process writing - last assignment

I usually make a mind map for teasing and bring out my ideas. The words in the mind map helps me to get inspired after thinking about each word for what to use or not to use in my writing. It is kind of a playful creation process, and I freely write what I feel, think, and observe about certain topic that I set up by using the words in mind map. After writing, I go over through my first draft which is probably not that great and revise it, which is process writing.

For writing reading response, of course, I made clear connections between texts and my writing because I needed to write about what I read and expand my thinking on the texts. I made a connection between my last writing piece and The Omnivore’s Dilemma for penetrating the thinking of perfect meal.

It was frustrating for me when I had to revise several times for fixing poor transition between paragraphs and make the piece more coherent and well-flowing. I was also frustrated for taking up so much time and energy to revise something that I didn’t expect that there would be a lot of errors or things that can be improved. Writing for the first time for a piece isn’t that hard because it’s more like free-flow writing for me. Oppositely, some find revising is easier than coming up with ideas, stories, or narrations. I think it is hard to write actually well and thoughtful with less grammar errors than writing new things without worrying about syntax, grammar, structure, and coherence of all the ideas. My breakthrough was to read my draft as many times as I could. I felt actually accomplished by making my writing better!

Throughout the quarter, I realized I’m really bad at keeping my writing concise but good. It was hard for me to keep it shorter, because I have a habit of writing a lot. Except my last main assignment, writing and participating workshops two other ones helped me to think through what’s important to put or not important to put. It was great process to sort out my thinking to make my writing more effective.

As I said before, I love to do mind mapping while I’m creating new ideas based on my memories and observations about certain topics. I always think back and try to see the evidence of past events (photographs/talking with others who experienced same thing as I did). Readers’ comments were always helpful in a way that they (our awesome classmates!!) really contributed their efforts to read my writing and try to give me many feedbacks. They also taught me what I missed that I wouldn’t know only through my perspective. They gave different perspectives for my writing that made it richer and better. From this course, I learned that I have a hard time with journalistic/nonfiction writings that I never really encountered in my life. I didn’t know journalism, especially narrative journalism, is so deliberate and needs carefulness from the writer. It has to be truthful and sincere so that readers can believe my story and have trust to the writer. It was nice to learn skills and techniques for journalistic writing especially by actively learning from each other through workshop.

Creating happiness with unmeasured cooking

I believe that the perfect meal comes from mother-side grandma’s hands. She has the special alchemy of making simple 101 Korean foods into the most sophisticated ones through cooking without perfect measurement and recipe. Her daring way of cooking inspired me to do an experiment of recreating her Kimchi Pajeon, a Korean pancake, and Jabchae, a noodle dish – stir fried with vegetables and – flavored with soy sauce.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan says that “For countless generations eating was something that took place in the steadying context of a family and a culture, where the full consciousness of what was involved did not need to be rehearsed at every meal because it was stored away, like the good silver, in a set of rituals and habits, manners and recipes” (411). I wanted my perfect meal to share my stored away consciousness with my dear friends: Eating together while having laughter, comfort, and warmth.

In Korea, our family gathering on Korean Thanksgiving day, Chuseok, was lively with the smell of sizzling kimchi pajeon. I wasn’t part of the cooking scene since I wasn’t successful at flipping it in a frying pan. “The way you flip kimchi pajeon is hilarious! But, it’s not cute if you do that every time,” my grandma giggled. My grandma’s kimchi pajeon was heavily buried in pepper and kimchi, covered almost all the part of yellow batter. Our family casually sat on the floor to eat the steamy kimchi panjeons together. It was as if we were watching a soccer game together. Timing was crucial for not to miss hot kimchi pajeons like not missing the moment when a soccer player scores a goal. The whole family dropped whatever they were doing and ran to eat kimchi pajeons. As soon as she handed the kimchi pajeons to us, we mopped up every bite of its comforting taste. Crunchy! Dazzling! Spicy that we burnt our tongue!

