Korean cuisine is not quite like other Asian cuisines. Whereas I think of Japanese and Vietnamese food as delicate and light, Korean food is more like Chinese Szechuan food—assertive, strong, in-your-face. It is terrific.
The primary staple is kimchi—cabbage (or other vegetables) that’s preserved by being put in brine and left to ferment. Korea has long, hard winters, so preserving vegetables was an issue in time past. Kimchi is sort of like sauerkraut but far better, because the usual hot versions of it have chili peppers in the brine, so that it has a serious bite. Kimchi comes as the standard side to everything, along with other little bowls of things that maybe you can’t identify. Just smile and eat them; they are probably healthy. (Incidentally, pickled whole garlic cloves are fantastic, so good that you have to wonder why some Western cuisine didn’t come up with them the way the Koreans have.)
Korean soups and broths are also so good that they could raise the dead. In a noodle shop, you often get broth, sometimes chicken, sometimes flavored with ginseng or ginger, with vegetables in it and maybe a bit of egg, and that’s it. It’s simplicity itself, but the vegetables will be fresh as dawn, shredded into neat mounds or cut up into perfect little matchsticks. You almost want to take a picture of it before eating. And when you do, you must slurp loudly, judging from the noisy Koreans I heard everywhere, guzzling broth merrily. It is a wanton pleasure to break every rule of etiquette you ever learned because breaking the rules in a Foreign Place is clearly What is Properly Done.
Bibimbap is rather the same thing as the broth, except the vegetables are on rice. It’s very simple, and, I suspect, a Korean version of comfort food. Bulgogi, which Chul and I had one night, is a Korean dish that has traveled far. It’s a version of barbeque: very thinly sliced beef (Korean beef is very lean and tasty), marinated in soy sauce, garlic, chili, and cooked at table on a kind of brazier that’s built into the table itself. The brazier looked slightly dangerous, and I could easily envision setting myself on fire as I took bulgogi from the brazier to my plate, so I wisely left the serving to Chul. The bulgogi has been good anywhere that I’ve ever had it, but as I’ve said elsewhere: Korean food can’t be beat in Korea.
Fruit stands are everywhere in Seoul, and Korean fruit is glorious. Korea has a temperate climate, which means a wide variety of fruit can be grown, and because it’s a small country, it doesn’t have to be shipped far. So it’s fresh and very beautiful. Even its presentation, even in the fruit stand in the dumpiest alley you can find, is beautiful. Light, nearly white peaches with just a hint of pink. Big grape clusters, deep purple under their dusky bloom. Plums that are fat and very dark inside; they will stain your clothes, but who cares, they’re so sweet. Pear apples, which I’ve seen on Guam; they are kind of a cross between a Bosc pear and a Golden Delicious apple, and they are wonderful. My breakfast every morning was just fruit, coffee, and a hunk of baguette.
On the other hand, some things that Koreans eat are a bit incomprehensible to Westerners. Chul pointed out that I was staying very near a dog meat restaurant, which I did not go to, as I didn’t know because I couldn’t read the sign. The Western prohibition on dog meat is interesting, I suspect based on the fact that we don’t eat our pets. (But we keep fish as pets and eat seafood, don’t we? Hmm . . . ) By the way, there is a fascinating book on the topic of cultural food prohibitions and preferences called Good to Eat, formerly titled The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig by an cultural anthropologist whose name I can’t recall. It explains this whole complicated issue, as well as why people in some cultures like munching on crickets and others don’t, et cetera, et cetera.
There are other weirdities. In a sweet shop, I ordered Belgian waffles topped with fruit—in Korea, this means fruit cocktail, which wasn’t quite what I expected—and Chul had a strange combination of shaved ice, fruit flavoring, fruit cocktail, and corn flakes. I think that the corn flakes were there for texture; I can’t really think of another reason for them to be there, but Chul ate it happily, not really understanding why I thought the particular combination of ingredients was, uh, strange. What do I know, Caucasian person who expects fruit cocktail to just be fruit cocktail on its own and not cast into a supporting role, unless it’s in Jell-O?
Koreans also use sweet vegetables in sweet things. This makes sense; I mean, Americans eat sugar from sugar beets. But we don’t call attention to the beets themselves, and a Korean might. I assume that this explains the “sweet potato latte” that I could’ve ordered in Holly’s Coffee, which I now regret not ordering, just so that I could say that I did it. Chul and I also stopped at a street market for a sweet steamed bun filled with sweet bean paste. This sounds a tad peculiar, but it was surprisingly delicious; the paste that fills the bun is made from a kind of red sweet bean, so in essence you’re eating an oversize donut that happens to be filled with beans instead of lemon custard. (Baking is not typical of Korean cuisine—nor, indeed, of Asian cuisines—so sweet buns are steamed. This also explains why Korean kitchens do not normally have ovens.)
Seoul is well stocked with pastry shops, and it’s also very easy to get a baguette in various French bakeries. This is a bit surprising to me, but baguettes are awfully tasty, so why wouldn’t you be able to get one? I didn’t explore Korean sweets very much, other than to buy some candy bars from street vendors (this is easy to do: point randomly. It’s not like you can read the labels), and then bite into them to find out what they are. There’s a really good chocolate one with strawberry filling, but it couldn’t compare to a Baby Ruth or a box of Junior Mints. I proudly hold my head high and say that Americans still are the global masters of junk food.
