Monday, March 30, 2015
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Saturday, March 28, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Tracey's Top Ten, er, Top Five Things He Likes About Korea
Originally published in The Groove, January 2008
A Stark View
By Tracey Stark
My wife complains that I have nothing good to say about Korea. After five years, she says, I should be able to look around and see things I really like about this country. So for this month, if you will indulge me, I am going to come up with things I really am happy with. (This list will NOT include any of the following: spitting, littering, noisy eating, criminally-insane bus drivers, Saturday traffic jams, motorbikes on the sidewalks, the smell of garlic and soju on the subways and public smoking.)
Typically, a “Best of” list contains 10 items. Since I am constrained by both space and the number of things I am actually pleased with here, I am only going to get to five. So, here we go…
1. If you have ever had a conversation similar to the following before, you will know the sinking feeling I had at the beginning and the complete elation I felt by the time the call was over:
“Yoboseyo?”
“Yes, hi. I left my cell phone in your taxi. Can I get it back, please?”
“Yoboseyo?”
“Yes, hello. My hand-u-pone in your tak-shi. Please, I get it back, juseyo?”
“Yoboseyo?”
I don’t speak Korean, so I passed the phone to a Korean friend and let him take care of it. In the end, the taxi driver was willing to drive back to where I was (for a small fee) and return the phone that I had so carelessly left on the seat.
This is not a one-off occurrence. In fact, I have left my phone in taxis five times in five years. I have gotten my phone back four times. It isn’t just phones that I have lost and re-found. I frequently forget to take my pool cue home with me when I leave a bar as well as books, keys, clothing, umbrellas, unpaid bar tabs, my wallet and even my wife. Overall, the odds are 10 to 1 that I get my stuff back (the odds are slightly higher for my wife). Those are much better odds than anywhere I’ve lived in the States.
2. Speaking of taxis, I love the fact that you can catch a cab at any hour and pay a fraction of what it costs in, say, Washington, D.C. or Tokyo. Sure, the doors on the cabs here don’t open automatically for you like in Japan, but I don’t think it’s worth paying a 50 percent premium.
3. Safety. Yes, aside from the fact that motorcycles tear up and down the sidewalks and everybody is talking on their cell phones when they drive, it is still among the safest places I have ever been. I hear stories from time to time about an attack or a burglary, but overall your chances of being a victim of a crime in Korea are pretty slim. There are few neighborhoods in Seoul in which I would be reluctant to walk through in the dead of night. Koreans are, for the most part, respectful of other people’s property and physical well being. If you pass out drunk on the side of the street, you will have your money in your pocket when you wake up. If you leave your keys in your car there is little reason to worry about it getting stolen unless, and this is a sad unless, it is parked in a neighborhood full of foreigners.
4. Deliveries. Let’s set aside the fact that the guys making the deliveries would sooner run you down on their 100cc scooters than swerve to miss you and concentrate on the fact that you can have anything delivered almost anytime. If you order something on the internet from any of the major Korean websites, you can expect to have it within a day. If you order food, you can expect it within an hour. This is something you won’t find anywhere in the West.
5. Finally, I must say something about Korean food. Love it or just merely like it, you won’t get a more filling and cheap meal anywhere. The side dishes alone would cost you $10 in the U.S. Take for example my favorite meal here, Bibimbap. That with four different bowls of, for lack of a better word, side stuff, would run you $15 or $20 in any decent Korean restaurant in the U.S. Here? The equivalent of $5 or less. You can’t beat that.
So there you have it. If I had to give five reasons why I am still here, these are the ones that would mean the most to me. There are other things I like about Korea, but these are the top five. Hopefully my wife will stop referring to me as Mr. Negativity from now on.
A Stark View
By Tracey Stark
My wife complains that I have nothing good to say about Korea. After five years, she says, I should be able to look around and see things I really like about this country. So for this month, if you will indulge me, I am going to come up with things I really am happy with. (This list will NOT include any of the following: spitting, littering, noisy eating, criminally-insane bus drivers, Saturday traffic jams, motorbikes on the sidewalks, the smell of garlic and soju on the subways and public smoking.)
