October 9Not an early start, but not too late. After the morning ritual of gossiping about family and friends, downloading photos, and waking up Serena, we headed out for budae chigae.
We went to Song Tan Budae Chigae, in Shinsadong just next to Apujung – the Rodea Drive of Seoul. This is Jason’s favourite budae chigae place. If you’re doing lunch in Korea, try to get to your restaurant before noon. It’ll be fairly empty. Come 5 minutes after, you’ll have to scramble for a table anywhere. As he says, “if I was going to open a restaurant, I’d do it in Seoul. Everyone eats out for lunch.” And probably 50% of the people go out for dinner on any given night.
The budea chigae comes in a covered dish, all steam and condensation, but you can still discern the two slices of processed cheese and the canned cocktail weenies in the mix (for some reason we didn’t choose to put Spam in, I don’t understand why not).
For drinking, my attention was riveted on the odd, peach coloured bottle they were advertising on their signboard. Jason told me this was a “lighter” version of soju, more like a wine, really, fruit based, sweeter, and only around 14% alcohol.
Well, I had to have some, didn’t I?
Jason gave the bottom of the bottle a good spanking (to mix it up) and then poured out the cups.
It’s a good taste. Not the paint stripping flavour of soju, but rather a sweet (but not cloying) wash of fruit juice. Probably closer to a dessert wine than anything else.
I would probably draw glances askance if I swigged it from the bottle, but, then again, this is Korea. But it looks pretty in those little thimble cups, so I wasn’t too badly tempted.
After we’d eaten down the hot dogs a bit, we ask for some ramyun for the stew. This came in the form of two Shin Ramyun packages. No need for false formalities here. We broke open the foil wraps, and dropped the two wafers of noodle into the broth. This drew up most of the fluid, so the ajimas (older ladies) working there poured in more broth, which is dispensed from a big aluminum kettle, the kind we use at home for making boricha (barley tea).
There’s a question. I’ve been used to using the terms ajima and agashi – for older and younger women, respectively (and respectably). Now that I’ve progressed into the frostier years of my life, should I be referring to women that are younger than I as “auntie”? (The answer, in part, is to refer to them as “imo” – auntie – nowadays).
I asked Jason about the broth, as to its base.
“Is this bonito, or chicken, or vegetable?”
“I think it’s pure MSG.”
The chigae was quite good, the broth (even refreshed) thick with starch, and the deep, bright red that the Koreans accomplish so effortlessly in their food (and I can only get as close to a bad breakout of acne).
I hadn’t talked of the panchan (side dishes). Crisp, marinated bean sprouts. Big cubes of daikon (mu) kimchi, fish balls (red with chili, of course) and water kimchi (mulkimchi) which Yoonhi took over as her own provenance (it went quick).
And purple rice. This is meant to be healthier for you, and was all the rage a few years ago. It’s good to see it’s lasted through the fad stage (I’ll talk about Korean food fads later).
We wrapped up the rice, and could feel the hovering presence of people that wanted our table. You don’t linger over your food here. In one of the pamphlets I collected I read the same concern from the ambassador of Switzerland, H.E. Christian Hauswirth: “Why do Koreans spend very little time at the table, when the rich settings with all the side dishes and specialties are made as real festive meals?”
Just busy, I guess.
After lunch we packed back into the car, and headed across the river.
We were just getting onto Itaewon (the “foreign enclave” of Seoul, adjacent to Yongsan, the US base) when, as will naturally happen in Korea, we found a relative.
“Isn’t our nephew’s museum around here?”
Well, it’s not really his museum, but he’s the assistant curator. The museum belongs to Samsung, or rather to Mr. Lee and his family – hence the name Leeum – The Samsung Museum of Art. The name comes from the popular Korean habit of combining terms to come up with new not-quite-Anglo terms. An example is music video becomes mu+vi for muvi. In this case it’s Lee+/muse/um=Leeum..
It’s a stunning collection of buildings - fronted by the War of the Worlds’ Spiders - built by three architects over a period of close to a decade. It had begun back in the mid-90’s, but the IMF shut things down for a few years. Then, with prosperity back in hand (you don’t keep the Koreans down for long….well, unless you’re Japanese, but I won’t get into that) they had returned to the work, inaugurating the three museums in 2004.
You start on the fourth floor of the first building, with a collection of some of the finest pieces of celadon to be had, tracing the evolution of the art from the early motifs through to the beautiful elaboration of the Koryo period, and then the degradation after the 13th Century, which in turn gave rise to the Buncheong {“blue-green”) style of the Joseun dynasty.
