A larger variation of many traditional Korean pancakes, Tofu Steak was trendy for a while in dieting circles. The “steak” in this sense is supposed to resemble the Korean and Japanese versions of Hamburger Steak. It’s basically Tofu Meatloaf.
You can use any seasoning you like with Tofu Steak. I like to use Montreal Steak Seasoning. My sauce of choice is good ol’ British HP Sauce. For Americans, it tastes similar to A-1 Steak Sauce.
Valuable Tip
Get the firmest tofu you can. We call it Buchim Dubu 부침두부. It should have rough manly pockmarks in it.
This is the stuff gangsters eat when they’re first freed from jail.
Ex-con eating tofu after his release (from Ask A Korean)
Here’s a picture of the package I used this time. Most Korean and Asian markets will carry Buchim or Jjigae tofu. Just any really firm tofu. If you’re not sure, show this picture or the words to a Korean staff member at a Korean market.
This Korean vegan recipe–oh, why do I even bother saying it’s vegan? It’s just good.
I had it for the first time during my second year in Korea. San Maul, which is still my favorite restaurant, tucked in the southern foot of Mt. Gwanaksan.
Dotorimuk
The star of the dish is the acorn jelly. Honestly, the dressing can be used for so many things. That is also a Korean vegan recipe.
I don’t have a recipe for making actual acorn jelly itself. You’ll need acorn powder. My hunch is that if you can find acorn powder, you can find acorn jelly. It’s at most Korean markets.
Valuable Tips
To make slicing the veggies easier, I use my trusty slicer. You can get yours here.
You can make the Sesame Seed Powder by grinding them in a coffee grinder or pummeling them with a pestle and mortar.The Acorn Jelly breaks easily, so it works better to arrange them on the plate and then dab them with the dressing.
To make it more like the version at San Maul, which I’m trying to replicate here, do the following.
Use red leaf lettuce.
Substitute the Sesame Seeds with Wild Sesame Seeds (Deulkkae 들깨) Substitute Sesame Oil with Wild Sesame Oil (Deulkkae Gireum 들깨기름)Substitute the Sugar and Rice Syrup with Korean Plum Extract (Maesil Ek 매식엑)
Looking for more?
Check out our post on Korean Diet Foods for more inspiration and Korean vegan recipes.[zrdn-recipe id=85]
The first interviews British critic Andy Hayler, who claims to have eaten in all the world’s three-star Michelin restaurants, including Seoul’s, and confidently states that they don’t deserve their stars. He then makes some statements about Korean cuisine itself in the world pantheon of food, though he emphatically states that he’s not an expert on Korean food.
The other article attempts to rebut what he said about Korean food, including interviews with two Korean food experts. What they both have in common is that the Seoul Michelin Red Guide sucks dotards.
I’m trying to figure out how to focus my thoughts here. I’ve already written my feelings about the Michelin Guide Seoul in this blog and in Vogue Korea. There are so many arguments shouting in my head. Mostly, it’s this guy.
Where I agree about the Michelin Guide Seoul.
He concentrates on the two three-star restaurants in Seoul, Gaon and La Yeon (sometimes Ra Yeon). He flat out states that they don’t deserve three stars. He’s saying this not as an expert on Korean food. He’s saying this as an expert on Michelin three-star restaurants.
The Korean experts in the other article agree. Those restaurants aren’t worth three stars. People on my tours who regularly dine at three-star restaurants were highly disappointed when they dined at the three-star restaurants in Seoul.
The price is what matters. I’ve said many times that when a fine dining restaurant charges high prices in order to give it some false sense of prestige, it should expect to be compared to other global restaurants in that price range. Hayler hasn’t been the only person pointing out how ridiculously high Gaon’s wine list is. Restaurants do put large margins on wine. Korea isn’t Europe. Yet they charge rip-off prices even by Korean standards. Cho Tae-kwon, the owner of Gaon, does the same with his personal brand of soju. It’s a good soju. It’s like Andong soju. He charges way more than you would normally pay for Andong soju. He has a version aged in oak casts that tastes similar to whisky. He slaps on a higher price domestically for this than the import price of single malt Scotch. It’s that old notion that just putting a high price tag on something automatically makes it classy.
Hayler compared the restaurants to Japanese kaiseki cuisine. He said he felt the style didn’t feel like it was coming from a “centuries-old tradition,” like kaiseki. For one thing, kaiseki itself is a modern mash-up of older cuisines. Supposedly the Korean three-stars are taking influence from Korean royal court cuisine. But even what is considered royal court cuisine is suspicious. As one of the Korean experts said, “‘Even kings did not eat a course meal in Korea.’”
I’m tempted to say, again, that Cho Tae-kwon and company don’t respect Korean cuisine enough to let it stand on its own. They have to make it like Japanese and European dining, to the point of pissing on its spirit.
Hayler is not a Korean food expert, but he does have experience eating Korean food in L.A. and New Malden. There’s even a contingent of L.A. Korean-Americans who vocally swear that the Korean food in L.A. is better than the Korean food in Seoul. I agree with him that the flavor of Gaon’s food is not much different than a mom-and-pop restaurant. It’s just given a pretentious makeover. If you take a Choco-Pie and put in on a fancy plate, you have Gaon’s approach. It’s just Kimbap Cheonguk diner fare with pretty plating.