Typically, a “Best of” list contains 10 items. Since I am constrained by both space and the number of things I am actually pleased with here, I am only going to get to five. So, here we go…
1. If you have ever had a conversation similar to the following before, you will know the sinking feeling I had at the beginning and the complete elation I felt by the time the call was over:
“Yoboseyo?”
“Yes, hi. I left my cell phone in your taxi. Can I get it back, please?”
“Yoboseyo?”
“Yes, hello. My hand-u-pone in your tak-shi. Please, I get it back, juseyo?”
“Yoboseyo?”
I don’t speak Korean, so I passed the phone to a Korean friend and let him take care of it. In the end, the taxi driver was willing to drive back to where I was (for a small fee) and return the phone that I had so carelessly left on the seat.
This is not a one-off occurrence. In fact, I have left my phone in taxis five times in five years. I have gotten my phone back four times. It isn’t just phones that I have lost and re-found. I frequently forget to take my pool cue home with me when I leave a bar as well as books, keys, clothing, umbrellas, unpaid bar tabs, my wallet and even my wife. Overall, the odds are 10 to 1 that I get my stuff back (the odds are slightly higher for my wife). Those are much better odds than anywhere I’ve lived in the States.
2. Speaking of taxis, I love the fact that you can catch a cab at any hour and pay a fraction of what it costs in, say, Washington, D.C. or Tokyo. Sure, the doors on the cabs here don’t open automatically for you like in Japan, but I don’t think it’s worth paying a 50 percent premium.
3. Safety. Yes, aside from the fact that motorcycles tear up and down the sidewalks and everybody is talking on their cell phones when they drive, it is still among the safest places I have ever been. I hear stories from time to time about an attack or a burglary, but overall your chances of being a victim of a crime in Korea are pretty slim. There are few neighborhoods in Seoul in which I would be reluctant to walk through in the dead of night. Koreans are, for the most part, respectful of other people’s property and physical well being. If you pass out drunk on the side of the street, you will have your money in your pocket when you wake up. If you leave your keys in your car there is little reason to worry about it getting stolen unless, and this is a sad unless, it is parked in a neighborhood full of foreigners.
4. Deliveries. Let’s set aside the fact that the guys making the deliveries would sooner run you down on their 100cc scooters than swerve to miss you and concentrate on the fact that you can have anything delivered almost anytime. If you order something on the internet from any of the major Korean websites, you can expect to have it within a day. If you order food, you can expect it within an hour. This is something you won’t find anywhere in the West.
5. Finally, I must say something about Korean food. Love it or just merely like it, you won’t get a more filling and cheap meal anywhere. The side dishes alone would cost you $10 in the U.S. Take for example my favorite meal here, Bibimbap. That with four different bowls of, for lack of a better word, side stuff, would run you $15 or $20 in any decent Korean restaurant in the U.S. Here? The equivalent of $5 or less. You can’t beat that.
So there you have it. If I had to give five reasons why I am still here, these are the ones that would mean the most to me. There are other things I like about Korea, but these are the top five. Hopefully my wife will stop referring to me as Mr. Negativity from now on.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Cat-Man-Don't!
Originally published in The Groove, December 2007
A Stark View
By Tracey Stark
Cat-Man-Don't!
Whenever I talk about our cats in public, my wife cringes. “Nobody cares about Philly and Max but us,” she says. “Put the pictures away.” But I usually ignore her because I believe you can judge a lot about a person by the way they react when you show them a picture of your child (whether biped, quadruped or moped).
I’ll admit it, I gush about the cats (especially Max, but please don’t tell Philly). They make me laugh and give me unconditional love. In return I give them a bonus can of moist cat food that my wife and I have dubbed “crack” because of the way it sends them bouncing off the walls. You really should see it. See, I’m gushing and telling you things that you don’t really care about.
When I was younger, my mother’s single sister had several cats with names like Mr. Chuckles, Napolean and Lady Kitsy. She had imaginary conversations with them non-stop and became the butt of many jokes in our family – behind her back, of course. To my brother, sisters, and me it appeared she had a mental illness. Years went by and Aunt Marilyn stayed the same, only the rotating population of cats changed.
