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The director of our school, Mr. Kang, took us to lunch the other day to his favorite restaurant, promising us that we'd go some other day to our suggestion of the Green World, our beloved vegetarian restaurant a 20-minute walk from our school and apartment. We slipped off our shoes and got comfy on our square flat pillows on the warm floor. The restaurant smell was sickly and fish-like and all-too familiar. Within seconds, the dishes started coming. I realized that this was one of those one-item-menu restaurants I'd heard about. Dozens of little plates were filled with all sorts of shapes covered in, of course, the red pepper paste. I was relieved when they also placed in front of me a stone bowl of steaming rice. I contented myself to rice and to a few of the dishes (including a lovely tofu soup) that I knew were vegetables and not too spicy or stinky. I could immediately feel that Scott was in a mood for experimenting (feeling obliged because of our director, knowing that I wouldn't do much but the rice, and loving the challenge of new foods), and so I watched him with curiousity while I blew on my rice. He tried each dish in turn (after Mr. Kang explained their contents), starting with the squid--slimy and small and covered in the paste. "Not bad," Scott said. And then the giant dried, salted fish with head and tail and eyes intact. ("Very expensive, historically and ritually important fish," Mr. Kang told us. When they could only transport salted fish back in the day, this was an important food item for the Korean people.) And then some other fish. And then another. The only thing he wouldn't go for was the crab legs, which you must munch on and suck out the meat--a difficult thing to do, which Scott had tried unsuccessfully the first week we were here. (That, and we've watched with dread, disgust, and curiousity hundreds of crabs here in big tanks, piled on each other and watching us with--what we believed were desparate--nervous eyes.) I ogled and asked questions, demading a full report of everything. I did smell one of the dishes, and when old, tired, dead Utah Lake shores bit my tastebuds, I pushed the dish away. It's all upbringing, I guess. These smells and tastes here are dead, rotted fish littering Utah Lake's shallow shores. For Mr. Kang and others, their strong savor is marked with ma's cooking and the survival of their people. Kimchi the same. I've never before seen a food reverenced like kimchi in Korea. It isn't a meal without it. There are endless varieties (which they can name), and hushed tones are used to note when this particular kimchi was made by so-and-so using their very own special recipe. Huh, I thought to myself, nodding. I had guessed fermentation was fermentation, but again, that just shows my cultural ignorance about kimchi--and about any other good brews, i suppose. Brewed Just Right, ck [2002-12-10]
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