I’d never cooked jabchae before but it is my all-time favorite meal since I was a third grader. My grandmother’s jabchae was the remedy for my addiction to junk foods sold in a little supermarket, a dream place for many kids as they had an arcade with PAC-MAN and Super Mario. Junk foods – artificial rainbow colored candy bars and extremely sour chocolates - were 50 cents so I had easy access to them. Since my mom was a working mom, she barely was at home, but my grandmother took care of me for two years while she and my grandfather lived with my family. It was then that she made jabchae – a refined mix of stringy glass noodles, pieces of fried vegetables, and salted sliced beef. The mellow taste made me slurp constantly as I finished eating it in a few minutes and forgot about the junk food I craved but my mother forbid. Its taste had her sweet voice and generous smile, and I adored the warmth and care that I got from eating it.

Although I’m afraid of flipping kimchi pajeon, and none of my guests has addiction to junk foods, I wondered if I’ve inherited my grandmother’s “natural talent” for cooking exquisite foods. I called my grandma to ask about ingredients for these dishes. She told me a list of ingredients and emphasized eggs are essential to make kimchi pajeon soft. To buy ingredients that I can’t get at usual American grocery stores, I asked a friend to drive me to Pacific Rim Foods, an Asian market in Kalamazoo, a city in Michigan where I live and go to college.

After an hour of grocery shopping, I had less time to cook because the

 guests for my dinner were coming back soon from their beach day. My guests were four of my suitemates, and two of them are vegetarians, so I needed to plan ahead to make good-quality vegetarian Korean foods. Also, most of them couldn’t eat spicy foods, so I had to put less spice in my food. They are amazed whenever I eat spicy food without crying over its hot taste. They look at me like I’m a circus lion that runs through a ring of fire. One time, when I ate a spicy instant noodle, Emma said with her eyes wide opened, “Wow, how did you do that? That’s so spicy… it’s like torturing yourself!” It was sad for me to give up the pork for kimchi pajeon and jabchae because pork would add chewiness. As soon as I arrived at my dorm, I had to roll up my sleeve and get to cooking. I hurried to the basement kitchen in the dorm. Then, I started to cook jabchae, which takes more time to cook than kimchi pajeon.

Cooking without depending on a recipe but depending only on instinct and the memories of – my grandma’s food and her teaching me how to cook jabchae – was challenging. Without carefully measuring the amount of gigantic sweet potato glass noodles I needed, I dropped them into of boiling water and waited for ten minutes. These funny-looking noodles – called dangmyeon in Korean – are brown noodles made from sweet potato starch. These entangled noodles look artificial and inedible like a bundle of brown hair. Tracing the memories of my grandmother in the kitchen, I remembered when she told me that great cooks know how much they should put without measuring. 

I worried about making the food unbalanced in taste from using an inadequate amount of ingredients, but my strong desire to cook depending only on my memories and instinct overcame my worry. While the stiff noodles became squishy, I stir fried, – enoki mushroom, two thinly sliced onions, a carrot, and spinach in vegetable oil. After ten minutes, I strained the simmering noodles and rinsed them with cold water. Though I almost burnt my fingers, I managed to mix them with the stir fried vegetables and marinated them with soy sauce sweetened with a fingertip amount of sugar. Although I was hurrying while cooking, I was careful at trying to pour my warmth into the food for my endearing guests. I got caught up checking the balance between sugar and soy sauce, but it was actually well-balanced, so I began to have confidence on cooking for this perfect meal. This marinating process reminded me of the moments I cooked with my grandmother.

One lazy Sunday afternoon, my grandmother taught me how to cook my favorite dish - jabchae. She pulled out tangled glass noodles with her cracked palms, while telling me about her hardship of doing housework and sewing jobs since she was eighteen. We started to shred fresh vegetables and stir fry them. While we were marinating noodles with soy sauce and sugar, her wrinkled fingers that – looked like crumpled raisins – and my small fingers collided together. She kept cheerfully chatting while we were cooking together. “There is great nutritional value in this meal. Mushroom juice probably smeared on this mix, and that helps to lower your blood pressure,” she affirmed. She is like an living cookbook. My grandmother likes everything to be fast because she lived busy life raising my mom and her other three children, but when it comes to, cooking she has always been deliberate and careful, making sure people who ate her food felt satisfied. Whenever she cooked, she was careful to wipe out each accidental drop on the edge of the plate. Her life revolved around cooking. Since my grandmother is a perfectionist, she taught me to never take short-cuts in cooking, but she taught me cooking sincerely.

