Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 11:47:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Ji-Young Kim Ji-Young Kim Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Food and Performance April 29, 1998 Different Representation, Different identity: Korean Cuisine in Manhattan Introduction: Food and Ethnicity When global society became more modern and more urban in the 20th century, a big flow of people: migrants, refugees, guest-workers, exiles, has been in constant movement. Dense population of ethnic communities were formed such as Chinatown, Little Italy, Little India, and Koreatown in major cities around the world. These fragments of ethnicity endlessly have been reshaping the global cultural landscape and creating an imagined world. They recognize different lifestyles, family formation, and social organizations. The association between food and ethnicity is well performed in ethnic restaurants. In postmodern urban societies, food has ceased to be merely about sustenance and nutrition. Ethnic restaurants have become mirrors of cultural identities: the food people eat and the ways they eat are on constant display. The restaurants are packed with social, cultural and symbolic meanings. They reveal a carefully managed environment, that is created as a suitable atmosphere for food consumption before the customers. As Bell points out in 'Consuming Geographies,' "Eating in the public domain is a mode of demonstrating one's standing and one's distinction by associating oneself with the ready-made ambiance to the restaurant itself." Ethnic restaurants perform its culture by re-presenting each ethnicity and by re-creating its place-identities. Thus, the restaurants offer a total consumption package, not just food and drink but a whole experience. The place becomes a spectacle. Barth in his Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference claims that ethnicity is best understood in the context of ethnic group boundary formation and maintenance, particularly in situations of social interactions between or among members of different groups . He says that ethnicity is only stressed when it is bothered and marked. In emphasizing ethnicity as a process, Barth rejects the idea of the melting pot in the United States; "The idea of the melting pot seems to give way to the idea of a cultural mosaic." This quality of the United States, which recognizes and respects different ethnic, religious, social and ideological cultures, allows each group to exist in its own way and to gain strength. This reverses the quest for a universal, singly rational order of progress. Each ethnic group stresses its own boundary and builds an imaginary community as a solidarity. It re-creates its cultural identity by marking its own group as 'Self' and the unfamiliar environment surrounded as 'Others.' A community re-creates a localized identity and brings the people who live within the community the sense of home. The community becomes their world. Thus it is not culture by itself which differentiates ethnicities, but humans who use their respective cultural traits, selectively and conveniently, as ethnic boundaries. The "we" of the ethnic group always implies "them," the outsiders: ethnic groups are the object of inclusion and exclusion. However, the flow between the inside and the outside of the ethnic boundaries is continuous: the relationship between the Self and the Others is endlessly interactive. Experiencing the Other makes one feel excitement, attraction and interest. In cities like New York, the boundaries of the Other is close so that one can easily consume the Other culture. Culture has become a consumable, marketable item that can be consumed without the need to travel. Not only the geographical boundaries but also time boundaries of consumable culture can be easily accessed. These different spatial and time experiences happen now and here, a characteristic which Gitlin considers part of Postmodern culture. The Postmodern customers want to experience the past and the future now and here. From this desire comes the popularity of the thematized simulations, which flourish based on the Others' ethnicity: touristic consumers can visit and experience the Otherness, all here and now. Consumers move from one time to another as their time and interest and other resources allow. Every action that occurs in ethnic restaurants reveals an cultural encounter mixed with familiarity and strangeness. The food and the setting can be either familiar or strange or both. This binary system of 'Familiarity' and 'Strangeness' reflects another binary of 'Self' and 'Others,' which continuously overlaps with the food. For some customers, the experiencing of eating in an ethnic restaurant signifies a familiar meal surrounded in an unfamiliar, strange setting, which helps fight off the feelings of disorientation: for many others, this experience represents the excitement of 'eating the Others,' making it possible for the customers to visit a strange place in the world. The taste for the exotic reflects indirect participation into cultural difference along a spectrum that moves from the familiar to the strange or the exotic. In this paper I focus on three Korean restaurants in Manhattan, and explore how they represent Koreanness and create their identity through their place-making practices. Depending on their practices, the