by Alex Jung
'Best of' lists are controversial, unscientific, inherently subjective and are guaranteed to result in bellyaching. But they are good for precisely this reason: they get us talking about food.
In order to compile our own list, we spoke with a number of certified ?foodies? ? people who obsess about food about as much as we do. One of those people is Jun Kyung-woo, the co-author of best-selling book Dining in Seoul.
?The first question is: how do you define Korean food?? says Jun. ?Is it the ingredients? Is it Korean because it exists in Korea? Is it what Korean people actually eat??
Indeed, the constantly shifting topography of Korean cuisine now includes dishes like pizza topped with fried shrimp and sweet potatoes and Chinese food like jjajjangmyun (black bean noodles). Respectively, they are branded ?Italian? and ?Chinese? food, but are so heavily Koreanized that they would be unfamiliar to native inhabitants of those countries.
?Korean food has deep roots,? says Jun. There is a long, dynamic history that includes a certain ingredients and flavors like soy, garlic, red pepper and techniques like salting, pickling, and braising. So while an outlandish pizza might be an entirely Korean product, for this list, we are looking at food that has a long genealogy on the Korean peninsula.
That being said, our conception of Korean food isn?t narrow. We value the bowl of naengmyun from the restaurant that has operated for over three decades as much as the artfully constructed plates that filters Korean flavors through molecular gastronomy.
There is an astounding breadth to Korean cuisine. We?d like to think that this is a start.
read moreSource: http://rss.cnngo.com/~r/cnngo/~3/tBK3M_lG0cg/10-best-korean-restaurants-seoul-114014
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