When an anniversary or an important dinner calls for something special, a fine Chinese restaurant is usually the first instinct. It's a cuisine that rarely misses in Korea, and its menu is broad enough that everyone at the table can order exactly what they want. The same holds for guests visiting from abroad. Bring an international visitor to one of Seoul's Chinese restaurants for a special meal and they tend to leave satisfied. Each restaurant carries its own character and signature dishes, so the choice usually comes down to matching the place to the company.

Hongyuan sits inside the Westin Chosun, a hotel with a genuine claim to several firsts in Korea. Opened in 1914, it is the country's oldest hotel and its first deluxe-grade property. It was also the first in Korea to install an elevator, and the first to open both a French restaurant and a buffet restaurant. Hongyuan carries that pedigree into its own room: 122 seats across the main hall, plus ten private rooms that hold up to forty guests between them. The interior is red, the kind of red that calls to mind Hong Kong more than Seoul.

We were seated in one of the private rooms. It was the right call. There was enough presence in the room to hold attention, but conversation never had to compete with it.

The eggplant fritters and dongpo pork are dishes ordered often elsewhere, yet they tasted sharper here. The dongpo pork's sauce is rich, but the seasoning stays restrained, so even a first-time diner won't find it overwhelming.

Nurungji-tang, a soup built around crisped scorched rice, tends to win over foreign guests without anyone expecting it. Ours arrived loaded with seafood. The rice was the real surprise: crisp, almost like a cookie, and nothing like it had been on the table before.

For a distinctive meal in Seoul, or a first taste of Chinese cuisine while traveling through Korea, Hongyuan is the table worth booking first.