same food can be considered either 'familiar' or 'strange.' I try to analyze how foodways provide a performance in which statements of identity can be made. Regarding these three restaurants as spectacles, I divide my analysis into three sections: decor of the restaurant as the staging, menu and food as the text, and the interaction between customers and servers as the performance. Each of the restaurants represents a different identity in a different setting. I document and compare the 'Self' and 'Others', 'Familiarity' and 'Strangeness' binaries of each restaurants and examine the reinterpreted Korean identity. The Decor of a Restaurant Woo Chon: a Theater of Memory Woo Chon is located at 35th Street and 5th Avenue, which is in the middle of Koreatown. The two-story building has a primarily wood interior, which gives it a homey appeal. Brown is the overtone color, invoking the sense of rural, agricultural setting. Every wall is covered with old Korean poems in a brownish wall paper, which were written in the 15th and 16th century, and describe the romantic pastoral life. A few Korean paintings are hung, mostly of mountains and gardens depicted in Chinese ink. Among the tables and in the corners, green plants are set out, which completes the atmosphere of a rural village in an overall brownish tone: green trees and plants in yellow and brown soil, the typical color of a Korean rural region. Mr. Choi, the owner, and a first generation immigrant, says, "I tried to make Woo Chon as a place where Korean people can come and relax with not only the familiar or nostalgic food they used to have in Korea, but also by the setting itself. Many of the Korean Immigrants here in New York came from agricultural region in Korea. Even they are from bigger cities, their roots are from the rural life. They came for a better life. But it is not easy. It is tough to live in a much much bigger city where the language is different, the lifestyles, the values, the beliefs are different, and of course where the food is different. I try to make them come here and enjoy what they feel they are lacking. With food." In the front door of Woo Chon, there is a short poem posted in Korean script. Our longing taste, the taste of our homeland Living in an alien land makes us miss our own culture. The taste of our food, especially, is one of our longing dreams ever. Come with your memories, we welcome you, Here in Woo Chon, you will meet your past here, And find your family and friends in an unfamiliar alien land. The ethnic restaurants within the diasporic community have a tendency to focus on their spaces to make it more familiar to the customers of the community. Restaurants often maintain a sense of identity and history through food consumption. As Berghe says, it is only through a process of alienation that ethnic food in itself becomes ethnic food for itself. Ethnic food is "most likely to become a fully self-conscious product in the context of the multi-ethnic city." In each ethnic communities, cuisine is recreated not only in response to the pre-exiting food tastes, but also as a symbol of common descent, as a marker and a reinforcer of social bonds. Food is marketed as the target of ethnic revival. Ethnic restaurants bring the whole community together by providing the food that its members ate in their homeland. The food is associated with the community's memory and re-creates its common past. Conversely, people feel attached to others who share their tastes and manners, that is, who share their ethnicity. In this sense, ethnic restaurants are an expression of the "home" in home cooking. In diasporic communities, food consumption has in itself the power to create 'communities' beyond the local, beyond the effects of commensality. Shared food habits also bind people together in what Brown and Mussell label 'communities of affiliation.' Food and the decor in Woo Chon create a familiar space for the community, a miniature world. They intensify Korean identity by the discourses of authenticity and tradition. By reinventing the full sense of rurality in Korea, which is nostalgic for most Korean immigrants, Woo Chon reconstructs its space as original and authentic place-bound. As van den Berghe notes, the very idea of difference in ethnicity is only 'fully realized through alienation.' Eating food is often of central importance, as ethnic cuisine 'only becomes a self-conscious, subjective reality when ethnic boundaries are crossed.' In the short poem on the front door, by referring the customers in the first plural "our" and "us," it targets mainly the immigrants who are far away from Korea as the main customers. This division of inclusion and exclusion is two sides of the same coin: to include only certain people in a group is necessarily to exclude all others. As Kalcik points out, the maintenance of traditional foodways and the reference to ethnic roots shore up group identity: 'food links people across space and time, so that it helps create a bond with past members of the group as well as between living ones'. In a familiar setting, every action becomes consuming the Self and the past. The restaurant becomes a theater of memory. Surrounded by Strangeness, the 'alien land,' Woo Chon becomes an island, a little Korea, and lingers on memory and nostalgia for the past. Asking the customers to 'come with memories,' Woo Chon retells