The new Seoul Food

http://www.thestar.com/living/food/article/923997--the-new-seoul-food

Published on Tue Jan 18, 2011

Food Editor

"Mom's Chicken" is made to order. You can get it fried, fried and seasoned, or fried and bathed in spicy red pepper paste sauce.

ANDREW WALLACE/TORONTO STAR

By Jennifer BainFood Editor

Crunchy, moist and recklessly sauced, Korean fried chicken is what we should think when we hear KFC.

Maybe it will attract more fans now that it’s being made to order in the North York branch ofGalleria Supermarket.

A whole chicken costs $19.99 and takes 30 minutes to make.

Recipes: Gamjatang (pork bone soup)and Bibimbap

You can watch as the pieces are coated with a seasoned flour and water mixture and deep-fried for 15 minutes. You can see the gorgeously fried pieces tossed with a spicy sauce made from gochujang (red pepper paste), soy sauce, a sweetener and sesame seeds. The result is full-on spicy but not incendiary. The riot of textures is saucy over crispy over moist.

“If you go to KFC you can get four side dishes,” says Galleria’s executive assistant/coordinator Won Ha, referencing the Colonel’s chain. “In Korea, we offer vinegar-pickled radish.”

Sure enough, the crunch of radish cubes is a cooling, crunchy replacement for slaw or celery sticks with blue cheese dip.

Galleria has proudly branded it’s poultry “Mom’s Chicken” and sells it fried, seasoned or seasoned and spicy.

We can already get Korean fried chicken at the two branches of Ajuker Fried Chicken and the Home of Hot Taste in Thornhill.

But the popular Korean snack food, best washed down with beer or soju, hasn’t taken off here like it has in New York City, where foodies frequent BonChon Chicken and Unidentified Flying Chickens.

Fried chicken is just one highlight of the second branch of Galleria at 865 York Mills Rd. The 40,000-sq.-ft., $7 million store opened in November with 540 parking spaces.

Galleria’s first outpost boasted bilingual staff, product signs and receipts when it opened with a splash in Thornhill in 2003. A third location will open in Mississauga next year.

The North York branch, west of Don Mills Rd. (the entrance is off Upjohn Rd.), expects customers will be 70 per cent Korean, 20 per cent Chinese and 10 per cent “other Canadian.”

You’ll find bilingual self-checkouts (Galleria developed its own software), bilingual signage and impressive prepared food offerings and a café. The store is even rebranding its logo so it’s English only.

On Friday, the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers toured Galleria on a trip that included Longo’s Maple Leaf Square, Summerhill Market and the new Pusateri’s in Bayview Village Shopping Centre.

“It’s a wild store — you’re rocking,” Pete Luckett, the flamboyant entrepreneur behind Pete’s Frootique in Nova Scotia, told Galleria management.

“I always believe in creating a unique experience and separating yourself from what the other guys are doing. Also this will attract a lot of us white folks.”

Across North America, Korean food is picking up fans.

In Toronto, Cookbook Store manager Alison Fryer believes Korean food could be the new Thai food (but hopes it never becomes as ubiquitous as Japanese sushi). She predicts Korean barbecue, rubs, spices and cookbooks “will be everywhere” this year.

“We have such a huge Korean community and Korean food is already a staple in the Toronto food scene,” she observes. “I don’t think it’s a trend or a fad that’s going to go away in a year and a half. We’d never consider Greek food or Indian food that way.”

In the United States, TheDailyMeal.com declared Korean food and kimchi (pickled vegetables) to be tied for #17 spot on its list of top 25 trends for 2010. (It also called Korean fried chicken a “phenomenon” that’s “giving KFC a run for its money.”)

Two names creating Korean food buzz are Korean-American chef David Chang of theMomofuku empire in New York, and Kogi BBQ, a fleet of five Korean fusion taco trucks from California run by a Filipino-American married to a Korean.

Toronto’s Korean restaurant scene is clustered in Koreatown on Bloor St. west of Bathurst, and Yonge St. around Finch. Among Koreans, the North York shops are more popular.

“Now that Bloor St. Koreatown is starting to dwindle and more Koreans are opening their stores in North York, the new name for North York Koreatown is North Korea,” says Sam Lee, owner of the new Bi Bim Bap restaurant on Eglinton Ave. W.

Like T&T, the Asian supermarket chain now owned by Loblaw, Galleria has enough prepared food to qualify as a restaurant.

It has hired cooks from Korea and local restaurants to run its buffet, ready-to-eat, made-to-order and side dish areas.

Customers can watch most of the chefs work. In three open rooms at near the café, staff also roast seaweed, roast sesame seeds and press sesame oil, make fish cakes, bake walnut cakes, and produce tofu and soy milk.

