A Gyopo In Korea: “Doosoogobang” and Korean Traditional Cuisine

I’m Dylan, a 3rd generation Korean-American, and I’ll be living in Seoul for three months. In that time, I hope to improve my near non-existent Korean skills and experience the culture that I’ve been removed from. In this series, I’ll be detailing those experiences. If you’re not caught up, you can catch the other chapters here.

This one’s a bit long. It’s about twice the length that I was recommended I write. I thought about splitting it into two parts, but I couldn’t think of a smooth way to do it. So, here’s an article that is a half restaurant recommendation, half cultural commentary hybrid (look at that fancy nested alliteration!).

In my second entry, I mentioned a lunch reservation my dad had made for 11:30. On that particular day which was the eve of Seollal, we took the bus down to Suwon to eat at “Doosoogobang” (두수고방), a restaurant that serves traditional Korean temple food, all vegetarian. It was brisk, the particularly piercing kind, and I felt it poking holes through my thick parka and numbing my nose. Most other restaurants were closed for the holiday, leaving Doosoogobang as our only refuge from the cold.

I want to iterate quickly that this is not really a restaurant review, but instead more of a recounting of a pleasant experience. This is more like a journal entry than anything, and I won’t be mentioning every single thing I ate.

When we walked in, the first thing we all noticed was how nice it looked. It was very clean and tightly organized. The decorum was limited and the color palette was fairly monochromatic with blank white walls. There were only a few tables and fewer chairs, as the tables at the back were on a traditional-style raised Korean deck meant for sitting on with crossed legs. What little furniture there was was made of wood. But despite all that, it didn’t feel… sterile. Sanitary, yes, but not sterile at all. Rather, it felt cozy, with soft light entering through the windows and soft piano music playing gently in the background. A man came out to greet us. He was Kim ChangHoon, our chef, and he led us into a side room, where we found our seats already prepped with an appetizer.

Maddie and me listening to our chef explain the first course. Photographed by Dad

It was then that I found out we were eating a fixed-course meal. These meals in the US can cost 300 dollars per seat, and some really fancy places can cost several times that amount. While I would still consider Doosoogobang to be an expensive and premium experience, particularly for a meal in Korea, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it cost only 100,000 won per person or roughly 75 US dollars for seven courses.

As we were getting seated, the chef asked if Korean was okay with us, and my mom, the best Korean speaker in my family, who is fluent but no longer at the level of a native speaker, asked him to speak slowly.

It didn’t matter. We were lost as soon as he started explaining the first meal, and he immediately recognized that he had to switch to English. But still, every time he explained a course, he would first do so in Korean so we could pick up what we could, though really only my mom had a chance. My dad and sister understood things here and there, and I was getting nothing. Then, he switched to English, which would help clarify things.

His English was not perfect, so some words he struggled to translate, but he was definitely fluent, and between him and my mom, we were able to figure things out. His accent in English was like that of a normal Korean accent, but with a bit of something else to it. We asked him how he became so good at English, and he responded that although he lived in Australia for some time learning to be a chef (which explains the accent), he mostly learned English by watching “Shane Peeled”. Wait, what? “Could you repeat that?” we asked him. “Shae-in-pil-deu.” Ohhh. It’s “Seinfeld.”

The restaurant is vegetarian, but unlike a lot of fancy vegetarian/vegan places in the US, they didn’t try to make steak out of mushrooms or noodles out of zucchini (though that last one can actually be quite tasty). No, they serve traditional Korean temple food. Kim ChangHoon learned by observing monk Jeong Kwan while he lived and studied at Baegyangsa Temple for a year. (Though she has no formal culinary training, Jeong Kwan is regarded as a premier chef of Korean cuisine and was featured in an episode of Netflix’s “Chef’s Table.”) As he served us a selection of banchan (Korean side dishes) with freshly cooked and pressed dubu (tofu, the best I’ve ever had), ChangHoon spoke of how Korea is in danger of losing some of its culture when it comes to food. “The new generation of Koreans is not learning how to make kimchi, gochujang, doenjang, or dubu,” he said. “If they need it, they buy it from the store, where it’s all mostly produced in factories.” (Disclaimer: keep in mind that he said this in Konglish and I’m paraphrasing from memory.)

The conversation then morphed into a discussion of the reception of Korean foods in America, and how Japanese food tends to get more love. In America, people love going out to nice sushi restaurants or chic ramen shops for a meal. Japanese food has found a place to thrive there. The Korean food market, on the other hand, remains limited mostly to those within the Korean diaspora. The only kinds of Korean restaurants you’ll find in America is a place that closes down and reopens with a new owner every year or an overly expensive fusion place where the food is like branches without roots. They have to lean on something to not fall over. Does that even make any sense? (Sometimes, my dad tells us he’s going to take us out to a nice Korean restaurant and we all become silently excited, only to lose that excitement when we walk in and see how fancy it looks. More often than not, this means that it’s a fusion place.)

Korean barbecue seems to be becoming more and more popular as of late, but it’s still nowhere near the popularity of Japanese food.

People in America also seem to just be more receptive to Japanese words than they are to Korean words. My mom pointed out that Japanese words might just sound prettier and look cleaner when romanized. Tofu vs. dubu. Sushi vs. kimbap. Tempura vs. twigim. Miso vs. doenjang.

“And I hate it,” ChangHoon added, “when I hear people call doenjang the ‘Korean miso.’ It’s not. Miso is one thing, and doenjang, though similar in concept, is completely different.” I’d have to agree. To call doenjang so is to be reductive and disrespectful of Korean culture. It makes it seem as though Korea simply adopted miso, when in fact, Doenjang or its predecessor, is known to have been made in Korea since the Three Kingdoms of Korea era (korea.net), which was from 57 B.C. to 668 A.D. The origins of miso, on the other hand, are thought to be in the Asuka period from 592 to 710, and it is speculated that it was borrowed from Chinese and Korean culture, according to top Japanese miso producer Marukome. And in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, doenjang is basically the Korean version of miso.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Japanese food, the same as any other American. Sometimes, I just wish there were more options for Korean food back home. Maybe I should really start learning how to cook.

As we ate, we could feel the thought and care that was put into every course. Everything was perfectly balanced. Some of my favorites were the unique black sesame juk (porridge) and the dubu with banchan dish. The doenjang-guk was perfectly tangy and cleansing. Even the sujeonggwa, or cinnamon punch, that we had for dessert had a magic touch to it. Sweet, but only barely so as not to burn the throat. A kick, but only one like a baby’s from inside the womb; soft, but poignant enough to be noticeable and exciting. Okay, maybe that sentence was a bit too weird. I guess I’ll never really know what that feels like, either. I just came up with that line and got excited because I thought it was really poetic.

Mom and Dad about to take a selfie while enjoying sujeonggwa and desert snacks.
Photographed by Maddie

Although many Korean traditions are being passed down less and less, especially since South Korea boomed in modern technological development in the last few decades, people like Kim ChangHoon and many others are striving to make sure they never go extinct. If you get the chance, I highly recommend visiting Doosoogobang. It’s in Suwon, so if you’re staying in Seoul, it’s a bit outside the city, but for us Californians, it barely felt like an excursion.