Gomtang & Compliments.
Your photos are great. Your writing has a good voice. Your cooking is fire. You’re a good father, etc.
And I’m constantly waiting for the ‘but’ to drop.
Anytime now, someone’s going to tell me they found a typo, forgot an important shot, lost an SD card, offended someone, double-booked a meeting, the dishwasher isn’t loaded properly, forgot to take out GST from the invoice, I was naked in front of an audience.
Whenever I get compliments, my knee-jerk reaction is to say ‘sorry’.
Media calls it imposter syndrome; I call it the guilt from throwing out compliments we don’t really mean to our children all the time.
True compliments are so hard to come by.
Deep down, I believe compliments should be earned.
It has happened twice this year, at the same place.
If I’ve recommended Sogumm to you, it means I like you.
If I tell you to stay away, or it ‘may not be for you’, that’s because I don’t trust your palate, don’t want you to go, spread negative reviews, and ruin the place.
“How was Sagye?” Kimmy asked.
He was referring to my shoot at the new gomtang place in the city.
“Have you been?” I asked.
“No, no time to queue,” he said.
“Exactly, the reason I’m here,” I told him.
“You didn’t try?” he asked.
I shook my head:
If I want to spend $28 and to queue up for Korean rice pho, I might as well come here.
Besides, I’ve seen their kitchen.
Wagyu brisket, aromatics, like a pot of ramen broth.
There’s nothing wrong with it.
But seeing all that Wagyu in the pot, the smell of the oleic acid, made me think it was a little too heavy / fatty for me.
Sogumm’s version is cleaner, both flavour and operation.
My point is, no two gomtangs are the same.
Sagye serves their gomtang in shiny metallic bowls; Sogumm uses green ceramc bowls.
Both are good.
“The photographs were really nice. Every time I see something I thought was different or natural, it’s your photo,” said Su.
Hard-earned compliment number one.
Whenever I need a recalibration after reviews, I make my way here.
This is the only place I’d use ‘restorative’ and ‘healing’ to describe the food without irony.
Call it the ‘Chef’s Table nun’ effect.
No, actually it’s the ‘rich white person halo’ effect.
I went to Hawthorn to collect some art for a friend in Hong Kong.
I couldn’t afford a chair in there, but I could afford a bowl of nice gom tang.
Plus, I need something to shake me off the dead boomer smell.
Recalibration, remember?
It was my first time dining alone at Sogumm, which is why I got to chat a little with Su and Kimmy.
“I was looking for a job, and Noma, Benu, all the big restaurants, they said yes. Only Andre in Singapore ignored me. So I managed to track down another Korean who was working there. It was Su. She told me not to come,” Kimmy said.
“Andre was different. He’s very creative,” said Su.
“That’s another way to say ‘asshole’,” I whispered.
Su smiled, but did not object.
“He is very particular about everything and focused his life on fine dining,” she continued.
What else is new.
At this point in my life, I believe all chefs are on the spectrum.
“He made me think that you can’t have kids and be a good chef at the same time,” she said.
Looking at her third-trimester baby bump, I’m glad she met Kimmy, and now they are both cooking in Melbourne, proving Andre wrong.
(Also, why are you still cooking? Sit down!)
Maybe it was the way they plated the dishes, the technique, the soft confidence despite using the simplest of tools to cook; the first time we visited, without the prior knowledge of their pedigree, I suspected the couple had fine dining experience1.
And even with that experience, they found something that works for them.
To be parents and good chefs.
I asked about their plans to open for dinner. Liquor license.
I noticed the menu hasn’t changed since last year.
Su shook her head.
At the moment, they are sticking to what is working.
There is an invisible hand pushing Koreatown and the current Korean dining trend.
A mishmash of Japanese word salad and foreign influence, with a copy-and-paste hook2. Salted cream on coffee, Dubai chewy cookie, honey bomb, basque cheesecake, ‘cloud’ whatever …
But I can’t hate Sogumm.
They could’ve done BBQ, Korean fried chicken, even push banchan.
I respect the restraint, the simplicity.
If possible, make everything from scratch.
Their USP is the same as Chae, but they have also made it accessible and not pretentious. Like a brunch cafe.
If you walk in as a couple, you’ll find a seat3.
No booking system, no lottery.
The last time I came with Chika, I told her I could taste some herbs in the gomtang.
I asked Kimmy.
He said no.
No herbs.
I said I tasted something earthy and metallic. Like burdock root.
Or ginseng.
“Oh. Maybe a touch,” he smiled, realising I’m not as dumb as I look.
I’ve always wanted to be Liu Mao Xing from Cooking Master Boy / Chuka Ichiban.
If you haven’t read or watched it, lemme tell you Masterchef, Food Wars, Kitchen Wars … all came after Chuka Ichiban.
The manga has all the food storyline covered.
Being able to live out volume 4, the ‘noodle but not noodle’ tournament from the manga, was a dream come true.
That’s compliment number two.
One I fabricated personally.
That day, I walked out of Sogumm thinking I was not a fake food critic after all.
(Even though ginseng is a relatively potent ingredient compared to pumpkin.)
