The Seoul episode of Peter Greenberg Worldwide is now online for your listening enjoyment. Listen to faves of the K-blog world, including Robert “The Marmot” Koehler, Robert “The Other Robert” Neff, Stephen “Mag 10” Revere, and at the end of the first hour Joe “ZenKimchi” McPherson.
I will be on the Peter Greenberg Worldwide radio show this weekend. It’s syndicated around the U.S., usually between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST. You can find a radio station playing it in your area here. If you miss it or don’t have access to it, it’ll show up in the archives later.
Peter Greenberg is Travel Editor for CBS News and is a regular on The Early Show.
UPDATE: Show is here.
The new issue of 10 Magazine is out. It covers where to find good beer in Korea and has tons of information on Christmas events so that you have no excuse to complain about doing nothing this year.
My articles covered the following restaurants:
Dongari – An excellent Japanese izakaya next to Seoul City Hall
Baru – Buddhist cuisine that doesn’t make omnivores pine for the missing meat
Daemyeong Ilshik – A sushi bar my friend Young introduced me to. His recommendations are always good.
Praha Cafe – The new branch of Castle Praha, this time in Itaewon
I also interview Chef Eric Hausser, head of pastry at Guillaume, a true French bakery in Apgujeong.
Try to get yourself a hardcopy. Or get a preview of it in PDF form here. Or just head to the web site for even more stories and events.
For a little January preview, I’ll be covering a hamburger restaurant in the style of the current American hamburger renaissance, a nice little bunshik shack, a new brunch spot that may breathe new life into the brunch trend, an authentic Vietnamese place in Dongdaemun and I sit down with one of the most recognized and beloved figures in the Seoul food scene, my brotha!
Joe DiStefano asked me for some info on Korea’s live octopus a while back for Edible Queens. No, it’s not an erotic bakery in San Francisco. It’s a new magazine covering the food scene in the borough of Queens, NY. He just sent a link to the article, and I was pleasantly surprised to be quoted in the cover article about Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain cavorting through the Asian wonderlands that reside there. Bourdain and I are quoted in the same article. How fanboy cool is that?
An essay I wrote on the Korean government’s ham-handedness in promoting Korean cuisine overseas has been published in this week’s Newsweek Korea. It’s mostly about how the government and some private entities aren’t even bothering to ask foreigners what they like. They’re forcing what they themselves like onto the market, like expensive royal court cuisine and ddeokbokki/”topoki” (see “Agriculture Ministry is Officially NUTS“).
With impeccable timing to prove my point, reader Edward brings to my attention a post by Food Comma that L.A. has just finished a Korean BBQ festival and contest. I’ve been making the rounds to any Korean who would bother to listen to me that Korea, with all its festivals, really needs a BBQ festival. Can you believe they don’t have any? They have a giant festival for rice cakes but not one for BBQ?
One Korean friend replied, “Who would be interested in a BBQ contest?”
LOOK FOR YOURSELF!
I didn’t find any official number for the crowd, but there were 30-minute to 1-hour waits, and food stalls ran out of meat. The L.A. festival also had a Korean BBQ marinating demonstration and a Choco-Pie eating contest. And you can’t have a Korean festival without those great organizational skills.
We had a great time at the cook-off but I gotta say it wasn’t especially well organized or executed. In fact we learned that the health inspector didn’t even give the OK to start serving food until an hour and half after the gates opened.
I know I’m coming off negative in this post, but I’m actually positive. I just want to yell to these Korean food promoters, “Wake up! Your food’s great. No one cares about ddeokbokki. Court cuisine is too bland and too Japanese looking. You’re blessed with some of the best BBQ in the world. Run with it!”
Check out the article in the Korea Herald on ZenKimchi Dining. It’s in the Wednesday, September 2nd edition.
Well, I recently talked about the new writing gig at 10 Magazine and the feature on food bloggers in The Korea Times.
Yesterday, I was showing the Lonely Planet writer around Anyang Art Park when he said, “I saw that you’re on the cover of Groove.”
He pulled the magazine from his backpack and showed it to me.
Whaa…?
I had remembered doing the interview, but I didn’t know it would be on the cover. The article is more about the SeoulPodcast than food. It’s a good one.
Writer Ines Min has written a piece on Korea’s food blogging community. All your faves are in there.
My latest and final food column for SEOUL Magazine gives tips on what to eat if you have a limited time in town. Get yourself a copy.
Matt Lamers and Olga Min did a story on how international couples cope with dinner decisions. Eun Jeong and I (not pictured) were interviewed for the piece.
Also check out Jean Oh’s piece on summer ‘boyang’ foods.
It also looks like “hansik” (Korean traditional cuisine) restaurants are dying out at the big hotels. Let’s hope that the Korean menu at the W Walker Hill can buck that trend.
Cho Tae-kwon, known in these quarters as having owned the poster child for overly pretentious Korean restaurants, the Gaon, again harps that Korean food must be prissied up on white tablecloths to be acceptable outside Korea. Personally, I think he’s just trying to sell his liquor and pottery.