the customers' history, and offers them a space to meet their past. HangaWi: a Theater of Tourism HangaWi is located on 32nd Street between 5th avenue and Madison Avenue, a neighborhood not too distant from the Korean town. It is a Korean vegetarian restaurant thematized as an ancient palace. According to its description, it is a place for 'an escape to another space and time. Vegetarian meals, presentation of traditional teas, folk and Zen music, decor of antiques and artifacts: all these elements complement each other to provide HangaWi with a relaxed atmosphere of peace and refuge.' The walls of the dining room are adorned by colorful antique quilts. The high ceiling is garnished with rafters in an arch, which are parts of a Korean tiled roof, and it is supported by 10 beige wooden pillars between the seats. The place connotes the atmosphere of a Korean traditional main floored room, where upper-class people and highly educated scholars would ask their visitors to sit down and chat. There are no chairs, and the customers are asked to sit down on the floor which is covered with light-yellow rush mat. Below the table, there are holes into which people can insert their legs. This special floor design with the holes, according to the owner Ms. Terry, is designed for the Western people who are not used to sitting on the floor for a relatively long time. Except for the colorful quilts on the wall, the overtone color of the place is natural beige. On the table, there are candles with Buddhist inscriptions in a bronze candle holders, and luxurious red and blue napkins wrapping the stoneware spoon and chopsticks in an envelope form. The background music is folk and spiritual. Sometimes it is only the sound of water running in nature, the sound of wind, and the chirping of birds. The place stimulates all then senses: visual, aural, tactile, and olfactory. All these senses intensify the exoticism of the atmosphere and make the place as an unknown, unexplored space. In entering HangaWi, I was fascinated by the staging. Every single pieces looked Korean by itself, but the sum total was not. The whole notion of 'exoticness' was present everywhere. It was indeed, 'the first step towards leaving the outside world and entering another world.' Terry says, " I always thought Korean cuisine could be better marketed if it focus on the authentic Koreanness. Korean people are always not self-confident about their unique charm which in fact has a huge potentiality in attracting the Western world. I was always amazed by the beautiful palaces in Korea. I used to hang out there hours and hours when I was a child. Few years ago, I went back to Seoul to visit several palaces, and finally I could adapt them as the main theme into HangaWi. It was a total success. Americans love this place." In the postmodern urban context, the most fertile ground for the blossoming of ethnic cuisine, food does not only reinforce ethnic ties: it also makes a bridge across ethnic lines. Ethnic cuisine does not confine itself mainly within the diasporic community, but jumps across its boundaries and gets marketed as a form of tourism. There is always the excitement of experiencing the Otherness. By eating other cuisine, people consume different cultures. Food has been used as the most accessible and friendliest arena of different ethnic contacts such as at festivals, carnivals, and bazaars. As an outsider consuming an exotic cuisine, one is literally taking in the foreign culture. In this process, however, when ethnic cuisine gets commercialized as a form of tourism, the matter of authenticity arises. The authenticity has a tendency to exaggerate the culture and ethnicity becomes an object of the exotic. In stressing the authenticity of the ethnic culture, conversely, the authenticity disappears and commercialized exoticism replaces. As Van den Berghe notes, "the tourist seeks instant gratification of his cultural voyeurism. Any attempt to cater commercially for that demand necessarily produces the cultural equivalent of fast food, as 'staged' authenticity' that adulterates that which the tourist seeks." Terry, as a Korean-American, stressed the restaurant's authentic of Koreanness. Nevertheless, there is an inevitable loss. HangaWi loses authenticity to the extent that it endeavors to cater to the taste of outsiders, the Others. The place is exhibited from outsiders' view projected into a 'different' culture rather than from insiders' view who self-reflect their own culture. Thus, it is not Korean Korea, but Western Korea. In HangaWi, there is no familiarity. Everything is strange and new. Everyone participates in the tour to another space and time as Others, and there is a neophiliac fascination with eating the Otherness. The customers cross the cultural boundaries in a very safe manner. Thus, there is no uncomfortable familiarity for the Others to adjust themselves. By obliterating the familiarity of the original, the place automatically transforms into a new space to experiment in a friendly way. Every aspect becomes experimental theater itself, a theater of tourism, and the Others become the center, without being marked as 'outsiders.' Bop: an Anti-Theatrical Staging Bop is located in SoHo, at Prince between Thompson and Sullivan Street. It is a small restaurant with 28 capacities. In Bop, there is nothing Korean to sense. In other words, there