As children, we had cats. Plenty of them. My sisters and I would test their landing skills from various heights, dress them up in capes and pretend they were superheroes by carrying them around like they were flying. But even then we knew that nobody would be even the slightest bit interested in our cat games.
Then one day, many years later, tragedy struck. When my sister Amy turned 35 she began telling me stories about her cats more and more frequently over the phone. “Dexter was chasing Chairman Meow and ran full speed into the sliding glass door and just shook his head like, ‘I didn’t know that was there…” She spoke in a low, dumb-sounding voice for Dexter. It had finally happened: she had succumbed to Aunt Marilyn’s debilitating illness and had claimed the family title of “cat lady.”
The title cat lady explains why I’m not worried about catching a full-blown case of it. I would be a cat gentleman. And as far as I know, there is no such thing as a cat gentleman.
But allow me to get my train of thought back on track.
When my wife and I are out and the topic of pets comes up (and it comes up surprisingly often these days) I flip open the phone and pull up the photo album. “There’s Max sleeping on his back. Isn’t he cute?” I gush. “There’s Philly as a kitten. Isn’t she the sweetest little thing?” And on it goes. Meanwhile, my wife has taken leave of me to make another trip to the ladies’ room or the bar to privately converse with her beer.
The reactions of our friends differ, as do the levels of our friendships. Close friends who know how much I love my cats will politely take a look, nod appreciatively, and promptly change the subject, vowing to themselves never to let it return to the topic of cats ever again. The few friends of ours who actually like cats will give my pictures a perfunctory gush of their own, scroll through a few more of them and return my phone to me.
Then there are those who don’t know me very well and don’t necessarily like cats. These people are my favorite, though I’m almost certainly not theirs. These are the people who don’t want to offend me by refusing to look at my pictures, but do so in various states of distress ranging from nervously babbling about the virtues of dogs (no offense, they add) to breaking out in hives or a cold sweat.
These reactions are understandable. When confronted with a picture of an ugly baby most people are reluctant to tell the truth. We may temporarily recoil from the sight, but we invariably recover and keep our food down long enough to find something nice to say. So why should the sight of an animal you may be allergic to or who may have scarred your childhood in unspeakable ways be any different? (As a child, my cat Joey liked to spray on the head of any human female who was dumb enough to lay in the grass when he was on the prowl.)
With the knowledge of my inherited condition and the love and understanding of my wife and friends, I know I can pet this problem. I can scratch its tummy and kiss its little nose. Then I can dress it up like Superman and carry it around the room like it’s flying.
A Stark View
By Tracey Stark
Cat-Man-Don't!
Whenever I talk about our cats in public, my wife cringes. “Nobody cares about Philly and Max but us,” she says. “Put the pictures away.” But I usually ignore her because I believe you can judge a lot about a person by the way they react when you show them a picture of your child (whether biped, quadruped or moped).
I’ll admit it, I gush about the cats (especially Max, but please don’t tell Philly). They make me laugh and give me unconditional love. In return I give them a bonus can of moist cat food that my wife and I have dubbed “crack” because of the way it sends them bouncing off the walls. You really should see it. See, I’m gushing and telling you things that you don’t really care about.
When I was younger, my mother’s single sister had several cats with names like Mr. Chuckles, Napolean and Lady Kitsy. She had imaginary conversations with them non-stop and became the butt of many jokes in our family – behind her back, of course. To my brother, sisters, and me it appeared she had a mental illness. Years went by and Aunt Marilyn stayed the same, only the rotating population of cats changed.
As children, we had cats. Plenty of them. My sisters and I would test their landing skills from various heights, dress them up in capes and pretend they were superheroes by carrying them around like they were flying. But even then we knew that nobody would be even the slightest bit interested in our cat games.
Then one day, many years later, tragedy struck. When my sister Amy turned 35 she began telling me stories about her cats more and more frequently over the phone. “Dexter was chasing Chairman Meow and ran full speed into the sliding glass door and just shook his head like, ‘I didn’t know that was there…” She spoke in a low, dumb-sounding voice for Dexter. It had finally happened: she had succumbed to Aunt Marilyn’s debilitating illness and had claimed the family title of “cat lady.”
