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A Taste of Home at Nun Namu Jip – Seoul
11.09.09 | Permalink | 8 Comments

It seems North Korean food is a trend in Seoul right now. With tensions running high between North and South Korea and Kim Jong Il acting crazier than ever, I’m not sure how this happened (Is it like, another missile?! That crazy motherf*cker! I wonder what he ate this morning?), but for me it was quite nice. My mom’s side of the family is from Pyongyang (the capital of North Korea), so I grew up eating a lot of North Korean food. Nengmyun (냉면, cold buckwheat noodle soup) is probably the most well-known, but another cold soup dish I grew up with is kimchi mari (김치말이). It’s very similar to nengmyun, but the soup has kimchi and sesame oil in it, and instead of the buckwheat noodles, there’s rice. (Rice noodles instead of rice is another option, but rice is more common.) Until recently, no one, unless they were North Korean, knew about kimchi mari. My mom’s friends and my friends always assumed it was something my mom made up with leftover mul kimchi (물김치, water kimchi) and rice. Now everyone eats it, as they should, but those who doubted before, recognize my mom’s skills y’all!

On our second day, Joo Hyun took me and David to Nun Namu Jip (눈나무집, Snow Tree House), a cute restaurant in Samcheong-dong (삼청동) famous for their kimchi mari. We got there early, but there was already a line out the door. Joo Hyun said the line wasn’t so bad, so we queued up and people watched as we waited. MORE »

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