory work to oversee Hansikgonggan. That year she also appeared at the Jeju Food & Wine Festival and at Sempio’s special lecture.
The breakthrough yearThe year she turned 60, Hansikgonggan, which she oversaw, was newly awarded one star in Michelin Guide Seoul 2019.
In 2019, she took over Hansikgonggan and became its owner-chef. In 2020, she was selected as Asia’s Best Female Chef, and Ssal-eul Dalmda, a book for which she wrote the Korean recipes, won first prize in the rice category at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. In 2021, she was named Seoul’s first Michelin Mentor Chef, but in September the restaurant Hansikgonggan closed.
In 2022, she was named to Forbes’ 50 Over 50 list of Asian women and appeared in MBC’s Docuflex. In 2023, she led the collaboration on Louis Vuitton’s pop-up restaurant Woori Louis Vuitton.
In 2024, she was among the five female chefs introduced by World’s 50 Best Restaurants and demonstrated kimchi making at a workshop in Seoul tied to Asia’s 50 Best.
In 2025, she opened Hansikgonggan Soban in Euljiro, Seoul, and in December she appeared on KBS2’s Boss in the Mirror. In 2026, she took part in Wavve’s Chefs of the Temple Kitchen and went to a charity gala in Bangkok and a Korean food course at ALMA in Italy.
Cho Hee-sook (born 1958) began cooking in 1983, the year she turned 25, at Eunhasu, the Korean restaurant at Sejong Hotel, and became known on Oct 18, 2018, the year she turned 60, when Hansikgonggan received one star in Michelin Guide Seoul 2019. In 2020, the year she turned 62, she was selected as Asia’s Best Female Chef.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.