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.

Tags: Food, herald, Korea

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I’ve mentioned before that the W Hotel Walker Hill in eastern Seoul would be my regular hangout if I struck it rich (it’s a good time to note that you can donate on the right).  It’s modern but cozy.  It’s elegant but not pretentious.

I got introduced to the W last year with the famous X Burger.  Since then I have been keeping up with Ciaran Hickey’s madness in the kitchen, secretly fusing Korean ingredients in his world class cuisine.

Why secretly?

This is one of the conundrums in the Korean gourmet scene.  Koreans want food that is high class, but they have trouble with thinking of their own food in the same category.  Chef Hickey has been trying to tell his bosses and his Korean clientelle that the nouveau French cuisine they love so much is really rustic peasant food tarted up a bit.

And Korean traditional cuisine is the glorious Asian provincial food that is begging for this treatment.

I was excited to be invited back to try the W Seoul’s new Contemporary Korean Menu, along with my cohort, Fatman Seoul’s Jennifer Flinn.

Thanks to the only taxi driver in Seoul who obeys traffic laws, I missed cocktail hour, but I did make it in time for the first course, served with a bubbly glass of dry spumante “Opere Brut” from NV Villa Santi in Crocetta, Italy.

What was the first course, you say?

On the menu it said “Beef Tartare,” but it was actually Korea’s formidable contestant in the world of high class cuisine, Yuk Hui 육회.

I said this once, and I will say it again.  Korea’s Yuk Hui beats the pants off of any French Steak Tartare.  It was perfectly executed.  Finely minced beef (not ground) mixed with fruit and bright Korean flavors, including Korean pear.  It came with a delicate but protein-laden quail egg yolk on a spoon, which I mixed with my beef salad.  The yellow “sand” on the sides was a Korean sea salt, which made a nice little accent to dip the tip of the spoon in to add a little surf to the turf.

This chilly dish was the perfect way to start a summer meal.  If you think it looks molested here, by the end there was not a morsel of meat left.  Jen commented that it was the most Korean of the dishes and least altered from traditional Korean technique.  I think that this was the point.  Chef Hickey was firing straight off that Korean cuisine belongs on the mantle of world class cuisine without much fussiness.  Eun Jeong made the comment, while looking at the pictures, of how pedestrian the presentation was.

I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide.  In my mind, a Korean who has grown up with this would find the sesame leaf and sprouts fairly commonplace.  Yet a westerner would find this an elegantly delicate presentation.  My only regret was that the wonderful licorice essence of the sesame leaf wasn’t somehow incorporated in the dish beyond being the palette for display.

Nonetheless, this was obviously a summer menu.  With how much Korea emphasizes its seasonal nature, I would beg the W to continue this menu to match the other three seasons.

The next dish was just plain clever.  You see, the fun of this menu was guessing what Korean dishes the courses represented.  The menu didn’t give any hints.  It sounded like what you’d find at any contemporary restaurant, where you’d get a vague list of ingredients with no actual dish names.

So, let’s see.  This is obviously a chicken soup, but the broth is, as Jen said, “medicinal.” Take that in a good way.  It used traditional Korean medicinal herbs and woodsy stuff to create an exotic earthy broth.  In the middle was a chicken breast tournedo, stuffed with Korean dates, nuts and more surprises.

Okay, it’s Samgyetang.  But this time it’s a gorgeous quaint stuffed chicken breast instead of a whole stuffed chicken.  Befriending it was a sliver of chestnut and a lightly tempura’d ginseng root, which I just picked up and ate with my fingers.  The little black stuff in the foreground was the mystery substance.  Jennifer found that it was ground black garlic.  This is garlic that has been aged in caves until it’s oxidized.  Tasted like raisins to me.  Yet it cut through the surprisingly rich broth to create balance.

The broth wasn’t the only surprising part.  Chef Hickey said a while back that the most challenging part of attempting high scale Korean cuisine is matching it with wines.  What wine could you possibly match with a woodsy medicinal chicken soup?

A German Riesling with a dry finish.

Does one actually exist?

Apparently so.  We had a refreshing 2007 riesling from Dr. Loosen of Mosel.  The wine screams summer.

While Jen was in the kitchen getting food porn shots, I got the next course.  These were the most memorable and the least memorable of the evening.  An Abalone Risotto with a Chili Marinated Grilled Black Cod.