The title cat lady explains why I’m not worried about catching a full-blown case of it. I would be a cat gentleman. And as far as I know, there is no such thing as a cat gentleman.
But allow me to get my train of thought back on track.
When my wife and I are out and the topic of pets comes up (and it comes up surprisingly often these days) I flip open the phone and pull up the photo album. “There’s Max sleeping on his back. Isn’t he cute?” I gush. “There’s Philly as a kitten. Isn’t she the sweetest little thing?” And on it goes. Meanwhile, my wife has taken leave of me to make another trip to the ladies’ room or the bar to privately converse with her beer.
The reactions of our friends differ, as do the levels of our friendships. Close friends who know how much I love my cats will politely take a look, nod appreciatively, and promptly change the subject, vowing to themselves never to let it return to the topic of cats ever again. The few friends of ours who actually like cats will give my pictures a perfunctory gush of their own, scroll through a few more of them and return my phone to me.
Then there are those who don’t know me very well and don’t necessarily like cats. These people are my favorite, though I’m almost certainly not theirs. These are the people who don’t want to offend me by refusing to look at my pictures, but do so in various states of distress ranging from nervously babbling about the virtues of dogs (no offense, they add) to breaking out in hives or a cold sweat.
These reactions are understandable. When confronted with a picture of an ugly baby most people are reluctant to tell the truth. We may temporarily recoil from the sight, but we invariably recover and keep our food down long enough to find something nice to say. So why should the sight of an animal you may be allergic to or who may have scarred your childhood in unspeakable ways be any different? (As a child, my cat Joey liked to spray on the head of any human female who was dumb enough to lay in the grass when he was on the prowl.)
With the knowledge of my inherited condition and the love and understanding of my wife and friends, I know I can pet this problem. I can scratch its tummy and kiss its little nose. Then I can dress it up like Superman and carry it around the room like it’s flying.
Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!
Originally published in Seoul Magazine, November 2007
Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!
By Tracey Stark
In an age of fluffy white bread, Krispy Kreme Donuts and chocolate chip cookies, Koreans found themselves looking inward in search of something flavorful, wholesome and, well, Korean for dessert. The search led straight to one of their most traditional and versatile foods: ddeok, or rice cakes.
The well-being trend, which started around 2002, brought attention back to many traditional Korean foods, such as kimchi, ddeok and dishes made with doenjang (fermented soybeans). Along with the well-being craze came entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the trend, preserve a part of Korean culture and compete with Western-style bakeries and coffee shops.
Although among Westerners the term “rice cakes” often brings to mind the crunchy, flavorless puffed-rice crackers sold in health food stores (known in Korea as bbeong tuigi), the Korean translation of the chewy, steamed or pounded rice desert is a more accurate use of the term.
Ddeok has traditionally been a food served only on special occasions. Over the years, though, the number of occasions has grown to the point that if you had a particularly large and prosperous family, hardly a week would go by when you did not eat ddeok.
Three weeks after a baby is born, family and friends celebrate with baej seol gi, a very pure-white colored ddeok. After 100 days, they break out the chal su-su gyeong dan (ddeok made with millet and red beans), o-sek song pyeon (five-colored ddeok) and again the baek seol gi.
During the Chosun Dynasty, when a student advanced in school, the family would send in ddeok for the teacher and students.
Weddings, birthdays, funerals and the anniversary of a parent or grandparent’s death all command a special kind of ddeok. There is a special ddeok for when a person turns 61 years old, or hwe gap. This is to celebrate the return of the zodiac sign of their birth year.
But, as the sphere of Western influence spread in Korea, bakeries have usurped the ddeok bang at gan, the neighborhood ddeok maker. Birthday cakes have replaced rice cakes as the centerpiece of the celebration. While ddeok is still served, it often remains on the periphery.
That modern tradition may be changing, however, as new methods of making ddeok meld with the taste buds of today’s Koreans resulting in more flavorful and varied types of ddeok than would typically be found at family gatherings.
Taking it to the masses
On the ground floor of the Institute of Traditional Korean food in Jongno-gu is the Jilsiru Rice Cake Café, which opened in 2002. The café serves 40 types of sweet and savory ddeok, ddeok sandwiches (in which the “bread” is made from rice served with an egg salad filling), tea and more.
