sisterfood

Growing up in Michigan, I never encountered Korean food.  It wasn’t until I moved to California and met my friend Elaine, a first generation American Korean, that I was introduced to kimchee (spicy fermented cabbage), banchan (the assorted side dishes that come before every Korean meal), toasted nori (tasty seaweed strips that are flavored with sesame oil and salt and used to pick up rice), and donuts filled with sweet red bean paste.  I immediately had an affinity for it.  I love spicy foods and the flavors found in Korean cuisine–the sesame oil, the heat from chilies, and the tang from pickling–found a happy home with me.

My absolute favorite dish is bibimbap.  It consists of a bowl of rice covered with assorted vegetables, a fried egg, spicy chili paste called gochujang, and usually beef (though not for my vegetarian self).  In a cuisine where meat appears in most dishes, bibimbap is a vegetarian’s safe haven. Its mix of vegetables is always exciting and often includes mushrooms, zucchini or cucumber, soybean sprouts, daikon, spinach, some mysterious root-like vegetables, and a sprinkling of nori–which are artfully arranged atop the rice. When presented in its most thrilling variation it comes to your table in a sizzling stone pot atop a wooden platter with a large spoon.  The gochujang is added to  your taste and then the large spoon is used to mix everything together, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot so the crispy rice on the edges gets mixed in.  When completely and thoroughly mixed, it is a steaming spicy version of fried rice that will singe your mouth with it’s heat and fill your belly with its goodness.

On Saturday night, I had the pleasure of accompanying Elaine and some other friends to Genwa, a relatively new Korean BBQ restaurant west of Koreatown.  Two of our Korean friends refused to go saying that Genwa is too gentrified, they were not interested in its non-authentic Korean food.  Elaine laughed it off and assured us that Genwa is good, just a bit nicer and more upscale than most of the places in Koreatown. At 7:30 on a Saturday night we walked into an empty restaurant.  I figured it was because the location–a strip mall on Wilshire–is a little odd for a restaurant.  It had a very pleasant atmosphere and we all sat down and ordered a ridiculous amount of food.  The banchan was a nice assortment of long green peppers with a mildy spicy bean paste, kimchee, pickled daikon, spicy pickled cucumbers, some little anchovies, a potato salad, nori strips, and pumpkin pudding for everyone.  Then we had a gigantic salad and the main courses started rolling out.  My bibimbap arrived last and was absolutely gorgeous.  Though the sauce was not nearly as spicy as I’ve had anywhere else, the flavor was quite nice and the vegetables aplenty.  I ate maybe half of it and was too full to try the kimchee vegetable dumplings that arrived late in the meal.