After my suitemates arrived to the dorm, they informed me that they were starving and ready for dinner. My expected end time for cooking was 6:30 pm, but it was already 6:45 pm. The hot weather heated up the kitchen. My back and forehead were sweating from anxiety. I felt dizzy but wanted to accomplish my goal. Sliced old kimchi that was sleeping in my dorm’s refrigerator finally found its destination. I hate the taste of old kimchi, so I haven’t eaten it for a while. However, my grandmother always used old kimchi for kimchi pajeon, so I put my unattractive kimchi into a big container and mixed it with chopped fresh green onions and chives, a little bit of minced garlic, flour, and two eggs. I kind of put water and flour with a one-to-one ratio. I crushed tofu with my hands and infused it with the pile of raw ingredients. Swirling the mix with a fork, substituting a balloon whisk, I could see bubbles coming up from the mix, so I stopped. In front of a sizzling frying pan with the oil, I poured out the mix. It spread around the pan like magma erupting from a volcano.

I feared that this beautiful red liquid of kimchi pajeon mix would be ruined if I didn’t flip it well. I worried about finding the right moment to flip it, but I had to try. I held up the handle of the pan and magically flipped it with quick momentum. Success! It was indeed victorious to see that the crunchy yellow and red kimchi pajeon didn’t break. However, each pajeon was too thick; kimchi pajeon is usually thin and crunchy.

After intensely cooking for two hours, my suitemates finally could fill their empty stomach. My fingers were tired from using the tiny cooking knife that doesn’t cut vegetables easily, and my sweat kept coming down my neck. Setting up for our Korean dinner party, I put a traditional Korean fan to decorate the dull-looking wooden coffee table in our suite’s living room. I put down silverware and plates really quickly and threw utensils to the corner of the living room. I summoned my suitemates while sweating, “Dinner time!” After my shout, my suitemates and I sat down in a circle. They listened to my explanation of each food. Then I served fresh and cool Milkis, a sparkling creamy soda, right from the refrigerator for a hot summer day. My starved guests aimed their forks and knives toward piles of kimchi pajeons and jabchae. The kimchi pajeon was too thick but had a crunchy texture at the edge. It was well-flavored and wasn’t too spicy – as I’d intended because my suitemates wouldn’t be able to handle too much spiciness. In contrary to my concern, jabchae was well-balanced with soy sauce and sugar, and my suitemates wolfed it down. I was proud of myself of for succeeding in cooking this sensitive food.
Most of my guests had never eaten Korean food before, but they were highly satisfied with their full tummies. That was the first moment of me actually treating my great friends who have survived crazy college life with me. The air was different. Sharing time together with my suitemates eating a home-made dinner was a treat. My suitemates and I are away from home. We all have memories of our own home food, and I hoped they received the warmth and comfort I always felt eating this food. I also wanted to regenerate the atmosphere of togetherness with my endearing friends. My grandmother loved cooking for everyone, including friends, strangers, and neighbors. Cooking was connection for her with others. She was like a god mother in her town because she became friends with many town people by cooking for them. She liked to cook and let them share her food altogether as a big community. Following another tradition of hers, I wanted to connect my friends through eating and sharing home-made foods. We casually sat in a circle around the coffee table and chatted for two hours about the difficulties we went through and the happiness we shared in our suite 309. “It was a great year after all. I will miss you guys so much,” Natalie, one of my suitemates, said.
Although the taste of my foods wasn’t even near the breathtaking taste of my grandmother’s food, my ability to create a quite decent crispy kimchi pajeon and glistening and a of deliciously salty and sweet jabchae made my day. Cooking without obsessing about the perfect measurement and recipe, like my grandma does habitually, was an adventure. By trusting my memories and instinct, I conquered my kitchen fears and created a shared experience with friends that would now be stored away in my consciousness.

Perfect meal [first draft]

I had believed that perfect meal comes from my grandma’s hands. It always seemed like my mother-side grandmother and my mom have special alchemy of making simple 101 Korean foods into the most sophisticated ones. Their cooking wanted me to do an experiment of regenerating same taste of Kimchi Pajeon (Korean pancake) and Jabchae (noodle, stir fried with vegetables – flavored with soy sauce) that my grandmother made.

