A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul

By Matt Gross

International Herald Tribune

SEOUL: Sometime after midnight on a Sunday, the streets of the
Myeongdong neighborhood in Seoul were quiet and cold. The young shoppers
who flit from Adidas to Tommy Hilfiger to Club Monaco had gone home to
study for December exams, and restaurant workers were setting barrels
full of leftovers onto the curb to be picked up by early-morning garbage
trucks. The city was going to sleep.

But over near the subway station, in a little orange tent, or
pojangmacha, a good night's rest was on no one's mind, least of all
mine. Inside, a semipermanent kitchen was working overtime, cranking out
hearty, salty, spicy dishes to warm the air and fill the bellies of the
drinkers around plastic tables.

On every table stood bottles, tall ones for beer and petite emerald ones
for soju, the Korean spirit made from sweet potatoes.

Suddenly, from one corner of the tent came a crash! Bodies and bottles
tumbled to the ground, and for a moment all conversation halted. One
fallen tippler pulled himself back onto his stool, and a grim-faced
waitress rushed over to wipe the blood from his head and bandage the
wound. Then it was back to normal. I sipped my beer and plunged my spoon
into a bowl of kimchi jigae, a rich stew of pork, tofu and kimchi, the
pickled cabbage that is Korea's national dish. I had been in Seoul 30
minutes, with plans to eat my way through the city, and already, I felt,
I was getting to the heart of things.

In the last two years, South Korea has spawned one major trend overseas
- Pinkberry, Red Mango and other cheery frozen yogurt parlors - and at
least one minor one: the fried chicken joint Bon Chon Chicken, which
arrived in Manhattan last year to much acclaim. Meanwhile, Momofuku's
David Chang has rocketed to the top of best-chef lists, thanks in part
to his clever reinterpretation of traditional Korean dishes and
ingredients.

To understand where these trends were coming from - and, I hoped, to
discover the next ones - I spent a week eating the weird and the wild,
the tasty and the comforting, and, more than once, the sublime. Oh, I
also ate lots and lots of kimchi.

(If you don't like kimchi, you might as well stop here. Everything comes
with kimchi: spicy or mild, salty or sour, crisp or soft, with mineral
notes or the briny aroma of dried shrimp. The variations are endless,
but all have one thing in common: ubiquity.)

Let's begin with the familiar: barbecue. There is perhaps no food more
accessible, in any culture, than meat grilled over an open flame, and in
Seoul you can't walk down a street, whether in the über-trendy Apgujeong
neighborhood or a grayer district like Dongdaemun, without inhaling the
invigorating fumes of charcoal fires.

When four friends and I arrived at Hongik Sootbul Kalbi, a barbecue spot
in the frantic dining-and-nightlife zone near Hongik University ("Meat
Street," one friend called it), the first thing our waitress did was
hand over a huge garbage bag - for our coats, to protect them from the
smoke.

And boy was there smoke! It wafted up from dozens of small, round metal
barbecue tables, turning the air so opaque I could barely make out the
enormous wall mural featuring caricatures of Korean celebrities - and
Michael Jackson. We clustered around a table, and soon the house
specialty arrived: chunks of well-marbled pork neck. The meat came
pargrilled, to cook faster, and my friends spread kimchi around the base
of the grill, where it slowly fried in the rendered pork fat.

Soon we were wrapping pork chunks in red-leaf lettuce leaves - along
with spicy bean paste, shaved scallions and kkaennip, an anise-flavored
leaf, similar to Japanese shiso, that I found addictive.

Sariwon, a calm, family-friendly restaurant, employs special extractors
on its grills to keep the air perfectly clear. And yet high technology
does not trump high taste: Sariwon's kalbi, or beef short ribs, were the
most tender and succulent I ate in Seoul. Better yet, Sariwon offered a
lengthy wine list that mixed New and Old World bottles, and at
reasonable prices.

The best place for serious pairings of food and wine might be the Gaon,
the city's most refined Korean restaurant.

