There and Back Again
I got back from my trip into Chicago exhausted and stuffed to the gills. The traffic was at times terrible both on the highway and in the city, which is to say, at least for Chicago, quite normal I guess. And it was very frustrating that the first place I wanted to go to, TAC Quick, was closed, despite the sign on the door indicating they were open Monday-Saturday. It was Tuesday and I was a bit miffed. But the restaurant being closed wasn’t what amazed me the most. TAC Quick is right around the corner from a friend who I used to visit a lot a couple of years ago. If I had known, I would have dragged her there or gone on my own. I can’t believe how close I was to it! If I had taken a right instead of a left out of the Irving Park Red Line station, I would have been there in 2 blocks! Oh well, I”ll call ahead next time to make sure I can experience bliss.
Fortunately, the second place I wanted to go, Cho Sun Ok, was close and open, so although it was a close call, I didn’t starve to death. The dining room is fairly small, lots of wood, intimate almost. Some of the tables have grills in the middle. If you’re at another type of table and order something that needs to be grilled, they bring out a portable gas one. I had the seafood and vegetable pancake, which was fairly mild, but delicious, chock full of green onions, red bell pepper, tender squid, and some other seafood I didn’t recognize. It comes with a side of delicious and very Korean dipping sauce which was made with soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and toasted sesame seeds. I’ve had kalbi (grilled marinated short ribs) and bulgolgi (very thinly sliced grilled marinated beef), both of which are extremely well known outside of Korea. Of course, I’ve also had their national dish, kimchi, along with probably a couple dozen types of panchan, the little dishes that accompany every meal. The can be as simple as lightly dressed wilted spinach, to an interesting creamy apple salad. And whatever you order, you usually get a lot of them, I’ve never seen fewer than a half dozen, and have seen twice that at one time on the table depending proabably on the number of entrees the table orders. Since it was just me, and I ordered just the pancake and the doeji gui (very thinly sliced pork, marinated, and then grilled), I only got 7 panchan. I couldn’t finish my pancake orf entree, and I tried to finish all the panchan I could, a spicy cabbage kimchi, pickled shredded daikon, seaweed salad, pickled zucchini, pickled cucumber, the apple salad, pickled bean sprouts, and I think that’s it. You might have noticed there were a lot of pickled veggies.
When my parents when to visit my sister and her partner, Ryan, in S. Korea last month, she noticed there were hardly any vegetables in the main dishes. I need to do some reading on the subject, but it appears to me like the bulk of the vegetables in Korean cuisine are in the panchan. I’ll have to research why, but my guess is that the winters, which I’ve heard are long and cold, don’t permit a lot of agriculture outside the summer months, so Koreans have learned to pickle what they can harvest, preserving it through the winter months. It makes for a very interesting cuisine, one that Mark Bittman of the NY Times calls, “Japanese food with guts.” I don’t think he meant it as a slam on Japanese food at all, just an explanation by amplification.
Anyway, it was very delicious, and I was long overdue to eat some again. It won’t be so long between visits to another Korean restaurant, but I do so love Thai and Vietnamese, and Chicago is so rich with so many great of those restaurants, that it maybe at least a few months. At least.
Then I went to a great very Viennese coffee shop on Lincoln, Julius Meinl, which had a bounty of amazing-looking pastries. I was already stuffed with Korean food, but I’d love to go back sometime and sample everything. I settled for a mocha, which was probably the best I’ve ever had.
This trip, actually every trip into Chicago or any great food city, reminds me of a saying I think I made up, “So much great food, so little time.” Perhaps I should put it on a t-shirt!
