Fish and Chips in Korea
I’m following my friend Rob down a dark and rainy street, listening intently as he talks up the restaurant we’re about to go to. He gives me the rundown:
Seunggun Mun or simply “Gun,” is the eponymous owner of Gun’s Sea Food. Born in Jeju, South Korea, he’s spent nearly a decade living and cooking abroad in Australia. And as any traveler inevitably does, he returned
home and decided to open his own restaurant serving freshly fried seafood. Opened in the late fall of 2011, Gun’s Seafood is becoming a sleeper hit with the expat scene.
Which is why I’m being led here by Rob, an ESL instructor from the UK – who adamantly declares Gun’s Seafood as having the “best” fish and chips.
And since I figure any person who has eaten enough fish and chips to generate the large enough sample size you would need to be able to declare a “winner” amongst them all - well, I figure his vote of confidence should
be good enough for me. Besides, I haven’t had enough fish and chips in my lifetime to have any empirical ideologies about this food. I’m a city kid. The closest thing I’ve come to authentic seafood is Aisle 7 in your
grocer’s freezer.
Apparently, Rob is a regular and upon seeing him, Gun decides to change the oil and after a twenty-minute wait, our hotly anticipated and perhaps over-hyped
meals arrive.
Although in Britain, the popular fish of choice is cod or haddock, Gun uses a local fish called Kwango – a type of flathead flounder – that are abundant
amongst the waters of coastal Korea. In fact, Gun tells us he’s just made a trip to the fish market and the fish we’re about to eat is superbly fresh.
Rob cracks open a bottle of vinegar and liberally soaks the batter and dashes a handful of salt over everything, while simultaneously instructing me that
this is the real way to eat fish and chips and mocking my efforts to locate a bottle of ketchup,
which he considers a crime against Queen and country. Rob eagerly presses off a large bite of fish and shoves it in his mouth and for a moment I think he’s having a stroke, but in actuality he’s only paused in taste-bud
reverie – rendered motionless by deep-fried fish. He grabs a bite and relishes the moment, closing his eyes and I can see that, for a short instance, he’s transported back to the UK, his home for many years.
“Now this is a proper fish-and-chips.”
For what it’s worth, it’s a damn good meal. Large portions on a square white plate. A base layer of deep-fried potatoes and stacked heartily with huge
portions of white fish. The batter is crisped nicely and the tartar sauce is home-made. A neat salad with cherry tomatoes and vinaigrette finishes the meal. Really, it’s the best. By all accounts, I should be right there
with Rob in his reverie. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why we’re in this place.
You see, Gun’s Seafood isn’t in England or even the UK. Gun’s Seafood is in Jeju, South Korea. And while it is the gorgeous island that it is, one
thing it is not, is a place to find a wide array of diverse cuisines. Up until a few months ago, this place didn’t have roll-on deodorant, let alone an establishment that provided standard UK fare. And I’ve just gotten
here. I’m still taking the crash-course in everything this small island has to offer. I’ve flown miles just to get away from my home-town, just to escape the usual things. And I’m in no rush to see anything familiar
right now. If that were the case, I’d be angling for a Philadelphia cheesesteak right about now.
But I can tell that Rob has reached an unquantifiably different outcome from this meal.
Fish and chips is the widely-recognized popular dish in the United Kingdom. Rob describes it as a working class food that would be wrapped in newspaper
(before newspaper wrappings were considered non-standard food serving vessels), and served as a carry-away meal. Rob tells me that everything about the meal suggests it grew popular out of necessity: “You know, it gets quite
cold and rainy in the UK. So you need something to warm you up.” It’s the rainy season here on the island, and I’m wondering if there’s any significance to that.
We have a few beers and then we begin talking. And then I feel like a jackass. The story is this: Rob hasn’t lived in his home country since 2006. He’s
collected a total of six years abroad teaching in Asia from places like Bangkok, Thailand to Seoul, South Korea. He’s a veteran of being far from home. He’s essentially dropped everything from his old lifestyle. The man
hasn’t even kept his name. His real name is Geert, but he’s adopted a more common name for the benefit of the ESL students. So it’s no wonder that he’s craving something familiar right about now.
Apparently, with these fish and chips also comes a healthy dose of perspective. Having only just arrived I must sound like a snot-nosed kid, full of opinions
and none of the facts. I’m sure he’s just smirking and thinking to himself: You’ll see. But at the moment, I’m still just a honeymoon traveler, coasting along happily, enjoying the novelty of everything, still too close to my old lifestyle to really miss anything.
Maybe in the not-too-distant future I’ll get sharp pangs of missing home and go searching for some comfort food. But right now, if you were to tell me there’s a new Philly cheesesteak place opening up around the corner,
I think I’d pass.
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