To say the risotto was the least memorable is unfair.  It’s a nicely executed risotto.  Creamy and chocked full of tender abalone, which turned the rice green, and topped with a little “sea foam” of milk and basil.  I just felt it needed a little more punch of seasoning to bring the shy abalone out of hiding.

Then again, it may have existed to counter the powerhouse that was the fish.  I can’t believe I’m getting all this worked up over a tiny cut of fish.

This, my friends, is a sneaky little bugger.  I’m biting the skin off my thumb as I look at it.  What they did was so simple but so perfect.  They marinated this rich flaky fish in a special dark gochujang from Sunchang.  I found out from Eun Jeong that the dark gochujang I’ve been raving over in our fridge also comes from there.  How to explain…

This red pepper paste has such a dark sweetness it’s like coffee.  Now smother a flaky and slightly oily fish with this and grill it just enough so that it’s still delicately wet in the middle, and this is the fish.  I know it sounds sexual, but it was sensory overload.  For extra decadence, it was topped with garlic stem tempura.

That fish was strong and stayed with me for a good while.  A California white, Bogle Vineyards’ Chenin Blanc, 2007, kicked it back in its place.  After three glasses of wine, things were getting a bit sloshy by then.

The next wine created a nasty scene (almost NSFW).  It was our first red of the evening, and the perfume it gave off was intense.  It was 2006 Daniel Rion & Fils Bourgogne from, well, Bourgogne, France.  Jen said she wanted to wear it.  She then commenced to treating her wine glass like a bong.

Note the steam

As fragrant as it was, the actual taste contrasted with it greatly.  Solid and oakey.

I should also note about how I prefer the atmosphere of the W.  It’s not stuffy.  The colors are abstract and enveloping.  There’s an entire wall of shifting light hues.  Combine this with a restaurant soundtrack that ranges from ambient electronica to Ella Fitzgerald, you are transported to a dream world where your senses are recalibrated.

It was then we got a new soup.  Chef Hickey had found one of the secret treasures of Korea after monkfish.  Yes, monkfish, as much as it’s prized out of the price range in New York and Europe, is still pretty cheap here.  What Chef Hickey threw in this dish was the Jeju Langoustine.  They’re shrimp with big ass claws, almost close to a crawfish.

The langoustine resting atop the Nollemi 놀래미 (translated as “hog fish,” but I like the Korean word better), was creamy, like eating shrimp butter.

This is the crux.  It’s where Korean instinct stubbornly battles fresh approaches.  This seafood soup is a clarified version of a Maeuntang 매운탕 or Haemultang 해물탕.  These are traditionally served boiling.

Why boiling?

Koreans say it’s to cover up the flavor of the seafood.

WTF??????

Maybe it’s to cover up the flavor of bad seafood.  This goes to the root of my criticism of Koreans’ approach to the wonderful bounty that surrounds them on three sides.  They destroy the natural flavors of these morsels and don’t let them live on their plates (unless they’re live octopi).  They disrespect their ingredients.

I get what Chef Hickey was thinking.  He had experienced a Haemultang somewhere and was intimidated by the boiling mess but loved the flavor.  He distilled the flavors into a spicy Bouillabaisse and danced little clams, fish and the creamy langoustine on its stage with enokitake mushrooms and Ssukgat, the bitter herb that brings Haemultang together and makes it distinctly Korean.  The only criticism I have for this is that a straw wasn’t provided for the broth.

By then I had gotten a Busan fish market full of seafood.  I needed to cleanse the palatte.  In galbi restaurants, they usually give you a cinnamon-laced persimmon punch to wash the garlic from your tongue.

Chef Hickey?

Fuck it.  Make it sherbert.

Yeah, he froze that little cinnamon punch.  It came with three minute mint leaves for garnish on the plate.  But mix the mint with the sherbert and you got somethin’.

We needed the little breather there because big red was coming.  The meat, meat, meat course.

This really messed with my loyalties.  On the left was a galbi-style marinated Hanwoo sirloin.  As you can see, it was barely seared, with the jus skimping across the plate.  On the far end was galbi jjim–a slow-cooked short rib that was just plain classic Korean cuisine, topped with a yeolmu kimchi.  In the middle was a meat-stuffed zucchini.

