While the still widely held assumption that North Koreans are regularly starving is generally untrue, malnourishment still remains widespread in the country. Most North Koreans remain thin and short, and success and affluence in North Korea are often advertised by a protruding and fat belly (not by a slim figure, which has long become a sign of success in the developed West).
Contrary to what is often assumed, the Pyongyang restaurant scene nowadays is large and varied, so it is never a problem to find a really good meal if one has enough money in the pocket. The newer, semi-private eateries tend to keep low-profile, and often have their windows covered with heavy curtains. The signboards are also small, if not absent, so outsiders would have few clues of the luxury inside.
‘…for the average North Korean commoner restaurants are prohibitively expensive’
Most new restaurants have private rooms used for closed banquets of the bureaucrats and new rich (closely connected, but somewhat different groups). In some cases they do not limit themselves to the gastronomical pleasures: sometimes such places have a reputation of dubbing as elite brothels. In a sense, this was confirmed by recent official North Korean documents: when Jang Song Taek was purged in December 2013, the indictment mentioned both his fondness for private rooms in the expensive restaurants and his dalliances with women.
All these pleasures might appear cheap for a visiting foreigner, but for the average North Korean commoner restaurants are prohibitively expensive. A dinner in a regular upmarket restaurant would cost some $7-10 (excluding alcoholic beverages), but the most expensive places would charge a patron up to $30-40. To appreciate these prices, one should keep in mind that the average monthly salary of a university professor now equals some 80 cents. In most cases, the consumers pay in foreign currency, usually Chinese yuan, which has long been a currency of choice in the up-market North Korean shops.
NK CULINARY DELIGHTS
Nowadays Pyongyang has its share of restaurants serving foreign cuisine – one can enjoy Japanese sushi, as well as assorted Chinese dishes. European-style food is also well-known, and a local Pyongyang pizzeria serves Italian dishes which can be consumed while listening to the fashionable Western tunes. Near Juche Tower the affluent and well-connected (as well as foreigners) can enjoy a great variety of beers in a beer pub with its own micro-brewery. The connoisseurs have assured me that the quality of the beer in this place would equal the product of the best European microbreweries.
However, it seems that North Korean-style Korean cuisine still reigns supreme. North Korea’s variety of Korean food is different from the fare that can be found in the South. Frankly speaking, the present author was more enamored of the Northern variety (it seemed to be less spicy and far more varied than its Southern counterpart). An American of Russian origin who had spent long time in Pyongyang once remarked: “I cannot recall a single case when I had a bad meal in a Pyongyang restaurant!”
The two most well-known old North Korean restaurants are Okryugwan and Ch’ongryugwan. Both first appeared in the 1960s, to showcase North Korea’s alleged prosperity (and those days are still remembered in the North as days of lost affluence). These restaurants are also seen as living museums devoted to traditional Korean cuisine. As a result, their staff occasionally is sent to the countryside to collect recipes and study traditional ways of cooking.
‘In an average North Korean high-end eatery many of the dishes on offer clearly have Russian origins’
Both Okryugwan and Chonryugwan remain state-owned enterprises, but this is slightly unusual nowadays: over the late decade or so a large number of smaller restaurants have begun to pop up. These newer restaurants, while still technically registered as government-owned, are actually run by private investors. Unsurprisingly, they are doing very well (perhaps better than their state-managed rivals).
Traditionally, the large international hotels also had restaurants which catered for the guests as well as to those lucky few North Koreans who were allowed to venture into the foreigners’ hotels. These old restaurants still operate, but it seems that the newly opened rivals have pushed them aside to some degree.
If we look at the menu of those restaurants, which specialize in the Korean cuisine (that is, a vast majority of the Pyongyang restaurants), we discover that many of the dishes are different from what one can get in a typical South Korean restaurant. To start with, the North Korean variety of haute cuisine has been strongly influenced by the traditions of Russian cuisine. In an average North Korean high-end eatery many of the dishes on offer clearly have Russian origins. This is obvious to the present author (being a Russian), but probably not to the average North Korean customer.
For example, these restaurants serve Russian-style heavy salads that are flooded with mayonnaise and other similar oily and fatty sauces. The “potato salad” is a common feature in North Korean restaurants’ menu, but few Russians would fail to recognize its actual origin as “olivie salad,” still ubiquitous in Russian eateries.
EATING THE TRACTORS
Of course, the North Korean elite likes to feast on meat. In the South it is beef that is most coveted. In the North, beef is simply beyond the reach of almost everyone. Technically North Koreans are actually banned from eating beef because cows and oxen are strictly used as draft animals not a source of animal protein (you don’t eat your tractors, do you?).
‘A number of times I have encountered complaints about obesity as a growing problem among the elite North Korean children and teenagers’
Like South Koreans, people in the North are big fans of barbecue. But instead of fresh rib meats (known as kalbi in the South), North Koreans tend to prefer marinated varieties (known as pulgogi, still popular in the South, but less so). As with South Korea, North Koreans grill their meat themselves over a charcoal fire or small gas stove installed in the tables at the restaurant.
Another North Korean dish is sinsollo, which is somewhat reminiscent of South Korea’s shabu–shabu. In the restaurant, customers are supplied with a pile of vegetables, meat and dumplings, as well as with a pan filled with water and a coal fire (that goes underneath the pan). Naturally enough, you put the food in the water (after it has boiled), wait for it to cook and then eat it.
While the new rich feast on pork and chicken, their children are fond of cheap (and seriously unhealthy) sweets imported mainly from China. A number of times I have encountered complaints about obesity as a growing problem among the elite North Korean children and teenagers. Such sweets are normally consumed at home, but can be purchased in the restaurants as well. It is not incidental that in the last decade Choco Pies (a South Korean snack that is also widely produced in China) has become tremendously popular in North Korea. It has become not only a treasured present, but also a sign of earthly success.
One can suspect that in due time the children and grandchildren of successful North Koreans – chiefly operators of semi-legal private businesses and corrupt bureaucrats – will look at the diets of their grandparents with a mixture of amusement and distain. Nonetheless, right now these people still follow the age-old paradigm: if you afford to consume many calories, do it for as long as you can.
And consume they do. High prices do not stop the North Korean new rich from crowding more fashionable eateries, and the market is booming prompting more and more entrepreneurs try their luck by opening yet another restaurant somewhere in downtown Pyongyang (of course, the restaurant is prudently registered with the local municipal authorities).
Picture: Wikimedia Commons
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