Soul food

No, I'm not talking about grits and corn bread. I'm talking kim chee, radish kim chee (깍두기), galbi (갈비), soon dubu chigae (순두부 찌개), and other Korean food.

It's said that taste is one of the strongest senses tied to memory. I wish this were true.

I don't have many memories before I was 4 or 5 years old. I don't remember eating Korean food at all, although as a toddler I must have eaten it every day until I was 3½ years old. Perhaps my umma (엄마) fed me watered-down kim chee as a baby. I don't remember.

I do remember falling in love with Korean food all over again when I was older, though.

My parents had taken me to a Korean restaurant before, but I just recall eating the barbecued beef. It wasn't until freshman year in college when I met some international Korean graduate students that I was properly introduced to a full Korean meal. We had 불고기 with lettuce leaves and 쌈장, not to mention kim chee and other 반찬. It was love (again) at first taste. The attraction, I think, was mutual.

After I figured out where I could buy Korean groceries (which may not seem difficult today, but there were only like two Korean grocery stores in the area at the time), I'd buy kim chee to eat at home. I could have lived off of kim chee, particularly the radish kind (it has that crunch factor), and rice during college.

Unfortunately, for two years I lived at home with my parents and commuted to the university. One night I brought home a jar of kim chee. I untied the plastic bag and unscrewed the lid. I was in the process of scooping out some kim chee when my mom came tearing into the kitchen, panicked. "What is that smell?!" she asked. She thought the smell of kim chee was some sort of gas fume.

After that and an incident in which my mom threw out my "stinky" kim chee just when it was reaching the perfect stage of fermentation for 김치 찌개, I left my kim chee eating to restaurants or friends' homes.

These days, I'm always up for eating Korean food. Unfortunately, unless I want to eat alone, I only eat it at most once every two weeks it seems.

My fiancé: "What should we eat?"

Me: "Korean?"

My fiancé: "Mexican?"

Me: "Korean?"

My fiancé: "Nah, I don't feel like Korean," or "We just had Korean."

How can you not want to eat Korean food??

I recently discovered that a Korean restaurant down the street from where we live just changed management, and I am so excited! We had eaten at the restaurant before, but had been disappointed with the 반찬 and hadn't gone back. Under new management, however, I'm happy to say they have a wonderful array of 반찬, including my favorite 미역채 (you'll have to excuse the spelling if it's incorrect -- I don't normally spell it, I just eat it), which I hadn't found in San Francisco since I moved.

My goal is to visit every Korean restaurant in San Francisco. On City Search, I counted 25 Korean restaurants in the city. I think I'm at seven so far.

Since moving to the Bay Area, I've been able to enjoy all sorts of different cuisine, from Indian and Pakistani to Eritrean. My favorites are still Korean and sushi, though. (And fortunately, I live just down the street from an excellent Korean restaurant and a great sushi place.)

One day I was eating at a restaurant and picked up a pickled cucumber from a side dish. (Wouldn't that be a pickle, you ask? Well, it wasn't quite a pickle.) After biting into that cucumber, I almost cried. The taste and texture were so familiar that they triggered an emotional reaction. I don't recall ever eating it before, but something told me perhaps I had eaten it as a young child.

The same thing happened in college when I ate some of those plump, juicy Asian grapes. I swore I had eaten them as a child in Korea.

I wish more Korean food could help me recall my lost early memories. I'd eat it every day.