The menu consisted of Korean classics, gussied up with premium
ingredients and presented on stunning custom ceramics. The Gaon's kimchi
jigae put the pojangmacha version to shame. The flavor was so pure and
intense, the crimson broth so creamy, it reminded me of tomato soup
(albeit one whose depths hid rich nuggets of pig's feet).

For revolutionary food, one must hit the streets. At a stand in busy
Myeongdong, I tried the tornado potato, a single spud carved into a
helix of starch, then skewered, deep-fried and sprinkled with salt and
powdered cheese - an Iron Chef-worthy innovation.

Just down the road was Balena, a storefront that whips up spaghetti with
spicy chicken and steak-studded xpenne, and crams them into ice cream
cones, to be eaten on the run with a fork.

The strangest thing I ate, however, was far from newfangled. It was at
Noryangjin, a cavernous marketplace that stocks stingrays, squids,
oysters, snails, crabs and a host of scaly, slimy organisms that I had
no name for.

But at Jinnam, one of several restaurants on the market's second floor,
I knew the name of my lunch: sannakji. Commonly referred to as live
octopus, sannakji isn't really alive, but the raw tentacles writhing on
the platter might lead you to think otherwise. Rather, it's just some
lingering electrochemical reaction that causes those thin strands to
curl, stretch and attach their suction cups to your lips and gums as you
try to ingest them. Rumor has it that people occasionally choke to death
on sannakji, but a quick dip in sesame oil keeps the suckers from
adhering too tightly.

The most surprising thing about sannakji? It tasted good - clean and
meaty - and once I'd gotten over the discombobulation that comes from
eating something that most definitely does not want to be eaten, I was
chopsticking tentacles into my mouth as if they were octo-popcorn.

More commonly, I ate at restaurants like New Andong Zzimdak, which
serves a single dish: boneless chicken pieces sautéed at your table with
mung-bean noodles, vegetables, and gochujang, a red-pepper paste that is
to Korean cuisine what butter is to French. This is easy food, slightly
spicy, with an unexpected sweetness from caramelized gochujang. Like
most Korean food, it comes in massive quantities and is meant to be
eaten by large groups of friends (mine included Joe McPherson, who blogs
about food at ZenKimchi.com), who pour one another beer and soju and
snip the long noodles with scissors.

Promiscuous eaters should wander around Kwangchang Market. Kimchi stalls
offer samples of myriad chili-flecked varieties, including one of
kkaennip, the shiso-like leaf that was part of almost every meal,
wrapped around grilled meat or embedded in silver-dollar-size pajun.

For me, herbaceous, anise-y kkaennip came to symbolize authentic Korean
flavor, and when I'd returned to New York, I asked for some at Kunjip,
my favorite restaurant in Koreatown. The waitress looked at me oddly,
then shook her head. Then she smiled and ran to the kitchen, returning
with a "special kimchi" of crisp, juicy baby daikon.

"Kkaennip" was a shibboleth, a password into the world of heretofore
unknown herbs and nameless crustaceans, of kimchi fried in pork fat, of
hours-long meals with newfound friends - of all the gustatory pleasures
of Seoul.

Victor Sack wrote:
> A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul
>
> By Matt Gross
>
> International Herald Tribune

<sigh> I wanna goooooooooooooo! I wanna gooooooooooooooo!

Thanks for sharing, Victor. My husband always loved those potatoes from
the street vendors. He would joke that he probably wouldn't want to see
the cooking vat or potatoes in the light of day but in the dark of
night, after a night out drinking, they were the bomb!