I’ve cooked kimchi pajeon before but I failed because I wasn’t successful at flipping it on a frying pan. I’ve never cooked jabchae before but it was my all-time favorite meal because in Korea I had my grandma’s jabchae for my birthday meal. In Korea, jabchae can be easily found in someone’s birthday or ceremony. Although I’m afraid of flipping kimchi pajeon, and it was nobody’s birthday, I wondered that I have genetic of “natural talent” for cooking exquisite foods like my grandma and my mom do. Thankfully, I learnt cooking process of these two dishes from grandmother who believed that kids need to know how to cook – which belongs to basic life skill. I called my grandma to ask about ingredients for these dishes. She told me a list of ingredients and emphasized eggs are essential to make kimchi pajeon soft. To buy ingredients that I can’t get at usual American grocery markets, I asked one of friends to drive me to Pacific Rim Foods, an Asian market in Kalamazoo.

After an hour of grocery shopping, I had lesser time to cook because my guests for my dinner were going to come back soon from their beach day. My guests were four of my suitemates, and two of them are vegetarians, so I needed to plan ahead to make good-quality vegetarian Korean foods. Also, most of them couldn’t eat spicy foods, so I had to put less spice in my food. It was sad for me to drop out the pork for Kimchi Pajeon and Jabchae as pork would add chewiness. As soon as I arrived to my dorm, I had to roll up my sleeve and get down to cooking. I hurried to bring utensils from my suite – a knife, pan, pot, three plates, two containers, and fork. Then, I started to cook jabchae, which takes more time to cook than the time taking for Kimchi Pajeon.

The gigantic sweet potato glass noodles needed a place to boil but I didn’t have a big pot, so I had to borrow one from the kitchen of Crissey dorm. These funny-looking noodles – called dangmyeon in Korean – are brown noodles made out of starch of sweet potato. It looks almost artificial and inedible by its entangled noodles, looking like a bundle of brown hair.
Without carefully measuring the amount of noodles I would use, I put dangmyeon inside of boiling water and waited for ten minutes. Tracing the memories of my grandmother in the kitchen, I remembered when she taught me about great cooks know how much they should put without measuring. 

For me, cooking without recipes was hard mainly due to possibility of making food unbalanced in taste, which comes from inadequate amount of ingredients. However, my strong desire to cook depending only on my memories overcame my worry. While the stiff noodles becoming squishy, I stir fried, enoki mushroom, thinly sliced two onions, a carrot, and spinach with Crisco vegetable cooking oil. After ten minutes, I took out the simmering noodles into a strainer and washed it out with cold water. Though I almost burnt my fingers from this process, I managed to mix them with stir fried vegetables and marinated with soy sauce and sweetened with fingertip amount of sugar. While cooking it, I was caught up with checking balance between sugar and soy sauce.

After my suitemates arrived to the dorm, they informed me that they were starving and ready for this dinner. Because of tight cooking time, my back and forehead were sweating from anxiety. My expected end time for cooking was 6:30 pm, but it was already 6:45 pm. The hot weather heated up the kitchen. I felt dizzy but wanted to accomplish the goal of testing my instinct of cooking great taste of food without recipe. Sliced old kimchi that was sleeping in my dorm’s refrigerator finally found its destination. I hate taste of old kimchi, so I haven’t eaten it for a while. However, my grandmother always used old kimchi for kimchi pajeon, so I put my unattractive kimchi into a big container and mixed it with shortly chopped fresh green onions and chives, little bit of minced garlic, kimchi pajeon power (flour), and two eggs. I kind of put water and flour with one-to-one ratio. I crushed tofu with my hands and infused it with pile of raw ingredients. Swirling the mix with a fork (a great utensil substituting a balloon whisk), I could see bubbles coming up from the mix, so I stopped. In front of a sizzling frying pan with the oil, I poured out the mix. It spread around the pan as fast as the magma erupting from a volcano.

I had great fear of flipping pancakes in general. This beautiful red liquid of kimchi pajeon mix would be ruined if I don’t flip it well. It was overwhelming to find right moment to flip it, but I had to try. I held up a handle of the pan and magically flipped it with quick momentum! It was indeed victorious to see crunchy yellow and red kimchi pajeon didn’t break. However, each pajeon was too thick although kimchi pajeon is usually thin and crunchy.

