Korea Tour: Eating It All Together with Daniel Gray

Published: Jan. 20, 2015, 5:22 p.m.

Right across the street from Seoul's Insadong\xa0district, Colin talks with Daniel Gray, creator of the site\xa0Seoul Eats, proprietor of\xa0craft beer restaurants\xa0Brew 3.14\u03c0\xa0and Brew 3.15\u03c0,\xa0and for four years a partner at\xa0O'ngo Food Communications.\xa0They discuss his weariness of the term "Seoul food"; what part of Korean culture happens around the table; what goes into "Daniel Gray's Ultimate Food Tour"; the pre-existing perceptions food tourists bring about Korean cuisine; the two senses in which Koreans "eat everything together"; why Koreans ask not if foreigners want to eat Korean food, but if they can; how he grew up adopted in Delaware\xa0and decided to explore Korea only after college; his first encounter with Korea in adulthood, attempting to find breakfast in Gyeongju; whether any remnants of the Korean language remained in his mind from the first five years of his life; how he got started writing not about food, but about his experience seeking out his biological mother; the meals that made him realize he loved Korean food; the dishes that took him the most getting used to, especially Korea's "nostalgic foods" from the 1960s and 70s; the way Koreans use American cheese; the sugar on Korean garlic bread; the importance of balancing all the flavors; whether the average Korean has a higher awareness of food than the average Westerner; what happened to\xa0a pizzeria in Korea when it didn't serve pickles; what makes\xa0Brew 3.14\u03c0's pizza different; what a Korean gets when they want American food; why you can't badly criticize a restaurant in the Korean media, and how that made Seoul Eats a refreshing read; the difference in attitude toward (and ease of) opening one's own restaurant in Korea and America; how restaurants show their generosity with their side dishes; the foreigner's search for "real Korean flavor" and "authenticity" in general; where to go first to get a handle on eating in Seoul; why Korean food hasn't taken off in the wider world to the extent that, for example, Japanese food has, and what that might have to do with its lack of a unifying idea; the international barriers to entry of \ub5a1\ubcf6\uc774; the food experiences without which you cannot understand Korean food; what he learns about international Korean food from the stream of food tourists he's met; and how he introduced his American parents to Korean food.