Stay (in) and Eat Ramen
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My Journey into the World of K-Drama, with Recipes
Words and photos by Jennifer Chase, Illustrations by Caitlin Tuttle, Recipes from Eric Shin, Seoul Spice
Most of my quarantine hobbies were short-lived. For about a week in 2020 I took better care of a sourdough starter than my children. Spring of 2021 had me foraging for morels and ramps, any excuse to escape the house. Mid-day zoom cocktail classes became a thing until I remembered I have a liver.
But the one hobby that has become part of my life has been my deep dive into Korean television shows known as K-dramas.
I was initially drawn by the Netflix hit “Crash Landing on You.”
The heroine and hero of Crash Landing on You on Netflix.
The story involves a South Korean businesswoman, Yoon Se-ri, who has a paragliding accident that lands her across the demarcation line into North Korea. Luckily for her, she falls into the sculpted arms of a ridiculously handsome North Korean soldier, Ri Jeong-hyeok. Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok fall in love (of course) but can’t be together as they are from countries that are technically still at war. For 16 episodes, Jeong-hyeok and a gang of adorable soldier sidekicks try to get Se-ri back to South Korea and themselves safely back home. A show about forced separation and finding a community where you are, it was the perfect 2020 binge-able quarantine drama.
At a time when travel came to a sudden halt, K-dramas opened a window to another world.
I learned, for example, that Korea’s answer to “Netflix and chill” is asking your date if they want to “stay and eat ramen.” The line comes from the 2001 movie One Fine Spring Day, where the female lead is too shy to ask her date to stay over, so she invites him inside to have ramen. It’s not surprising that eating, rather than movie-watching, is a metaphor for hooking up in Korea. In Korean culture, food plays a key role in social interactions, which is a main theme seen in Korean film and television.
“Korea’s answer to ‘Netflix and chill’ is asking your date if they want to ‘stay and eat ramen.’ It’s not surprising that eating, rather than movie-watching, is a metaphor for hooking up in Korea.”
As I moved on to other K-dramas, I couldn’t help but be fixated on these food scenes and I started to seriously crave the dishes they were eating. I rambled on to pretty much anyone who would listen about my new obsession, and as I happen to be the creative director at Edible DC, at least a few of these people were chefs. DC chef Eric Shin agreed to feed my obsession by creating recipes based on scenes from some of my favorite dramas.
Chef Eric Shin, founder of DC-based Korean comfort-food outpost, Seoul Spice, is literally is one of those kids who grew up in a restaurant, as his parents owned one of the first Korean restaurants in Georgia, named Garam.
Chef ERIc chin with his mother, yang.
“My mom, Yang Shin, stubbornly cooked everything from scratch back in the back of the house while my dad ran the front of the house. I learned so many life lessons watching my parents chase the American dream!” Eric explained to me. He also learned most of his cooking chops from José, one of the restaurant’s sous chefs, and said “I’m sure he loved having a 11-year-old hanging around him during dinner service, but I have vivid memories of kneading buckwheat dough for naengmyun, preparing rice and watching their amazing knife skills.”
Running a fast-casual Korean comfort food concept with six locations in the DC area would be a full-time job for most people. For Eric Shin, though, it’s his side hustle. Both Eric and his wife, Majorie Blake Shin, are professional musicians with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO). With live performances canceled for most of the pandemic, Seoul Spice became a workplace for a number of NSO musicians. For menus and more information, go to seoulspice.com
Kimchi Jigae
The Show: “Reply 1988”
The Recipe: Kimchi Stew
I’m a sucker for friendship stories and this is one of the best. Set in 1988, the year Seoul hosted the summer Olympics, the show centers around five best friends and their families who live next to each other in a small alley. It’s a deeply nostalgic slice of life that shows some of the larger events happening in Korea and the wider world through the eyes of this hilarious neighborhood gang.
The scene
In Korean dining, having an assortment of side dishes, or banchan, is as important as the main entree. The scene begins with the kids being asked to bring extra of whatever their mother has cooked to their neighbors’ houses as banchan. It’s initially played for laughs with all the running back and forth, but then cuts to the house of Taek, a sweet, socially awkward teen, who is the neighborhood genius at Baduk, an ancient Chinese board game. Taek and his father sit in silence at the table with just one pot of kimchee stew between them. The camera moves overhead and we see the table fill up with sides sent from their neighbors. It’s a poignant scene that shows how the community who have limited resources themselves, share what they have. Food is a tangible gesture of love and care.
Chef Eric told me, “Growing up, my favorite was Budae-Jjigae (aka The Army Stew Variation), which is the same recipe as above, but throw in slices of Spam, Vienna sausages, broken rice cakes, instant ramen noodles and crack a raw egg into the hot stew before serving.”
KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN
The show: “Crash Landing on You”
The recipe: Fried Chicken
This story about forbidden love is at its most compelling when it shows us a peek into North Korean life. The details are considered to be very accurate; the showrunners included a defector from North Korea as a consultant to make sure producers got it right.
The scene
If you can watch “Crash Landing on You” and not crave fried chicken, then you don’t like fried chicken. Maybe you don’t even like food. Korean chain BBQ Olive Chicken is a sponsor of the show and fried chicken is inserted wherever and whenever possible. In one particularly memorable scene, Jeong-hyeok and Se-ri are in a very retro-looking Pyongyang bar eating fried chicken with cold beers and watching the first snowfall. The first snow is a fixture in many K-dramas as Koreans believe if you are together with someone during the first snow of the season you will be together a long time. Romance + fried chicken + snow = K-drama gold!
Chef Eric’s Korean Fried Chicken (Yangnyeom Chicken) Recipe here.
KOREAN BBQ SPREAD WITH TRADITIONAL SIDES
The Show: “Pretty Sister Who Buys Me Food”
The Recipe: Korean BBQ
Also known on Netflix as “Something in the Rain.” If you can get past the annoying soundtrack (Carla Bruni’s version of “Stand by Your Man” seems to be on endless repeat) you’ll find a sweet romance drama about an older woman and a younger man that also tackles some more serious issues like dating taboos and workplace harassment.
The scene
Early in the series we see Jin-A, a manager at a coffee franchise company, at an office dinner grilling meat, pouring drinks and awkwardly pretending to laugh along at her male superiors’ inappropriate comments. By the next barbecue, though, she’s gained confidence and learned to stand up for herself. You won’t be able to help laughing at the way the office women make their point with a pair of barbecue tongs and you WILL crave Korean BBQ!
Not Quite Your Mother’s K-drama: A guide to K-drama tropes for newbies
K-drama writing and production have come a long way in the last decade and many of the best shows cleverly subvert common tropes in the genre, but there are usually at least one or two of these common plot points:
The Love Triangle. If it’s two men in love with the heroine, the second guy will be adorable, selfless and entirely too good for this world. You will at some point wish he can get the girl. This is known as the “second lead syndrome” and has led to major shipping wars (advocates of one pairing or relationship over another) so intense on K-drama forums that WE DO NOT SPEAK OF THEM. On the other hand, if it’s two women in love with the male lead you will (love to) hate that scheming wench.
The meet cute happened a while ago. The main couple has somehow met when they were younger. There’s a good chance that one has saved the other from a tragic accident.
Things happen—slowly. Relationships and especially skinship (physical intimacy) moves at a much slower pace than in Western media. Think Regency-era romance movie before “Bridgerton.” The first kiss will probably happen between episodes 7–9.
There WILL be a hospital scene. If your only knowledge of Korean culture came from K-dramas, you would think that they are an extremely accident prone people in need of regular IV drips to survive. Korean friends have assured me that this is not the case.
Piggybacking is a common form of transportation. Our heroine will at some point get drunk on soju (a clear liquor made of rice, wheat, sweet potatoes or tapioca) and have to be carried home.
K-drama men wear turtlenecks and beautiful cashmere coats—in all seasons, indoors or out. Men of America, please emulate this.
And, a few more recommendations for K-drama watching as your eat your ramen:
“Descendants of the Sun”
Even after 19 episodes, I’m not entirely clear about what special forces captain Yoo Shi Jin and surgeon Kang Mo Yeon were doing in the fictional country of Uruk, but it was filmed on a beautiful Greek island and the chemistry between this couple is sizzling. The actors later dated and married IRL.
“It’s OK to not be OK”
Gang Tae, a health worker at a psychiatric hospital; Sang Tae, his autistic brother; and Mun-yeong, a children’s book author with antisocial personality disorder are all struggling to overcome deep trauma. While the themes are serious, a liberal dose of eye candy (we can thank obligatory Korean military service for Kim Soo Hyun abs!), humor and beautiful cinematography keep the story from being too somber.
“Start Up”
Picture a Korean version of the show “Silicon Valley,” but with more idealism and more beautiful people. In a moment when we are skeptical about technology companies and their role in our lives, it’s refreshing to watch a show about young people wanting to use tech as a way to do good in the world.
“Healer”
Gun ownership in Korea is extremely low and gun fatalities even lower (.08 per 100,000 as compared to 12.21 in the U.S.), so fight scenes in Korean TV shows normally use martial arts instead of guns and are usually done by the actors themselves instead of stunt doubles. Ji Chang Wook is mesmerizing to watch as he jumps from rooftops and fights bad guys while young journalist Park Min-young fights with the power of the keyboard.
“Run On”
My current obsession, this one is still ongoing. Centered around the relationship of a movie translator and a track and field athlete, it has witty dialogue and very few of the normal K-drama tropes. I want to drink Soju and be friends with every one of the female characters. We can piggyback home.