In front of the café are parked several tourist buses. Being located between the Jongno and Insadong neighborhoods has attracted many people to the food institute, the ddeok museum, and of course, Jilsiru Rice Cake Café.
“The café was opened to let more people know about ddeok,” said Kim So-jung, manager of the Jilsiru in Jongno. “The well-being trend increased the popularity of ddeok and by 2004 we were much busier.” Ddeok is considered a low-calorie, low-sugar dessert.
Now, as the well-being craze wanes, Kim believes the introduction of more ddeok cafes is fueling the continued interest in the traditional Korean dessert.
Kim said the Insadong location was opened to introduce rice cakes to foreigners who might be more likely to go into a Starbucks.
Carolyn Papworth, a former food and travel writer for Lonely Planet Books and The Age newspaper in Melbourne and a current book editor in Seoul, has lived in Korea for five years and loved ddeok from the first time she tried it. “I’m inclined toward the texture of ddeok. I used to eat it all the time when I first moved here.”
“But the idea of a ddeok café seems a bit too contrived,” Papworth says. “If you want to add ddeok to your existing menu at your café, fine. But a ddeok-themed café? It seems gimmicky.” She does admit, however, that a place like Jilsiru is a great way to introduce tourists to ddeok and an aspect of Korean culture.
Although head to head competition between coffee shops and rice cake cafes tends to lean more toward The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf than to Jilsiru, Kim hopes time and a sense of cultural loyalty will change that.
Sung Jin-woo, 31, an English teacher in Seoul, prefers ddeok to bread. In fact, he says, he eats it for breakfast every day. But he is not a coffee or tea drinker and rarely frequents coffee shops. Until one was pointed out to him, he had never taken notice of a ddeok café. He still has yet to eat ddeok in one.
When his freezer is empty of the rice cakes his mother sent back with him from his last trip to Busan for Chuseok, Sung said he will probably buy a whole cheesecake and not look for more ddeok. “But,” he adds, “if there is ddeok and cheesecake available at the same time, I will buy both.”
Still, Sung believes the cafes and the evolution of ddeok is a good idea. “Making ddeok is important,” Sung says earnestly. “It’s our food.”
Although she eats it less frequently, she still enjoys it on occasions such as Chuseok and the Lunar New Year. “Ddeok is about celebration,” she said.
The changing face of ddeok
In an effort to turn new generations away from cookies and back to rice cakes, Jilsiru has taken the “less is more” approach.
“Traditionally, you had to buy ddeok in large quantities and bigger chunks,” Kim said. By making it bite-sized, Kim says, ddeok becomes a more elegant dish.
Size aside, Jilsiru also focuses on making ddeok pleasing to the eye and palate by combining common and uncommon flavors with modern food styling. One rice cake resembles a California sushi roll but is actually a ddeok stuffed with kimchi. Other varieties resemble cheesecakes or bon-bons. This, she believes, is what will attract the younger generation.
One of the main problems with ddeok is its relatively short shelf life. It typically keeps its optimum flavor for only one or two days. After that, it becomes stale and spoils rather quickly. Ddeok can be frozen and eaten for months at a time, as Sung has proven, but the flavor begins to suffer. The director of the food institute Sook Ja-yoon has been working for years to address these issues through developing a new style of packaging. What she has come up with is a vacuum-packed ddeok that can be heated in the microwave when one is ready to eat it.
One of Jilsiru’s most popular items is the ddeok sandwich. In the past 20 years, it was common for children to have pizza or hamburgers for school celebrations, but they have found in recent years the sandwich has been gaining in popularity.
Jilsiru also offers “lunch boxes” with a small salad, a ddeok sandwich and several varieties of sweet rice cakes for those on the go.
Though some of the flavors available from Jilsiru, like pumpkin or berry, might seem modern, there were around 100 ingredients used to flavor ddeok over the centuries. Many of these recipes were lost and many were just not available to the average Korean because fancy, flavored ddeok was most often reserved for the wealthy.
Other ingredients, such as cocoa, coffee, cheese, or green tea fit into the “fusion” category of modern ddeok.