Where I diverge.
I started having a problem when Hayler started wandering the rabbit warren of comparing Korean cuisine with European. They had to have been gotcha questions. I have enough experience with this to say, “No comment.”
But he commented.
Let the cringing start.
I’ll lead with a quote from Hayne Kim, who I find to be an interesting voice when it comes to Korean and western cultures.
I’m no nationalist (grew out of THAT unpleasant phase years ago) but I found his tone problematic and, as he admits, ignorant. I’m not one of those kimchi-philes (must use kimchi to take over the world is one of the stupidest ideas the Korean gov’t has had) but found it weird that he compared it to white truffles. Also the fact that he says Korea has no uber rare and exotic ingredients. Korean ginseng has a huge following from what I understand, as does the Jeju black pig–albeit, the pork is more domestically known.
And a quote from my friend Dan Suh. He is the top Korean food importer in Europe, based in New Malden and currently living in Seoul.
Michelin was lobbied to come to Korea, and there is a particular bias towards one businessman. I had an argument with the Chairman of the Michelin Guide about it, and although I was very open-minded to what he had to say, my opinion still stands.
Korean food is intricate in its own way but lacks the refinement in cooking techniques that French cuisine possesses. There are something like 14 main ingredients to Korean food, which means you can make so many dishes from those ingredients. That, in itself, is a fantastic achievement and shouldn’t be devalued. But at the same time, Korean food needs to advance and realise that it is pigeon-holed and isn’t refined. That’s why I like what some modern chefs are doing (successfully and unsuccessfully), such as at Jungsik, Mingles, Ryunique, Exquisine, by combining classic French techniques with Korean ingredients and flavours.
As for Andy Hayler, he’s from the same bunch of critics as Jay Rayner and Fay Maschler, who had a critique removed of a Korean restaurant after she criticised it for not having coriander (cilantro), fish sauce, and chillies in the japchae, and her review was bombarded with hundreds of people laughing at her. So, in truth, British critics are completely ignorant of some of more niche cuisines, such as Korean.
I’ve eaten at Ra Yeon, and in truth, it was extremely delicious but the prices do not justify the quality of the food.
What this does, really, is throw the integrity of the Michelin Guide into doubt.
I’ve also noticed a good bit of condescension (maybe leftovers of an colonialist POV), from British and European expats regarding Korean food. Heck, try to get any Brit to pronounce Korean words like Pyongyang correctly.
A bad week for Brits and Korean food credibility this week, along with Gordon Ramsay praising Cass in an ad.
It is not unusual for local governments to lobby and help pay for the Michelin Guide to publish a guide on their city. The question is whether they felt pressured to award three stars in their first Seoul Guide, when some cities don’t even have three-star restaurants. According to the other article, Michelin is claiming it had Korean inspectors for their Seoul Guide. Part of me still wonders, with my experience with Korean food critics and bloggers, that they thought more about impressing western elites than honestly evaluating restaurants.
The ingredients claim kicked everyone in the gingko nuts. Started a lot of arguments. Truffles are great. I loves me some truffles. Foie gras. If you want to be nerdy, you can point out that the French got it from the ancient Romans. They are only great if prepared well. Boiling a truffle isn’t going to taste as nice as shaving it into a risotto. I’ve had badly prepared foie as well, where it had the texture of crispy snot.
Unlike even one of the Korean experts interviewed in the article, I believe Korea has some great ingredients that the three-star restaurants ignore.
Ginseng regularly gets slammed into dishes. When eaten straight, it’s like licking dirt. Yet I’ve had an amazing interpretation of Samgyetang that was a consomme heightened by a kiss of ginseng, served with a little twig of ginseng tempura. The dirt flavor gave way to more complexity and had a cooling effect on the palate.
Deodeok is an unsung hero. It’s a root, mostly grown in Gangwon Province that, to me, tastes like a light horseradishey carrot. Why aren’t more restaurants playing with this? My first pop-up, we made a makgeolli cream cheese start and topped it with candied deodeok. It was a revelation.
What about naengi? It’s spicy, pungent, and smells like a crackling fireplace. This is an herb that the world has yet to discover the joys of.
I could list more–Ddeul-ge (wild sesame), perilla leaves, omija, pine mushrooms, Korean pine nuts (which have a higher oil content than Italian pine nuts).
The real strength that distinguishes Korean from most world cuisines…
Fermentation.
Yeah, we all know kimchi (of which there are over 200 varieties and counting). doenjang, gochujang, and soy sauce. These take skill and time to make well. Maybe more skill and definitely more time than Hayler’s comparison to French demi-glace. We also have artisanal fruit and vegetable extracts. Jangajji, fruit and vegetable soy pickles. Why don’t we see more of these in fine dining?
There is one restaurant I know of that features artisanal ingredients like these. Congdu. They have a dish that showcases a flight of different aged soy sauces. I’ve even gotten to try a teaspoon of 100-year soy sauce. They have a bean sauce that was revived from the Goryeo period (918-1392 CE). They source their ingredients from Korean masters, who have been perfecting their crafts for generations. The flavors transport. It feels like, “I thought I knew Korean cuisine. Now I’m into something deeper.”
Last time I was at Congdu, I ran into Hyeonseo Lee, author of The Girl with Seven Names. She said she had been eating there every night for a week because the food was so moving.
