Cars need to consume gas or electricity to function properly. Humans need to eat food to function. Because humans have brains, they are particular about their fuel. Unlike machines, they cannot be satisfied with just one thing. I believe that is perhaps why the concept of "taste" was born. Taste is a subjective concept. The moment it brushes the tongue, one's own unique standard kicks in, deciding whether it is delicious or not. You can't say it's entirely different for all 8 billion people on Earth, but in any case, it is different for everyone. Everyone claims their own mother's kimchi is the best. It is an acquired, conditioned taste.

Surprisingly, there are many people who don't care about taste and just want to fill their stomachs. Usually, if you look at them, their parents were not affluent. It might sound like the thoughts of an old boomer, but that is the reality. When you have nothing, how can you afford to fuss over taste? You just fill your belly and go out to work!

I had a mother who absolutely loved to eat. So, growing up under her, I experienced a great variety of tastes. Likewise, I lived my life believing that eating delicious food is one of life's true happinesses. Thinking about it now, I wonder if that's why I opened a restaurant in my twenties. To think that the industry I started as a hobby is still stimulating my brainwaves to this day~!

When I opened my restaurant back then, all my relatives hit the roof, asking how a man of my standing could open a mere eatery~~. Just forty years ago, there were such stuffy, old-fashioned folks. Now, all those relatives are running restaurants themselves. Trends and life are always changing. If I had received all those killer promotional materials back then in a social media era like today, I would be a celebrity by now. I was just too far ahead of my time!!!

When it comes to taste, the ears taste it before the mouth does. You hear someone say it's delicious, buy into the anticipation, and seek it out. Next are the eyes. The visual taste. Just as it's pleasing to look at someone handsome, food tastes good when it looks good. Next is the nose. The aroma. If the aroma is good, your mouth waters. Since you can't touch food with your hands in the same way, it then enters the mouth and the tongue feels it. When all five senses are satisfied, a conversation about it begins.

A friend who ate pasta at my restaurant in the 80s went back to Korea and started a pasta trend. Now, you can eat pasta for $2. Nowadays, for every Tom, Dick, and Harry, pasta is no longer a high-end dish. Because things change.

Young people these days have very fastidious palates. Because they were born in a country that had already become rich and grew up eating all sorts of foods, they consider someone like me an old boomer. Living in a world built by their parents, they don't know gratitude and just take it for granted. I understand~~! Because things change.

Having been in and out of the restaurant industry for 40 years, the most important thing is not taste. It's price! If you want to open a restaurant and make money, your first priority is how you price the items you want to sell. That is even more true in times like these. The price has to be reasonable for people to line up. Except for the people who don't care about food prices, of course. They have their own separate playgrounds. The number of YouTubers infiltrating their exclusive playgrounds and broadcasting it is growing, and it's quite popular. I guess everyone thinks expensive means good. Because things change.

I grew up in the US, so I didn't know the depth of Korean food. But now, I know the charm of Doenjang Jjigae [soybean paste stew]. If you think about it, Korean food has the most depth of any cuisine in the world. Starting with kimchi and doenjang, to all kinds of jeotgal [salted seafood], they are all foods meant to improve your body's condition. The food also changes according to the season. How wise is that!

I like sushi, but Japanese cuisine lacks depth. As an island nation with an abundance of fish, they must have developed their own know-how, but fundamentally, sushi is delicious as long as the ingredients are fresh. They successfully marketed the process of making it as an art, which hit the mark and birthed it into a global cuisine. Japanese food is easy to globalize. Soy sauce, mirin, sake, and dashi are the bases. With just these, any Japanese dish is possible. They turned the process of creating a single element into an art. They are incredible people.

Chinese food, where it's said they eat everything but the table, is almost entirely fried in oil. That's why they drink a lot of tea. Italian cuisine is flour. French cuisine is the process. Only Korean food consists of dishes born with the human body in mind. When the old folks say, "Now is the time to eat [a certain food]!", that is when that very thing is at its freshest, tastiest, and healthiest. Seasonal food. Do hamburgers, pizza, or jjajangmyeon [black bean noodles] have seasons?

Ah! Will someone ever bring the wisdom of Korean food to the global stage? Back in the 80s when I was crazy about pasta, I wanted to make a sauce using Korean jeotgal. At that time, the US didn't have many of the ingredients I wanted. And I, too, have changed.

Having taste as the topic, there is just so much to say. Memories stemming from taste come pouring out. What should I eat today???