FatManSeoul

It was Fatman’s recent pleasure to join esteemed professor Charles Montgomery of Korean Modern Literature in Translation and his lovely wife Yvonne to try out a bowl of buckwheat at 메밀꽃필무렵 (maemilggotpilmuryeop), a restaurant specializing in buckwheat cuisine.
Why, pray tell, is Fatman dragging a literature professor along for the eating?  The name of the restaurant is taken from one of the most famous lines of modern Korean literature  and an astoundingly difficult story to translate, The Buckwheat Season.   It’s one of the stories that seems to make it into just about every book of translated stories, but can also be a bit hard to love if you’re not nostalgic for a particular Korean past.  Prof. Montgomery shares the particular vexations of trying to deal with this work on his write-up of our expedition. Go read all about it (and the story) here~!

But now, on to the food! Read the rest of this entry »

Adding to the growing list of organic restaurants in Seoul, Mananim stands out for its singular devotion to the homemade. Now, lots of places out there feature homemade food – but how many of them make their own cheese, soy sauce, and vinegar? That’s right, everything is handmade by the owner, down to the vinegar and soy sauce used to season the dishes. At this point, Fatman wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the owner hand-raked the salt. Read the rest of this entry »

Fatman was recently browsing the interwebs, and realized there is some confusion brewing over the vast sea of dishes covered by the term 비빔밥.  Now, the idea of bibimbap itself is pretty straightforward:  It’s rice, mixed with . . . well, something else.  But with so many regional and local kinds of bibimbap, it’s sometimes hard to know your 전주 from your 진주.  So, Fatman humbly offers the following fieldguide for bibimbap identification:

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For once, a competition Fatman can enjoy without being picked last in gym class!

Sure, the Korean team may have been knocked out of the World Cup, but you can always enjoy a cup of makgeolli in consolation.  Or, take a more celebratory tone by turning your attention to the Makgeolli World Cup ~ this clever cafe on Naver has matched different makgeolli with different countries for a showdown that leaves everyone a winner.  Check out the current rankings here, and try some at home for your own special world cup experience!    Or, head down to your local makgeolli bar (Fatman recommends 친친 in 홍대) to cheer along.

Draft 막걸리?!?
This is one innovation Fatman is kind of psyched about (한/영린크):

Baesangmyun Brewery, the maker of one of the leading brands of makgeolli, said that it has opened a micro-brewery in southern Seoul around its head office where visitors can buy and take out fresh makgeolli.

The Seoul-based outfit plants to establish around 10 more miniature breweries at the capital by the end of 2010 where the takeout makgeolli will go on sale just like the Starbucks outlets.

Ok, the comparison to Starbucks is not quite the right one.  After all, you’re probably not allowed to imbibe a cup o’ makgeolli on your way to work in the morning.  But it is both new and delightfully old fashioned at the same time, and Fatman is kind of enamoured of Baesangmyeon‘s idea.

You see, kiddies, way back when Fatman was merely a Fatchild ( . . .ok, maybe before we were even a Fatglimmerinourmother’seye) makgeolli was not a drink you got out of a plastic bottle.  It was made fresh and delightful, either at home in an ardous process, or by a local brewer with local ingredients, giving it its own sense of terroire.   Essentially, makgeolli was all micro-brew made in a process Michael Pollan would adore, a locavore‘s dream.  The Japanese colonial administration and later Korean administrations passed laws and regulations that significantly hampered the production of high-quality local makgeollis, and the drink is just now recovering its rightful status.

And part of that status depends on it being consumed fresh.  Really, really fresh, in comparison to most alcoholic drinks.  It’s not like a wine that benefits from aging; the sooner you get it after it’s brewed, the better.  That’s why they have expiration dates printed on them ~ makgeolli goes bad quite quickly.  Assuming all other things are equal, a fresh draft makgeolli is going to taste better than one that’s been in a bottle on the supermarket shelf for a while.   We have to say, this seems like a pretty darned good idea.

So, anybody up for a trip to check this out?

The spring may have fled already and the lethargic heat of summer settled on the city like a big, sopping, wet, super-heated blanket, but that’s no reason to stop stoking our internal furnaces.  It’s time to fight fire with fire, and there’s no better way to do that than with a spicy, boiling bowl of soft tofu soup.

Following Fatman’s rules of good Korean restaurants to a T, this place does one thing and does it exceptionally well: 순두부. Read the rest of this entry »

For all those of you who couldn’t make it to the event itself, the Korean subtitled version of Zen Kimchi founder Joe McPherson’s TEDxSeoul talk, “How should the Korean government promote Korean food” about ideas for successfully globalizing Korean food is now up. Enjoy, and congrats Joe!

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Deep tipping of the fat hat to Gusts of Popular Feeling, who found this Korea Times article on the effects of the World Cup on sales of makgeolli vs. beer, and how they think it’ll play out . . . shockingly, the beer companies maintain that beer is not only the most FIFA appropriate choice, but will definitely withstand makgeolli’s assault.  Makgeolli-making companies throw their market-growth statistics in beer’s face, and maintain that they’re the patriotic way to booze your way into sports oblivion.

Boys and girls, there’s no need to fight, and Fatman is fairly sure there’s enough love of the liquor in Korea to keep both drinks around.  Of course, beer manufacturers should note that their domestic products have only slightly more flavor than what comes out our taps, and makgeolli has blossomed in part because of a real increase in quality over the past few decades.

So, ladies, gentlemen, and football hooligans:  What are you quaffing when the game is on?

If you’re reading this blog, Fatman assumes you like Korean food.  And, if you like Korean food, you probably want to see all the other cool kids eating it, regardless of location.  So, having already discussed the government’s recent ham-handed efforts to promote Korean foods abroad, along with private enterprises like CJ Food‘s “close, but no cigar” work with Bibigo, Fatman wants to ask:

What foods do you think have the most potential to become popular outside Korea?  How would you bring it about?  If you were an investor, in charge of bringing something to an outside audience,  what tasty dish would you be putting your money on?

Fat hat tip to reader Jaim, who apparently is triangulating efforts on samgak gimbap.