Just add kimchi

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This was published 12 years ago

Just add kimchi

Seoul food ... mixing kimchi.

Seoul food ... mixing kimchi.Credit: iStock

In a whirlwind introduction to Seoul food, Stephen Phelan is warmed by barbecues and the chilli-fuelled national dish.

The first thing to see in Seoul is Nanta. The Korean equivalent of a Broadway musical, this show has been filling theatres in the city since 1997, becoming a top tourist attraction and a major cultural export. It was, in fact, a brief hit off-Broadway a few years ago. The name means "random beats" and the music is adapted from a traditional form of folk drumming known as samil-nori. But the English subtitle is Cookin', because all of its percussion comes from kitchen utensils banged, chopped and shaken.

Playing overworked chefs in a busy restaurant, the performers introduce us to the local sense of humour, which proves to be pretty broad as bums are slapped, cabbages are thrown and brooms are suggestively mishandled. They also make a strong case for the appeal of the native cuisine. Even at a distance of eight or nine rows, I can smell the fresh produce being tossed about on stage. By the final curtain call I'm hungry enough to dive face-first into the bin of kimchi they've been using as a kettledrum. By the end of one weekend in Seoul, I will have eaten at least as much of the stuff.

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A side dish, garnish, or main ingredient of almost every meal here, kimchi is one of the few Korean dishes that has spread around the world and serves as a primer for Seoul food in general - too spicy to ever get boring and with too many variations on its base of fermented vegetables and seasonings to ever become entirely familiar.

After the show, at a restaurant named Mil Jip Mo Ja Wa Jang Dok Dae - fun to say but difficult to remember - I tuck in to a chilli and kimchi pancake, or "jeon", served with a dipping sauce of soy, vinegar and red-pepper powder. The common factor in all Korean cooking is the taste of fire - and the flames that engulf my mouth on Friday night will not be put out until I leave on Monday morning.

Beer does not really help, especially as the big three domestic labels - Cass, Hite and OB - are barely drinkable, in my view. But they don't hurt much either and add something to the shared pleasure of the meal. Korean custom dictates that each dish and bottle is distributed around the table, so everybody gets a taste and nobody fills their own glass.

Crossing town to the busy nocturnal Hongdae district with my local guide, Jeff, and several of his friends, I'm told there is no eating without drinking in Seoul and vice versa. Even a bar named Beer Bank offers a long list of snacks, or anju, and my companions immediately begin ordering plates of meat in assorted hot marinades.

Perhaps licensed premises in Korea can't serve alcohol unless accompanied with food? "I don't know about that," says Jeff, who has lived in this city all his life. "This is just what we do. Koreans love to eat and drink." Social life in Seoul appears to be founded on this principle and it quickly comes to feel like the most convivial metropolis on Earth.

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Stopping off at a convenience store well after midnight on the short walk home from the subway to my guesthouse in Jongno, I decide to try a shot of soju, the national spirit, by way of a nightcap. The young clerk sells me a small green bottle of the stuff for a little more than 1000 won ($1) and suggests a bag of dried squid to go with it. I don't like the look of this but he's insistent and gives it to me for free.

I sit down with these dubious treats on a plastic chair outside, enjoying the red and gold of the leaves under the street lights and the strange quiet here in the historical centre of the city; it's much noisier around the margins. But it's also a city of many universities and I'm soon joined by a group of drunken students, looking to practise their English. They bring their own bottle and show me how to soften the squid by holding a cigarette lighter to its tentacles.

"When the legs move, you can eat," one of them explains. Blackened and curled and sufficiently tenderised, the squid still tastes horrible but then so does the soju, a cheap distilled synthesis of rice, potatoes, sugars and who knows what else. Again, though, I am left with the impression that Seoul is a fine place for such warm encounters.

Next morning, I learn that coffee is one expensive delicacy in South Korea. Home to some of the world's leading technology corporations and rising up the ranks of the most powerful economies, the capital has been colonised by global brands and ever-posher shops in the past decade. Meeting Jeff at a high-end book cafe named Between Pages in the fashionable Ssamziegil shopping complex, he tells me that even paper cups from Starbucks are now brandished as status symbols by the middle class.

We go for tea instead. Min's Club is an original 1930s hanok, tastefully converted from a private residence into a restaurant and tea house and angled to let in more sunlight than is usually allowed by Korean architecture. A pot of Chinese date tea at a window table actually delivers on the menu's windy promise to "relieve your strain and increase your memory" and some of last night's details start coming back to me.

I'm hungry again but the prices at Min's Club are a little inflated for tourists and wealthier locals, so we duck around the corner to the well-known gourmet avenues of Insadong for bulgogi and bibimbap - two more Korean dishes that are fun when repeated aloud.