"Victor Sack" > wrote in message
. ..
> A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul
>
> By Matt Gross
>
> International Herald Tribune
>
> SEOUL: Sometime after midnight on a Sunday, the streets of the
> Myeongdong neighborhood in Seoul were quiet and cold. The young shoppers
> who flit from Adidas to Tommy Hilfiger to Club Monaco had gone home to
> study for December exams, and restaurant workers were setting barrels
> full of leftovers onto the curb to be picked up by early-morning garbage
> trucks. The city was going to sleep.
>
> But over near the subway station, in a little orange tent, or
> pojangmacha, a good night's rest was on no one's mind, least of all
> mine. Inside, a semipermanent kitchen was working overtime, cranking out
> hearty, salty, spicy dishes to warm the air and fill the bellies of the
> drinkers around plastic tables.
>
> On every table stood bottles, tall ones for beer and petite emerald ones
> for soju, the Korean spirit made from sweet potatoes.
>
> Suddenly, from one corner of the tent came a crash! Bodies and bottles
> tumbled to the ground, and for a moment all conversation halted. One
> fallen tippler pulled himself back onto his stool, and a grim-faced
> waitress rushed over to wipe the blood from his head and bandage the
> wound. Then it was back to normal. I sipped my beer and plunged my spoon
> into a bowl of kimchi jigae, a rich stew of pork, tofu and kimchi, the
> pickled cabbage that is Korea's national dish. I had been in Seoul 30
> minutes, with plans to eat my way through the city, and already, I felt,
> I was getting to the heart of things.
>
> In the last two years, South Korea has spawned one major trend overseas
> - Pinkberry, Red Mango and other cheery frozen yogurt parlors - and at
> least one minor one: the fried chicken joint Bon Chon Chicken, which
> arrived in Manhattan last year to much acclaim. Meanwhile, Momofuku's
> David Chang has rocketed to the top of best-chef lists, thanks in part
> to his clever reinterpretation of traditional Korean dishes and
> ingredients.
>
> To understand where these trends were coming from - and, I hoped, to
> discover the next ones - I spent a week eating the weird and the wild,
> the tasty and the comforting, and, more than once, the sublime. Oh, I
> also ate lots and lots of kimchi.
>
> (If you don't like kimchi, you might as well stop here. Everything comes
> with kimchi: spicy or mild, salty or sour, crisp or soft, with mineral
> notes or the briny aroma of dried shrimp. The variations are endless,
> but all have one thing in common: ubiquity.)
>
> Let's begin with the familiar: barbecue. There is perhaps no food more
> accessible, in any culture, than meat grilled over an open flame, and in
> Seoul you can't walk down a street, whether in the über-trendy Apgujeong
> neighborhood or a grayer district like Dongdaemun, without inhaling the
> invigorating fumes of charcoal fires.
>
> When four friends and I arrived at Hongik Sootbul Kalbi, a barbecue spot
> in the frantic dining-and-nightlife zone near Hongik University ("Meat
> Street," one friend called it), the first thing our waitress did was
> hand over a huge garbage bag - for our coats, to protect them from the
> smoke.
>
> And boy was there smoke! It wafted up from dozens of small, round metal
> barbecue tables, turning the air so opaque I could barely make out the
> enormous wall mural featuring caricatures of Korean celebrities - and
> Michael Jackson. We clustered around a table, and soon the house
> specialty arrived: chunks of well-marbled pork neck. The meat came
> pargrilled, to cook faster, and my friends spread kimchi around the base
> of the grill, where it slowly fried in the rendered pork fat.
>
> Soon we were wrapping pork chunks in red-leaf lettuce leaves - along
> with spicy bean paste, shaved scallions and kkaennip, an anise-flavored
> leaf, similar to Japanese shiso, that I found addictive.
>
> Sariwon, a calm, family-friendly restaurant, employs special extractors
> on its grills to keep the air perfectly clear. And yet high technology
> does not trump high taste: Sariwon's kalbi, or beef short ribs, were the
> most tender and succulent I ate in Seoul. Better yet, Sariwon offered a
> lengthy wine list that mixed New and Old World bottles, and at
> reasonable prices.
>
> The best place for serious pairings of food and wine might be the Gaon,
> the city's most refined Korean restaurant.
>
> The menu consisted of Korean classics, gussied up with premium
> ingredients and presented on stunning custom ceramics. The Gaon's kimchi
> jigae put the pojangmacha version to shame. The flavor was so pure and
> intense, the crimson broth so creamy, it reminded me of tomato soup
> (albeit one whose depths hid rich nuggets of pig's feet).
>
> For revolutionary food, one must hit the streets. At a stand in busy
> Myeongdong, I tried the tornado potato, a single spud carved into a
> helix of starch, then skewered, deep-fried and sprinkled with salt and
> powdered cheese - an Iron Chef-worthy innovation.
>
> Just down the road was Balena, a storefront that whips up spaghetti with
> spicy chicken and steak-studded xpenne, and crams them into ice cream
> cones, to be eaten on the run with a fork.
>
> The strangest thing I ate, however, was far from newfangled. It was at
> Noryangjin, a cavernous marketplace that stocks stingrays, squids,
> oysters, snails, crabs and a host of scaly, slimy organisms that I had
> no name for.
>
> But at Jinnam, one of several restaurants on the market's second floor,
> I knew the name of my lunch: sannakji. Commonly referred to as live
> octopus, sannakji isn't really alive, but the raw tentacles writhing on
> the platter might lead you to think otherwise. Rather, it's just some
> lingering electrochemical reaction that causes those thin strands to
> curl, stretch and attach their suction cups to your lips and gums as you
> try to ingest them. Rumor has it that people occasionally choke to death
> on sannakji, but a quick dip in sesame oil keeps the suckers from
> adhering too tightly.
>
> The most surprising thing about sannakji? It tasted good - clean and
> meaty - and once I'd gotten over the discombobulation that comes from
> eating something that most definitely does not want to be eaten, I was
> chopsticking tentacles into my mouth as if they were octo-popcorn.
>
> More commonly, I ate at restaurants like New Andong Zzimdak, which
> serves a single dish: boneless chicken pieces sautéed at your table with
> mung-bean noodles, vegetables, and gochujang, a red-pepper paste that is
> to Korean cuisine what butter is to French. This is easy food, slightly
> spicy, with an unexpected sweetness from caramelized gochujang. Like
> most Korean food, it comes in massive quantities and is meant to be
> eaten by large groups of friends (mine included Joe McPherson, who blogs
> about food at ZenKimchi.com), who pour one another beer and soju and
> snip the long noodles with scissors.
>
> Promiscuous eaters should wander around Kwangchang Market. Kimchi stalls
> offer samples of myriad chili-flecked varieties, including one of
> kkaennip, the shiso-like leaf that was part of almost every meal,
> wrapped around grilled meat or embedded in silver-dollar-size pajun.
>
> For me, herbaceous, anise-y kkaennip came to symbolize authentic Korean
> flavor, and when I'd returned to New York, I asked for some at Kunjip,
> my favorite restaurant in Koreatown. The waitress looked at me oddly,
> then shook her head. Then she smiled and ran to the kitchen, returning
> with a "special kimchi" of crisp, juicy baby daikon.
>
> "Kkaennip" was a shibboleth, a password into the world of heretofore
> unknown herbs and nameless crustaceans, of kimchi fried in pork fat, of
> hours-long meals with newfound friends - of all the gustatory pleasures
> of Seoul.