It’s very stylized, with certain motifs - such as the diving crane and the angling fish - running through the centuries. And it’s very pretty. There’s something about that oft-copied green glaze over the craclature of the pottery that you can’t help but admire.
But, what’s a “prunus vase”?
There was one little oil bottle, in particular, that grabbed my attention, with a detailed pattern of branches and leaves that was stunning. However, even though we’d done a marathon viewing of Oceans 11, 12, and 13 just the week before, I kept my kleptomaniacal urges at bay.
To descend, you drop down the rotunda stairway, reminiscent of a mini-Guggenheim. The architect has funneled the stairwell, expanding the top and contracting the base to give the parallax impression of greater depth. It’s one of those Escher like things where you want to tilt your body to match the canted walls.
They do advise to “please let your children not to run on stairways”. At least not unless your child is Rod Serling.
The third floor houses more and varied pottery, and on the second floor they hold the paintings. I really like Korean paintings. They’ve generally got a lot more life to them than the Japanese and Chinese works of the same periods, spending more time on people and their activities. And, in Korea, “activities” is going to involve drinking, eating, and playing games. And drinking.
And when you get to the ground floor, it’s a Buddhist finish, with some very good examples of the metal work the Koreans are famous for.
Museum 3 was closed, in the midst of renovations, but Museum 2, which housed the contemporary arts display was up and running, so we took in the more modern Korean works. These included a number of very striking pieces, while there were enough others that gave me material to string together some stories to keep Serena amused (“And this is the man eating cow on a rampage….”).
There was one – I Must Learn English - a collection of woodblock “tiles” each juxtaposed with adjectives and nouns in English. With this went a background audio track of conversational English lessons. Jason was pretty certain he recognized the people who were doing the voices from some of his work.
That was on the second floor. On the first they had a Warhol, and exhibits of Damian Hearst and Andreas Gursky’s 99 cents.
We sat with the family in the coffee shop, giving Serena the chance to stock up on Black Forest cake and Yoonhi to get in an unwise cappuccino (Yoonhi should not drink caffeine after lunch).
The collection comprises some 20,000 pieces (there’s another museum an hour away near Everland, the Hoan (?) Museum. They generally have around 200 pieces on display at any time, rotating 3% each year (but the painting move four times a year, due to concerns over their maintenance).
The primary material is the collection of celadon on the fourth flour of the first building. According to my nephew (I can actually trace the family lines on this fairly easily, but you have to know that it’s a large net you cast when you fish for family relationships in Korea), the pieces on display on that floor would cover the cost of the buildings (which came to around $300 million – Hey! I don’t have to differentiate between US and Canadian anymore! Cool!).
Up until spring of this year, the museum was by appointment only. In part, they didn’t want the neighborhood (mainly residential) to be too disrupted by too many people, and they also had a long list of people who wanted to the chance to see it first.
From one museum we moved to another, closer and dearer to my heart. The Kimchi Museum. This’d take ages to go through in detail, but the brief is that you get the historical background on kimchi (chilies were fairly recent – the primary theory is that the Japanese brought them during the 1592 invasion, and that the Japanese had them through their trade with the Portugese); the function side of how to make kimchi (with lots of dioramas); and the chemical side, with explanations on what is going on in the ferment, and how all of this is good for you.
Note from the disturbing model in the photo above (c’mon, it does look kinda ghoulish): in Korea, kitchen gloves come in red. They figured that they were just going to end up that way anyways, so you might as well go with fate.
Most important, you get to see a lot of different types of kimchi. My favourite for sheer beauty is the pomegranite kimchi. No pomegranates were harmed in the making of this, they just cut and pack the pickle so that the shape looks like a pomegranite (or a pod from Alien).
This was fun with Yoonhi there, as she can remember her mother making all of these. There was one long soliloquy of “I remember this” and “this was so much work”.
Years back I’d scoured the area below the Tower looking for this museum, but had no luck. It had moved at that time, coming to rest in the Coex Mall, a huge thing of a mall that encompassed several wings, movie theatres, hotels, and an aquarium. Obviously, Serena was going to have to go to the aquarium.
First, though, the troops needed some sustenance. We made our way to the bottom of the Hyundae Department Store and picked up some ddok for Yoonhi and Serena. Everyone is giving advice on how to cook it, and we can’t quite get it across that Serena is just going to chow down on them as is.
Rice gets worked into an amazing variety of tidbits here, with package after package of sweets on display.
Then the girls headed off for the undersea world, and Jason and I wandered through the food floor, checking out the produce.