Jo Ji-eun, 26, a translator at the National Palace Museum of Korea, thinks the new flavors are just the normal evolution of food that happens to all cultures, but she fears cafes will change the way people think about ddeok.
“Ddeok is about sharing,” Jo said “It never used to be possible to eat ddeok alone.”
She added that she would hate to see ddeok lose it cultural relevance.
Kim, on the other hand, looks forward to the day when ddeok becomes “Korea’s donuts.” As more rice cake cafes open and more specialty shops (ddeok jibs) and department stores offer a wider variety of rice cakes in more manageable portions, she may get her wish.
The Institute of Traditional Korean Food, the Ddeok and Kitchen Utensils Museums and Jilsiru Rice Cake Café are located at 164-2 Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, two blocks north of the Jongno 3-ga Station (line 3) exit 7 and about four blocks southeast of the Anguk Station (line 3) exit 4. The Jilsiru Rice Cake Café in Insadong is one block south of Anguk Station exit 6.
Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!
By Tracey Stark
In an age of fluffy white bread, Krispy Kreme Donuts and chocolate chip cookies, Koreans found themselves looking inward in search of something flavorful, wholesome and, well, Korean for dessert. The search led straight to one of their most traditional and versatile foods: ddeok, or rice cakes.
The well-being trend, which started around 2002, brought attention back to many traditional Korean foods, such as kimchi, ddeok and dishes made with doenjang (fermented soybeans). Along with the well-being craze came entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the trend, preserve a part of Korean culture and compete with Western-style bakeries and coffee shops.
Although among Westerners the term “rice cakes” often brings to mind the crunchy, flavorless puffed-rice crackers sold in health food stores (known in Korea as bbeong tuigi), the Korean translation of the chewy, steamed or pounded rice desert is a more accurate use of the term.
Ddeok has traditionally been a food served only on special occasions. Over the years, though, the number of occasions has grown to the point that if you had a particularly large and prosperous family, hardly a week would go by when you did not eat ddeok.
Three weeks after a baby is born, family and friends celebrate with baej seol gi, a very pure-white colored ddeok. After 100 days, they break out the chal su-su gyeong dan (ddeok made with millet and red beans), o-sek song pyeon (five-colored ddeok) and again the baek seol gi.
During the Chosun Dynasty, when a student advanced in school, the family would send in ddeok for the teacher and students.
Weddings, birthdays, funerals and the anniversary of a parent or grandparent’s death all command a special kind of ddeok. There is a special ddeok for when a person turns 61 years old, or hwe gap. This is to celebrate the return of the zodiac sign of their birth year.
But, as the sphere of Western influence spread in Korea, bakeries have usurped the ddeok bang at gan, the neighborhood ddeok maker. Birthday cakes have replaced rice cakes as the centerpiece of the celebration. While ddeok is still served, it often remains on the periphery.
That modern tradition may be changing, however, as new methods of making ddeok meld with the taste buds of today’s Koreans resulting in more flavorful and varied types of ddeok than would typically be found at family gatherings.
Taking it to the masses
On the ground floor of the Institute of Traditional Korean food in Jongno-gu is the Jilsiru Rice Cake Café, which opened in 2002. The café serves 40 types of sweet and savory ddeok, ddeok sandwiches (in which the “bread” is made from rice served with an egg salad filling), tea and more.
In front of the café are parked several tourist buses. Being located between the Jongno and Insadong neighborhoods has attracted many people to the food institute, the ddeok museum, and of course, Jilsiru Rice Cake Café.
“The café was opened to let more people know about ddeok,” said Kim So-jung, manager of the Jilsiru in Jongno. “The well-being trend increased the popularity of ddeok and by 2004 we were much busier.” Ddeok is considered a low-calorie, low-sugar dessert.
Now, as the well-being craze wanes, Kim believes the introduction of more ddeok cafes is fueling the continued interest in the traditional Korean dessert.
Kim said the Insadong location was opened to introduce rice cakes to foreigners who might be more likely to go into a Starbucks.
Carolyn Papworth, a former food and travel writer for Lonely Planet Books and The Age newspaper in Melbourne and a current book editor in Seoul, has lived in Korea for five years and loved ddeok from the first time she tried it. “I’m inclined toward the texture of ddeok. I used to eat it all the time when I first moved here.”