After intensely cooking for two hours, my suitemates finally could fill their empty stomach. My fingers were tired from using the tiny cooking knife that doesn’t cut vegetables easily, and my sweat was kept coming down on my neck. Setting up for our Korean dinner party, I put a traditional Korean fan to decorate dull-looking wooden coffee table in our suite’s living room. I couldn’t bring legitimate Korean-ness into this dinner, which might be a culinary tourism in a college dorm room. At least I put down silverware and plates. I summoned my suitemates, “Dinner time!” After my shout, my suitemates and I sat down in a circle. They listened to my explanation of each food that would be foreign to them. Then, fresh and cool Milkis for beverages were served right from a refrigerator for a hot summer day. Starved guests aimed their forks and knives to piles of kimchi pajeons and jabchae.  They had bites, I had a bite also. The kimchi pajeon was too thick but had crunchy texture at the edge. It was well-flavored and wasn’t too spicy which I wished it to be because my suitemates wouldn’t be able to handle too much spiciness. Contrary to my concern, jabchae was well-balanced with soy sauce and sugar, and my suitemates wolfed it down. I was proud of myself of succeeding in cooking this sensitive food. If I put less soy sauce, then it would taste dull because the glass noodle originally doesn’t have taste.

My dear guests also loved Milkis since its sparkling creamy soda calmed kimchi pajeon’s subtle spiciness. Most of them didn’t have Korean food before, but they were highly satisfied with their full tummy. That was the first moment of me actually treating my great friends who have survived crazy college life with me. The air was different. Sharing time together with my suitemates to eat home-made dinner was worthier than eating café food together.  

Although taste of my foods weren’t even near to breathtaking taste of my grandmother’s food, crispy kimchi pajeon and glistening and elastic texture of deliciously salty and sweet jabchae made my day. Cooking without obsession of perfect measurement and recipe, which my grandma does habitually, was adventurous. I felt like I conquered the kitchen by cooking independently with trusting my memories and instinct. 

A complete view of the dinner

Kimchi pajeon

Jabchae

The Omnivore’s Dilemma - Part III response

Pollan tells readers that the shortest food chain is the least wasteful food chain. It involves hunting, gathering, and growing ingredients for food. Today, the food that comes to our table is extremely complicated because its ingredients travel a long time, and they are from everywhere. It isn’t reliable to depend on flowery descriptions of “organic” foods that are not really organic due to its unsustainability. Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac. from The Omnivore’s Dilemma says that “Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry” (281). It tells how it is important for humans to gain knowledge of their food ingredients and nature that makes ingredients available for cooking.

Pollan covers heavily on self-sustainable style of eating which is based on his experiences. It is a powerful narrative as he interests readers to continue reading his work instead of making them bored with all the statistics and scientific facts. We often worry too much about being healthy and eating healthy foods, but if we don’t know how the basic food chain works in the nature, we would be an unfruitful, passive, and dumb eater. We can’t be stupidly captivated by food industry’s advice and advertisement of what we should eat or should not eat because food industry wants you to be ignorant of foods and detached you from land and nature that provide sources of food. However, hunting, gathering, and growing can nourish our knowledge about where does the food comes from and solve a problem of suspecting origin of the food. Pollan instructs us the ways of doing these and addresses that, “For most of us today hunting and gathering and growing our own food is by and large a form of play” (280). I definitely agree about this because personally I don’t understand why people consider fishing as leisure and sports. People should have more respect to fish that is sacrificed for our appetite. We are basically killing fish for us.

Eating meat includes in the human’s food pyramid, maintaining our balance. I think that the whole mainstream movement of vegetarianism comes from the cruelty of industrial slaughter and animal killings, raising consciousness and morality. However, outside of a movement of vegetarianism, cultural mainstream stimulates us to forget about pain of slaughtered animals and choices that we can independently make. Pollan says that “For all these people [people worked to justify the slaughter of animals to themselves through religions and rituals] – the cultural rules and norms – that allowed them to look, and then to eat. We no longer have any rituals governing either the slaughter or eating of animals, which perhaps helps explain why we find ourselves in this dilemma, in a place where we feel our only choice is either to look away or give up meat” (331). It is interesting to see how people look away from frustrating and cruel food industry, which abusing animals, is the prevalent reason why omnivores become vegetarians. Cruelty of killing animals is the problem of the industry, not faults of humans. Eating meat is natural thing to do, but I’ve never thought that eating meat sometimes can be ethical in a way to reduce more intensively cultivated crops. However, it is our duty to at least respect animals and make them die happily, not like making them die from industrialized slaughters, which animals suffer from inhumane process of making animals to products. Pollan says that “happiness seems to consist in the opportunity to express its creatively character – its essential pigness or wolfness or chickenness” (319). We should never forget that they sacrifice their lives for our sustainable eating and pleasure. 

