In the culture hall, they had exhibits on people globalizing Korean cuisine. ZenKimchi fave Hooni Kim and his restaurant Danji had a nice showing.

These were taken with my Galaxy S phone, and something smeared on the lens. Kinda has a Xanadu feel.

Some new sauces are coming out. In fact, I’ve already seen them at my E-Mart. Soy sauces with lemon and ginger flavors and something called “Pickle Sauce,” which I think is for quick home pickling.

CJ had an exhibit of the products they were exporting to Japan and America. This fancy looking makkolli was for Japan.

Here’s the array, under the Bibigo label. The exports to America are mostly sauces, seaweed, and instant rice.

Some sweet wines, called Muju, were popular. The blueberry I liked–not by itself, but it would be a good cocktail mixer.

Jeju abalone shell trinkets. A lot like mother of pearl. And inexpensive too.

In the Andong section, they had their famous version of shikhye–a sweet rice punch.

And you gotta have your Andong soju, in classic bottle form

or Hahoe mask form

or golf club form?

Here was one of the big finds. An Andong company is developing a Korean proscuitto with the name Corescuitto. They had no samples yet.

They did have a model, though. This was a topic of heated debate among my friends. Part of it was, “That’s some gall to outright copy Italian prosciutto techniques.” But the other side was, “Yet they’re using Korean pork, which is good quality. And it will be cheaper.”

The Jeju section was my favorite. They were showcasing a lot of products, including this Herb Water. Very different take on bottled water with lemongrass and rosemary flavors. They also had “Herb Cool” body spray, which I have a sample of at home. Makes your skin feel cool like a Peppermint Patty.

This is also where I had found the Yeonggyul, which I had posted about earlier.

The gadgets section had a few finds, like this draft makkolli machine. I think they missed the point of the enjoyment of both draft beer and the enjoyment of makkolli. Draft beer is tapped fresh from a keg so you get the freshest flavors. Makkolli’s character comes from its natural carbonation. This machine kills both of those. The method is to pour bottles of makkolli into the machine. It spins the liquid to cool it down while also agitating the bubbles. You end up with a flat glass of makkolli. It’s like pouring bottles of beer into a washing machine and drinking them from a spout.

So yeah, they missed the point.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This machine sucks the dust off your shoes. I wish I could just watch the customers’ reactions at the first restaurant that installs this.

I also sampled a lot of makkolli in the process. My favorite was this one. Ginseng-infused makkolli. The reddish brown bottle had the fullest flavor. Very earthy natural and uniquely Korean flavor.

That’s all I have from this year. The Andong proscuitto and Jeju yeonggyul were promising. Not so sure about the draft makkolli.

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But the entire row of vendors was interesting itself. One criticism–or disappointment–people have of Korean street food is that even though it’s good, there’s little variety. Every vendor basically sells the same stuff–odeng, sundae, twigim, ddeokbokki with the occasional hoddeok, bungeobbang and egg bread stand. Like the apartment building architecture, Korean street food is just factory stamped copies of each other.

But this place is different.

They had the tried-and-predictable standards, but there were also vendors that sold fried rice, deopbap, omurice, hot dogs, little rice balls, curry ddeokbokki, and there was the lady who sold bibimbap and Poktanbap.

I ordered the small “botong” bowl for W2,000. She warned me it was spicy, and I told her it was okay. I had prepared by getting some drinks at the local GS25. She got a small styrofoam bowl and filled it with a scoop of rice, topped it with a slice of American cheese, ground beef, crunchy flying fish roe, roasted seaweed confetti, fried seaweed, two spoonfulls of gochujang, crushed walnuts, a pinch of shredded coconut, and a gorgeous runny fried egg she grilled on the flattop per order.

Yes, coconut and walnuts.

I sat down on the stoop in front of McD’s and stirred it up. Took a big bite. It was HOT! Deeply and pleasantly hot. The coconut was a surprise, but it was such a small presence that it subtly smoothed out the other ingredients. The fish roe kept it interesting with its crunchiness. Compared to much street food and fast food, it was relatively healthy. And my stomach was burning the rest of the day. I want to go back and have another. I think a small bowl is all you need.

But get this, even though this area was different, it was popular. I think it’s also located near post-graduate cram schools for people training to be lawyers and such. It was all college-aged kids, and they were standing in line for these items. In Korea, the university areas are the breeding grounds for new culinary ideas. New foreign franchises tend to open near the women’s university because, seriously, more Korean women overwhelmingly occupy new types of restaurants than men. But this area was well represented by both genders.

