Around Town: Trip to Koreatown leads to delicious results

After months of procrastination, I finally made it back to Koreatown. My destination was the Kae Sung Market.

What, you might ask, was a La Cañadan doing “outside the bubble” in KTown? The answer was simple. I don’t make kimchi and all the kimchi for sale in La Cañada is made with tiny little shrimp.

I don’t eat shrimp. It’s a religious commitment. Our house is ground zero for kosher posole, kosher mole and kosher chicken pibil, but my bid to kasherize all forms of wonderful food hit this big roadblock — the kimchi.

Kimchi, reputed to be the national food of South Korea, is made from brined vegetables, like cabbage or radishes, which are fermented for months in a mouth-watering combination of garlic, scallions and spices.

The problem for me has been the “saeujeot” or shrimp sauce. For a while, Trader Joe’s sold a totally vegan kimchi, sans saeujeot. Alas, they stopped selling it.

The solution was simple. The Kae Sung Market, run by the Cho family. For the past 40 years, Sook-Jae Cho has made kimchi the old-fashioned way with seasonal varieties of vegetables, no MSG and with her family’s Northern Korean recipes. There’s usually one type of kimchi made without shrimp.

The market is so small that I drove past it twice before stopping.

The market is so small that it only has two parking spots.

The market was small, smaller than the inside of the gazebo at Memorial Park. Refrigerators covered most of the walls, mostly filled with gallon jars of homemade kimchi, and other types of banshan (appetizers). Inside was an elderly woman. She was very nice.

The market is named for the Cho family’s hometown. The town of Kae Sung (also Kaesong or Kae Song), is in the very south of North Korea. At the end of World War II, during the partition of Korea, Kae Sung was in South Korea. North Korea captured Kae Sung at the beginning of the Korean War, but the city was recaptured by UN forces, then abandoned. The 1953 treaty turned Kae Sung over to North Korea.

Food-wise, Kae Sung is a jewel. Kae Sung is the Paris of Korea. Why? Because Kae Sung was the capital of Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty, from 918 to 1392. As a result, it developed a complex culinary culture, seemingly lost behind the iron curtain protecting North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. The Kae Sung Market is the living remnant of this culture, a few miles from our town.

While I perused jar upon jar of kimchi, an older gentleman walked in. He offered to translate.

“No shrimp?” He asked.

“No shrimp,” I replied.

The lady pointed to a refrigerator behind me.

“Turnip green kimchi,” said the gentleman, “no shrimp.”

“No shrimp,” said the lady.

I could hardly wait to get home to try it. Once there, I pried open the lid, revealing the fermented turnip leaves and white things, and used a fork to pull some out. I was speechless. It tasted like summer. It was, simply, the best kimchi I have ever tasted.

There were other goodies at the market. Bottles of sesame oil, which, regrettably I did not purchase. This guarantees a return visit. Soon.

Kae Sung Market is on 1010 St. Andrews Place in Koreatown - “KTown,” Los Angeles.

A few miles from La Cañada.

ANITA SUSAN BRENNER is a longtime La Cañada Flintridge resident and an attorney with Law Offices of Torres and Brenner in Pasadena. Follow her on Instagram @realanitabrenner, Facebook and on Twitter @anitabrenner.