The Omnivore's Dilemma Part II response

What do words - sustainable, organic, and natural - stand for in the time of those words often misuse? That has been my question about organic food industry. Technically, the popularity of organic food has been rising because consumers have become more aware of healthy lifestyle and sustainable and moral way of processing foods. Waste is produced by the nitrogen and pesticide running off the industrial fields and harmful heat energy exerted from tractors and trucks for industrial farming. (Pollan 130). To prevent these problems and following more negative consequences, organic food industry emerged. However, Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma states that organic products even in the organic supermarket aren’t really organic. He says that “I would much rather use my money to keep my neighborhood productive and healthy than export my dollars five hundred miles away to get ‘pure product’ that’s really coated in diesel fuel” (132). This explains why organic foods can be as unsustainable as typical industrialized foods. It neglects saving energy waste, bioregionalism, and seasonality that are supposed to be an ideal standard of organic foods.

I think that saving energy waste, bioregionalism, and seasonality shouldn’t even be the ideal standard, but it should be required to be called “organic foods”. It actually makes me doubt when I see “certified organic” mark on the foods in grocery store because this word has been used so many times in food industry for marketing, fabricating an image of all “certified organic” marked foods are sustainable, green, and fresh which isn’t true in most of the case except in Farmer’s market or more local-concentrated markets. I realized at some point I lost the excitement to see “organic” marked foods which I supposed to think these would make me healthier. It is sad to see how our commercialized and industrialized society leads organic food to be just one of the popular trends that consumers can access without rethinking about foods themselves beyond what a label tells them.

Pollan states that “Our food system depends on consumers’ not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing” (245). It shows that ignorance of consumers let organic foods lose its essence. Industrialized world pushes organic foods to be cheaper and more convenient that distribution and production of organic foods make unsustainable. I believe that organic foods should be only from local farmers who would reduce use of fuel to move around their products. If consumers are more educated about the real concept of organic foods, then they will appreciate foods in a deeper level of understanding there do they come from and how they are processed.

Pollan talks also about slaughter and its cruelty. He argues that how scale makes all the difference in more sustainable and moral killing of animals for foods. Joel, a grass farmer, says that in The Omnivore’s Dilemma “That’s another reason we don’t raise a hundred thousand chickens. It’s not just the land that couldn’t take it, but the community too” (230). Basically, I think that people should stop expecting too much from the land and nature to produce what they want. This relates to booming of industrial organic foods because people have too much greed for faster, more convenient, and cheaper foods so that organic foods are forced to process and deliver in lower quality and in an unsustainable way.

Part III - restaurant review

My expectation of dining out at Zooroona was to taste great quality “authentic” Middle Eastern food, especially kebab, and my actual experience perfectly fit right into my expectation of tasting great quality food since the foods there were more crafted, flavored, and well-made. The dishes were tasty and humungous which exceeded my expectation. I craved for better-quality kebab than the quality of a burnt “Koreanized” kebab I had on the street in Korea. I ordered Shish Tawook, cubes of marinated lemon-splashed chicken kebab. It was juicy and not burnt. Also, when I dipped it into the garlic sauce, it was refreshing which was different from the sauces I dipped the kebab in Korea.

I was definitely satisfied with their pita bread and flavorful long grain fried rice that came along with Shish Tawook. Baklava was one of the most amazing desserts I have ever had. Its combination of sweetness and crunchy layers harmonized greatly.  I’m not sure about tasting authentic Middle Eastern foods because I can’t really judge they were authentic or not since I’m not from the Middle Eastern countries. The owner of Zooroona, Mr. Mandwee insisted that foods of this restaurant are pretty much authentic since he is from Arab and knows what authentic dishes of his culture and root are. However, Zooroona might make Americanized Middle Eastern food that leads eaters to delude themselves into eating “authentic” Middle Eastern dishes while conjuring atmosphere that they might have felt like they were experience “real” Middle Eastern culture. I don’t have good amount of knowledge about Middle Eastern culture and foods either. Also, Middle Eastern culture is so vast and diverse so it would be a generalization if I consider all Middle Eastern foods that are served in Zooroona are overall representation of Middle Eastern foods.