I'm envious, very envious!

Victor Sack wrote:
> A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul
>
>

Kimchi jigae is one of my favorites. I have been to S Korea many times
on business and have been to most of those places and lots of other
similar ones. I tend to favor stalls/tents and mom & pop type places.

Kunjip is also my favorite restaurant in Koreatown.

George > wrote:

> Kimchi jigae is one of my favorites.

It is one of mine, too, as is kimchikuk, virtually the same thing but
served sans meat and often sans tofu, making it rather lighter. I cook
it at home sometimes. Another great favourite is yukkaejang. I also
love bulgalbi and bulgogi and sometimes I prepare them at home, too,
either marinating the meat myself or buying it pre-marinated at one of
the Korean groceries here.

> I have been to S Korea many times
> on business and have been to most of those places and lots of other
> similar ones. I tend to favor stalls/tents and mom & pop type places.

I have never been there, unfortunately. I'd like to go, just to be able
to eat as many different foods as possible. Still, I am lucky to be
living in what is effectively local Koreatown here in Düsseldorf.

> Kunjip is also my favorite restaurant in Koreatown.

I should have gone there when I was in New York four years ago. As it
were, we ate soellongtang at Gam Mee Ok. Its raison d'être, its very
essence, is blandness, but blandness of a special kind, which grows on
you. I did not like it the first time; I rather like it now, as I do
similar-tasting galbitang, gomtang and kkori gomtang. It is remarkable
that Koreans like the explosively spicy soup/stews like yukkaejang and
kimchi jjiggae and the bland ones like the above equally well. Of
course, when they eat those bland soups, they still accompany them with
the spicy kimchi, kkaktugi, etc.

