The first Korean to become a dessert brand in Japan's sweet-obsessed market

Can dessert ever be the star of the table?

Dessert is typically cast as the supporting role of any meal — a sweet plate to close out the dining experience. In Korea, where dessert culture has historically been thin, it has long been treated as a pleasant afterthought rather than a destination in itself.

But that script is slowly being rewritten.

Justin Lee, one of Korea's foremost dessert chefs, believes dessert is fully capable of taking center stage. He sees the emerging consumer habits of today's teenagers and twentysomethings as proof.

"It's changing — slowly, very slowly," he said. "Older generations set their spending standards around value for money, but today's teens and people in their twenties are increasingly willing to pay for intangible experiences. Twenty years from now, when they have real purchasing power, Korea could have a dessert culture far richer than what we have today."

Consumption is habit. For older Koreans who lived through poverty, dessert was never a spending priority in their youth — and even as incomes rose, those early habits proved hard to shake. Japan tells a different story. There, generations raised on dessert as a cultural experience treat it not as a mere afterthought but as something genuinely worth paying for.

Signs of change are emerging in Korea as well. A Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey of 380 members of the MZ generation found that 46.6 percent identified "gasimbi" — the satisfaction derived from a purchase, regardless of its price — as the concept that best described their spending habits. A separate survey by Campus Tomorrow found that 30 percent of people in their twenties said they "spend freely on food without cutting back." For this cohort, the question is not simply how much something costs, but how much enjoyment and experience that money can buy.

JL Dessert Bar, Lee's venue in Hannam-dong, sits at the center of this shift. When it opened in 2016, it introduced the concept of "dessert dining" to Korea — a course-by-course dessert experience modeled on the rhythm of a French restaurant. But what gets dismantled here is more than just the format. The very assumptions diners bring to dessert are upended.

The clearest expression of that philosophy is Lee's signature Tomato Plate. Built around cherry tomatoes, homemade yogurt, basil, Parmesan ice cream, dried meringue and black olive powder, it reimagines the Italian caprese as a dessert. Sugar and cream are only part of the story.

Umami, sweetness and acidity layer over one another, while the brittle snap of meringue plays against the slow melt of ice cream. Paired with a cocktail of tequila, tomato and basil, a single dessert unfolds like a full course.

"This is the dessert that made me who I am — the one that expresses me most completely," Lee said. "It has won me many awards, and it remains the dish guests love most."

His instinct for dissolving the boundaries of dessert is equally on display in his carbonara — a creation that left Italian audiences stunned. Inspired by the classic pasta, it places bacon gelato on a base of Parmesan, finished with Pecorino and black pepper. On the side: brioche toast topped with an onion jam spiked with apple cider.

The al-dente texture of the Parmesan base, the cold bacon gelato, the saltiness of the cheese and pepper, and the sweetness of the onion jam collide on a single plate. The dish borrows a familiar name and delivers something entirely unfamiliar.

For Lee, inspiration does not arrive through ritual. It tends to appear in the most ordinary moments.

"There's no special routine I follow to find inspiration — it just shows up one day," he said. "With the carbonara, it came from the sweet richness of bacon and cheese bubbling together in cream. I made it at a gelato seminar in Italy, and even the locals were genuinely shocked."

The path was not smooth from the outset. When Lee announced he would build a tasting-menu restaurant around desserts that had never existed before, those around him reacted with concern more than excitement. Many questioned whether a venue devoted entirely to dessert could survive. Lee trusted his own palate.

"I believe in my own taste," he said. "I think what tastes good to me is good cooking. When I said I was going to do dessert dining, people looked at me with doubt — but I was certain my food was genuinely delicious."

JL Dessert Bar struggled in its early years, hampered by the inexperience that comes with running any new venture. It stayed open. Over time, Lee's name and his cooking found their audience, and the bar grew into one of Korea's defining dessert destinations.

JL Dessert Bar has been named to the World's Best Pastry Shops list compiled by French guide La Liste. Lee himself was named La Liste's pastry talent chef of the year for 2024. The venue also received the best cafe and dessert award at Taste of Seoul in both 2024 and 2025.

Earlier this year, Lee opened Mudae by Justin Lee at the Conrad Osaka hotel in Japan. The approach came from the Conrad Osaka side. The fact that a Korean dessert chef has entered Japan — a country fiercely proud of its own dessert culture — under his own name carries considerable weight on its own.

What makes the move even more notable is that Mudae marks the first time a Korean dessert brand has entered Japan by licensing a personal intellectual property on an annual basis and collecting royalties. The name "Justin Lee" has become a brand in its own right.

The name Mudae — the Korean word for "stage" — carries his identity within it. The venue uses Japan's finest local ingredients, but the sensibility shaping those ingredients originates in Korea. The staff working on-site trained in Korea before taking up their posts. It is, in essence, Justin Lee's Korean-born vision placed atop Japanese materials and surroundings.

"I think of Mudae as a new stage — one where I can interpret local ingredients and culture in my own way, within the unique environment that Japan offers," Lee said. "Through this experience, I want to create new possibilities in Japan, and then carry that spirit of challenge to other countries, each time capturing the character of that particular place."

His mother played a significant role in shaping the chef he became. During the Asian financial crisis, financial hardship pushed her into the restaurant industry. She had always been passionate about cooking, and she quickly distinguished herself — the buffet where she worked as a hansik head chef became so well known that diners chartered buses from across the country to visit.

Lee eventually changed course and joined an Italian restaurant, where he began making desserts on the side and discovered an entirely new world.

"It was so much fun," he said. "So I joined a cake cafe that was open 24 hours and worked two jobs at once — days at the restaurant, nights making bread. I was sleeping three and a half hours a day. I kept that up for six months."

Determined to train abroad, Lee made his way through Australia before settling in New Zealand. He passed a trial at Restaurant Clooney — then home to the country's top chef, Des Harris — and joined the pastry section.

It was there that he met world-class pastry chef Brian Campbell. Campbell recruited him to join the newly opening patisserie Miann, and Lee seized the chance to work alongside him. Campbell drew heavily on modern molecular techniques in his desserts, treating them not as an afterthought but as a full gastronomic experience — an approach that left a deep impression on Lee.

"He had worked in Britain, where culinary cultures from around the world converge, so he had a sharp feel for what was current," Lee said. "That's where I learned modern skills like molecular gastronomy. It was a genuine revelation for me."

Lee's next goal is, perhaps surprisingly, a modest one. Rather than chasing grander awards or global fame, he wants simply to keep the space he has built going for as long as possible.

"I don't want to put it in grand terms," he said. "I want to keep JL Dessert Bar running for another 20 years or more — until the day I have to stop cooking. Dessert culture is shifting little by little, so maybe that's not such a distant dream."

Can dessert truly become the star of the table? Justin Lee's answer already sits on a plate — ingredients that no one thought of as dessert, coming together to tell a new story.

Perhaps the future of dessert lies not in becoming sweeter, but in crossing the boundaries of what we thought dessert was. At that moment, dessert stops being the final course of a meal and becomes the scene that lingers longest in the memory.