Zooroona definitely served tasty foods, but sometimes the service wasn’t that great. Waiting time was short and wasn’t as long as I worried, but I had to wait at least five minutes for waiters to set up my table on Sunday buffet. Regular restaurant days except Sunday operate differently since waiter and waitresses were responsive and quick to take orders. Also, they were kind so that they explained the taste and ingredients of dishes that I was curious to know about.

Long’s “Culinary Tourism” exactly explains a mistake of my writing of analyzing my dining experience at Zooroona. Long says that “It[Culinary tourism] is about groups using food to ‘sell’ their histories and to construct marketable and publicly attractive identities, and it is about individuals satisfying curiosity” (20). Maybe Zooroona do their best to represent the image of authentic Middle Eastern food; however, they might just “sell” the culture and its food to attract eaters to come to their restaurants through marketing their uniqueness from other typical American restaurants. They might sell Americanized Middle Eastern foods.  It is hard to define even what authenticity is. What is “authentic Middle Eastern food”? I think that it is hard for Arabic and Lebanese restaurants to render true “authentic foods” in U.S. because the origin of ingredient for served dishes in these places are not likely to be same as the origins of ingredients for dishes that are served in Arab and Lebanon.

As a culinary tourist who doesn’t know much about Middle Eastern culture and its food, I doubted about does Zooroona truly serve “authentic” Middle Eastern food. However, in my first draft for the restaurant review, I wrote that Zooroona’s atmosphere and food were authentic by frequently misusing the word, “authenticity”. However, after reading Long’s “Culinary Tourism”, I realized authenticity shouldn’t be used thoughtlessly because it’s such a sensitive word. My experience in Zooroona was definitely the example of culinary tourism. I utilized my sense as much as I could to experience Middle Eastern culture through eating its “cultural dishes”, and Zooroona’s foods were different from my mundane foods that I have in school cafeteria. I intentionally went to Zooroona to find “authentic” Middle Eastern foods, but it is still mysterious that I had “authentic” foods or not.

Despite a confusing experience, the culinary tourism widened my perception and shifted myself from ordinary world that I live in. In the future, when I go to study abroad in Madrid, Spain, I will more be careful about what I perceive as authentic Spaniards food because Madrid is known for a tourism place, and the restaurants there can be not authentic many times because they might lose attractions from tourists who aren’t used to Spaniards’ dishes and reject their dishes. Furthermore, I will be more careful to claim authenticity of cultural dishes in ethnic restaurants in U.S. I used to think that cultural dishes like “European dishes” are all same although there is large diversity in European foods. Commercializing culture not only belongs to tourism but also invades to culinary culture, and we should be a critical eater and thinker when it comes to understanding different culture and its food. 

Zooroona restaurant+lounge [final draft]

“Why not trying Iraqi tea with cardamom? My Iraqi people usually drink this amazing tea throughout the day, so there are tea stalls and vendors everywhere in Iraq,” the owner of Zooroona, Mr. Mandwee, exhalted Iraqi tea with cardamom with a warm smile. Zooroona’s alchemy starts with wisps of narcotic bittersweet Iraqi tea with cardamom. It urges one to dream, reflect on oneself, and at the same time explore as if he or she wander at Arabic forest at night in August. Under the canopy of firefly-like light bulbs and colorful Arabic pendant lamps swinging on the ceiling, Iraqi tea’s light layers flow like freely falling petals unlike a tea with full of thick syrup. It clears off one’s worry as being a getaway from busy pace of life.

“Come visit us” in Arabic, Zooroona, serves traditional Middle Eastern dishes from Lebanon, the Mediterranean, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. This welcoming restaurant is located on West Main Street in the Tiffany’s mini-mall which is about fifteen minutes walking distance from Kalamazoo College. Zooroona’s open hours are very flexible. They open seven days a week at around noon until 9pm, but for the weekends until 11pm. Without an extra charge, for a main dish, there are two appetizer choices: a cup of lentil soup and Al Dar Zalata(salad). The lentil soup is balanced with grainy pieces of lentil, cumin, and little bit of lemon juice that invigorates the start of a meal. Contrastingly, Al Dar Zalata consisting of fresh-cut tomato, lettuce, onion, cucumber, and Syrian cheese garnished with roasted almonds is immersed in excessive amount of house dressing. It isn’t as refined as the lentil soup, the best comforting taste of appetizer. Arrival of main dish, Shish Tawook, enchants eaters to grab folks and knives to dig in right away. Shish Tawook is originated from Lebanese and Syrian cuisine, cubes of marinated lemon-splashed chicken kebab glistening with moisture and a few parsleys on the top. Not overcooked. Not wildly salty. The sour but refreshing garlic sauce heightens its mesmerizing taste. The chewy and tender white chicken kebab is grilled on skewers popped into one’s mouth, awakening his or her taste buds. It is served with sliced grilled onions and tomatoes, pita breads, long grain fried rice, and red peppers.

