Cho Tae-kwon's "Noblesse Oblige"

Posted by ZenKimchi in Featured, Korean Food Globalization | 0 comments

Credit: Park Hyun-koo, Korea Herald

Our resident Korean food globalization blowhard is at it again. Just when I think he can’t say anything more hilariously outrageous, another newspaper fawns over his aristocratic-tinged verbal diarrhea. He usually pops up when he’s trying to promote a product, in this case his new restaurant and upscale soju brand Hwayo. I have a bottle of Hwayo at home, and to give you an idea of how it is, I use it for cooking but not drinking.

I won’t go too much into responding to his latest round of silliness and the Korean media’s love for him because he acts like the trust fund twit that he is. I’ll just give some highlights.

• Korean food will become more popular if restaurants charged for banchan
  • (Korean “tapas” restaurants have tried this in America and haven’t done too well)
• The infamous W100,000 samgyetang, where his restaurant didn’t do anything creative other than throw a black chicken and an expensive ginseng root into the pot, is actually praised in this article
• Chaebols should open high end restaurants for foreigners
• There have been no changes in Korean food since the 1960s (really?)
• Americans think Momofuku’s ssambap is Japanese food (really?)
• He considers developing Korean foods and drinks his “noblesse oblige”
  • What century does this guy’s delusions come from? He’s becoming the Shin Hyung-rae of Korean food.

You can read the article here.

[HT to Tammy]