The Quiet Luxury of a Backroom Korean Tasting Menu
Kim is a man made of rectangles, with straight shoulders and a square jaw, and the forward-leaning posture of a person who stands over a stove all day. He wears short-sleeved chef’s whites with a navy apron tied overtop, and speaks quietly—not orating, just talking. The story of a meal at Meju, he explains, is in the restaurant’s name: a meju, a bundle of dried soybeans wrapped in rice stalks, is one origin point for the three essential jangs (sauces) of traditional Korean cooking: doenjang (a soybean paste), ganjang (soy sauce), and gochujang (a spicy fermented pepper paste). Kim bemoans the corporatization of these profoundly traditional ingredients: once upon a time, he sighs, as the first course of silk-soft tofu under a warming doenjang broth is cleared away, every Korean family migh...
