Sometimes, a Spoonful Takes You Home

Hello, everyone.

This is my first post on our website. As I wondered where to begin, I thought back to my first days working here. I wanted to tell you about what moved me most as I got to know Korean food. Perhaps you will keep me company in this story while you wait for your meal.

When I first started working here, I noticed the happiness on our Korean guests’ faces when they found a Korean restaurant. There was something deeply familiar about that expression. Even when I could not understand their language, I understood their joy.

I put myself in their place. I am miles from home. For days I have been walking unfamiliar streets, hearing another language and trying food I am not used to. Seeing new places is wonderful, of course. But then a smell reaches me… A smell I know from my mother’s kitchen.

What would a person feel in that moment?

I think I would smile before I had even taken the first bite.

That is what goes through my mind as I watch our Korean guests. Which evening at home might the kimchi jjigae or doenjang jjigae in front of them bring back? Whose table, whose voice? I cannot know just by looking at their faces. One day, I would like to sit down and ask them.

But that happiness feels familiar.

Would it be too much to call the dishes Maria prepares little elixirs that carry our Korean guests in Istanbul home for a moment? They are the best people to answer that. What I see is a woman preparing a dish she has made for years with the same care, and people finding a familiar taste at her table.

I think that is part of Maria’s secret.

You can learn a recipe. You can measure the ingredients and calculate how many minutes it needs to cook. But it is hard to explain that small difference that lets you recognise your mother’s cooking, even at a crowded table. “She just has a special touch,” we say, and leave it at that.

Perhaps one of our Korean guests is thinking exactly that with their first spoonful here.

If your meal has arrived, I will not keep you any longer. Enjoy it.

But if, one day, far from home, the smell of a familiar dish makes you pause, do not rush past that moment. Perhaps an evening you have missed for a long time is waiting for you at the tip of a spoon.

If your mother is beside you, give her a hug. If she is far away, hear her voice if you can. As I wrote these words, I thought of my mother’s cooking. If reading them brought someone’s table to mind, perhaps you will tell a story from that table, too.