historically immigrants have had to adapt to find a taste of home when my mother lived in germany in the 80s she used to boil jalapenos and water because it was the closest she could get to the taste of kimchi stew sometimes out of necessity this melding of different cultures produces something entirely new and delicious growing up with a korean mom and a white dad my kitchen table was always a mashup of east and west so when i heard about the concept of this show to investigate the meaning of fusion and the impact of migration on culinary tradition i knew i had to start with korean food just because it's a cuisine that's so close to me pocha 32 in manhattan's korea town serves a dish called budeciga also known as army-based stew that marries a korean staple with western ingredients it's a dish that was born in a time of scarcity in the aftermath of the korean war when koreans began incorporating canned foods from american military bases this kind of processed food was very new to koreans in the old days spam or canned food right after korean world is finished everybody was poor and then around that time you know some people who work in the army base brought home this process the kind of canned spam and ham and sausage and then they added to their kimchi stew and it tasted so tasty even just visually is like a complete mashup of korean and american ingredients when i was really young i didn't know that this was purity you know like my mom would make kimchi and then sometimes she'll throw in some ramen noodles she'll throw in some sausages and spam and then it was later when people were like oh your mom's making food chicken i'm like oh my memory was mainly just oh it's kimchi-jjigae with a lot of different ingredients when i lived in korea i was not a big fan of you know this kind of buddha chicken because just the concept of this food they're adding sausage and ham you know and cheese kind of i didn't like that kind of idea traditional army-based stewie so you need the kimchi first one kimchi you cannot keep it and also spam when i came to america and i lived in also canada everybody says what koreans used to eat spams i didn't realize that this is very people people look down on this kind of spam what i read was that the gis had what they called c rations and they were eating spam like three times a day so back in america there was a sort of backlash of just like spam is disgusting we've eaten it so much when we were in the military but in korea people were on the brink of starvation it was a war-torn country agriculture was at a standstill um they were scaveng a lot of people were scavenging near army bases for the spam so there's also like a very kind of painful history in this dish too more and more people love this buddha among koreans but somebody who went through soul poverty at the time probably they would think wow these days young people are eating this way but actually i was crying at the time no food in korea at the time most of the young generation don't think this way just enjoy this food there and also ingredients are now just you know improved better quality they add more you know rice cake here you know tofu sweet potato even in noodles they make it more kind of upscaled but only one thing you cannot miss is kimchi because it is based on kimchi stew i think that korean people have like a really interesting relationship to fusion a lot of western ingredients maybe because of this beginning of the history there are becoming incorporated in new ways and it's actually become more and more popular so people are sort of attracted to fusion in the way that they kind of have this distaste for that here these days in korea a lot of people we can't say hey you know you are korean you are supposed to eat only authentic food why kimchi chicken no you can't say that because people love it and maybe we can talk about hey more healthy conscious don't eat too much processed food we can talk about this but this is not a korean food you are not supposed to eat this you know we should you know get out of that kind of concept a lot of the chefs that i've talked to about their different types of cuisine are very hesitant about the word fusion and i think that it kind of has this sort of negative connotation here for me personally when i hear of like an asian fusion restaurant i i generally like kind of like turn my nose up a little bit because i just assume it's like inauthentic and bad i think that you know fusion for me when i liked to add sriracha to just a turkey sandwich or you know i kimchi with pasta a lot so is that really fusion for me more than a trend i think it used to be more trendy like oh let's combine this and this and it works but i think that people love combining different things just you know because it just tastes good it's interesting to think about like the difference between fusion and evolution now that there's such a larger korean-american population here do you feel like korean food has changed to sort of western taste a little bit just around me everybody makes authentic food but when i go to the restaurant you know just like your restaurant you know just maybe they can change because they have to be creative to bring that some more people if this is too authentic ways too spicy too too fishy they probably come down you know heat i understand one dish that i could think of that is from here that made it back to korea and kind of came back is korean fried chicken when you go to korean restaurants i don't know if it's really always the right thing to say like oh this is very traditional korean fried chicken because you know what like you know is that really authentic like it's hard too it's like saying that you know this is really authentic because it's like you know korean fried chicken i think similarly is also after the korean war probably was also a western influence my my mom passed away in in 2014 almost five years ago now and actually the first dish that i made um was chachu because and i actually followed your recipe that's how i found you there are a lot of people who learn how to cook korean food because of you they all kind of have this like surrogate digital mom it's a very like personal thing this food and learning how to pass that down even if it's not from your family but someone else that's why i think it kind of feels like so close to you because there's this familial feeling of i learned how to cook this partially from this person [Music] how do you feel when people who aren't korean who are interested in korean food as like a fat like there was a video about this white guy making kimchi and a lot of people are like this guy is just so confident in really not showing how to make it correctly as someone who makes videos from a really kind of authentic place how do you feel when you see something like that i mean in the old days when i started posting my recipe for the first time i was very annoyed you know for example one chef came and then just cut it whole napa cabbage with a big knife cut it like this we don't do this always be nice to my ingredients they're your babies yeah yeah and then when i saw this i was very you know a little bit annoyed but these days it's okay you know because all culture different whatever you make you know you think that that's kimchi okay if you taste if this is tasty that's your kimchi so i think you know for me no problem i always put myself into other people position if i want to learn indian cooking i want to learn real authentic way after that okay like this is too strong flavor i can calm down and that's my choice but first i want to learn real one beyond what kind of questions i'm searching for the answer to also is what is the distinction between cultural sharing and cultural appropriation as a korean business owner serving food that has a very very close personal connection to you does it bother you to see financial success of non-korean people using that cuisine is like a popular thing when we introduced our concept the neighborhood and in the community they're very open which we're very grateful for i'm not always there so i don't know if the customers really know that this is owned by a korean american they just think oh is this like part of whole foods we get that question a lot like oh did whole foods create this concept so when we talk and share about our story and why we're doing this it's really to share the korean authentic flavors but just kind of reinterpret it in our way do you ever worry i mean in the same way that we talked about budachi and the history behind it and this kind of fear that people think that this is authentic traditional korean food do you feel this like responsibility to tell people like this is an addition no i mean we love the traditional korean soups and the proteins that our moms make but at the same time like this is actually a lot of how korean americans eat so i think and also do you ever feel just like well i'm korean and i have this so it's authentic to me [Music] it irritates me a little bit more than i think like a slightly older generation for me and i wonder if you felt this way too growing up in the u.s when i would bring kimchi to school i got really made fun of and it was a really like painful thing in my childhood to be made fun of i was so self-conscious about it part of me is like very very happy that korean food is becoming more popular that more people are exposed to it but there's also like a little bit of resentment and irritation that it had to be sent around by like other you know american people what you have you have like a different memory like growing up and like now everybody loves it you know why did they like it 20 years ago where were you like 10 15 years ago yeah i i grew up very i have similar stories and i think at one point i avoided trying to bring that korean lunch to school and sometimes i would just not eat but i think that in general people have changed the way they eat they're introduced to so many more different flavors like you know sushi is like a very popular example too it took some time but now that there's more access there's better marketing there's you know more non-koreans trying to create their own version of what it means to them and to share that part of their story that now it's like okay i could eat it you can eat it too i think my memory is it's comfort food at home my mom was a working mom and this was like the fastest thing she could make this had kind of all the food groups and bowl of hot rice you didn't need the 10 different pancetta side dishes so i think this is a very good thing about korean food you can change it change the ingredients to something that you available [Music] you