Young man enjoying a large bowl of Poktanbap

Is it an anomaly or a sign of things to come? I hope the latter.

Fried Rice

DeopBap and Curry Rice

Says "Oga-ne Pancake" but has hot dogs. Need to investigate closely next time.

Kimchi Jjigae DeopBap? Interesting.

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A little chocolate is like a love affair — an occasional sweet release that lightens the spirit. —Linda Solegato

If chocolate is a lover, it’s not monogamous. Chocolate shares itself easily with most fruits, nuts, some legumes, tea wine and even flowers.

Mindy Fong, owner and proprietor of Jade Chocolates in San Francisco, brings a true pan-Asian flair to her confections. Many chocolatiers pair their treats with “safe” Asian ingredients, such as green tea, jasmine tea and ginger.

Fong encourages her chocolates to share themselves with more exotic Asian partners such as dried mangoes (sometimes shaped like orchids), roasted sesame seeds, roasted brown rice, lemongrass, tamari-soaked almonds, lapang souchong tea and ylang ylang flowers.

I had a chance to talk to her recently at Napa Chocolate Salon, held in the upper Napa Valley town of Yountville. The venue was just a few blocks from the world-famous Bouchon Bakery, owned by chef Thomas Keller of French Laundry acclaim.

What foods or flavors wouldn’t Fong mix with chocolate?

“Chocolate is basic, like black and white,” she replied. “It complements many different flavors.”

Just as I suspected: Chocolate is a sensory swinger, freely giving out love to everyone.

Jade Chocolate's chocolate covered edamame, just waiting to be sampled. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)

Jade Chocolate’s chocolate-covered edamame (soybeans) seemed like odd match-making. Fong dry-roasts the edamame, bathes them in bittersweet chocolate then dusts on bittersweet chocolate powder and sea salt.

I was expecting a “beany” taste, but I didn’t detect it. When edamame is roasted, the legumes taste similar to a peanut but more subtle, she told me. I now concur. Yet the inside of her enhanced edamame had more crunch than I’d expect from a chocolate-covered roasted peanut.

Two kinds of flavors, Fong said, don’t complement chocolate well:

1. “Delicate flavors.”
2. Flavors with a similar “earthy” profile to chocolate.

Pu-er tea, she pointed out, has a strong “earthy” flavor that muddies the flavor of any variety of chocolate.

Korea has its own perplexing pairing. Kimchi chocolate has a zippy liquid center. If spicy pickled cabbage spiked with hints of garlic, ginger and fish sauce can tango with chocolate, then just about anything else can do so too.

Chocolate is most seductive, it seems, when it is matched with complementary but equally strong flavors, just as people are. It may not be a choosy lover, but chocolate certainly performs well on play dates.

Asia Asia in Ilsan

This has been coming a while. In 2007, I raved about a pan-Asian joint called Tikiti. I was railed at for being so positive. Looking back, the food was dull, but it was so rare for me to get anything close to Indian food in my town. I jumped at anything that would bring some ethnic diversity to Anyang.

It didn’t last long. Tastes weren’t ready for that yet. The Koreanized pho (oh, sorry, “Vietnam Ssalguksu”) trend was rising, and there wasn’t room for anything else new.

I started catching the stir of something different a year ago. My source, as usual, was Korean TV. I regularly watch these shows on the weekends where they feature interesting restaurants. Most all of them are Korean. But suddenly, “What is this? they’re in what looks like an Indian restaurant in Ansan!”

Ansan, on the southern end of the blue subway line, is an enclave of immigrants with a rich conglomeration of world foods. It’s the only place in Korea that sells durian on the street. Central Asian restaurants are plentiful there. To the north in Myeong-dong and Jongno there are a few longtime Indian joints, but they were usually patronized by diehard Indian fans in Korea. In the middle was Itaewon, and those restaurants usually had English-speaking expats, which are effective Korean repellents.

Indian restaurants started to spread out a bit. After Tikiti closed, a real Indian restaurant opened in Anyang. The side streets of Gangnam sprouted with restaurants advertising “Indo Curry.” I recently went to Ilsan and was introduced to Asia Asia by my old friend Brant. It’s spacious, well decorated, and the service is great. What got me was how this place got packed at lunchtime by Koreans in work clothes. I watched them eat. They ordered the great spicy curries and loads of naan. They ate like old pros. They enjoyed it. And usually where foreign foods are in the realm of young females, there was an almost even mix of men and women greatly enjoying their Indo curry.

