Eating Korea

December 5, 2016
After two decades of teaching English in South Korea, journalist Holliday returned on a mission to reeducate himself about the country’s rapidly evolving cuisine. This lovingly written food pilgrimage starts by asking, “What is Korean food?” Holliday leads his reader on an obsessive quest to find “the honest guts of Korean food, of the country,” in dishes such as kimchi, bibimbap, blackened goat, and hagfish (somewhat like eel). Holliday effectively conjures the family-run restaurants of remote South Korean towns, and the vendors and markets that support them. He celebrates “a way of eating that is very Korean” even as it disappears due to less home cooking and the rapid disintegration of the traditional family unit. When discussing mok-bang (Koreans who broadcast themselves while eating, for others to watch), one of Holliday’s dining companions has this insight into her society: “We developed so fast, in such a short period, we don’t actually enjoy ourselves apart from drinking and eating.” Holliday captures these uniquely Korean sights, smells and flavors with appetizing detail, and along the way finds his true prize: a hard-won understanding of the nation’s changing culture.

December 1, 2016
A British journalist who lived in Korea in the 1990s chronicles his return in 2015, when he found the culinary landscape transformed, mostly for the better.It didn't seem promising when a friend took Holliday (Eating Viet Nam, 2015) to a small restaurant in downtown Seoul and invited him to eat pizza flavored with fruitcake, proclaiming, "this is the future." While teaching in Korea 20 years earlier, the author fell in love with its down-home, superspicy food; fruitcake pizza was not his idea of a good development. However, he was excited by the new pride Koreans take in their cuisine, no longer embarrassed that it is "too smelly, too spicy." So Holliday decided to travel around the country sampling its quintessential dishes. He fears--as he notes a few too many times--that traditional Korean food is disappearing like the old hanok bungalows bulldozed to make way for skyscrapers. On the contrary, he discovered, the new cooks take pride in reclaiming old recipes. As the narrative moves out of Seoul into the provinces, the author makes palpable the "glorious stench" and mouth-burning tastes of a highly spiced cuisine, from kimchi to bibimbap, a one-bowl festival of flavors that is a specialty of the city of Jeonju. Like many food books, the parade of one meal after another can become wearying, and Holliday's lingering descriptions of textures and substances that are bizarre by Western standards ("it was as if a urinal cake were now lodged inside me") are not for the squeamish. But his cook's tour also includes interesting observations on Korea's rapidly changing society: the increasing assertiveness of its once-subservient women counterpoised against the rage for plastic surgery, its "quickly-quickly" culture contrasted with the mysterious concept of han, a state of soul combining "irresolvable pain [and] unrealizable dreams" that Koreans regard as a uniquely national quality. The navel-gazing about the pluses and minuses of modernization is expendable, but Holliday provides a lively snapshot of an ancient culture in transition.

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March 1, 2017

In the 1990s, Holliday (Eating Viet Nam) moved to South Korea to teach English, falling in love with the country and its food. He then traveled throughout the world, returning to the country 20 years later to write about the dishes he enjoyed years earlier. However, the landscape he once knew has drastically changed. Traditional buildings have been bulldozed to make way for modern ones. Meanwhile, many traditional delicacies are disappearing as the younger generation of Koreans seeks fusion with Western flavors, causing conventional foods to be adapted with new ingredients and techniques. Journeying throughout South Korea, Holliday seeks out these entrees while also describing how culinary tastes have evolved. Many of the dishes described will be new to most readers, but Holliday's vivid descriptions make even the most uncommon recipes accessible. VERDICT Holliday has a flair for bringing unique locations and provisions to life, taking readers with him into crowded restaurants and markets, creating an exciting work for food lovers interested in a combination of culinary history, cultural analysis, and travel.--Melissa Stoeger, Deerfield P.L., IL

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