$6.95 for the large freshly-brewed tea is expensive for college students. Its cost is almost equivalent to a meal from Jimmy John’s, but sipping Iraqi tea with cardamom is the climax of dining experience in Zooroona. The restaurant’s emphasis on serving fresh food and drinks appears when Mr. Mandwee, who also worked as a waiter, quickly ran to the tea station and brewed the tea right away. Upon my request, he brought out two different kinds of leaves’ containers and showed them to me. He explained the differences between tastes of two leaves and how these two blend together to make ultimate bliss. The steamy caramel colored black tea in a transparent glass teacup makes one wants to drink it without hesitation. However, one might regret drinking it so quickly because it is seriously bitter like an espresso due to the green cardamom, a pistachio-looking and intensively aromatic spice, so a cube of sugar needs to be in this tea to be more drinkable. If you are a sugar fan, you won’t be able to handle this bitterness.

Mr. Mandwee explained his mission for this restaurant. He hopes that many people from Kalamazoo and Michigan experience the variety of cultural foods. Also he welcomes people from anywhere to enjoy the Middle Eastern teas and dishes. Every Saturday, the belly dance performance urges eaters to share the union with family, friends, and even strangers. According to Mr. Mandwee, a lot of people want to get up and dance with a dancer, so sometimes they dance together. This is more than simply receiving dishes and consuming them. It leads passive consumers to be part of the exhilarating and lively moments at the restaurant.

This restaurant’s atmosphere is like the Arabic forest. The sound of the artificial indoor waterfall pleasantly rings, and the interior is delicately decorated with inscribed geometric Arabic patterns and wooden indoor tree. Greenery hanging on the wall adds liveliness to the cave-like interior. The Middle Eastern hookahs and portraits of Arabic women with mystic smiles in every corner of the restaurant are unique. In the middle of the restaurant, there is an elongated floor sitting down seats with sitting cushions. The music isn’t too loud, and there isn’t that much noise. The music is mostly the dreamy soft house songs building up the laid-back mood, but sometimes there are some overly dramatic songs that make one dizzy. This mysterious but delicate ambiance makes the place cozy.

On Sunday for brunch buffet, the bustling movements of waiters and waitresses prevent customers to ask for water. One might have to ask not only for water but also for a complete set of silverware. Although buffet lets one tastes collections of Zooroona’s all-time famous foods for fifteen bucks: falafels, rice pudding, hummus, lentil soup, Shish Tawook, and cooked eggplant rounds, workers are occupied with filling up each food section. The work division is kind of a mess as there isn’t an assigned person to take care of individual table. On regular days except Sunday, a waiter would guide you from the beginning and to the end of the journey of dining out at Zooroona. On a menu for both lunch and dinner, there is a description under each dish, so it would be easier to imagine what kind of dish will be like. Foods in the main menu are ranged from $12 to $17, which is not super affordable; however, the humongous serving size with high quality foods can be great leftovers.

Baklava, a sweet bite-size pastry, is originated from Ottoman Empire, and it would be a pleasant closure for a meal. As soon as one bites into the golden layers of paper-thin and flaky crusts, they vulnerably break with subtle crackling sound. Then, the chopped nuts, pistachios, and honey juice inside of Baklava pour out, melting into one’s mouth in a few seconds. The sweetness is more than enough but quite addicting.

Here, the dim light of lantern and candle with continuous sound of the waterfall conjures you to be in the night of forest even in the day time. The Iraqi tea with cardamom induces you to dream and reflect yourself, but also tasting numerous delicate, sweet, and richly flavored foods is exploration in this Arabic forest.