Why were my loyalties torn?

It admittedly got me a little emotional.  The stuffed zucchini tasted just like the type of treat I get in my lunch box courtesy of Eun Jeong, my wife.

The slow-cooked short rib on a bed of potatoes and todok tasted just like my much missed grandmother Beba’s beef and potatoes.  Comfort food from two women close to my heart.

Oh yeah, the sirloin was good, too.

The wine was a much heartier “Uncut Shiraz” (I guess that means Gentile), 2007, from Gemtree Vineyards.  Good stuff.

Dessert was a special gift for adults only.  Black sesame ice cream on a bed of crushed housemade “Oreo”-style cookies.  Dark and forbidden.  Pair this with an Asian pear poached with black peppercorns, and you have a dessert that the kids just won’t get.

Screw them.  They aren’t paying.

The little cubes were jellies made from Bokbunja, the Korean raspberry liqueur, on top of a little vanilla smear.  If only Lotte could come out with a black sesame ice cream, is all I can say.

Dinner wrapped with coffee and little petit fours of Jeju halabong orange jellies.  Chef Hickey found them while vacationing and was dumbfounded by their flavor.

I wasn’t given the official tally of this meal, but I’m pretty sure that, with wine included, it was quite the six-figure KRW affair.  Nonetheless, I would pay the full price for this meal just to have that fish again.

I met a few cool folks, including Naver “Power Blogger” Kim Bum Soo of Pat2Bach (his take on the meal) and Sunsook Koo of DesignHouse.  Drank a good bit of wine, but the evening was far too short.

Darn you, Korean subway schedules!!

I just gotta head my way out there again.  The W is a great place to really relax and enjoy yourself.  It’s stylish.  The people are gorgeous.  And the food will take you to another world.

[More pics here]

Tags: Food, hotel, Korea, w

I just noticed that the entire Korea episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern is online.

Segment 1: Noryangjin Fish Market (live octopus) — Guide: Chef Hu-nam Kim

Segment 2: Fermented Bean Paste, Fermented Skate, Changgukjang Jjigae (”Dead Body Soup”) — Guide: Soo-jung Kang

Segment 3: Chu-eoTang (live loach soup) and more soups, Korean Barbecue — Guides: Terry Rah, Richard Choi, Robert Egbert, Julie Yi

Segment 4: Kimchi factory, Street Food — Guide: Soo-jung Kang

Segment 5: Blogger outing with Turtle Soup, Blowfish and Grilled Eel — Guides: Daniel Gray, Eun Jeong Lee, Eun Hak Lee

I have been working at the same location for three years.  For that time, lunch has been a daily challenge.  We don’t serve lunch at our workplace, and the choices in the neighborhood are sparse–pizza, fried pork cutlets and mayonnaise-drenched sandwiches.  There isn’t any decent Korean take-out.

Every now and then, I stopped by my local E-Mart on the way to work to see if they had something I could use for lunch.  For a good while I bought their pre-made salads.  Yet like most things at E-Mart, once I like something they either discontinue it or cheapen the ingredients.  The bright mixed green salads devolved into piles of shredded cabbage with thousand island goo.

In the past two months, little frozen dinners have started appearing.  Many of them were store brand.  At just 3,500 won a pop, I had to check them out.

Nakji Cheolpan Bokkeumbap 낙지 철판볶음밥 (Octopus Fried Rice) was one of the few choices that weren’t the store brand.  This was one of the better rice offerings.  The rice was a little dry, and the octopus was a bit stingy, but the octopus you did get was plump and flavorful, not too chewy.

Pineapple Curry Rice 파인애플 커리 요리밥 was also not a bad choice.  It tasted like East Asian curry and had enough pineapple to make a difference.  The shrimp were not plentiful, but they weren’t those nasty baby shrimp that “shrimp” products tend to employ.  It was begging for some good protein to top it, like a grilled chicken breast.  This makes a good side dish.

The Treccine Carbonara 까르보나라 트리치네 did not disappoint.  I’ve had some nasty Italian frozen food in the past, so I was expecting the worst.  The sauce was thick and creamy.  The pasta wasn’t too soggy.  It held up well.  Sparse vegetables.  It worked well with some sliced garlic baguettes from the local Paris Baguette.  It’s a starch bomb.

