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How Survivors of Stalinism Created a New Korean-Fusion Cuisine - Atlas Obscura
When the Koryo Saram were forcibly relocated, they forged new identities.
n 2010 Dave Cook, a food writer with a talent for highlighting lesser known cuisine, endorsed a mom-and-pop cafe just off Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach boardwalk in the New York Times. By writing about the restaurant, which is known interchangeably as Eddie Fancy Food, Cafe At-Your-Mother-in-Law, or Y Tëщи, he gave most Americans their first look at a unique fusion cuisine: Korean-Russian-Central Asian, or Koryo Saram, food.
Ever since, interest in this subtle blend, which mixes the heavy yet cool flavors of the Eurasian steppe with the fire and tang of the Korean peninsula, has exploded. Enticingly, though, it does not simply mix-and-match the traditions’ ingredients. Koryo Saram food presents, for example, a standard Central Asian dish, such as lagman, a cool beef noodle soup, straight up, only revealing an unexpected dash of fermented Korean chilis when diners taste it on the tongue. And chim cha salads often look for all the world like white kimchi, but one bite reveals cabbage deep soaked in vinegar, rather than fermented, and sometimes cut with distinctly Central Asian flavors, such as pickled tomatoes. Tourists from across the U.S. and as far as South Korea now visit Y Tëщи, or Brooklyn’s other Koryo Saram eatery, Café Lily
When the Koryo Saram were forcibly relocated, they forged new identities.
n 2010 Dave Cook, a food writer with a talent for highlighting lesser known cuisine, endorsed a mom-and-pop cafe just off Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach boardwalk in the New York Times. By writing about the restaurant, which is known interchangeably as Eddie Fancy Food, Cafe At-Your-Mother-in-Law, or Y Tëщи, he gave most Americans their first look at a unique fusion cuisine: Korean-Russian-Central Asian, or Koryo Saram, food.
Ever since, interest in this subtle blend, which mixes the heavy yet cool flavors of the Eurasian steppe with the fire and tang of the Korean peninsula, has exploded. Enticingly, though, it does not simply mix-and-match the traditions’ ingredients. Koryo Saram food presents, for example, a standard Central Asian dish, such as lagman, a cool beef noodle soup, straight up, only revealing an unexpected dash of fermented Korean chilis when diners taste it on the tongue. And chim cha salads often look for all the world like white kimchi, but one bite reveals cabbage deep soaked in vinegar, rather than fermented, and sometimes cut with distinctly Central Asian flavors, such as pickled tomatoes. Tourists from across the U.S. and as far as South Korea now visit Y Tëщи, or Brooklyn’s other Koryo Saram eatery, Café Lily