Cycle 14 – Item 38

12 (Sun) February 2023

Chinese Greens

2.0

at Holee Chow

-Dogok, Gangnam, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with the Family, Mom and Dad

One of my many gripes about Korean-Chinese restaurants is that they do not offer any vegetable options.

My theory to explain the absence is that, when the cuisine originated at the turn of the 20th century, the menus were likely limited to simple noodle dishes, which is all that the customers at the time could afford; fancier restaurants (often in hotels, where even to this day the fanciest Chinese restaurants are still to be found) began to pop up half a century later (post-Korean war), offering lavish multi-course meals featuring expensive meats and seafoods – so dishes in the middle, like stir-fried vegetables, never had a chance to develop.

The “Chinese greens” were just bokchoy, parboiled and drizzled in oyster sauce.  In the history of GMTD, the only vegetable dish from a Korean-Chinese restaurant was pretty much the same thing (see 4.297 Bokchoy in Oyster Sauce) – I’ve never seen the dish anywhere since, until tonight.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)