Cycle 1 – Item 119

4 (Tue) May 2010

Yuringi

2.5

at Song Ga

-Yeonnam, Mapo, Seoul, Korea-

with MtG

Yuringi (유린기) is a Korean-Chinese dish.  Deep-fried breaded chicken cutlet, typically sliced and placed on a bed of iceberg lettuce, dressed in a light sweet-sour soy sauce, and topped with scallions/garlic/chilies/etc.  As for the dish’s origins, the on-line sources didn’t provide any reliable information, not even a precise definition or etymology.  From personal observation, I speculate that yurimgi developed into its current form sometime around the mid/late 90s, when Korea’s haute dining scene was getting started, based in and around Gangnam, where hipster Chinese eateries were all the rage, some purporting to be “East-West fusion” (doing stupid shit like spaghetti in oyster sauce) while others claimed to be “traditional Chinese” (as opposed to traditional Korean-Chinese.  The legacy of that era is a handful of dishes that hit the mainstream and remain to this day, including yuringi, perhaps, which may have a similar counterpart back in China.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)