Haemul Pajeon

Korean savoury pancake of wheat flour, rice flour, and egg batter studded with whole spring onions and seafood — typically prawn, squid, mussel, and clam — pan-fried in oil until the surface is crisp and golden and the spring onions char at the edges. Served with a dipping sauce of soy, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and sometimes a touch of gochugaru. The signature is the crisp-fried batter wrapped around fresh seafood, with the spring onion's char-and-grass character running through the dish — savoury, oily, briny, mildly aromatic. The trimethylamine reaction with oak rules out oaked wines absolutely.

Pairs Perfectly

Crémant d'Alsace from a serious producer, France. The Pinot Blanc-led traditional method brings carbonation that lifts the frying oil from the palate between bites, the lees autolytic complexity meets the seafood depth beautifully, and the rounder body than Crémant de Bourgogne handles the substantial pancake without going meek. Champagne, Brut non-vintage from a grower-producer, offers the same logic with greater Pinot Noir backbone at a higher price point.

Pairs Well

Riesling sec from Alsace, France. Dry Alsace Riesling brings high-acid mineral structure that cuts the frying oil cleanly, and the gentle aromatic profile meets the spring onion char without competing — the still white answer where one is preferred to sparkling.

Pinot Noir from Marlborough, New Zealand. The Asian cuisine New World answer — light red-fruit and high acid handle the seafood and the dipping sauce without bringing oak that would clash with the trimethylamine, and the soft tannin sits alongside the sesame oil cleanly.

Worth Seeking Out

Hunter Valley Semillon, New South Wales, Australia. Bone-dry, low-alcohol (10–11%), with a lime-zest and lemongrass profile that mirrors the spring onion freshness and cuts frying oil with rare precision — the most underrated dry white in the world for this kind of food.

Avoid

Any oaked wine — reacts with the seafood to produce metallic flavours; tannic reds — clash with the pancake and the seafood entirely; sweet wines — wrong against the savoury soy dipping sauce; aromatic whites with rose or lychee — fight the spring onion character.

Failing That

A Picpoul de Pinet, Languedoc.

If All Else Fails

Pinot Grigio, northern Italy.

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