is no special staging, relating anything to Korean cuisine. With dim, tranquil lighting, it is rather dark inside, and there are a few Chinese mirrors with Chinese women in them hung on the wall. One side of the wall is a small bar which reminds one of a Japanese Sushi bar. The atmosphere suggests Asia with those few decorations. The tables are very close to each other, giving a cozy feeling. The servers walk around the tables casually, and the open kitchen is almost silent except for some broken English sentences, heard once in a while in a low voice from the chef directing the Hispanic employees. The overtone color in Bop is dark greenish gray. The walls are verdigris, the lights dark green, with a gray colored floor. Nothing is exaggerated in any sense. There is nothing special about the space, only minimalistic Asian expression. Without looking at the menu, it is difficult for one to find out what kind of food served. It is totally anti-thematic and anti-theatrical, a restaurant where food is detached from the place. The owner, Brad Kelley, owns two other different ethnic restaurants in the neighborhood; Kin Khao, Malaysian cuisine and Kelley and Ping, Pan Asian cuisine. He opened Bop six months ago in the belief that the next ethnic restaurant boom would be Korean cuisine. Brad approached Bop with his new concept for ethnic restaurants. "When I opened Kelly and Ping or Kin Khao, I tried to stress their authenticity by bringing the exotic culture in to the place. It was ten years ago. At that time, unknown Asian culture was fascinating for Americans. They were eager to try the differences. Now, I see people are getting tired from being in an exotic place. They don't have to travel through restaurants anymore to experience the cultural differences. They have money now. They can travel to Japan to learn Japanese culture, or to China to see Chinese culture. That's one of the reason I tried not to make the place itself to be too authentic." SoHo, the neighborhood in which Bop is located, is called "the heart of Manhattan's fashionable downtown art scene." It is the district for trendiness. Among countless galleries, boutiques, antique stores, restaurants and coffeehouses, the streets are full of trend-setters, who wander the district and take time to window shop, browse in galleries and boutiques, or just to spend time with their friends. It is not a business district, nor an ethnic district. Diverse people come and go randomly in this neighborhood. People don't make a special trip to SoHo to experience particular different ethnic cultures. Brad aimed at this perspective, and cast his restaurant as not authentic or traditional but as familiar. Korean food is a relatively new cuisine in the Western world. Brad points out that Korean cuisine has been a tough sell for the 'Others.' "I don't want to make people come here and be educated. You can't educate people unless you get familiar with the culture itself in a certain degree. Korean culture hasn't been really spread out in America even though there is quite a large Korean population in America. Certainly I didn't want to run the risk of making my customers exhausted by presenting a relatively new cuisine in a new cultural setting. At least, SoHo is not the right place for that. " He grafts the strange, unfamiliar food to a friendly familiar setting. While Woo Chon stages itself as a theater of memory and HangaWi as a theater of tourism, Bop stages itself without any theatricality. By introducing a roughly 'new' cuisine in a trendy district, Bop obliterates all the authenticity and exoticism from the stage except the food served on the table, and offers itself as a plain restaurant. It seems to be lacking any theme, and as the result, it attracts people who are tired of going to the restaurant-theaters. Also, it is an escape for people who are not searching for any adventure at the dinner table while having somewhat new and different food. Based on this new concept of an ethnic restaurant, Bop represents Korean culture in causalness and offers an ordinary daily drama rather than a special occasion to both neophobia and neophilia. Customers can consume the new culture in familiarity. Menu and food: The Text I have explored the decor of these three restaurants as a particular staging. They all set unique settings and attract different customers by different representations of Korean culture. In this section I analyze the menu and food of the restaurants, and study how they, as the program and the main texts , specify and intensify their approach in presenting Korean cuisine. Woo Chon: The Taste of Nostalgia On the front page of the thick menu of Woo Chon, there is an explanation for the name of the place Woo Chon: a cattle growing village. It says that Koreans started to raise cattle 2,000 years ago. The cover of the menu again reveals the rurality of Korea by displaying a picture of a bull lead by a farmer with a coolie rack on his back. The menu is filled with photographs and is 29 pages long. The name of each dish is written in Korean script with a short English descriptions on the side. The menu has more than 130 large dishes. It covers basically almost everything a Korean would have if they went to any restaurant in Korea. The menu functions as an exhibition in the museum on Korean cuisine, and pleases the customers' eyes. It represents the authenticity