And now for my favorite, Lasagna 라자냐.  In Korea, Lasagna can only be found in certain Italian restaurants and Costco.  Finding a cheap frozen option has been a treat.  I’ve actually eaten this for dinner, not only for lunch.  It’s not very meaty, but it makes up for it with its cream and cheese.  It’s a big gooey comforting mass.   The cheese stretches for almost a meter.  The tomato sauce is hearty.  This is another one that needs a baguette for sopping.

Not pictured but not so bad is the Chicken Teriyaki 치켄 떼리야키.  Like the other options, the protein is minimal but good.  There are some other frozen entrees I have yet to try.  New ones are poppin’ up all the time, such as a tropical fried rice that includes kiwi.

Have any of you tried these yet?

Tags: frozen, Korean Food, lasagna

The past few years I have spent my free mornings walking up the leg of Gwanak Mountain that’s behind my house.  It’s an easy thirty-minute walk that passes by four gorgeous Buddhist temples and ends with satisfying views of my fair city of Anyang.  In June, little berries popped out on the side of the road that looked like raspberries.  They’re tart and seedier than the raspberries and blackberries I used to pick at my grandparents’ place in North Carolina, but it’s always cool to forage your snacks while hiking.

These little berries are called “san ddalgi” 산딸기, or “mountain strawberries.” The English name is Korean raspberry.

This is the first year, though, that I’ve seen them for sale on the street.  I bought a small batch from my local tiny mart and tried them.  They’re much milder than the ones on the mountain behind our home.  They have the texture of a raspberry and the flavor of a very weak strawberry with some other aroma that hits the back of the tongue that’s unfamiliar that’s similar to the way that Korean bean sprouts taste, what I say, soapier, than other bean sprouts.

Nonetheless, I found that they were good blended with frozen bananas in a smoothie.  With the store bought ones, though, clean them thoroughly and check each one for mold.

They’re on the mountains from now until late July.  If your eyes are peeled, you’ll also catch some tiny berries that actually do look like wild strawberries.  Last year, I broke all the rules of my old Boy Scout manual and tried one.

Didn’t die.

The wild strawberry was mild and juicy.  Not sweet.  But again, something interesting to look out for when hiking the many mountains in Korea.

Tags: Food, korean, mountain, strawberries

This is a guest post by our good friend Skinny Steve.

Let me preface by saying this: I’m no food snob. I have friends that can taste a cookie and make comments like, “hmm, a little more vanilla and it would be perfect,” or “It has just a little too much baking soda” but that’s just not me.

That being said, I love eating and drinking. I seek out wine tastings, I’m always on the look out for new restaurants, and I relish a sprawling all-you-can-eat buffet. This is also how, at 27 years old, I found my weight approaching 280 pounds (127 kgs).

Over the past couple of years I’ve dropped about 50 pounds (~22.7 kgs) by changing my lifestyle and revolutionizing the way that I think about food. So it may surprise you that I’m a huge fan of Doughnut Plant, NYC, the latest import to Korea from the United States.

A lot of people will be turned off by the high prices at Doughnut Plant (That’s ‘plant,’ like a factory, NOT ‘planet’). In fact, the cheapest doughnut comes in at 2,400 won, and the prices go much higher, for a bigger-sized cake doughnut. Yet, I was curious to see if it was worth the price, so I decided to contact ZenKimchi and ask if he’d be interested in coming along for the ride.

Though the official Korean Doughnut Plant website (www.doughnutplant.co.kr) lists only a single location nearby Kon-guk University Station, there are two nearby Gangnam Station (exits 2 and 6), and I’ve heard reports of another spotted near Myeong-dong. Joe and I decided to hit up the larger of the two Gangnam station locations, outside of Exit 2.

Walking straight from Exit 2 for just a few minutes, about halfway to Woosung Apt. Intersection, you’ll find yourself walking the black carpet leading into the doors of an eatery designed to look more like a hip cafe than a doughnut shop. This definitely ratchets up the anticipation that you might be about to partake in the communion of something really special.

Choosing the doughnuts to try out wold prove to be quite a challenge. I’d done some research beforehand (okay, to be honest, I cheated and ate there once before too) and I knew that the ‘Blackout’ was their flagship doughnut, so I knew we’d give that one a shot. Joe and I decided to collectively buy four doughnuts and two cups of coffee to split between the two of us for review.

