This column, reprinted from 2003, references a restaurant that no longer exists. If you’re intrigued by the Korean raw fish preparation called hwae dup bop, there’s a good version at Kang Nam (5715 Buford Highway, Atlanta. 770-455-3464).
Usually, with a mixture of hand gestures, simply stated analogies and self-effacing humor, I try to bluff my way through menus at restaurants where English isn’t spoken well. But I was really coming up against a blank wall at Sushi House.
This Doraville spot is a bit of a cross-cultural odd duck — a Japanese sushi bar like you might find in Korea. The menu straddles borders — a little sushi or tempura here, some haemool tang (spicy seafood soup) there.
I sat at the sushi bar with a friend and tried to explain to the waitress what I was looking for. I had eaten it once in a Korean sushi bar, and had never forgotten it. It was kind of like a sushi version of bi bim bap — raw fish, rice and all kinds of vegetables in a big bowl, moistened with a killer chile sauce.
I tried to explain it as such. Slowly. Deliberately.
“Heeeee?” the waitress repeated, her incredulity expressed as a rising tone in her voice, “Sushi bi bim BAP??”
Yes, I persevered, taking out an imaginary bowl and piling it full of imaginary fish (chopped with the slicing edge of my right hand) and imaginary vegetables, then squirting it with an imaginary bottle of sauce.
Her eyes just got wider. “No, we don’t have that!” she said in a tone of exasperation. The sushi chef came over, intrigued by the spectacle. They began talking in Korean, a conversation which must have gone something like:
“What the heck does he want?”
“I don’t know, but it looks like he suffers from some form of nervous condition.”
“Yeah, what’s that business with his hand? Do you think he’s having a seizure?”
By this point I had grabbed a menu, and began parsing it line by line. Aha!
“Hwae Dup Bop: Sashimi & vegetable on rice w/ spicy sauce, $12.95.”
“Hoo-way doop bop!” I cried to the waitress. “That’s it!”
She read over my shoulder. “Eeehhh … hwae dup bop. Aaahhh.”
Recognition. She pointed out a sign on the wall written in Korean. “Lunch special. Hwae dup bop $7.95!” she said, smiling.
And then — amid a flurry of miso soup and pan chan (pickles and salads) that seemed worth $7.95 on their own — my hwae dup bop came.
It was even better than I had remembered. In a glass bowl big enough to hold a trifle came the most enticing assemblage of green leaf lettuce with tuna, flounder, salmon, crab, seaweed, avocado, carrot, squash, flying fish roe and a quail egg. On the side came a bowl of rice, a massive bottle of the vinegar-chile sauce for seafood called “cho gochujang” and a spoon to mix it all together.
It feels almost alive in your mouth — cool and crisp and fresh, then warm with pockets of rice, then waves of sweet, spicy and tart flavors. Your mouth feels attuned to it all, down to the pop of every tiny fish egg.
If it reminds me of anything, it’s kind of like a really great salad bar salad. I love it; as I write, I’m desperate for more. I couldn’t be happier than to have found it in Atlanta.
But there was one problem.
As I left the restaurant, a feeling perhaps best described as mounting horror came over me. The proof was incontrovertible. I had turned into Aunt Lil.
A little background is needed. Aunt Lil, my father’s sister, lived nearby as I was growing up. She was a self-made woman — a single mother who ran a small import-export business. She called herself “Mrs. Kessler” after her divorce and rejection of her married name; back then the only alternative was “Miss Kessler, ” and she was no “miss.”
Once a year or so, Aunt Lil took our large brood out to the Golden Palace restaurant in D.C.’s Chinatown to experience what she called “real Chinese food.” We sat at a round table with a lazy Susan, and she ordered all the food for the table. This was a lengthy process, filled with many “if we get the duck, then we don’t need the chicken” negotiations.
Aunt Lil had an, um, way of talking to Chinese waiters. She pulled them in close and kind of yelled operatically, like Brunhild, into their faces. We sat there mortified as she accused them of foisting off inferior preparations and, inexplicably, holding back on the top-secret good stuff. She was Mrs. Kessler and not about to get chop-sueyed by some misinformed waiter. She would be understood, any way possible.
And then, as soon as the waiter left with his marching orders, she took a sip of her tea and spat it out.
“Ack! It’s cold! Waiter!” she yelled. “Waiter!! Bring-ee tea-ee!”
Bring-ee tea-ee: two words that are now an old family punch line. It still makes me laugh and cringe.
But, like, I’m one to talk — Mr. Sushi Hand-Chop Guy.
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