of Korean cuisine, and assumes the legitimate reference to it by displaying a large variety of dishes. All of the huge and colorful pictures in the menu reveal the five colors which any standard Korean dinner table would have: black, white, red, green and yellow. Mr. Choi says, "Koreans don't concentrate too severely on aesthetics, but the color is very important. The five colors we try to present in every table tells Korean unique bold flavors. They are the colors of our nature, which Koreans would easily identify themselves into the dish." The food in Woo Chon also stress the 'right' taste. Korean cuisine is well known for its spicy hotness, and as there is a saying, "the spicier, the more Korean." Koreans identify its own taste as spiciness. When asked for the taste, Mr. Choi said that he tries to bring the exact taste when Korean people think of Korean food. However, after trying several dishes at Woo Chon, I could not help but think that the taste was exaggerated. Every dish was too spicy or too strong even for a Korean. In order to stress Korean ethnicity through the food, Woo Chon puts extra spice in it, with a very heavy thick sauce. The dish is transformed into an exaggerated Korean taste. HangaWi: The Elaboration of Modernity In HangaWi, there are three menus: dinner, beverage, and tea and dessert menu. The menus are the programs for the customers' exploration of a new culture. Each elaborately explains every item in a poetic way, and makes its audience anticipate the next scene to come: the food. The content is adapted into Western convention, starting from starters, appetizers, entree, and desserts. The names for the dishes are poetically invented such as 'mushrooms galore,' 'tofu sandwich with lemon surprise,' or 'fragrant bamboo rice.' Terry comments, "Some Koreans complain that the menu is not Korean. Actually, I don't mind it. I want to experiment and extend the possibilities by mixing Korean food with a new concept." She continues, "It is a matter of marketing. I don't want HangaWi to be pure Korean. For that, people can go to the Korean community. I wanted this place to be ambivalent. For Koreans, this place looks 'very modern', and for Americans it will be reflected as 'very traditional.'" Terry targeted the customers for upper class Americans who don't go for real traditional Korean food, but who would like to experiment the 'exotic' atmosphere. By creating a new menu structure with ethnic food, HangaWi performs a neo-modern-Korean Identity. In order to make Korean cuisine more acceptable to the 'Others', HangaWi tries to overcome the difficulties Korean food had in entering the main flow of the ethnic restaurants in New York. According to Terry, Korean cuisine is only known for Bul-go-gi (Korean Barbecue) and Kimchee, and not appreciated as much as Chinese and Japanese cuisine by foreigners. "Americans have a strong negative stereotype that Korean cuisine smells like garlic, and that Korean restaurants are only for middle-lower class because of the bad service and indecent atmosphere. I wanted to change this misconception." She adapted the food to contemporary trend in the United States, where the notion of 'health' is continuously stressed, by making the place a vegetarian restaurant. The dishes served in HangaWi are decorated elaborately such as a crane shaped radish or a bridge shaped cucumber. Every dish has a real edible flower on it. Ms. Kim, the chef, says that the plate itself has to be the center theme of the table. "Making a plate requires creativity. People on the dinner table who come to HangaWi are astonished by the atmosphere. If the food is not exotic as much as the place, they will only come once to see the architecture and interior design. They wouldn't come back. It's like a museum. If museums only have the same exhibition, how many people would go there again? My job is to bring people again for the food itself. I try to make the dish as aesthetic as possible and make many variations." Thus, the food intensifies and concludes the theme of the restaurant. As Ms. Kim said, it becomes the center of the theatricality. Bop: Centralized Self on the Table In Bop, all the Koreanness is condensed into food. Compared to the anti-theatricality of the space, Bop focuses on its dishes in representing Korean identity. The word "bop" means rice in Korean, which is also synonymous with food. Rice is the staple of Korean cuisine, and has a special centrality in ethnic identity formation. Usually, Korean do not feel that they have eaten unless they have rice for their meals. They believe that rice has a soul. The word bop connotes aesthetics as a beautiful and good life. It also implies a good fortune, which makes one rich. Therefore, by naming itself as such, Bop centralizes Koreanness into food. For example, every large dish is served with a bowl of rice. By serving rice with every dish, Bop serves the dominant symbol of the Self in Korea. The core of Korean identity is concentrated into the bowl of rice. The menu of Bop is very simple: seven small dishes and six large dishes. Even the explanation is not elaborated. There are no fancy names for the dishes, and they are simply written in the menu as they sound in Korean. The small and simple menu reflects the minimalistic expression of the space. However, the taste of the food, cooked by Ms Lee, is based on the 'natural' flavor