The real sign that a trend is taking hold is when it invades the supermarkets. My local E-Mart started carrying microwavable naan and curry a year ago. At first, the stock was sporadic, but then it became reliable.

The real, real sign that it’s become part of the culture is when it invades the homes. As of a couple months ago, kits have started to load onto supermarket shelves to make Indo curries and naan at home. And not just a monolithic curry–there are different kinds of curries you can buy as packaged mixes. There’s a homemade naan kit. And now there are two different Indian curry kits at my local K-Mart (the Korean grocery store, not the American big box). Before then, spaghetti sauce was the most ethnic you could get at K-Mart.

Now it’s everywhere. The Indian curry mixes are advertised on the subway, with a Korean mother making curry for her child. As mentioned, Gangnam’s Indian restaurants are growing.

What I really like about this movement–not just a trend–is that it was introduced by central Asians. Indians and Pakistanis own and operate most of the restaurants, especially the original ones. This means that only small modifications were made for the Korean palate, like putting pickles on the table. But it hasn’t gone through the drastic Koreanification like Vietnamese pho has. Where real Vietnamese pho is full of bright colors and cilantro, Korean pho is a dull beige with only pickled onions, Korean chillies and bean sprouts as condiments. Cilantro has to be asked for separately.

I mention all this to EJ, and she says it’s logical. Koreans already have a taste for Japanese-Korean curry. It’s a yellowish curry with corn starch, so it has the look and consistency of snot. And it’s thrown on rice (Curry Rice). I haven’t seen Indian curry being treated this way so far. There was some rice on the Korean tables at these Indian restaurants, but there was waay moore naan.

So, it looks like Indian food is hitting Korea the way that Korean food is hitting America but without all the modifications. It’s fascinating to see how this has happened all of a sudden.

—

Other trends I see happening:

• Gourmet burgers
• Beer diversification and homebrewing
• Uzbek cuisine
• Sandwiches and delis
• “Dry aged” steaks (they’re not really dry aged but wet aged and taken out of the packages to dry out)

Trends that are sticking around:

• Brunch
• Kebabs (though Koreanized)

Trends that are dying or have died:

• Makkoli (was fabricated anyway)
• Roti Buns (a long time ago)
• Cupcakes (barely even happened)
• Koreanized pho
• Imported western casual dining (TGI Friday’s, Bennigan’s)

Trends they may be occurring in the future

• Nasi Goreng and other Indonesian and Malay dishes
• Cocktails
• Single dining options
• Brazilian

Trends that just won’t die:

• Overpriced pretentious upscale Korean restaurants
• Bad service
• Japchae Bread

Trends I wish would happen:

• Limes
• Pudding
• Pies

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Restaurant Consultants Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co. Inc. predict Korean food will be popular in 2011. Yes, they’ve predicted this every year since, I think, 2008. And they admit it’s been a tough call:

We’ve long been predicting Korean dishes as the next big cuisine, but they haven’t gained much traction outside of Korean neighborhoods – except in food trucks where they’ve been mashed together with Mexican tacos.  Kogi, the seminal Los Angeles food truck that launched a thousand wheels, features Latino tacos filled with Korean ingredients, now being copycatted profusely. This will lend legitimacy to Korean flavors, and bulgogi, bibimbap and kimchee will enter America’s gastronomic lexicon. In Philadelphia, the world-food restaurant Meritage has been serving Korean short rib tacos at the bar, and Wednesday nights this summer featured Korean fried chicken for two, so word is getting around.  Publicity surrounding the Momofuko chain also will give Korean a push.
[...]
Watch for American chefs on reconnaissance patrols to LA and New York Koreatowns.  And wait for a big breakout:  A “big deal” Korean restaurant that is marketed to non-Koreans.

Would that be the International Blue House of Pajeon?

How accurate do you think they are about this? If Korean food is not making it out of Koreatowns without a tortilla wrapper, why is that?

[HT to Chef C]

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It’s now legend how Suji Park almost singlehandedly started the brunch trend in Seoul a few years ago with her popular brunch spot Suji’s. She’s the reigning “Queen of Brunch.” And she’s not let me live it down that my team put her restaurant at 2nd place in 10 Magazines best brunch stops in Korea. I should note that since that listing, the #1 restaurant decided to not open on Sundays, which would have seriously brought down its ranking.

Sunday brunch? Never heard of the concept?