I don’t think Congdu has any Michelin stars.
In the end, those two articles pointed out the weakness of the Seoul Michelin Red Guide. Hayler may not be an expert on Korean food, but he is an expert on Michelin restaurants.
There are much better restaurants in Seoul than the Michelin suggests. And Korean ingredients have more unlocked potential than people think.
I knew of people coming over and taking pictures of the food, trying to take it apart. I remember back when people were doing that at Vatos when they first opened.
Last year, after I left the BBQ Pub, a friend invited to me for lunch at VIPS buffet. They had a barbecue section with a white barbecue sauce. Odd, since my old BBQ Pub was the only one in town showcasing North Alabama style white barbecue sauce.
There are now companies that specialize in restaurant espionage. They have teams that will figure out the spices and the techniques and copy them. I mean, why try to do something from your heart when you could just “benchmark” off of someone else’s hard work?
The latest blatant example comes from a place down in Busan called Gourmet Zip. The “Zip” is supposed to mean “집” (Jip, or “house”). It’s annoying enough that some people think Z can easily substitute J, but that’s not the point.
It’s not the point that this is another restaurant relying on Instagram gimmicks.
Credit: 꿈꾸는 애뚜’s 블로그
It’s also not the point that this is another bad restaurant culturally appropriating whatever trendy foreign food it can.
Ceviche
Pasta (for some reason, Caesar Salad is under the Pasta section)
Fajitas
Steak cooked on a hot stone
Detroit Pizza
Detroit Pizza???
For those of you not familiar with Detroit pizza, here is a description from the guys at Motor City Pizza in Seoul.
Detroit-style pizza is a deep-dish pizza developed in Michigan known for its thick crisp crust. The square shaped pizzas are the result of being baked in well-seasoned blue steel pans, which were originally made to hold small parts in automobile factories.
OR…
You can read the Korean description WORD-FOR-WORD on Gourmet Zip’s menu.
Credit: 꿈꾸는 애뚜’s 블로그
Okay, not precisely. They dropped the word “처음으로.” I guess that makes it kosher, right?
Here’s a wider look at the menu. (MexicanTown’s toppings are fairly random.)
Credit: 꿈꾸는 애뚜’s 블로그
Even better, here’s
Motor City’s Original Menu
We see that they copied the name “Detroit Red Top” and added pepperoni and bacon.
Gourmet Zip
Then they copied the “Jackson 5” with the addition of pancetta.
But come on, Zen. Pizza toppings aren’t that original.
I agree. But how often does one see RANCH as a sauce on Korean pizza?
I’ve talked to one of the owners of Motor City. He is happy that his beloved Detroit-style pizza is spreading throughout Korea. In fact, other respectable pizza places do Red Top pizzas now.
What is troublesome is that the copycat copied the menu text, the garnish, and they’re getting credit for Motor City’s appearance on the TV food show 수요미식회 Suyo Mishikhwe.
Yes, that’s right.
Motor City was featured on a popular food show, and Gourmet Zip is trying to take credit. Bloggers are stating that it was GOURMET ZIP’S pizza on the TV show!
There’s a narrative logic you can pull from it. Motor City started in June-July 2016. The TV show aired in November 2016. Gourmet Zip opened in March 2017.
I wonder where they got their ingenious menu ideas…
Stop, stop. Don’t rip your hair out.
No, no, no. Please don’t bang your head on the wall.
This is happening all the time, and it’s getting worse. Like I said, there are companies whose bread and butter is to steal recipes and concepts from restaurants.
This is why I’m not opening another restaurant here. At least until there is either some legal protection in place or until this is shamed by the public. It’s hard enough to deal with inefficient corrupt suppliers, local business owners who don’t like foreigners in their territory, cheating partners (I was lucky enough to only have that happen once).
But once you overcome ALL THAT and start becoming successful, there’s some rich bored asshole waiting to steal your whole concept and take credit for it, even if they’re making a shitty version.
I think the ice has melted now. Pretty safe to say that. But who knows with that hellish winter that stuck around too long like me at a wine party. Hopefully the list we did on winter survival foods helped a bit. Now it’s time to cope with the heat and the rain.
Eun Jeong and I pow-wowed on this list. As with the winter list, she had reservations on a few items that Koreans don’t consider traditional foods for this time of year. But for a lot of us, these are the foods we cling to that makes the blistering Korean summer bearable. Let’s pop open the ice chest and share the goodies.
10. MulHwe 물회
This chilled sashimi soup and its “bibim” cousin Makhwe 막회 come all slushed out in crushed ice in a refreshing just-spicy-enough broth. Put the frosty stainless steel bowl to your mouth, and it’s like drinking from Arctic waters–if they were filled with gochujang and thinly sliced fish.
9. Patbingsu 팥빙수
I think of Patbingsu as a frozen dessert bibimbap. Shaved ice gets loaded with sweetened red beans, various fruits, candies, pillowy marshmallow-like ddeok plus whatever other additions can be fit in there, like sweetened condensed milk and ice cream. I like mine with a lot of fruit. Just stir it like bibimbap and devour. Watch for patbingsu headaches!