The first of these translates faithfully as "fire meat", consisting of beef, chicken or pork cooked over a flame. The second means "mixed meal", a stir-fried pile of sliced meat and sauteed vegetables with chilli-pepper paste. My only complaint is the muzak played in every bar and restaurant I've visited - woeful quasi-classical piano dirges or high-pitched, so-called K-pop songs that could qualify as sonic weapons. Jeff suggests we address the problem by singing our favourites at one of the many noraebang, or "song rooms" in the Sinchon district. Similar to Japanese karaoke, the Korean version inevitably allows for more food and drink.

So we spend the afternoon at a song room named Wow with a bottle of makgeolli - white, fermented rice wine - and an assortment of spicy anju. Jeff introduces me to popular Korean love songs with titles such as Goodbye and Crooked Heart while I combat these melancholy "classics" with upbeat numbers such as Under the Sea, from The Little Mermaid.

At dinner time he recommends a nearby barbecue restaurant called New Mapogalmaegi, which is actually quite old and packed every night of the week. Each table is equipped with its own grill attached to a thick black chimney-pipe that ascends into the ceiling through a thick, sizzling mist of suspended fat droplets.

As in most restaurants in Seoul, I would be a bit lost here without a translator. Jeff says the menu and specials board offer infinite arrangements of beef, pork, lamb and chicken for diners to grill to their liking. But the corresponding pictures on the wall show indistinguishable platters of raw meat in reddish marinades, with captions of Korean script. In the absence of a guide, a newcomer might have to point and hope for the best, although it's also probably fair to say that you cannot go too far wrong with a barbecue, particularly in a country that is globally renowned for its "galbi" grilling methods.

Generally speaking, South Korea is known for galbi and for its long and rending separation from North Korea. As a destination, Seoul has been somehow overshadowed by other Asian capitals, despite being louder than Beijing, almost as vast as Tokyo and offering better, hotter food than Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City or Phnom Penh.

The hottest dish of all, of course, is buldak, or "fire chicken", and my host considers it remiss to visit without trying it. At a high-rise "hof" bar called Aska, overlooking the blazing night lights of Sinchon, we order a plate of this ferocious speciality to remove the taste of our "soju-bombs" - a shot glass of soju dropped into a larger glass of that woeful local beer.

The meat comes in livid-looking pieces and each mouthful is like biting a chunk out of the sun. When I am old and forget every other meal I've eaten, I will remember the fire chicken in Seoul and the tears that streamed down my face. Tears of pain, certainly, but also of joy.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Korean Airlines has a fare to Seoul from Sydney for about $1490 non-stop (10hr 35min) and from Melbourne for about $1470 non-stop (about 11hr). Fares are low-season return including tax.

A performance of Nanta can be seen in the Unesco Building 3F, 50-14, Myeong Dong 2 Ga, Jung-gu. Tickets from 50,000 won ($43). See nanta.i-pmc.co.kr/en/index.asp.

Eating there

Mil Jip Mo Ja Wa Jang Dok Dae is known for its savoury pancakes and distinguished by the odd assortment of hats hanging from the rafters. On the third floor, 182-5 Heukseok-dong, Dongjak-gu.

Beer Bank is one of many lively cellars in Seoul's main student district, where premium European beers are often cheaper than lesser American imports, though both are superior to the local stuff. At B1, 361-17 Seokyo-dong, Mapo-gu, Hongdae.

Between Pages is a pricey but pleasant literary cafe at the Ssamziegil shopping complex, Gwanhun-dong, 38 Jongno-gu.

Min's Club teahouse and restaurant is a great place to relax in a masterfully restored hanok building, though not for long if you're on a budget. At 66-7 Gyeongun-dong, Jongno-gu.

Wow Noraebang is a cheap and cheerful karaoke room at BF1, Seodaemun-gu, Changcheon-dong 57-8.

New Mapogalmaegi is one of many world-class barbecue restaurants in Seoul and so popular with the locals you know you should join the queue for a table. At Yeoksamdong 810, Hongdae; see mapo92.com.

Aska Hof ("hof" is the Korean version of a pub, in which light meals and snacks are always served) allows you to sit and drink all night on zebra-print sofas, with a great view over night-time Seoul. At 5F, Sinchon Entertainment Centre, Seodaemun-gu, Changcheon-dong 32-4.

Staying there

Yoo's Home Guesthouse has three simple rooms with heated floors in a beautiful hanok-style building, conveniently located in the Jongo district, near most of Seoul's top historical attractions. Rooms from 30,000 won. At 87-1 Unni-dong, Jongno-gu; see yoos-home.blogspot.com.

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