“But the idea of a ddeok café seems a bit too contrived,” Papworth says. “If you want to add ddeok to your existing menu at your café, fine. But a ddeok-themed café? It seems gimmicky.” She does admit, however, that a place like Jilsiru is a great way to introduce tourists to ddeok and an aspect of Korean culture.
Although head to head competition between coffee shops and rice cake cafes tends to lean more toward The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf than to Jilsiru, Kim hopes time and a sense of cultural loyalty will change that.
Sung Jin-woo, 31, an English teacher in Seoul, prefers ddeok to bread. In fact, he says, he eats it for breakfast every day. But he is not a coffee or tea drinker and rarely frequents coffee shops. Until one was pointed out to him, he had never taken notice of a ddeok café. He still has yet to eat ddeok in one.
When his freezer is empty of the rice cakes his mother sent back with him from his last trip to Busan for Chuseok, Sung said he will probably buy a whole cheesecake and not look for more ddeok. “But,” he adds, “if there is ddeok and cheesecake available at the same time, I will buy both.”
Still, Sung believes the cafes and the evolution of ddeok is a good idea. “Making ddeok is important,” Sung says earnestly. “It’s our food.”
Although she eats it less frequently, she still enjoys it on occasions such as Chuseok and the Lunar New Year. “Ddeok is about celebration,” she said.
The changing face of ddeok
In an effort to turn new generations away from cookies and back to rice cakes, Jilsiru has taken the “less is more” approach.
“Traditionally, you had to buy ddeok in large quantities and bigger chunks,” Kim said. By making it bite-sized, Kim says, ddeok becomes a more elegant dish.
Size aside, Jilsiru also focuses on making ddeok pleasing to the eye and palate by combining common and uncommon flavors with modern food styling. One rice cake resembles a California sushi roll but is actually a ddeok stuffed with kimchi. Other varieties resemble cheesecakes or bon-bons. This, she believes, is what will attract the younger generation.
One of the main problems with ddeok is its relatively short shelf life. It typically keeps its optimum flavor for only one or two days. After that, it becomes stale and spoils rather quickly. Ddeok can be frozen and eaten for months at a time, as Sung has proven, but the flavor begins to suffer. The director of the food institute Sook Ja-yoon has been working for years to address these issues through developing a new style of packaging. What she has come up with is a vacuum-packed ddeok that can be heated in the microwave when one is ready to eat it.
One of Jilsiru’s most popular items is the ddeok sandwich. In the past 20 years, it was common for children to have pizza or hamburgers for school celebrations, but they have found in recent years the sandwich has been gaining in popularity.
Jilsiru also offers “lunch boxes” with a small salad, a ddeok sandwich and several varieties of sweet rice cakes for those on the go.
Though some of the flavors available from Jilsiru, like pumpkin or berry, might seem modern, there were around 100 ingredients used to flavor ddeok over the centuries. Many of these recipes were lost and many were just not available to the average Korean because fancy, flavored ddeok was most often reserved for the wealthy.
Other ingredients, such as cocoa, coffee, cheese, or green tea fit into the “fusion” category of modern ddeok.
Jo Ji-eun, 26, a translator at the National Palace Museum of Korea, thinks the new flavors are just the normal evolution of food that happens to all cultures, but she fears cafes will change the way people think about ddeok.
“Ddeok is about sharing,” Jo said “It never used to be possible to eat ddeok alone.”
She added that she would hate to see ddeok lose it cultural relevance.
Kim, on the other hand, looks forward to the day when ddeok becomes “Korea’s donuts.” As more rice cake cafes open and more specialty shops (ddeok jibs) and department stores offer a wider variety of rice cakes in more manageable portions, she may get her wish.
The Institute of Traditional Korean Food, the Ddeok and Kitchen Utensils Museums and Jilsiru Rice Cake Café are located at 164-2 Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, two blocks north of the Jongno 3-ga Station (line 3) exit 7 and about four blocks southeast of the Anguk Station (line 3) exit 4. The Jilsiru Rice Cake Café in Insadong is one block south of Anguk Station exit 6.
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