Adventures with Kimchi

I discovered and developed a strong affinity for Korean food long before I ever set foot on Korean soil. The spicy-and-sour blend present in so many dishes has long made it one of my favorite cuisines.

As I was walking off the plane yesterday after landing at Incheon airport, the Korean-American ladies behind me were talking about how they wanted to stop at a restaurant in the airport to get some “good, real kimchi.” “I can’t wait to smell it,” said the younger of the two. While many nations express deep passion for their national dishes, it seems that kimchi has a unique place in the pantheon of ethnic foods. While kimchi is indeed the fermented cabbage with copious amounts of red pepper that is increasingly available in the US (even outside of ethnic markets), the name actually encompasses a whole wide variety of things pickled with red pepper – including daikon radish, cucumbers, etc. I even tried something called “water kimchi” yesterday which was drunk in little metal bowls. I’ve yet to have a meal in Korea that did not include kim chi in some form. A Korean-American friend told me last night that even European restaurants here in Seoul often add a small garnish of kim chi to their fare. A day without kimchi is a bad day indeed.

Like most of East Asia, dining out appears to be both frequent and of reasonable cost in Seoul. Walking with a Korean-American friend last night down one of the main avenues of Seoul’s commercial south side, I saw restaurants of every conceivable variety – and those were just the signs I could read! We ended up at a “chicken galbi” place. Apparently, the term actually means “chicken ribs” but the dish is made by filleting the meat off of the chicken legs, cooking it together in a large hot pot in the center of the table with various kinds of mushrooms, cabbage, potatoes, various types of noodles and copious amounts of red pepper sauce (if anything is more elemental to Korean cuisine than kimchi, it is the red pepper). After everyone has eaten a good bit, steamed rice and a bit more red pepper sauce is stirred in to the reheated pot and a second round of eating commences. Of course, various types of kimchi are served from a type of salad bar to properly complete the meal. 

Chicken Galbi being prepared at our table

Seoul is an intense place with traffic rushing along the broad freeways running on both sides of the River Han. Buses, cars, bicycles, motorbikes jostle for position, but in a very orderly fashion. Some of the motorbikes are McDonalds delivery people whisking an order to a customer. Wide avenues are lined with enormous video screens, all varieties of flashing neon lights, and every other variety of electrical advertisement. Lush advertisements for every conceivable product jump out at you, most employing models so blonde as to be nearly albino in their marketing.

Like most Asian cities, the streets swarm with youth, reminding me as always that we live in an increasingly Asian world. More than sixty percent of the world lives on this enormous and varied continent. While most of the world lives in some mash-up of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern, I find this tension absolutely front and center in much of Asia. That’s nowhere more apparent than in this chic district of one of Asia’s chic cities, where little garnishes of kimchi grace the finest French plates.