The term “fusion cuisine” has long been in use in the United States. There, the phrase “fusion food” is far from unfamiliar. It’s a country where they put avocado on Japanese sushi and pineapple on pizza (which for Italians, and Neapolitans especially, is a nightmare(?), but anyway). Fusion twists, adds to, or altogether changes the properties of the original dish. It’s linked to the now-popular trend of combination and convergence. That’s how it gives birth to different genres. You can typically expect a generation with remarkable traits through variation, hybridization and crossbreeding. The wine we drink, for example, is actually the result of constantly crossbreeding wild grapes, and even now there are stellar genetic engineers doing their jobs. What about cows and pigs? Or spinach and onions? Or even apples? Genetically speaking, the history of food is the history of genetic crossbreeding, something which is considered to give humankind more calories and enjoyment in every taste. While this scientific and biological crossbreeding, mixing and twisting goes on, twisting in the frying pan continues on as ever.
 

As for Korean food for example, kimchi is now evolving as not only the US but also other influential regions like Europe and Japan put their own twist on it. Did you ever imagine that high-end restaurants in Australia would serve kimchi as a salad-like appetizer or a garnish for steak—a practice that has already become commonplace? On ubiquitous seasoned salads and European-style steak dinners! In the US, kimchi and bulgogi have been included in foods like tacos and burritos, resulting in multi-fusion cuisine: Adding Korean food to a taco is a fusion of Korean and Mexican food; if you put kimchi or bulgogi into a burrito, now you’re mixing Korean food into an American—specifically Texan—and Mexican fusion, a sort of triple fusion of Korean, American and Mexican food. What would be even more interesting is if some African spices were thrown into these burritos. Please, somebody needs to invest in this. Who knows what could happen?
 

But fusion cuisine is already an everyday thing in Korea. Koreans have always been good at mixing. We even have a dish called “mixed jjigae.” At schools, they serve ketchup spaghetti as a side dish with a hamburger patty alongside. Of course, rice and kimchi are also part of the meal, but kids have no problem eating them altogether without giving it a second thought. They don’t even bring it up once they go home. It’s no big deal to eat something mixed, as long as it tastes good. With apologies to Neapolitans, Korean pizzaioli (the Italian for “pizza experts”) are willing to take anything outside of a pineapple—even a durian—and put it on a pizza if it’s going to taste good. Bulgogi is a matter of course, Dutch Gouda cheese is okay, and they don’t say no slathering on some fried kimchi (so good) and jjajang sauce. Because it crossed over from China and became Koreanized, jjajang sauce, made from black beans, already has a twist. The same goes for pasta, which you can eat with gochujang, anchovy sauce, kimchi or pollock roe on any street you may find yourself. Not to mention crab marinated in soy sauce, which counts many people abroad among its fervent fans. Consumers are obsessed with taste, only focused on the end result. Some might point out dubiously that it isn’t authentic Italian pasta, at which point they could hear a lighthearted retort:

“So what? It’s the taste that matters.”
 

If I’m being totally honest, food in Korea is often served with mayonnaise salad, even those dishes said to be part of the traditional cuisine. That’s one application of Korean food’s attitude of embracing all things that have long since crossed over into it. Have you heard of budae jjigae, for example? The dish actually has no relation to the US military base from which it derives its name. Rather, it’s kimchi jjigae made with ingredients from the soldiers ate, like ham, sausage, canned beans and American cheese. Of course, the stew also makes liberal use of garlic and green onions so anyone eating it is sure to sense the Korean flavor. In other words, Koreans enjoy adding the most mass-produced American ingredients even to their kimchi, the very core of the traditional dishes they’re so proud of. They don’t consider it a disgrace to kimchi’s reputation.
 

“I have kimchi on its own all the time anyway,” they say. I think that shows confidence. It’s a fact of daily life for Koreans that they can have cereal and milk for breakfast, kimchi jjigae at work for lunch, and steak with wine for dinner. Every day a new kind of fusion restaurant springs up in the street to take on well-established bestsellers, and people happily pay to visit such restaurants. They post reviews as praise or as suggestions. They demand that fusion chefs make something stronger, something more inventive. It’s because of this climate that Korean chefs can’t get any sleep; they must constantly work out the problem through permutations and combinations of every option, trying out new ingredients and recipes like a perfumer with their eye on something like the next big hit scent. Failure is inevitable, but atop those remains is born a new dish. To anyone who comes to Korea, even for just one month, you’ll be able to feel the changing atmosphere of the food streets in that time. We don’t stay put. Even when it comes to cuisine.

TRIVIA 

Budaejjigae

The dish is already famous among non-Koreans. Interestingly, the style of budaejjigae varies by the regions that had US military camps nearby: There’s Songtan style, where the Osan Air Base was located, while other styles emerged from where the army was split between units stationed in Paju and Uijeongbu. And the Yongsan style—where the Eighth Army was—is, naturally, a tad different as well. Whatever the style, spiciness is a given. This situation is very similar to the different styles of hamburgers in Okinawa, Sasebo, Yokohama and Yokosuka, areas in Japan with US military bases. Interestingly, even though it’s an American food item—the hamburger—in Japan’s case, in Korea it’s jjigae, a decisively Korean food. There’s an alternative theory about budae jjigae that says it was invented after Korean troops were dispatched to Vietnam and which claims the dish was born when the US military delivered meat, ham and sausage provisions to the Korean armed forces, but the Koreans, tired of the greasy foods, cooked them together with canned kimchi, garlic and other foods transported from Korea. This is how veteran and distinguished Korean writer Hwang Sok-yong remembers it.