In that odd space between dinner and the night’s other, more taxing obligations, my father, brother, and I used to find ourselves slouched in the living room with the linger scent of dinner. One of us would be flipping through the channels for nothing in particular, but there were unspoken favorites. These tended to be, and still are today, cooking and travel shows.
Though we watched a lot of Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, and various travel documentaries, we never watched Anthony Bourdain. While I want to say this was for no reason in particular (maybe the times and channels never lined up), I also wonder about the possibility that we were, at the time, not “American” enough to understand his captivating ability to be so incisively direct — perhaps we were taken aback by his brashness, especially in comparison to the ever cool and logical Alton Brown or the lacquered virtuoso cooking skill of Bobby Flay. My brother and I might also have simply not been old enough to understand the courage it takes to enter intercultural spaces, to dive headfirst into the unknown and the messiness one learns to embrace.
This past weekend I set off for Busan to meet some friends and enjoy the beach. On the train ride there I read Bourdain’s landmark New Yorker essay “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” More so than the content, the writing was riveting. The robust metaphors relating chefs to a band of misfits plunged me into what felt like a lawless tavern, where all of my ingrained social mores were thrown into the air, replaced with surprising stabs of blunt truths about life in the kitchen. But through the chaos the writing conjured, you were always assured that Bourdain was there, in brief interjections of wit and personal stories: “What do I like to eat after hours? Strange things.” As my train pulled into Busan I was left awestruck by Bourdain’s gift as a writer — how can a chef write like that? — and became deeply curious about his worldview.
“As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”
Yesterday was a painfully beautiful day in Busan: strong sunlight accompanied by a cool breeze, trendy art-oriented cafes, a walk by the beach during the sunset, fresh fish for dinner, and a night out with friends. Painful primarily because each moment makes me think about how I’m leaving Korea soon. These days I often find myself caught in between states of feeling satisfied and impossibly grateful for the privileges I’ve enjoyed while abroad and the gaping potential for regret in all that I didn’t do because I, at times, decided not to push my limits. As the sun set by the beach and all of the couples and families laughing on patios were cast with a deep golden hue, I felt something like the Bourdain quote above, the sheer marvel of being able to enjoy such an experience while also knowing it is all too fleeting.
Reading about and listening to Bourdain this evening has been revelatory about travel in the way I imagine talking about food often is: the necessity of constantly reexamining that which is taken for granted. David Foster Wallace in his commencement address “This is Water” starts with a fish asking “What the hell is water?” and goes on to instruct that in the coming years after college we must learn to constantly examine the purpose of our everyday routines, all of the “water” that is an indispensable, and thereby often invisible, foundation of our realities. Travel is similar in this way. This year has been a struggle to remember that I am still traveling, that my time here has an expiration date, and I should prioritize my life accordingly.
Bourdain, at the peak of his career, enjoyed privileges of constantly being able to shake the water, to visit the unknown. What many of my peers say is most admirable is the way he understood foremost the nature of this water as something bigger than us. He listened to the stories of others and knew his place as a guest in a manner impossible to see through a camera that places him directly in the center. (My impressions of his authenticity and cultural fluency come largely from this tribute on CNN.)
This has made me think about how easily I’ve been lulled into the same comfort of living that my family and I, on however subtle of a level, wanted to escape through the shows we enjoyed together. And while it’s easy for me to imagine the number of people these days who want to travel to Korea after listening to Kpop or watching a drama, or simply seeing a single travel special on TV, the more difficult realization to discern is that we all live in places others wish to travel to, or, at the very least, want to visit to challenge themselves by rubbing up against the unknown. It makes me think about the ridiculous way locals wear not having visited a nearby tourist site as a badge of honor, as if living somewhere precludes you from wanting the desire to try something new. How easy it is to forget to live with curiosity about where and why we are.
I want to round out these notes with a few words on food. Food is a language, deeply shaped by culture and shared in contexts as unique as the utterance of a single word. And yet I’ve thought little about food not only in Korea but also in general, beyond the way most people talk about food as a way to relate to others on a superficial level. Recently, I tried to write down my top five meals in Korea, but found it difficult to remember the best. But the issue, I now realize, is likely not due to a lack of experience or culinary knowledge but in my standard of what is the “best.”
A quote by Bourdain, as with most realizations that come from travel and food, is a cliche but nonetheless incisive: “Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.” As I struggled to come up with restaurants, I subconsciously considered not only what I thought tasted the best but also what others would respect and would think “unique.” The thought process was a more complex evaluation of what represents a culture, exceeds culinary standards, and what, in my honest opinion, would “wow” people who might want my recommendation. But the taste of meal evaporates from memory more quickly than anything else, and Bourdain has vindicated me from measuring meals in this way.
This past weekend I ate a Busan speciality, 돼지국밥 (pork rice soup) two times, but neither time lived up to the one bowl I had this past winter. My friend and I woke up early and took a day trip on a frigid January weekend, for no real reason other than wanting to see the ocean. Our first stop was the original 할매국밥, a long-running restaurant that now has several stores throughout Busan.
The sun was as beautiful as it was this past weekend, with light streaming in through the windows of the old place. It seemed unchanged from when it opened in 1978, with a rusty sliding door and yellowing wallpaper. But that was the charm. I was probably the only foreigner in the room, as my friend and I took a seat at a long row of wooden tables. Though it was rather early, the place was full of local grandmas and grandpas in their colorful parkas and athletic pants quietly eating some warm soup on a cold morning. It felt as though I had entered a distinctly “Korean” space, a corner tucked away from the long shopping streets dominated by foreign companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s. It was easy to imagine my grandparents being regulars there, starting their day with the same thing they always started their day with.
The kitchen was open, so you could see the smoke from the pot rising into puffs that shone in the slanted sunlight. When the grandma preparing our food brought it over with an array of kimchi, chives, and garlic, my friend remarked at how clear the broth was. Normally you wouldn’t be able to see through to the rice, she said. And yet despite its appearance, the soup tasted like pork perhaps more so because the flavor was so subtle. Similarly my memory of this meal seems built around a similar principle: the quiet clinking of spoons with bowls and snatches of conversation, the weak, morning sunlight, and the slight imperfections of the building itself all came together in a way that is difficult to forget.
It’s simple to seek out a restaurant with high reviews, but creating such context for great meals is often beyond our control. In the same way, it’s easy to tell yourself that today you will be more mindful of your existence, but the real miracles happen in the instances where your being more mindful coincides with something that validates that mindset. For example, you could have the same open mind for your day but find no special revelation in a fast food joint (though it’s possible). Notable meals or moments are by nature exceptional, but there is beauty in understanding that they are not always extravagant or far away.
In the coming weeks and months after returning to America I hope to write more about such memorable experiences in Korea.
Notes of a Korean-American 