The massive Cinnamon Bun caught my attention, being reminiscent of the famous cinnamon rolls I’d buy with my college roommates at the Eagleville truckstop diner in the middle of the night while cramming for tests. So I decided to order the Cinnamon Bun, the Blackout, and an espresso. Joe finally settled on the Creme Brulee and Vanilla Bean doughnuts.

Sitting down to dig in, we noticed that the doughnut plant staff had already cut each doughnut into four pieces and given us small forks. For review/doughnut sharing purposes this was great, so we didn’t waste any time before digging in.

I knew the blackout was something special before I’d even completed my first bite.

My teeth sunk into three different textures of chocolaty goodness that really surprised my. The crust of the doughnut with a little bit of a crispiness was expected, but the cakey texture of the doughnut and the gooey fudge marbled throughout the doughnut all blended together for the finest doughnut-eating experience I’d ever had.

That is until I tried some of Joe’s Creme Brulee doughnut. I have never in my life tasted creme brulee, so I don’t know how well it is has been co-opted into doughnut form, but all I can say is the doughnut was fantastic. These two doughnuts weren’t just good, they were interesting in the same way that a fine wine with many different dimensions to its character is interesting. Only when I drink wine I just nod my head and pretend to understand what the instructor is describing. When it came to these doughnuts, the qualities were pronounced enough that even a luddite like myself could thoroughly enjoy them.

Unfortunately the Cinnamon Bun just didn’t stack up to the high expectations we had after trying the first two doughnuts. Joe pointed out that it was just too cakey for a cinnamon bun and I agreed with his assesment, but there was something else about it that just missed the mark for me. Maybe it just didn’t stand a chance when compared to the fond memories I have of fresh cinnamon rolls, piping hot, with fresh icing poured over the top of it while joking around with my college buddies in the dead of winter.

Finally, Joe’s Vanilla Bean doughnut didn’t stack up against the first two doughnuts either. Since this is the closest thing Doughnut Plant has to a ‘plain’ doughnut, we probably should have tried it first. It definitely wasn’t bad, and it had interesting funnel cake notes on the finish, but I probably still wouldn’t order it again considering the other doughnuts on offer that are practically works of art.

As for the coffee, the espresso there wasn’t anything special, most likely suffering from the same problems as Starbuck and Coffee Bean coffees in Korea, which is to say the beans are roasted on another continent then put on the slow boat across the Pacific Ocean where they inevitably go stale, but Joe thoroughly enjoyed his Salted Caramel Latte and said that he would recommend it.

On our way out, I decided to order a few more of the novelty doughnuts for later ‘review.’ I ordered the Cassis Choco, Espresso, and Tres Leches doughnuts. I didn’t eat these until later though, so they lost some of their freshness. Still, I thought the Cassis Choco doughnut was pretty great and I imagine that, when eaten fresh, it might approach the greatness of the Blackout and Creme Brulee doughnuts. The others were very good, but again, just not in the same league as the top tier doughnuts there.

So how does Doughnut Plant fit in with my new, healthier, lifestyle? It’s simple. These days when it comes to food, I’m thinking about quality over quantity. It was hard for me to give up things I love like John Belushi’s little chocolate doughnuts, cheapo all-you-can-eat buffets and convenience store ice cream cones that Korean companies have perfected. So rather than relying on willpower, which almost always fails, resulting in a downward spiral of giving in to your temptations and feeling bad about yourself, which just leads to even worse food decisions as you eat your feelings, I choose calculated indulgences. I’ll pay the extra money for doughnut plant, a hotel buffet, or Cold Stone Cremery and I’ll plan it carefully and I’ll make an effort to enjoy and feel good about every second of the experience. The next day I feel sated and ready to get back to my salads and smoothies.

More doughnut porn here.

Tags: donut, doughnut, Korea, nyc, plant

Under the High Chair has posted a top ten list that hits close to home.

Top Ten Things to Expect When Dining with a Food Blogger

Eun Jeong and I are on Arirang Today, um, today.  It’s a magazine show on Arirang TV.  It’s a bit about the globalization of Korean food.  Got a free meal out of it.

Tags: arirang, Food, korean, tv

Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie podcast has posted a five minute segment about kimchi.  It’s quite gorgeous.

Watch now