Cycle 13 – Item 60

6 (Sun) March 2022

Hongshyo Gaibashi

2.5

from Shanghai

at home

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with the Family

Hongshyo Gaibashi is a Korean-Chinese dish.  “Hongshyo” = 红烧 = hongshao = to braise in soy sauce (according to Naver Dictionary).  “Gaibashi” = scallops in Japanese.

From Shanghai, the dish tastes exactly like palbochae (see for example 11.244 Palbochae).  Presumably, the dish has some counterpart in authentic Chinese cuisine, but I’m sure that it’s nothing like this.  Based on prior experiences with high ticket items from this restaurant, I had zero confidence that the dish would be much good, but I felt like celebrating the family’s high Covid-19 mortality rate.

In Korea, Chinese food is typically delivered on plastic plates, wrapped in cellophane.  After a few hours, the restaurant returns to retrieve the plates.  The sudden growth of demand in food delivery during the pandemic, which has also led to increased reliance on third-party delivery services, has prompted some restaurants to switch to disposables, but resuseables remain standard.

When I was in college in the States, a friend from Korea came to visit, and we ordered Chinese delivery for dinner.  She was disappointed that the food came in disposable styrofoam containers, rather than the white paper boxes with red castles printed on the sides, as seen in American movies.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)