Eating Korean

Set-up in many Korean restaurants is a do-it-yourself matter. Locals look for a box or drawer in the table and begin to lay out the necessities: metal chopsticks and long-handled soup spoons and napkins that more closely resemble U.S. facial tissues. There are also scissors to snip food into bite-sized chunks, which is helpful in chopstick land. Then they grab the jug of water and fill glasses. The table itself may have chairs or may be a low one where diners sit on cushions on a heated floor. For traditional dining, you choose your protein source, which arrives with a seemingly endless supply of side dishes. Seriously, these spreads can make Thanksgiving look like a light snack, and emptied dishes are promptly replaced. It’s a bit of a nightmare for someone like me who doesn’t like overeating or wasting food. (One of the conference speakers, a dancer, arrived early and went to a Korean restaurant on his own. He stayed there for hours trying to clean his plate before giving up in dismay!) I asked a Korean professor about the waste. She said that the government had tried to address it by mandating charges for every item brought to the table—fifty cents for kimchi, for example—but the people rebelled. I also asked what a typical dinner in a Korean home might comprise. The minimum requirements are soup, protein dish, rice, and the national staple, kimchi. Dessert is another soup or fruit or both. These days Koreans are importing pineapple because they think it helps digest meat. Koreans are thoughtful eaters, but which I mean that they are concerned about their health and diet and carefully teach their children which foods to eat and in what combination. In the photos, notice the sashimi with goldleaf, the unusual presentation of kimchi (red inside green), and the kebob appetizers at the Indian restaurant. (The array in the second photo is lunch for six people!) Who’s hungry?!