8. Bindaeddeok and Dong Dong Ju 빈대떡과 동동주
These are for a lazy afternoon when the sun is baking or when the rain is beating down on the steamy ground. A crispy, toasty, almost corn scented, Bindaeddeok (mung bean pancake) with the house made rice brew Dong Dong Ju satisfies the inner ajosshi. Enjoy this in the open air or under a shelter isolated by the sea of rain.
7. Samgyetang 삼계탕
This is the obligatory Samgyetang ranking, considering it’s the top traditional cure for summer’s electrolyte depletion. Assuming it was bland compared to other Korean foods, I stayed away from it for years. But one hot day, Eun Jeong was greatly craving it. For me, the chicken isn’t the star. It’s the ginseng and the goodies inside the chicken. That combined with the Insam-ju–soju inflused with ginseng–and the tastes bring me to a cool moss-blanketed forest floor. If you can handle picking through the bones of an entire chicken, this isn’t a bad dish for late summer.
6. Hwe DeopBap 회덮밥
From avlxyz on Flickr
I understand the old guideline that raw fish is meant for the winter. That was good advice before the days of reliable refrigeration. Even though Hwe DeopBap has the name “DeopBap,” it’s treated more like a Bibimbap than just raw fish on rice. It’s rice, lettuce, veggies and some type of raw fish that you mix with vinegared gochujang (Chojang 초장). It’s cooling and would make a great lunch during a day at the beach–or a great lunch that would make you think you’re having a day at the beach. I particularly like mine with some crunchy fish roe sprinkled in there.
5. Strange Korean Ice Creams
Summer brings on new waves of discounted Korean ice creams. We’ve seen the tomato popsicle, the controversial corn ice cream (love it), sweet potato ice cream and the suggestively titled “Big Screw.” There’s that clever watermelon ice cream popsicle with chocolate-covered sesame seeds. The milkshake in a pouch. The popsicle with gum inside the popsicle stick. Sports ice. Pistachio ice cream cones. Fish-shaped BungeoBbang ice cream. Pineapple bars. Melon bars. Red bean popsicles. The Dwaeji Bar.
Summer makes me fat.
4. Oi NaengGuk 오이냉국/Oi Muchim 오이무침
These are almost in the same category. I love the tiny bowl of tangy chilled cucumber soup that comes as banchan with many summer meals. I also look forward to Eun Jeong’s Oi Muchim, which is by far the most popular recipe on ZenKimchi. Thinly sliced cucumbers dressed with onions in a sweet and spicy vinegar dressing. The taste of summer!
Those cucumber dishes are best accompanied by a charcoal barbecue. Not traditionally considered a summer food in Korea, I’m pretty sure the rest of the world considers grilling meat a summer treat. I can’t wait for those steamy heavy nights sitting outside, watching the people go by, grilling galbi and samgyeopsal with some icy draft beers.
2. Fried Chicken and Beer
Speaking of beer, summer is the ideal time for the Korean chicken hof–bars that specialize in Korean fried chicken and beer. It’s a classic combo, right Ludacris?
I keep going back to my first year in Korea and hanging out at Two-Two Chicken with the Ansan gang. Something about the summer heat even makes the mayo and ketchup drizzled cabbage taste good.
1. Naengmyeon 냉면
This is the reason to look forward to summer. I’ve already had my first Naengmyeon fit, and the quenching bowl of noodles doused the heat-induced cravings. And don’t forget the Gangwon Province version called Makguksu. There’s even a makguksu museum out there. This restaurant we went to last weekend also served simple buckwheat jeon that were pleasantly smooth and mild with a touch of the earthiness that makes Naengmyeon noodles so great. *
There are many more summer foods that didn’t make the list but should get an honorable mention, like Mul Kimchi, Makguksu, fresh blended fruit juice and barley tea. What are some others?
* I should note that even though buckwheat is not a grain that comes from grass (like wheat) and doesn’t itself have gliadin proteins that aggravate the gluten-sensitive, most Korean Naengmyeon, Makguksu and Japanese Soba are mixed with some wheat flour so that the noodles can form a strong enough dough, like around 10 percent. So if you’re highly gluten-sensitive, it’s best to avoid them.
Korea’s traditional grocery stores are struggling. They have been struggling for decades, since the first E-Mart “super-supermarket” opened in 1993. According to a recent article by Korea Exposé, between 2000 and 2011, for every one store like E-Mart opening, 22 smaller mom-and-pops have gone out of business. Since people’s needs for groceries haven’t waned, it’s logical to suggest that these big box centers have sucked the market from the smaller guys.
E-Mart, Lotte Mart, and Homeplus are run by Korea’s humongous family run conglomerates, chaebols. They have the deep pockets to sell items at slim margins and even at a loss in order to unfairly secure their markets. I’ve heard stories on the inside how E-Mart is one of the most egregious practitioners of squeezing its suppliers to the point that they hardly make any profit off items they sell in its stores.
Last week at Seoul Food 2017, I was talking to a vendor who supplies mostly Costco. He said that E-Mart reps recently stopped by and wanted to set up distribution for some of his products in their stores at a much lower rate than Costco would have. The vendor politely refused, and the reps acted like the vendor was crazy for turning down this golden opportunity. I should note that they weren’t open for negotiation either.
The Solution…
One of the solutions some officials cooked up a few years ago was to close all big box supercenters two days a month. On paper, it made sense. If E-Mart was closed, then shoppers would have to get their vegetables at the local small market instead.
Yet that’s not really how it’s turned out.
