16th June 2008
The erroneous description above rages me.
“Least favourite” (Americanism?) – the term suggests you have carefully considered and ranked accordingly every item or idea from the front to the back of an effectively endless line of preference. “Least favourite” could possibly be construed as a euphemism for dislike or hate or… just “least favourite”. I don’t think its possible to have a least favourite, or whatever that means, when it comes to food, having felt that a) there is no retrievable record for the bottom of bad food experiences as they have all been successfully repressed, and; b) I’m not really about making crass value judgements like “Martian food is my least favourite” or “this food is so gross it tastes like it came from Uranus” – food is very much an article of culture, and culture sustains itself with food (peeps need to eat); so disses on the particular can be seen (however unjustifiably) to refer to the whole. I guess the cosmopolitan and sensitive folk of the world would have a more 3-D arrangement of likes and dislikes. TrustedPlaces have naturally understood the complex and sometimes pernicious taste situation and have come up with the rather good TrustedPlaces Taste Maker [sic] which analyses the broad ‘quilt’ of data you input and cross references your tastes with their databases yielding all kinds of restaurant suggestions, etc. Algorithmic stuff is kind of chic and very now (people say algorithms even caused the Credit Crunch so they must be quite formidable), especially in this kind of application. However, we are really waiting it seems for TasteMaker V.02 which will potentially go into even more detail; maybe to include values like predominant ingredients e.g. “hydrogenated fats” and “MSG” or even clientele e.g. “Friends of Marc Jacobs cougars” or “FT reading bondage crowd”, etc. So if I were to enter my favourite food values into a big futuristic virtual taste generator or super ‘Deep Blue’-type cuisine aggregator or whatever they would run: “BBQ”, “BEEF”, “PICKLE”, “SANDWICH”, “GARLIC”, “CHILLI”, BATTER”. I guess that would probably generate “KOREAN” and “TEX-MEX” as top results. Tex-mex is not my least favourite nor my favourite food - so the machine is already broken or has severe glitches, or cannot be designed to take in all the idiosyncrasies and nuanced experiences which fashion taste. But Korean is by far my favourite food, and this is what Ran serves.
The restaurant interior is optimistically beige (style not a concern), with enormous monochrome photographic prints of historical South Korean landmarks, for the sake of ID, and dark plain wooden furniture. This boring background belies the rich and bizarre foreground of food and smells: garlic, sesame, caramel are diffused by the red emulsions of chiges (Korean stew) and sizzling tabletop barbecues - this is alchemy happening! Guests are all engaged convivially in the banquet food layout of shared plates, the traditional Hanjeongsik, of numerous side dishes, namul, condiments, and kimchis, with long metal chopsticks unique to Korea. Everything served here is excellent. Pin-up dishes include the seafood panjeon, bulgogi, bibimbap and udon plates and don’t be afraid of offal!! The Korean food enthusiasts of my group are convinced it’s the Japanese of our twenties, which is kind of true, and according to my Japanese hair-dresser, is to Japanese people what Japanese food is to us, but whatever it is, its my favorite so...
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