K-foodie meets J-foodie
Oh Minji: The Korean word for “gourmet” derives in part from the word for “beauty,” so when it comes to talking about food, beautiful really means delicious. The Netflix series K-foodie meets J-foodie is a collaborative “Korean-Japan taste exchange project” between Yutaka Matsushige, a Japanese gourmet known for his TV series Solitary Gourmet, and Sung Si Kyung, a Korean ballad singer and YouTuber with over two million subscribers watching his series Let’s Eat. Together, these foodies meet up to explore the beauty of food culture as they share some “insanely good spots” with one another. For this pair, a good spot goes beyond a place that simply serves insanely good food—it’s an opportunity to share in a restaurant’s location, a dish’s history, and all the cultural nuance that comes along with the cuisine. At a Chinese restaurant in Ikebukuro, Japan, an area with a diverse Asian community, for example, the owner Mama Yang introduces Sichuan tantanmen, a hometown specialty so named because the noodles are shouldered (“tan”) on poles while bringing them through the mountains. She also shares her ura menu, “a secret dish served only to regulars”: fermented mala cabbage soup. Meanwhile, at a yakiniku barbecue restaurant run by its Korean Japanese owner, viewers get to see the indirect way of speaking inherent to Japanese culture in action, as Matsushige, eating rice the Korean way, looks at the grill and subtly asks, “Should we change it?” rather than directly saying, “Please change the grill.” Also seen is Korean “ssam culture,” where sharing a food wrap becomes a “way of showing affection.”

Korea and Japan may be neighboring countries, but everything from how they eat from bowls of rice to what their chopsticks are made of and how they prepare the same ingredients varies between them. Matsushige and Sung come from different countries, were born 16 years apart, have different drink preferences—Sung opts for mega size draft beer, while Matsushige goes non-alcoholic—grill at a different pace, and think about different things during their downtime. But despite their differences, when they come together under their shared foodie interests, indulging in meals so amazing that neither can help talking about how “insanely good” they are, they’re quick friends. Whether soaking in the sunset and the sounds of nature with a sweet slice of cheesecake, or grilling yakiniku at their own pace in a smoke-filled room, they never stop bringing the beauty of gastronomy to life. They get to eat as they please, following their new friend’s recommendations here and there to fill their hollow legs. True to the “beauty” in the Korean word, the gourmet food in K-foodie meets J-foodie satisfies more than just the palate—the entire atmosphere that comes with it delights the eyes and ears, right down to all the conversations and other sounds surrounding them. So pull up a seat and join these two very different foodies as they explore the very delicious, and very beautiful, world of gastronomy.

I Love My Neo-Soul (Spotify playlist)
Seo Seongdeok(music critic): On March 1, Angie Stone was killed in a car crash. She is remembered as one of the stars of the neo soul wave of the late 1990s to early 2000s. But unlike contemporaries such as Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Jill Scott, she launched her career two decades earlier. Stone was a pioneer of early hip hop and a member of the Sequence, one of the first all-woman rap groups, in the late 1970s. She was in a number of groups after that and was also a songwriter and backup singer, contributing to albums by Mary J. Blige, Lenny Kravitz, and D’Angelo. But her solo career only took off once the commercial potential of neo soul—a movement she had quietly supported behind the scenes—became clear. She gave us such classic albums in the genre as Black Diamond (1999) and Mahogany Soul (2001).

While neo soul started as a label whipped up by marketing execs to refer to a certain group of artists, everyone already knew exactly the musicians and songs it referred to. The way it departed from the producer-driven, sample-centric approach of mainstream R&B in favor of a singer-songwriter-centered exploration of diverse Black musical genres aligned with the broader interest in indie music of the time. Stone’s own journey from hip hop to neo soul reflects a desire to define musical styles according to how the Black music community sees itself, not genres as divided up by external forces. Notably, neo soul refused to marginalize female artists and make them into mere characters in a man’s story, cementing them instead at the center of the creative process—a shift that resonated with a question Stone had long asked herself: If I can help other artists, then why not myself? She found her answer in neo soul.

The Spotify playlist I Love My Neo-Soul celebrates this memorable genre. Even though its heyday was just a few short years, there was no shortage of songs that came pouring out. The over 100 tracks in this playlist are basically irrefutable evidence of the fact. Perhaps Angie Stone was ahead of her time—or maybe she had been there all along. May she rest in peace.

Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting (Dietmar Elger)
Kim Boksung(writer): Gerhard Richter, born in 1932 and still alive today, grew up in Nazi Germany, later socialist East Germany, and finally defected to the more liberal West. This chaotic background and his participation in social causes left an indelible mark on both his life and art, though Richter himself has often denied these connections. Through Dietmar Elger’s biography, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, however, they feel unmistakably intertwined.

Richter, who didn’t receive good grades in art classes but developed a love of abstract art, is in some ways comparable to Andy Warhol, thanks to his famous “blurred” approach to painting pop culture photos in the 1960s. On the surface, these paintings are deceptively simple, but Elger reveals the tragedy behind the subjects the artist chose. Even more remarkable is how Richter has constantly reinvented himself since, quickly moving on from the work that made him famous to experiment with everything from sculpture to stained glass, breaking centuries of artistic stagnation in Germany.

Having worked with Richter for decades, author Elger had unparalleled access to his archives and drew extensively from interviews, helping to clarify Richter’s enigmatic personality and famously inscrutable artistic message. Though the book focuses more on his work than personal life, the link between the two ends up being undeniable, revealing a greater and darker influence from his country’s division than the artist lets on.