Small mom-and-pops are still going out of business. I see it all the time. The big boxes have continued to expand.
I’ll throw in what I’ve witnessed myself. I know it’s anecdotal, but this is real.
Big Boxes Attract Customers More Through Variety Than Discounts
One of the early controversies of the store closing law was that it included Costco. Even though Costco is known as a discount supercenter, it doesn’t sell products that directly compete with small biz grocery stores. People don’t go to Costco for gochujang and garlic. They go there for exotic imported food, liquor, and vitamins that they can’t get anywhere else. If a consumer wants to buy a block of cheddar cheese, and Costco is closed, there isn’t an alternative. The mom-and-pops don’t sell blocks of cheddar. Or Italian meats. Or Omega-3 tablets.
If Costco is closed that day, then the consumer is just going to wait until it re-opens.
There are other items that are more common in Korean households that smaller grocery stores don’t supply. Things you don’t even think about, like cat litter. Thank goodness we had a Daiso selling cheap cat litter on a Homeplus-is-closed day when our daughter decided to be a cat and peed in the litter box.
The Law Hurts Other Small Businesses
In its efforts to protect small grocery stores, this law has hurt small businesses that rely on the larger retailers. Restaurants, in particular, rely on Costco and other larger retailers for some of their ingredients. When I started the BBQ pub last year, I had no contacts for suppliers, and it wasn’t as if they were banging on my door. (Well, an import beer distributor did.) A lot of the ingredients we needed for the type of food we served mostly existed at Costco, and it was closer to our restaurant than the other places. There was an E-Mart across the street as well.
There were times when I was prepping in the kitchen and discovered we were out of a crucial ingredient, or we needed some type of kitchen supply. I’d run across the street to E-Mart to get it, and it was closed. There were no other stores close by that sold what we needed to keep the restaurant running. We just had to take it off the menu that evening.
And lose sales.
Closing a source of unique crucial supplies for other small businesses is not only ham handed. It shows favoritism for one type of small business over another. More restaurants close each year in Korea than grocery stores, but there are no laws protecting them from unfair practices by large corporations.
And what of the suppliers for the big boxes? I know a few of them, and they’re not swimming in cash. They’re already stressed from the narrow margins E-Mart and Hyundai give. It compounds their struggles when they can’t sell their products because of mandatory store closings. I’m not just talking about boutique importers. This includes makgeolli brewers, mandu makers, and seafood suppliers. There is no efficient way for them to also get into the smaller grocery stores. The shelves are smaller, and the distribution network is highly inefficient. (Which is a whole other post.)
Large Supermarkets Aren’t Always Cheaper
At the pub, stores like E-Mart were last resorts. I preferred getting my vegetables and dry goods at my local farmers’ co-op and the small grocery stores near my house in Gimpo. The quality was better, and the prices were competitive, if not lower. If I’m out shopping, the mantra I hear from my wife is, “Don’t buy vegetables from Homeplus.”
That’s because their produce is awful and overpriced. Milk is the only common item we buy at Homeplus over the local stores because of price. But even that is changing. We only go to Homeplus for items not at the other stores, like oatmeal, wine, and imported goods. I personally avoid going to Homeplus because it’s more inconvenient. The parking at big boxes is hell. And then you have to go through a series of conveyor belt escalators to get to the food section. It takes too much time compared to the local markets.
It Hurts Small Communities
We currently live in a small neighborhood in Gimpo. We have lots of small grocery stores and one Homeplus. Yet, since we’re a small neighborhood, the building that houses the Homeplus also houses clothing stores, hair salons, a few restaurants, and the neighborhood’s only movie theater. When Homeplus is forced to close, all the other businesses have to shut their doors too.
Last December, my daughter and I got all ready to go see the new Star Wars movie. She was so excited. But the movie theater was closed when we got there because the adjoining supermarket was required to shut down. We eventually found a theater showing the movie in another neighborhood, but seriously. In small communities, closing down the local big box also closes down a lot of other small businesses that the community relies on.
One could also make the case that an E-Mart employs more people than all the small grocery stores in a community combined. But I wouldn’t lean too heavily on that argument. I’m not a big fan of how chaebols treat their employees.
Anti-Consumer, Not Anti-Chaebol
The law as it currently stands is more anti-consumer than it is anti-big-business. There have to be better ways to reign in chaebol power than to hurt other small businesses, consumers, and small communities. According to the Korea Exposé article, the new Moon Jae-in administration (whom I generally support) may actually INCREASE the number of days the big boxes close. This will only hurt the public more than it will help small grocery stores.
How about going in, investigating, and finding a solution to the chaebol choking their suppliers? How about making distribution networks more efficient and less corrupt?
That’s going deeper into the root of the problem. Closing E-Mart a few times a month is just treating the symptom.