without the least adaptation. Bop's specialty is Bibimbop, one of the large dishes, white rice topped with a variety of vegetables and a fried egg. This dish is the only one adapted for the 'Others', by having seven varieties of flavors: beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, tuna, kimchee and wild mountain vegetables. (Traditionally, Bibimbop has no varieties and only contains basic vegetables such as seasoned bean sprouts and spinach with slivers of beef.) As an American, Brad uses his advantage, knowing what would be viable for differences to be appreciated. "I sell culture through food. I try to keep the natural taste, but sometimes it is hard. You have to think whether it is going to work or not. You have to think about the market all the time, and create a precise concept for each dish. Personally, I don't want to make much adaptation. I'd rather have a small selection. You have to make everything viable. Otherwise, it won't last long. It becomes tiring." In the process of making food 'viable' for the Others, Bop compacts its variety and concentrates Korean identity into the dishes. The 'authentic' Korea is displayed on an American table. The Interaction between the Customers and Servers: The Performance In a restaurant, customers and servers' interaction complete the spectacle. The picture changes depending on who the customers and the servers are and how both interact within the space. The servers help the customers from their entrance till they leave, and the customers have an endless encounter with culture. Both of them perform their identity by serving and consuming the culture of either 'Self' or 'Others.' Woo Chon: Home Visits to an Island Woo Chon is open 24 hours a day. When asked for the reason, Mr. Choi said it is mainly for the people who stay in Manhattan for a short business trip. "They can not sleep well due to the jet lag, and also they can not get used to American food in such a short time. During the day time, they meet Americans, have lunch or dinner together which is not their food. At late at night, they come and complain the strange food they had for the day, and feel relieved in having some real food here." At three in the morning one day, a quarter of the large restaurant was full of Koreans. The place was giving a sense of 'home' for the strangers in Manhattan. The strangers turned into friendly visitors of a rural village, by sharing familiar food. This commensality is the main function in Woo Chon for these people. The customers of Woo Chon during the lunch and dinner peak time are diverse. Mr. Kim, the manager, says between noon and 2 in the afternoon and between 7 and 9 in the evening, there are about 40% non-Korean customers. However, except those peak times, most customers are Korean. The intimacy between the customers and the servers varies according the customers' ethnicity. Twelve servers out of sixteen are Korean. During the peak time, they work more professionally. No talk occurs between the servers and the customers except when they get orders and serve the food. However, when it is less busy and when there are more Koreans, the servers and the customers freely talk, joke, relax, and once one even sat on a chair next to the customer and started conversation about her hometown in Korea. Soo-young, one of the servers, says, "When there are only Koreans, all of us feel much more comfortable. Maybe for my boss, it is better to have more Caucasian around. But I don't care. I like Korean customers. I don't have to speak broken English to them." As such, most of the time, Woo Chon performs as a small island in the middle of Manhattan, full of home imageries, both to the customers and to the servers, the disaporic community. HangaWi: Tourists Led by Tour Guides In HangaWi, the servers are fully dressed in Hanbok, but adapted to a modern style by cutting down the length of their skirts and trousers to move around more freely and by narrowing the width of the sleeves to serve the dishes. The servers welcome the customers with a calm smile, and lead them to the tables. In soft, calm, and low voices, they explain every item, from tea to dessert, and also answer the customer's questions of how to eat, what to eat and what to drink, and so on. They are like a friendly tour guide leading to a new space. They elaborate their explanations, even adding the history of each dishes. Customers learn certain rules to perform from the moment they enter the exotic theater. Everything is strange and to be experimented. In the Zagat Survey for 1998 New York City Restaurants, it advises to 'wear clean socks since you take off your shoes and sit on the floor.' When I asked about the green tea, commenting that it was rather pricey for a cup of tea, (The price ranged from 5 dollars to 10 dollars for a single cup) the server answered, "This tea is 'Original.' It is different from any ordinary green tea. It comes from the Mountains of Jilee San, which is known to be the sacred ground for green tea. It provides the best conditions for the cultivation of green tea leaves. It is 'different'. " The answer was so well rehearsed that it sounded like a recorded tape. Then the server called the manager to give me more information about the tea itself. She came over and gave me a little lecture on the history of Korean tea ceremony and explained the appropriate temperature and