James Robert Southard is a Louisville artist currently based in Seoul, South Korea. For the next four months, he is participating in the Seoul Art Space Geumcheon Artist-In-Residency program. He will transmit musings on culture shock, food, art, and more to Louisville, which will be shared with the community via The Paper.
After an incredibly long flight, I recently landed in Seoul Korea for an artist residency where I am to create artwork that responds to my new community.
Problem is, I know nothing of this town and I’ve been trying to find my way around here by walking the streets, eating the food, and greasing some palms. Actually, I find myself bowing more than shaking hands. Working full days in the studio, I found myself looking for quick cheap meals nearby, and I was told about a Baek Ban Jip style restaurant. It was explained to me that this was what they called a hot stew joint, which in this chilly South Korean January, sounded very agreeable. After finding it around the corner I realized, like many small restaurants in Seoul, they are tiny and completely unidentifiable from any other business. I must have walked past this place a dozen times but that day I opened the door, slid my shoes off, as per the custom, and found a spot on their heated floor at the only empty table. The place was packed with jump-suited auto repair workers from the neighborhood, not talking or looking up from their steel bowls of purplish rice. No menus on the wall or any sign of what they serve here. In fact, the kitchen was as small as a closet at the back of the room, where I only saw one pot boiling away on the stove. Without asking me any questions, the waitress abruptly dropped down five ubiquitous varieties of banchan (condiments, such as kimchi). Before I could react and try to ask for a menu, I was given a tin of rice and a steaming bowl of stew. By looking around the room, I discover that all the patrons were eating this same dish. I was to eat what ever they prepared that day. They cook one thing from what was available and serve it with rice and pickled side dishes. The meal was fantastic: hot mixed seafood stew with potatoes and vegetables. Tiny squids were floating about in the salty hot broth, which made for a warm meal that I so much needed without even realizing it.
I am not here to discuss the food, as much as the concept of a restaurant that serves only one daily fare. I am not turned off by this concept at all, in fact I’ve returned to this place almost everyday for lunch. In the evenings they add fried eggs to the list of condiments. Yes, a fried egg can be a condiment.
What elates me is that this reminds me of when you ate at home with your mother at the stove; you were to eat what was prepared. It was simple; it was made from the meat found at fishmongers or a butcher down the block and the broth was continued from the night before. True, almost no Kentuckians my age ate like this growing up, but I am starting to feel that would have been a fantastic upbringing. In fact, the restaurant’s stews seem to slowly evolve day to day so that you can taste hints of yesterday’s leftovers in the next day’s pot. This is where I feel that most Westerners would be turned off.
“What if I don’t want sea food?”
“Can I have it without onions?”
“I had that for lunch.”
Speaking for myself, I am happier being served the one dish that the cook spent all day making. Like the Misua noodle makers of Taiwan, creating one thing from dawn to dusk, my Korean hosts are the masters of their individual craft. To the annoyance of my friends and family, when I’m in establishments with menus, I usually ask the waiter, “What’s your favorite dish?” I always want to believe that I may not know what’s best and I should trust the professionals. This is something Louisville needs; small cantinas that serve only the one dish that the cook knows through and through, while charging what it actually costs. People want to talk about museums, architecture or landscape when communities inspire an artist. I must say that my most insightful moments so far have come at about noon every weekday around the corner, sitting on the floor alongside Seoulites with a steaming bowl under my nose. It is this ‘simpler is better’ mindset that is getting my creative juices flowing and it’s helping me consider how my art practice and I will fit into South Korea.
I later learned the name of the restaurant was Salang-ui jib, which means Love House. I’m glad I’ve been paying with cash instead of credit card. My bank, back in the states, may raise an eyebrow when seeing me returning to the Love House five days a week.
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