Suji is trying to make magic again by bringing New York deli style cured meats. She’s not the only one. Leo’s Deli has some pretty nice fixins too. (Just been informed they’re closed.) But Suji not only serves corned beef and pastrami in her restaurants. She’s selling her meats through Costco and has been opening a couple dedicated delis apart from her main restaurant.

She invited EJ and me to the original Suji’s to try them. Yes, it was a complimentary meal. I’m always upfront about that. But the free meal and my relationship to Ms. Park never guarantee a free ride here. In fact, I’m more likely to give constructive criticism when the meal is free.

Let’s start with the pastrami.

It’s hot, it’s big and the bread barely contains it, which is a prerequisite for a New York pastrami sandwich. It comes with only mustard as a condiment with a dill pickle slice, slaw and a killer potato salad. The meat is fall-apart tender, and it tastes like the real thing. She has a local operation cure her meats. This is way fun to eat. I always say the best food is the messiest food. Yet I think my sensitivity to salt has changed over the years. I found the pastrami a bit on the salty side. But when I went to New York last month, I found a lot of the food to be salty. EJ had the same comment, though, along with her favorite cop out, “I don’t know if this is good or not.”

I know it's three pastrami shots, but isn't that a gorgeous creature?

She says that when she tries a new food and doesn’t immediately like it. But she’s not a heavy meat eater, and you gotta admit that sandwich can be intimidating to someone who thinks of meat as a side dish.

Here’s the jewel. The Reuben. That and a fresh Italian sub are my two favorite foods in the world, so I’m a bit partial to this. Corned beef with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese (or a close cousin) and Russian dressing on toasted rye. Joshua “Wine Korea” Hall was with us, and we had all just eaten a whole entree each. But we ordered the Reuben for research purposes. After wolfing it down, we ordered another one. And the we considered ordering a third. Then it occurred to us that this meal was complimentary so that we could sample as many dishes as we could–not pig out on Reubens.

Obviously the Reuben was the hit at the table. All three of us have starkly different tastes, and we all loved it.

There were other great dishes we had, and we had some issues with some systematic flaws, particularly in the kitchen and behind the bar. But those are outside the scope of this post. It is my hope, though, that deli meats follow brunch as the next great imported trend in Seoul.

I really could go for a Reuben right now.

Go to Zenkimchi Dining for location and more details.

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I have seen this pop up in a few places this month, and the cafes are popular. In Japan, it’s called Mochi Ice Cream. Okay, in Korea, it’s called Mochi Ice Cream, too. But I figure if the Japanese can repackage Korean food with their names (did you know that they recently patented the word “Makkoli” so now Koreans can’t sell it under that name) I’m going to call this ChapSsal Ddeok Ice Cream, which is what it is.

And it’s as tasty as it is pretty. A very soft layer of chewy rice cake surrounds a noggin of ice cream. May be ice milk, actually. And it comes in a great assortment of flavors. EJ and I tried the apple pie and caramel macchiato flavors. We made noises and faces that would not be appropriate in a Victorian setting.

They’re around W2,000 a pop. A little pricey, but you really need just one. Or two. And they’re highly perishable. You have to eat them the same day.

Caramel Macchiato

Apple Pie

These little morsels were born in Japan by the Lotte Corporation–which is really owned by a Korean-Japanese family. So it’s sort of Korean, really. There’s a great cafe in the Japanese district of Ichon (Ichon Station, exit 4, cross the street and turn left). It’s the headquarters for what I think will become the next Roti Bun.

Anyone else try these? What’s a really good flavor?

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Korean taco trucks are no longer limited to America’s West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland. Now Atlanta, the largest U.S. Southeast city, has Yumbii. It’s one of the latest such roving restaurants to follow in the wake of intense popularity for Kogi, which has more than 67,000 listed followers on Twitter.

Yumbii chef Tomas Lee fuses Korean, Mexican and Southern cooking traditions onto a small plate. He is the former executive chef of Atlanta’s ritzy Buckhead Diner.

Lee calls Yumbii, “the result is the best damn meal you’ve had out of a food truck east of the Mississippi.” The menu includes Korean barbecue tacos and burritos as well as pulled pork sliders topped with cucumber kimchi.

Using an increasingly common marketing method for rolling restaurants, Yumbii updates Atlanta-area residents on the truck’s latest location via Twitter.

ZenKimchi would like to hear about your experiences with this newcomer to Korean fusion gourmet on the go.