precipitation for the cultivation of tea: It has to be cultivated in a deep valley where 13.8C is the average temperature and more than 1,500mm of precipitation per year is expected. Being led to 'another space and time, ' the customers are expected to learn something new and explore the differences of exotic culture. Due to the exaggeration of Korean culture, only one percent of the customers are Korean. The majority of Others find themselves with their friendly tour guides, and the customers naturally become tourists. Bop: Casual Intimacy In Bop, there are only two servers. Two Korean-Americans girls wear plain black evening dresses and serve the customers in a friendly, but not overwhelmingly informative, fashion. They give short comments on food only when are asked by the customers. The atmosphere is less professional and more casual. The background music is jazz or classical at a low level. The customers are fairly mixed in terms of ethnicity, but there is no distinct amount of Korean customers. Without any formality, Bop makes the customers relax. Rita Morgan, one of the customers in Bop, says, "I like here because I don't have to think about what I should do and what I shouldn't do, what is the proper way to eat, would people stare at me, watch how I eat, how I respond, and so on. I don't want to feel I am different. That's why I love this place. I can get out of the pressure of thinking too much about the food. And of course the food is great. It is both healthy and filling." Located in the middle of the mostly Europhiliac SoHo, Bop represents Koreanness in a very safe manner. It obliterates the neophobic worries by serving food in a friendly way. The servers are interactive with both the customers and between themselves. They go outside and have a cigarette with the customers occasionally, and talk about current issues such as Bill Clinton's sexual scandals or the Winter Olympics at Nagano. As the New York Times Review says, "Bop is a place when you need a break from all the formality. It comforts you, and scores on warmth and the elusive fun factor." Conclusion: Representation of Cultural Identity and its Original I have analyzed three different Korean restaurants in Manhattan and their approaches for place-making practices. Each of them sells cultural identities through the whole experience in consuming the culture. Ethnic cuisines have a key role to play in reinforcing the cohesion within a diasporic community against the threatening invasions of 'foreign food' imageries. At the same time, ethnic cuisines other than one's own are often celebrated, even fetishized, for their exotic difference, adding spice to life. Foodways, thus has binary systems as 'Self' and the 'Other,' as 'familiarity' and 'strangeness.' As Porter says, a good restaurant "acts as a catalyst for people to do what they want." What they want is clearly much more than just eating. Ethnic restaurants offer a marketed consumption package of culture. In this process, the question of whether a marketized culture is true to its original identity arises. There is always a violation of culture. In Woo Chon, the effort to re-produce the image of the traditional rural imaginary makes it realer than real. Postmodernist thinkers call this cultural process Hyperreality: "the becoming real of what is hype or simulation." Approaching Korean culture as hyperreality, Woo Chon reconstructs the past of the immigrants in Manhattan. The taste of the dishes becomes more Korean than the original ones. The restaurant functions as a theater of memory, linking the past and the present in the space, in the menu, in the food, and in the interaction between the customers and the servers. HangaWi promotes Korean culture to the 'Others.' It is the most exciting experience of a voyeuristic culture, a theater of tourism. As a spectacle, HangaWi extracts and abstracts from Korean traditional culture, and re-creates a new culture. It translates, and is a translation of Koreanness for the foreigners. The authenticity cleverly gives way to the exotic, and the place transforms into a different space, different time. The exaggeration of every single items in the place becomes meaningful as it gives the customers a new experience in exploring the differences. Bop approaches its identity by narrowing into one single narrative as the main theme, and gratifies the varied states of potential consumers of Korean culture. It liberates itself from an authentic self, and gives more freedom to creatively construct and reconstruct the 'Self.' By only compressing the Others' culture into the food, Bop jumps the ethnic boundaries and converts the 'strangeness' into 'familiarity.' Its anti-theatricality offers the Others openly a cross-ethnic consumption. The ethnic identity go through transformations in ethnic restaurants. The violation in presenting the original culture is inevitable. Ethnicity and its representation in restaurants appeal to its patrons and through a marketing process, they recreate, transform, and reinterpret the ethnicity. The binary systems of Self and Others, Familiarity and Strangeness always come together and continuously re-define the experience of the cultural consumer. Bibliography Barth, F. (Ed.) (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Boston: Little, Brown. Beardsworth, A. and Keil, T. 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