The melons ranged in size from the recognizable big greens and cantaloupes to beautiful little tiger striped things. And there were piles and piles of green onions, sesame leaves, lettuce, and cabbages.
The mushrooms I really wanted to shoot, but I was waved down after initially brandishing my camera and told that photos weren’t allowed in here. I contented myself with tastings.
As a note, if you’re down on your luck and starving, get to a Korean grocery store. Every two or three feet you’ll have someone pressing a food sample on you. Mushrooms, fish, sausages, meat, it’ll be just a toothpick away.
The beef is the crowning glory. The Korean beef (Han-u) is a thing of beauty. Like all such things, it’s not cheap – running around $115 a kg for the stuff we were looking at. This was 5 Star beef, stunningly marbled with the white distributed evenly throughout the meat. I have to find some place where I can get this as yukke (the Korean tartare).
Jason and I, after a brief lustful glaring at the beer selection (more later) bought a couple of bottles of aloe vera drink (spank that bottom) and headed out into the mall to catch up to the girls.
The mall was what you’d expect of a mall. There was a huge Hello Kitty (Sanrio) Store, and there was a Totoro shop right across (specializing in anime knick knacks). Lots of clothing shops, and lots and lots of restaurants. Jacky Chan has one of his in here, with Jacky’s likeable face plastered everywhere.
We got the run down on the omu rice fad that swept through a couple of years ago. Omelet and rice, but one place (Omuto, I think) came up with “fusion omu rice” and rose to fame with 30 different variations. Of course, once someone gets popular with an idea here, the “vultures’ move in, and set up shop right next door with their imitations. The idea is that they can hopefully either waylay people before they get to the original, or else get the leftovers when the famous place fills up.
It’s a neat little characteristic here, as this has, over the decades, led to “streets” of certain types of foods, and neighborhoods that become famous for their particular style as the work of one person is almost immediately replicated…..sort of like amoeba.
And, according to Jason, who would know, Kraze Burger is the current reigning king of the burger wars in Korea, playing on the “organic” and “healthy” card.
The mall also hosts one of the arenas for the world video game championships. I wonder if Scud could get a scholarship for this sort of sport?......
For dinner, having done pork in two of its manifestations (sam gyep sal and budae chigae) we opted for beef, dropping in at Tae Do Sik Tang. This was excellent (although not the $115 a kg stuff), and took us through grilling and eating with sum (leafy wraps) through to the bokkum bap stage at the end.
For the beef, you start off with a big hunk of fat to get the pan ready. I love this place.
Scissors are definitely part of any table setting in Korea, and nobody’s going to whinge about being intimidated by them (I did have to suppress an urge to grab them, though, and go running).
The meat is well marinated, but not sweetly so like bulgoki. This is also a reasonably thick cut for Asia.
Jason took care of the cooking, setting to the cutting and flipping with a certain level of glee.
The beef went down with Prime Max beer – “delicious idea”, and a cheerfully tubby little bottle of San Sa Chan – another fruit based wine at about 12% - “Korean rice wine for the next generation” it says, but we’ll drink it now ourselves anyways.
The bokkum bap saw the remnants covered up so the flavours could coalesce.
We’d peek a few times to see how it was going.
And when judged ready, the rice went in, and the mixing started.
And then things are finished with a flattening off of the top.
After dinner, in Korean tradition, we drank until 3 a.m. at Big Rock, with traditional ale, Warthog, and McNalley’s. The Canadian presence really does come through in town, with a lot of Maple Leaves showing up around the place. Of course, that could just be a bias on our part, as our family members and the people we know are going to have the Canuck Connection (Vancouver’s population swells each summer with the volume of home stay students that come over for English immersion).
When you drink in Korea, you’re expected to order a food platter of some sort. It’s just not right to drink without eating something…..and the platter is where they make their money. So they were somewhat concerned that we’d just settled into beers with a vague promise of getting a platter “later”.
However, once we’d ordered the second 4 litre tank of beer, they just brought a plate of mussels around for free. Another aspect of Korean bars is, if they recognize you, or just like you, they’ll send around free stuff. This confused us at first, with bottles of Sprite and Coke showing up at dinner, and us trying to figure out where they came from.
Around 2 something things seemed to be slowing down, and we suggested maybe it could be a good time to slip away. We clawed the girl away from the fussball table, and called it a night.
Or is that a “morning”?
(note: edited because I'm not bright enough to check the Hangul before I write down restaurant names)
Edited by Peter Green, 12 October 2007 - 02:10 AM.