Hello, everyone! Namaste ^^; Today, I received a call from a big cable broadcasting company in our country. There is a kind of food broadcasting. They suggest to me that some famous entertainers come to our restaurant and take a broadcasting of eating the food. But they asked me to sponsor some money. approximately 7,000,000 KRW (6,800 USD). I don’t have money. Ha Ha Ha….. lol The unreasonable truth that can not go to the TV show, if there is no money. Have a nice day all. ^^;
This was from Taj Mahal in Korea, an Indian restaurant in Daegu. I’ll say firstly that not every production in Korea does sleazy tactics like this, but I’ve had enough experience with productions to not trust what you see. Don’t trust most of the blogs. Don’t trust the TV shows. Don’t even trust many of the newspaper articles. And NEVER, NEVER, NEVER trust a line outside a restaurant in Seoul. Restaurants have “plants” stand in line. They put out chairs and ticket number machines to make it look like they’re fake-ly popular. I mentioned before that my old restaurant partner at the pub paid an agency to get bloggers to write trumped up reviews. This was one of the reasons I left the restaurant. Almost every restaurant in Seoul has been featured on TV, so it’s nothing special when they have signs showcasing their thirty seconds of fame. Autographs on a restaurant’s wall don’t mean much. To paraphrase Graham Holliday’s Eating Korea: Reports on a Culinary Renaissance, they’re more like graveyards of fame than endorsements of the restaurant. Don’t even trust the tourism organization, or even Michelin. They seem to have been corrupted as well. Don’t even trust people like me appearing on TV. In many cases, we’re paid to be “interviewed,” which means they give us a script to go by. They frown on us giving our real opinions, and if you want to go home after 14 hours of filming some inane scene, you would say just about anything. That’s why you don’t see me much on TV these days. Blogging and media culture in Korea just doesn’t have the ethical standards. In some cases, they are corrupt to the core. In most cases, they’re just unaware of ethical standards. We need more restaurants and people on the inside exposing these practices. I’m jaded enough to believe that they won’t change a lot of the old unethical tactics. But I’m more interested in consumer awareness. Spread this around.
For Children’s Day, we went to the Picnic on the Bridge, part of the Seoul Food Festival, organized by Chosun TV. What they did was take over the lower deck of the double decker Banpo Bridge and made it into a boulevard of food demos, booths, and food trucks–along with the prerequisite awkward photo stunts and Hallyu promos.
I’m posting this because it encapsulated the current state of food in Seoul, Korean food marketing, and other cultural dynamics. I’m also, as always, talking out my rear, so take this all with a grain of 꽃소금.
General Notes
Foreign VIPs
The organizers imported some good VIPs for this one. The most notable was Franco Pepe, the legendary pizza artist from Italy. I did what I swore I would never do–stood in line for a slice of pizza. Thankfully, the line didn’t last that long, and the slice was worth it. The dough was like marshmallowy chapssal ddeok, crisped up, chewy, voluptuous. It was so sexy that I’m sure Red Tube has a channel for it.
Jeannie Cho Lee was there, and I didn’t get around to saying hi. We had done projects over media through the years but had never met in person. Oh well…
The Usual Weird Shit
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Just like making foreign VIPs wear hanbok and doing the Gangnam Style dance, it’s become standard practice to have a swimming pool of bibimbap stirred up by the obviously embarrassed chefs for the photo ops. Since it was the fastest line, we did get a bowl to share. And we were all surprised it was pretty good. Spicy too. Still, I am eager to retire the Giant Bibimbap™ at Korean food festivals.
General Organization
This wasn’t slapdash. The organizers set up credit card machines for the food trucks and concessions. The venue had strategically placed rubbish bins. The tables and chairs lining the bridge were nice. The staff of volunteers were vigilant about making sure everything was clean and orderly.
The Entertainment
The girls waited in line for a balloon animal and then rushed off to… Balloon animal clowns. K-Pop acts. That made this more of a festival and not just a bunch of food snobs milling about.
The Beverages
This was good and bad. There was a section with a Stella Artois tent, pouring W5,000 beers. There were also wine vendors offering tastings and selling bottles for decent prices. BUT… That was the only place you could get a drink other than Sprite. Sprite was not only a sponsor, they were the one party dictatorship of this festival. Some people were smarter than I and brought their own beverages. I did bring home a nice nosey bottle of California chardonnay for W18,000. Looking forward to popping that open.
The Food Trucks
Food trucks in Seoul have had a short odd history. The Seoul government officially legalized them half-assedly a few years ago. As in, it was legal to have one but not legal to park one. They can only operate in fake pre-planned events. It’s difficult for them to get a following, and it’s also difficult for them to get consistent feedback to improve their food. Because frankly, most of the food from them sucked.
Sucked hard.
Most of the food trucks spent more time on their looks and branding than on the actual food. They followed the long tradition of copying other concepts. Not only did most of them copy foreign concepts–badly, I must say–but they copied local concepts, like the Steak-in-a-Cup. That was bad, too.
This goes along with another of my consistent rants. If something works, don’t fuck with it. If there’s a standard dish you are trying to emulate, get the basics down first, and then do variations. Don’t start with the variations. With the Steak-in-a-Cup concept, just a well-seasoned steak with some fries will do. Instead, we got under seasoned steak with nasty onions in sweet gochujang and pumpkin mousse baby food. I didn’t find one truck just doing simple steak and potatoes.
A fish and chips truck just didn’t even try. Well, they tried with their cool British packaging and the overused “Keep Calm and _______” slogan that went stale a decade ago. The sad thing is, if they just did a simple traditional British fish and chips dipped in batter, not only would it have tasted better, they would have saved money. Instead, we got overly greasy cod and shrimp that weren’t fresh, covered in panko bread crumbs, skinny fries (not thick British pub chips, which are easily available–we had them at one of my restaurants), a wedge of lemon, and a choice of tartare, sweet chili, and some other sauce that shouldn’t go NEAR fish and chips.