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Paris Croissant (owned by SPC Group, a South Korean food specialty company) signed an agreement with Northern California based Jamba Juice to open 200 Jamba Juice stores in South Korea over the next 10 years. Jamba Juice plans to open their first South Korean store in 2010.

Jamba Juice’s specialty is “better-for-you food and beverages”, including fruit smoothies, juices, and teas. They also sell breakfast foods such as oatmeal. Jamba Juice currently have over 700 locations in over 30 states in the United States. This pales in comparison to SPC Group’s ownership of over 4,500 stores and franchises in South Korea, China and the USA with affiliates such as Paris Croissant, BR Korea (Baskin Robbins, Dunkin’ Donuts), Shany and Samlip General Foods.

Jamba Juice’s partnership with SPC Group’s Paris Croissant is Jamba Juice’s first foray into the international market. Jamba Juice is on Facebook. For more information about this agreement, check out Business Wire.

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Walk down any grocery store aisle in the United States and you will find a bounty of olive oils flavored with garlic, orange, lemon, chili pepper and rosemary. You may have one or two spending shelf time your pantry shelf right now. But you probably don’t have smoked olive oil hanging out there — yet.

Smoked olive oil is the newest flavored oil to hit the market. It’s produced by a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company called The Smoked Olive. The oil was featured on an episode of chef Emeril Lagasse’s Discovery Channel show Emeril Green. The oil has also received rave reviews from Sonoma County chef John Ash as well as Food Network chef and San Francisco Bay area resident Tyler Florence, who called it, “the sexiest new flavor I’ve tasted in years.”

It’s easy to understand why no one has tried to make it before. Olive oils are very sensitive to heat, light and oxidation. Al Hartman, the chef behind The Smoked Olive, developed a patent-pending technology to smoke the olive oil without damaging it. The last thing a chef wants to do is ruin a batch of top-shelf California extra virgin olive oil.

The Smoked Olive currently sells three different varieties of smoked olive oils, described this way on the company website:

1. Sonoma Olive Oil, which starts off bold and smoky and finishes with a subtle olive finish
2. Napa Olive Oil, which has a light smoke flavor that makes the olive oil flavor even more pronounced
3. Santa Fe Olive Oil, which includes a dose of chili with the smoke. The chili sneaks upon you gradually but the chili does not overwhelm or overtake the olive and smoke flavor.

If you are interested in trying some Smoked Olive Oil for yourself, they do ship in North America and internationally (including South Korea) as well.

We discovered the company at the St. Helena’s Farmers Market in St. Helena, Calif. while we were preparing some B-roll — background images — for our follow-up video interview with chef Hector Marroquin of Pupusa Griddle Catering as he served up his kimchi pupusa plates.

Production-wise, this was our first outdoor video session. The first on-location episode was “Innovations With Kimchi,” recorded in The Green Grocer, which is now closed.

Recording outdoors presents all sorts of problems not faced indoors. Wind can rumble in microphones and tousle hair. Differences in lighting between a person in the shade and a sunny background can mess up camera light settings, leaving the person too dark on camera. Sunlight can also make potentially unsightly lens flares without a substantial lens hood. Ambient noise can be loud and distracting, sometimes imperceptibly so until the recording is reviewed in a quiet location.

We controlled the wind noise with a basic foam windscreen for the handheld microphone, and the windscreen also lessens — but doesn’t prevent — popping in the microphones from spoken T’s and P’s. For really windy conditions, we have a special “hairy” foam windscreen for the lapel microphone.

For lighting, it’s best to use a very bright camera light or a reflector to counteract harsh facial shadows from direct sunlight. The best solution is to diffuse the sunlight falling on the on-camera subject then reflect light back on the subject to fill in shadows. However, that requires several people.

We have just me on camera and Jeff behind the camera. To hold the reflector, he had to set frame the shot on the camera, start recording and then hold the reflector. The shot composition couldn’t be adjusted until the end of the segment. The head-to-waist composition of this video did work for most of the shots, because the booth could be seen as actively attracting customers.

The reflector we use is a Lastolite collapsible one, with silver on one side and alternating stripes of silver and gold on the other. The manufacturer said that pure gold would make the image too yellow, and the wisdom of that design was evident on this video. Probably, we should have used the silver side to provide whiter light to blend with the rest of the image.

The background music came from Jamendo again. This time we used a song called Coming Home by Kendra Springer.  At the time I discovered this song, Springer’s album, Hope, was number one listened to album that week with over 18,000 downloads since it was posted on November 19, 2009.

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