Victor

Victor Sack wrote:
> A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul
>
> By Matt Gross
>
> International Herald Tribune
>
> SEOUL: Sometime after midnight on a Sunday, the streets of the
> Myeongdong neighborhood in Seoul were quiet and cold. The young shoppers
> who flit from Adidas to Tommy Hilfiger to Club Monaco had gone home to
> study for December exams, and restaurant workers were setting barrels
> full of leftovers onto the curb to be picked up by early-morning garbage
> trucks. The city was going to sleep.
>
> But over near the subway station, in a little orange tent, or
> pojangmacha, a good night's rest was on no one's mind, least of all
> mine. Inside, a semipermanent kitchen was working overtime, cranking out
> hearty, salty, spicy dishes to warm the air and fill the bellies of the
> drinkers around plastic tables.
>
> On every table stood bottles, tall ones for beer and petite emerald ones
> for soju, the Korean spirit made from sweet potatoes.
>
> Suddenly, from one corner of the tent came a crash! Bodies and bottles
> tumbled to the ground, and for a moment all conversation halted. One
> fallen tippler pulled himself back onto his stool, and a grim-faced
> waitress rushed over to wipe the blood from his head and bandage the
> wound. Then it was back to normal. I sipped my beer and plunged my spoon
> into a bowl of kimchi jigae, a rich stew of pork, tofu and kimchi, the
> pickled cabbage that is Korea's national dish. I had been in Seoul 30
> minutes, with plans to eat my way through the city, and already, I felt,
> I was getting to the heart of things.
>
> In the last two years, South Korea has spawned one major trend overseas
> - Pinkberry, Red Mango and other cheery frozen yogurt parlors - and at
> least one minor one: the fried chicken joint Bon Chon Chicken, which
> arrived in Manhattan last year to much acclaim. Meanwhile, Momofuku's
> David Chang has rocketed to the top of best-chef lists, thanks in part
> to his clever reinterpretation of traditional Korean dishes and
> ingredients.
>
> To understand where these trends were coming from - and, I hoped, to
> discover the next ones - I spent a week eating the weird and the wild,
> the tasty and the comforting, and, more than once, the sublime. Oh, I
> also ate lots and lots of kimchi.
>
> (If you don't like kimchi, you might as well stop here. Everything comes
> with kimchi: spicy or mild, salty or sour, crisp or soft, with mineral
> notes or the briny aroma of dried shrimp. The variations are endless,
> but all have one thing in common: ubiquity.)
>
> Let's begin with the familiar: barbecue. There is perhaps no food more
> accessible, in any culture, than meat grilled over an open flame, and in
> Seoul you can't walk down a street, whether in the über-trendy Apgujeong
> neighborhood or a grayer district like Dongdaemun, without inhaling the
> invigorating fumes of charcoal fires.
>
> When four friends and I arrived at Hongik Sootbul Kalbi, a barbecue spot
> in the frantic dining-and-nightlife zone near Hongik University ("Meat
> Street," one friend called it), the first thing our waitress did was
> hand over a huge garbage bag - for our coats, to protect them from the
> smoke.
>
> And boy was there smoke! It wafted up from dozens of small, round metal
> barbecue tables, turning the air so opaque I could barely make out the
> enormous wall mural featuring caricatures of Korean celebrities - and
> Michael Jackson. We clustered around a table, and soon the house
> specialty arrived: chunks of well-marbled pork neck. The meat came
> pargrilled, to cook faster, and my friends spread kimchi around the base
> of the grill, where it slowly fried in the rendered pork fat.
>
> Soon we were wrapping pork chunks in red-leaf lettuce leaves - along
> with spicy bean paste, shaved scallions and kkaennip, an anise-flavored
> leaf, similar to Japanese shiso, that I found addictive.
>