The result was an inedible greasy mess that no one enjoyed. I keep hearing arguments that they’re catering to the local clientele, but there were NO LOCAL CLIENTELE! No one liked their food. Just some simple beer battered cod, thick cut chips, lemon, vinegar, and a tartare sauce that wasn’t just mayonnaise with a little pickle relish would have done much better.
The Pho truck charged just as much as a brick-and-mortar restaurant but gave much less. Just noodles, MSG-laden broth, and a few scraps of meat. Hardly any veggies. In a cardboard bowl. The point of a food truck is to make something either cheaper than bricks-and-mortars or better than other street food, or both. This is the typical case of Korean wanna-bes copying a concept without bothering to UNDERSTAND the concept.
(I hear that’s how the Oxford Dictionary defines “Cultural Appropriation,” but I guess Asian countries are exempt from that label.)Jian’s first Cubano
Food Trucks and Gender Politics?
I observed this. The best food we had came from trucks run by women. I had a lovely Pork Banh Mi with good bread, lots of cilantro, full of meat. The Cubano had no honey mustard or sweet pickles. My daughter Jian took it and devoured the whole thing after her first bite.
I may be truly reaching on this, but this is just from observation and conversations with Koreans I’ve had for over 13 years inside Korea.
Women in Korea are way more open-minded than men. Korea has one of the largest gender gaps of any OECD member country. Women are not satisfied with traditional Korean social norms, so they have looked outward. This is why Sex and the City and Manhattan brunch culture took hold. This is why women drive the trends in Korea.
I’d say this is also why girls and women do better than their male counterparts in learning new languages. I remember reading Chomsky or some other linguistic scholar stating that when learning a new language, one must become more flexible with their self identity. Your native language is part of your identity. For a lot of Korean males, learning foreign languages makes them feel less Korean. I’ve had students blatantly say this. They don’t like learning English because they feel less Korean.
Because Korean women are more open-minded to non-Korean cultures, they take more interest in understanding the culture behind the food they’re appropriating. The men care more about looking cool and gaining social status. That’s why a food truck run by women made such a great Banh Mi while the food trucks run by men made the saddest fish and chips in the world and bland steak with pumpkin baby food–all while trying to pose as DJs in their spare time.When the Korean and English each make sense Besides–come on! At least give me a challenge when I’m writing the jokes.
Prices
I touched on this in the last section. In Korean language blogs talking about the festival, they also had a problem with this. The prices for a lot of the food trucks was jacked up. We wanted to sign Jian up for a kids cooking course, but they charged W50,000 per child, and to cook what? A hamburger? OMG!
Only a few people shelled out the money for that in the end. Hardly anyone participated.
This is the old thinking. It’s the notion that slapping a high price tag on something makes it automatically desirable (note: Cho Tae-kwon, Hwayo, and Gaon). In the past, noveau riche Koreans gladly lined up and paid premium prices for mediocre food because they wanted to show off their wealth. It was a status play. These days, younger Koreans are more concerned with value. So this festival with their premium-for-crap strategy, organized by the older establishment-thinking ajosshies, didn’t josh well with the mostly younger attendees.
Marketing
My family met our friends, an Englishman of Korean decent, who is one of the largest Korean food importers in Europe, and a Korean lawyer. We all immediately commented on how sparse the attendance was. The lawyer–whose opinions on food and Korean culture I heed intensely–said that the marketing failed. No one knew about this event. I didn’t know about this event, and I get spammed all the time by these types of things. It was the Englishman who told me about it.
The festival’s website looked decent and modern. It was WordPress–likely the Divi theme, as we use on this blog. But the content was the same stolid old Korean corporate style. All talk of branding and corporate organization trees–as if they were marketing to shareholders and not consumers. The organizers consisted of Chosun TV execs, Korean government officials, and university professors. No one from the restaurant private sector. They even spelled one of the K-Pop group’s names wrong, the one they called “Korea’s Top Idol.”
I guess they weren’t top enough for anyone to know how to spell their name.
Conclusion
That said, they did well. These events and the Seoul food scene is constantly getting better. It was well organized. Despite 80% of the food trucks we tried disappointing us, we loved having the variety to choose from while sitting on a nice table in the middle of the Han River on a gorgeous day. That pizza I will remember all the way to my dying breath.
The ajosshies-in-charge just need to get their marketing act together, they need to expand the beverage options, and the need to cut back on the silly cliche photo stunts that make respected chefs look like dancing monkeys. I wish something could be done about food truck laws so that these trucks can get some actual experience in the wild, thus improving their food and weeding out the poseurs.
I hope to go to next year’s festival. I’m optimistic that it will be even better.
Credit: Emilio Andreas ArayaA line outside an Isaac Toast standWhen I first came to Korea in 2004, I had some cultural adjustment to do (understatement). Breakfast was one of them. The closest I could get to a western breakfast at the time was Isaac Toast. But it was SO BAD that I just resorted to samgak kimbap from convenience stores instead.
Why?
Isaac Toast is only good if you’re drunk, stupid, or both.
