modom (palindrome guy) > wrote:

> That was my thought, too. Making dipping sauces would perhaps offer
> the benefit of allowing you to actually taste (not imagine) the
> interaction of a given soy sauce with other things like ginger, lime
> juice, sugar, sesame oil, chiles, or whatever. Also it's fun to have
> a passel of condiments on the table. That's the main draw I've found
> in Korean restaurants.

I am surprised. At Korean restaurants here there are preciously few
dipping sauces and mostly no condiments of any kind on the table at all,
though some have soy sauce and perhaps salt and pepper.

The dipping sauces are served with specific dishes only. Gun mandu
(fried dumplings) are served with soy sauce, perhaps mixed with a little
vinegar or lemon juice and a tiny bit of sesame oil. Bulgogi (fire
meat) and bulgalbi (fire ribs) are served with ssam jang, which is
either doenjang (soy paste) or doenjang mixed with gochujang (chile
paste). Samgyopsal (slices of grilled pork belly) is served with oil
mixed with salt. Mul naeng myun (buckwheat noodles with a few slices of
meat in ice-cold clear broth) are served with mustard. (Dolsot)
bibimbap (rice with toppings, such as vegetables/and or meat and egg) is
served with doenjang or gochujang (or a mixture), with everything then
mixed together. That is about all.

Korean restaurants here are frequented mostly by Koreans, with just a
sprinkling of the Japanese and Europeans, so it is not as though they
have to adapt to foreign customs and customers.

Victor