This luxury seaweed is the new truffle

There‘s a new luxury ingredient on fine dining menus across the city: seaweed. Specifically, a dried seaweed from Korea, called gamtae, which costs $16 per pack of seven sheets — or about half as much as Perigord truffles by weight.

During tomato season, chef Randy Rucker of River Twice and the newly opened Little Water layers gamtae into a sandwich with thick slices of local tomatoes smeared with a smoky mayo and pressed between two slices of bread from Mighty Bread Co., all topped with golden Ossetra caviar. At Jose Garces’ Amada, with locations in Old City and Radnor, strands of gamtae are sprinkled across Galician-style grilled octopus nestled on a cloud of potato espuma.

“Gamtae tastes like the most savory version of the ocean mixed with fresh cut, bitter grass. The aroma is reminiscent of the sea and mushrooms.”

Gamtae looks like tinsel, if tinsel occurred in nature. It tastes like a marriage of matcha and nori, anointed by truffles, and it has become the darling seaweed of chefs. It can deepen the natural umami of tomatoes or add an oceanic otherness to pasta dough; in powdered form, it thickens sauces and as a garnish, it bestows dishes with an enticingly spiky crown.

It’s especially popular with the Michelin — or Michelin-aspiring — set. In just the last month, I’ve had it dusted onto kanpachi, a variety of yellowtail, at the new tasting menu establishment Provenance in Society Hill; perched on a tiny pastry crust filled with bluefin tuna tartare and smoked onion fudge at Omo by Jont in Orlando, Fla.; and decorating a savory seaweed donut with a square of unagi at Washington’s Reverie.

At Provenance, where chef Nich Bazik melds French technique with Korean ingredients introduced to him through his in-laws, he uses gamtae in many forms — seasoned with sesame oil, in powdered form, and simply dried — to make bouillons, cure loins of kanpachi, finish dishes, and even seasoning other seaweeds. “Gamtae tastes like the most savory version of the ocean mixed with fresh-cut, bitter grass. The aroma is reminiscent of the sea and mushrooms,” Bazik said. “I might make a foie ganache and roll it in gamtae and serve it with white truffle.”

Ecklonia cava is gamtae’s scientific name; it’s known as noro kajime in Japanese. Wildly temperamental, it grows only in the mudflats of Wando, and the Jeolla provinces of South Korea, and in some parts of Japan. It cannot be farmed, and must be harvested by hand without disturbing its roots, so it will regenerate.

“The name partially comes from the fact that when you harvest it you need to spin and roll it carefully, like wrapping it around because the strands are so thin,” said Jennifer Jiyun Yoo, the co-founder of Gotham Grove, which sells high-end Korean pantry ingredients. “‘Tae’ means something like green, moss, or weed, and gamda – ‘gam’ means ‘to wrap.’”

Gamtae has long been a delicacy in Korean cuisine. “My grandmother will soak the dried gamtae until soft, strain and squeeze, roughly chop, then toss it with anchovy fish sauce, rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and gochugaru, then a generous amount of chopped white onions and garnish with a round of sesame oil and sesame seeds,” said Seung Hee Lee, author of Everyday Korean and founder of Korean Fusion, a platform for Korean recipes.

Yoo, who brings a variety of esoteric seaweeds from Korea’s small family-owned-and-operated producers to the U.S., began importing gamtae from Korean seaweed producer Badasoop in 2019. “I was a big fan of their seaweeds,” she said.

Partnering with luxury ingredient distributor Regalis, Yoo has encouraged chefs without any ties to Korea to use the country’s culinary ingredients. “My philosophy and hope is that folks would see gamtae as just a food ingredient, like how soy sauce and sriracha has become. I want to break down the barrier that it’s a specialty ingredient,” she said.

One of the chefs Yoo turned on to gamtae is Chris Cipollone of Brooklyn’s Francie, who says that it “has a similar taste profile to truffle. It’s like an oceanic white truffle — so isn’t it better to double up the truffle flavor?”

Gamtae’s more recent availability has also been a boon to Korean chefs stateside. “I moved to the U.S. in 2008 and gamtae was nowhere to be found,” said Lee. “The toasted sheet kind with salt is perfect with white rice and some banchan.”

Lee has consumed gamtae her entire life, and loves it in its simplest form, straight out of the bag. Cooking with dried gamtae “is a bit more challenging because if you don’t soak it long enough, it could feel like you are eating a hair weave.”

But gamtae easily enhances the simplest ingredients. You can purchase it from Gotham Grove or Kim’C Market. Where you’d you might use truffle powder, or a flavored salt, try out powdered gamtae. Sprinkle its strands onto eggs, or like Rucker, try it in a tomato sandwich.

The world is your gamtae.