FRANVIA | K-food

  It Looks Like Chaos (But It's Not) The first time I watched my American roommate try bibimbap, she just stared at it. There it was—this beautiful bowl with all these perfectly arranged ingredients. Bright yellow egg yolk sitting on top like a sun. Neat little piles of sautéed vegetables in different colors. Glistening beef. White rice underneath. A dramatic dollop of red gochujang sauce. Order waiting to become harmony "It's so pretty," she said. "I almost don't want to mess it up." Then I picked up my spoon and started stirring everything together. The egg yolk broke and ran through the rice. The red sauce smeared across the vegetables. All those careful arrangements dissolved into this marbled, messy-looking bowl. Her face was horrified. "Wait, you're supposed to destroy it?" I had to laugh. Because yeah, from the outside, Korean eating habits can look a little chaotic. We take beautiful things and immediately mix them into something th...

  Pull up a chair at any Korean table—whether it's a fancy restaurant in Seoul, a street-side joint in Busan, or your friend's grandmother's kitchen—and you'll see it right away: there's always soup. Always. It might be a crystal-clear broth that looks almost too simple to be interesting. Or a fiery red stew bubbling away in a stone pot. Maybe it's a milky-white bone soup that's been simmering since dawn. But whatever form it takes, that bowl of steaming liquid is never missing. A bowl that outlasts generations. I remember the first time an American friend visited me in Korea. After three days of home-cooked meals, she finally asked, "Is there, like... a law that you have to serve soup with everything?" We both laughed, but honestly? It's not far from the truth. To skip soup at a Korean meal feels deeply wrong—like serving spaghetti without any sauce, or coffee without a cup. For Koreans, soup isn't just food. It's temperature and timin...