It follows the Korean sandwich 80% rule: 80% is good. 20% is WHAT THE FUCK??Ham, cheese, and STRAWBERRIES?Bacon, lettuce, tomato, and TARTAR SAUCE?Tuna salad and RAISINS?Lovely buttered toast, egg, grilled ham, cheese, and WHY THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DUMP A LOAD OF SUGAR IN MY SANDWICH??Isaac Toast has always done the same thing. They make sandwiches that seem good, and then they have to ruin it by throwing cheap shredded cabbage and some sweet sauce on them. I’m a grown-up. I don’t need my food to be turned into candy.People line up for THIS?Sandwiches are to Americans as kimbap is to Koreans. Imagine the uproar if a place called Woori Kimbap that people were lining up for in America was selling tuna and ketchup kimbap rolled in sugar? AND if those lines were sucking the business away from legit Korean restaurants?Isaac Toast has been a running joke for as long as I can remember. It’s the poster child for how places in Korea ruin foreign food.Is it cultural appropriation in Asia?I don’t care. It’s taking something I grew up with and enjoyed, and taking one slow sugar-coated shit on it. This would have been fine if there were examples of foods from my home culture readily available that didn’t get the 80% rule treatment. But no, this was what we were stuck with when we got a little homesick and were so desperate for a taste of home.While at the same time Korean students and such overseas are being heeded in news articles for complaining about the Korean food in cafeterias and restaurants not being the same as their mom’s home cooking.
Sandwiches aren’t food
Korea is great at so many things–except sandwiches. You won’t find the equivalent of a Banh Mi here. It’s not traditionally a part of the food culture. It’s a foreign import that’s been adopted out of context and mutated.One reason for sandwiches and other foreign foods being transformed into dessert in Korea is that sandwiches aren’t considered a meal. You won’t find a Korean parent packing a sandwich in her child’s dosirak outside of being a snack. Sandwiches are in the same category as cake. They are to be eaten with a hot beverage as a snack and not as a meal.I listened to a podcast where the author of a book on espresso posited that when cultures adopt foreign foods, they first tend to sweeten them. She was using that to illustrate how Americans adopted Italian espresso by turning it into Pumpkin Spice Lattes. This also holds true to Korea, whether it be sugared garlic bread in Italian restaurants, honey mustard smothering Turkish kebabs, or a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos that tastes like Cheesy Frosted Flakes.This wouldn’t be so bad if there were alternatives. There aren’t. And this wouldn’t be so bad if Koreans overseas weren’t so vocal over every culinary slight to Korean cuisine. You can’t demand others not alter Korean food because “I’m Korean” while also excusing Korea mutilating foreign food because “I’m Korean.” That’s the child demanding to play with others’ toys while not sharing his own–Korean Exceptionalism.
It hurts Korea’s multiculturalism
What offends me by these lines is not that they’re doing well. It’s that disgusting fake food is taking business away from authentic non-corporate restaurants, and these great restaurants are closing down every month because of these trend zombies. Actually, they’re mostly tourists in Myeong-dong, which reinforces my rule that there’s hardly any good food in Myeong-dong.People outside Korea give it a pass when it comes to non-Korean food because of some orientalist exoticism. They won’t admit that a ketchup sandwich is equivalent to trailer park food because it’s ASIAN.Isaac Toast is an abomination to humanity. It is an evil mutation. Eating Isaac Toast without extreme inebriation and desperation is a criminal act. STANDING IN LINE to eat Isaac Toast puts you in the Venn Diagram between ISIS and Trump supporters.
RESIST!!!
(Man, and I thought the churro craze a few years ago was dumb.)
The Acorn Jelly breaks easily, so it works better to arrange them on the plate and then dab them with the dressing.
Substitute Sesame Oil with Wild Sesame Oil (Deulkkae Gireum 들깨기름)Substitute the Sugar and Rice Syrup with Korean Plum Extract (Maesil Ek 매식엑)
The organizers imported some good VIPs for this one. The most notable was Franco Pepe, the legendary pizza artist from Italy. I did what I swore I would never do–stood in line for a slice of pizza. Thankfully, the line didn’t last that long, and the slice was worth it. The dough was like marshmallowy chapssal ddeok, crisped up, chewy, voluptuous. It was so sexy that I’m sure Red Tube has a channel for it.
Jeannie Cho Lee was there, and I didn’t get around to saying hi. We had done projects over media through the years but had never met in person. Oh well…
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Just like making foreign VIPs wear hanbok and doing the Gangnam Style dance, it’s become standard practice to have a swimming pool of bibimbap stirred up by the obviously embarrassed chefs for the photo ops. Since it was the fastest line, we did get a bowl to share. And we were all surprised it was pretty good. Spicy too. Still, I am eager to retire the Giant Bibimbap™ at Korean food festivals. 
That said, they did well. These events and the Seoul food scene is constantly getting better. It was well organized. Despite 80% of the food trucks we tried disappointing us, we loved having the variety to choose from while sitting on a nice table in the middle of the Han River on a gorgeous day. That pizza I will remember all the way to my dying breath.
The ajosshies-in-charge just need to get their marketing act together, they need to expand the beverage options, and the need to cut back on the silly cliche photo stunts that make respected chefs look like dancing monkeys. I wish something could be done about food truck laws so that these trucks can get some actual experience in the wild, thus improving their food and weeding out the poseurs.
I hope to go to next year’s festival. I’m optimistic that it will be even better. 
