Why does Korean food hold sway over Indian palates?

Indians have taken to a once-unfamiliar cuisine, thanks to home chefs and delivery kitchens doling out Korean fare

Whether you’re craving a bibimbap or tteokbokki, chances are, there’s a delivery kitchen ready to fulfill that hankering. From Kalimpong to Bengaluru, Korean food is available across India, to the point that it has even become a street food staple, with carts serving up corn dogs and boba tea. As local audiences have taken to K-Dramas like Let’s Eat and Wok of Love, they’ve started to immerse themselves further—in the music and not surprisingly, food as well.

Sparked by a liking for K-dramas?

Kaviraj Thadani, who runs Seoulmate in Mumbai says, “You know, there are girls that come and sit, and while the music is playing, they sing every single song. Every single song they sing,  while waiting for their food.” There are several reasons that have brought about this latest wave, the two most significant ones being the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the first wave of K-dramas that viewers discovered on Netflix much earlier. After all, the shows have lush depictions of food, including how much the Koreans love their tteokbokki or their drinking sessions that show them pairing their fried chicken feet with beer or soju.

In Kalimpong, engineer-turned-restaurateur Tej S Thapa runs Seoul Full, a restaurant that started off as a delivery kitchen. The space, which now serves everything from Korean BBQ to black bean noodles, caters to locals from the area and Korean travellers who visit on tours of the region. This story—of an untrained chef, driven by passion—finds echoes when speaking to chefs from across the country who are inclined towards cooking Korean food.

An array of culinary influences

Kolkata-based Vishakha Roy Choudhury, for example, was learning Korean because of her love of K-Dramas, which soon extended to an interest in cooking. She notes, “I started learning more about the food, since we only knew Korean food as ramen or kimbap. I really wanted to learn how these dishes came about, and almost each dish has a story behind it.” This led to Crunchilicious, a home kitchen which serves kimbap, fried chicken, corn dogs and more. 

Choudhury had a leg up, relying on her brother, who was studying for his PhD in South Korea. He connected her with a friend’s grandmother whose recipes she uses, and who she used as a sounding board for substitutions or technical questions. She touts the budae jjigae—an army stew that is a mashup of Asian cooking technique with American ingredients—as a dish she would like to put on her menu but that won’t travel well, given her delivery-only operation. With ingredients like Spam, sliced cheese and baked beans, it was created during the Korean War in the early fifties, and has become a staple. However, it's required to be eaten straight from the fire., “It has to be served then and there because basically the broth has to be a bit thick and in the time you’re having it, the broth dries down,” she explains.  

In Mumbai, Thadani had a local Korean friend taste his recipes in August 2020 before launching Seoulmate in November that year. He started serving out of a delivery kitchen in south Mumbai before expanding into Bandra last year into a small restaurant with three tables. When it comes to dish formulations, Thadani says, he asked himself, “How can I sell it to people over here?” He hopes this interest will create change, asking, “Why can’t Korean food be like Chinese food?” citing the ubiquity and regularity of Chinese restaurants in the country. He’s open about the fact that he’s adapted recipes, because he wants the food to become something that is consumed regularly. In the years since launching, during his travels, he says, “I focus on Korean restaurants outside Korea, because I wanted to see how they sold Korean food to the locals.”

On the other hand, Tilottama Bhagat runs Mise En Place, a three-table restaurant in Kolkata that’s made a name for itself. With Bhagat doing everything from making kimchi to elevating broths with seaweed for umami, each dish on her short menu meets her own exacting standards. She says, “I thought I would be able to elevate my own life stage if I make a cup of coffee or a rice bowl for somebody,” and from this vague plan, she’s built a well-regarded eatery in less than a year. That’s because she focuses on traditional technique, and specifies that there is a difference between using red chilli paste instead of gochugaru, a traditional Korean red chilli powder.

Accessibility and availability

A lot of  Korean ingredients like seasoned seaweed, mirin and sake vinegar, are now found in supermarkets and stores in India. While online, Urban Platter and Korikart deliver widely. For example, Thapa in Kalimpong orders his sticky rice online. In Bengaluru, popular Korean eatery Arirang has Korea Mart that allows shoppers to stock up on ingredients from the country. 

Collectively, each of the chefs is part of a groundswell that is pushing Korean food forward into the country’s collective imagination. They’re joined by Korean restaurants that are, or were, run by Koreans catering to their fellow countrymen who live and work in India. Samsung, LG Electronics and Hyundai are just three Korean multinationals with a strong presence in India and an attendant expat workforce. While most of these restaurants can be found in and around manufacturing hubs along the southern coast, they also cater to white-collar workers in metros like Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru.

In Mumbai, Lower Parel’s Sun and Moon Korean Restaurant serves up a range of dishes from Korean BBQ to seaweed soup and soybean paste stew. It originally started out at a Korean guest house, where chef Sun Dae Yung Jung would serve, with tables arranged around the considerable dining room, before finally moving to a restaurant space.

With the monsoon around the corner, it’s perhaps time for Korean pancakes, which the locals pair with rice wine. It’s a local craving, much less the desire for chai and pakodas here. Given that Korean culture is still ascendent, and ingredients become easier to source, Korean food might be on its way to ubiquity in India.

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