Says Ha: “We want to be able to offer the most authentic recipes possible.”

Starting with its house-brand KFC.

Bain: Sam Lee’s Korean bibimbap restaurant stands out

Sam Lee is a new breed of Korean restaurateur. He opened Bi Bim Bap on Eglinton Ave. W., and offers brown rice, shellfish-free kimchi and vegetarian/vegan-friendly dishes.RICK EGLINTON/TORONTO STAR

Let’s list the reasons why I love Sam Lee’s new Korean eatery, Bi Bim Bap.

It’s Toronto’s first restaurant dedicated to the popular Korean dish of rice, vegetables, meat and eggs (if you like) that you mix with sauce into something magical.

It offers brown rice.

Its shellfish-free kimchi is made with fish sauce instead of fermented shrimp paste.

It is quietly vegetarian- and vegan-friendly.

It is clean, serene and colourful.

And Lee is fluent in English but knows better than to dumb down his flavours.

Besides, who can resist a guy who remembers my shellfish allergy from a 2009 conversation and emails an invitation just two days after he opens his restaurant Bi Bim Bap (950 Eglinton Ave. W., west of Bathurst St., stonebowl.ca).

“No shrimp in my kimchi — just anchovy, salt, sugar in our kimchi marinade,” writes Lee. “My wife calls it Jen’s Kimchi.”

A namesake kimchi (pickled veg)? I’ll eat to that.

Lee is a new breed of Korean restaurateur. Now 44, he came to Toronto from South Korea when he was 9 and grew up “a Canadian socially who ate Korean at home.”

He studied science at the University of Waterloo, dabbled in business and still runs a Charley’s Steakery franchise in the Woodbine Centre specializing in Philly cheesesteak.

A foodie, Lee has learned Korean cooking from his mom, Bong-Ja Lee and his wife Janet, Yun, who launched Bi Bim Bap (Korean for “mixed rice”) with him on Dec. 10. We first met at his favourite butcher, Woori Meat Shop in Mississauga.

He’s no fan of Bloor Street’s “dwindling” Koreatown, but likes a few spots on the Korean stretch of Yonge St. north of Sheppard. Still, he didn’t want to set up near them or be like them.

“There are a lot of great cooks, but they get caught up in the trend of offering too many things on their menu,” says Lee.

He applauds our gamjatang (pork bone soup) joints and soondubu (spicy tofu stew) spots for “starting to understand that you can concentrate on one thing and keep the quality up.”

Sure, almost every Korean restaurant serves one or two bibimbaps — Lee plans to experiment with a seasonal six-pack or even more. (A raw version didn’t work out.)

This week he’ll give you beef, short ribs, fried eggs, seven mushrooms (my favourite), portobellos, tofu or four kinds of seeds in a clay bowl full of rice, nine vegetables, dried seaweed and sesame seeds with a choice of six homemade sauces.

One tip from Lee: “Mix bibimbap with chopsticks, not a spoon, because the chopsticks will fluff it up but the spoon will compress it. Then you eat it with a spoon.”

A lot of things are on Lee’s menu simply because he likes them and hopes other people will too.

Like the free option of brown rice instead of white rice.

And the MSG-free gochujang (red pepper paste) that he carefully sources for his sauces because MSG makes his heart “go nuts.” Miso soup is vegetarian, made with just kombu seaweed and shiro miso paste because the bonito fish powder that usually goes into it is laced with MSG.

Five of Lee’s six bibimbap sauces are vegan, omitting the cooked minced beef that’s usually in them.

Out of deference to the Jewish neighbourhood, there’s no pork.

As for the kimchi, isn’t fermented shrimp paste an essential Korean flavour for pickling vegetables like napa cabbage?

“That’s North Korean style,” says Lee. “For southern style, it’s affected less. We do Seoul-style kimchi — and nobody seems to notice.” (Except grateful customers with shellfish allergies.)

The level of English in Toronto’s Korean restaurants is generally very low. Being able to talk with Lee about his ingredients is something appreciative customers have immediately noticed.

One thing you won’t find on the menu, though, is overt talk about any of these things that sets the restaurant apart from its competitors.

“It just looks so goody, and that wasn’t our purpose,” Lee figures. “People who look for these things know they’re there.”

Perhaps, unless you’ve given up even looking.

Anyway, go have some bibimbap with a side of Crunchy Wasabi Salad (slivered cucumber, carrot, red onion, sweet peppers, green onions, apples and egg in spirited yellow wasabi vinaigrette). Lee makes mine without the imitation crab.

jbain@thestar.ca

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