> Sariwon, a calm, family-friendly restaurant, employs special extractors
> on its grills to keep the air perfectly clear. And yet high technology
> does not trump high taste: Sariwon's kalbi, or beef short ribs, were the
> most tender and succulent I ate in Seoul. Better yet, Sariwon offered a
> lengthy wine list that mixed New and Old World bottles, and at
> reasonable prices.
>
> The best place for serious pairings of food and wine might be the Gaon,
> the city's most refined Korean restaurant.
>
> The menu consisted of Korean classics, gussied up with premium
> ingredients and presented on stunning custom ceramics. The Gaon's kimchi
> jigae put the pojangmacha version to shame. The flavor was so pure and
> intense, the crimson broth so creamy, it reminded me of tomato soup
> (albeit one whose depths hid rich nuggets of pig's feet).
>
> For revolutionary food, one must hit the streets. At a stand in busy
> Myeongdong, I tried the tornado potato, a single spud carved into a
> helix of starch, then skewered, deep-fried and sprinkled with salt and
> powdered cheese - an Iron Chef-worthy innovation.
>
> Just down the road was Balena, a storefront that whips up spaghetti with
> spicy chicken and steak-studded xpenne, and crams them into ice cream
> cones, to be eaten on the run with a fork.
>
> The strangest thing I ate, however, was far from newfangled. It was at
> Noryangjin, a cavernous marketplace that stocks stingrays, squids,
> oysters, snails, crabs and a host of scaly, slimy organisms that I had
> no name for.
>
> But at Jinnam, one of several restaurants on the market's second floor,
> I knew the name of my lunch: sannakji. Commonly referred to as live
> octopus, sannakji isn't really alive, but the raw tentacles writhing on
> the platter might lead you to think otherwise. Rather, it's just some
> lingering electrochemical reaction that causes those thin strands to
> curl, stretch and attach their suction cups to your lips and gums as you
> try to ingest them. Rumor has it that people occasionally choke to death
> on sannakji, but a quick dip in sesame oil keeps the suckers from
> adhering too tightly.
>
> The most surprising thing about sannakji? It tasted good - clean and
> meaty - and once I'd gotten over the discombobulation that comes from
> eating something that most definitely does not want to be eaten, I was
> chopsticking tentacles into my mouth as if they were octo-popcorn.
>
> More commonly, I ate at restaurants like New Andong Zzimdak, which
> serves a single dish: boneless chicken pieces sautéed at your table with
> mung-bean noodles, vegetables, and gochujang, a red-pepper paste that is
> to Korean cuisine what butter is to French. This is easy food, slightly
> spicy, with an unexpected sweetness from caramelized gochujang. Like
> most Korean food, it comes in massive quantities and is meant to be
> eaten by large groups of friends (mine included Joe McPherson, who blogs
> about food at ZenKimchi.com), who pour one another beer and soju and
> snip the long noodles with scissors.
>
> Promiscuous eaters should wander around Kwangchang Market. Kimchi stalls
> offer samples of myriad chili-flecked varieties, including one of
> kkaennip, the shiso-like leaf that was part of almost every meal,
> wrapped around grilled meat or embedded in silver-dollar-size pajun.
>
> For me, herbaceous, anise-y kkaennip came to symbolize authentic Korean
> flavor, and when I'd returned to New York, I asked for some at Kunjip,
> my favorite restaurant in Koreatown. The waitress looked at me oddly,
> then shook her head. Then she smiled and ran to the kitchen, returning
> with a "special kimchi" of crisp, juicy baby daikon.
>
> "Kkaennip" was a shibboleth, a password into the world of heretofore
> unknown herbs and nameless crustaceans, of kimchi fried in pork fat, of
> hours-long meals with newfound friends - of all the gustatory pleasures
> of Seoul.

I LOVE Korean food. Thanks for posting this, Victor.

--
Jean B.