Wow, it’s been a minute—did you miss me? The past few weeks have been a blur, and I feel like I’m just now falling back into my normal routine. I spent a little over a week in Taiwan visiting my family, where I ate an endless parade of starches: rice, noodles, buns, etc. I also found peace and release from the noise of New York in bodies of water, bought every single trinket I laid my eyes on, and went to the world’s first and only Michelin-starred ice cream parlor, MINIMAL. (Only their takeout operation was open when we went, which I found less impressive than the write-ups of their dine-in tasting menu experience.)
And then I came crashing back into reality. Don’t ask me what happened last week; it was all in a heavily jet-lagged fog. My first meal back in New York was at American Bar, where I had a peanut chicken salad and fries. (Let’s not think too hard about the irony of returning from Asia craving faux-Asian American foods.) Viraj and I celebrated Valentine’s Day with our usual shenanigans: cooking duck and then using the duck fat to fat wash a mixture of bourbons we had lying around in our cabinets, taking notes while watching Eric Sze eat everything on the menu at Delmonico’s and then going to Delmonico’s and nailing our order, and meeting my friend Becky at Cha Cha Festival, a tea festival that’s happening every weekend in February. (Go, it’s great!)
In the same way that I have certain foods that I crave and need to seek out whenever I’m in Taiwan, it’s interesting to discover what foods I crave from my American life whenever I’m away for a sizable amount of time. I’m pretty much always thinking about Asian food — Viraj can testify to how cranky I get whenever we’re traveling in a non-Asian country and I haven’t had steamed rice in too long, it’s crazy — but while my taste buds were shivering with delight all week in Taiwan, weird and unexpected cravings for the mundane foods of my workday started bubbling to the surface. I don’t want to admit it, but ever since I’ve come back, I’ve become weirdly obsessed with Cava, which I never really liked that much to begin with. I don’t know what’s come over me…
While I use One More Bite to discuss all the wonderful, diverse dining experiences I’ve had, the reality is that I spend my weekdays eating at endless variations of the same restaurant: the bowl that’s assembled by an assembly line that you’re inadvertently a part of, and then consumed at your desk, perched between your arms so that you can still type as you chew. It’s all so bleak!
No, I won’t pack my own lunch to break out of this routine. But, I will go on a secret trip to Woorijip, sometimes joined by my dear friend and fellow sufferer of the mundanity of the work lunch, Nathalie. Woorijip is a special place to me — so special, in fact, that I hesitate to tell others about it. The place is crowded enough! But we tell each other everything, don’t we? (Or, at least I do…)
Woorijip reminds me of the lunches my mother packed for me growing up, little boxes of dumplings or fried rice or different types of stir fry neatly arranged atop rice. And though I was embarrassed at the time that I didn’t just have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich like every other kid, I now recognize the superiority of these Chinese dishes my mother prepared for me, and I extend that appreciation towards other Asian takes on lunch, like Woorijip’s Korean offerings. When I lived in LA, my mother and I used to have a running joke that if I ever missed her home-cooked meals I should just go to Din Tai Fung, since we went so often as a family, especially in Taiwan, that it really does remind both of us of some sort of “home.” And though we do have a Din Tai Fung in New York now, I’ve moved on. Woorijip is my false mother now, when my real one isn’t around to pack lunch for me.
The experience of eating at Woorijip really does make me feel like a kid in a candy store — their shelves are lined with endless options of noodles and rice and kimbap and soup and banchan, which are slightly different every time I’m there. (The best dish I’ve ever eaten there was this edamame, onion, carrot and seaweed salad. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen it again.) It usually takes me a few laps to decide on what to eat, and then after I inevitably buy too much food, I always find myself eyeing some other dish that an employee is rolling fresh out of the kitchen, wishing that I had more room in my stomach and more time to linger. And though I stuff myself at Woorijip every time, the total never comes out to be more than $20 — usually, my lunches there are around $10.
What I buy at Woorijip really varies, but I usually gravitate towards their japchae (stir-fried glass noodles) and kimbap. For the sake of this newsletter, I bravely ventured out into the cold to Woorijip today and ended up getting shrimp japchae, vegetable jeon and stir-fried string beans, my first time trying all of these dishes. Predictably, it was delicious. Based on my experience, Woorijip’s food has a consistent quality that sits somewhere between a good hot bar and a sit-down restaurant, excellent for its price and convenience. For example, the vegetable jeon, though it had gotten a little cold, still had a satisfyingly crisp edge. (Woorijip does have microwaves available for use, though I’m usually too excited to eat to wait to use one.)
Though it can get crowded at lunch, there’s ample seating within the restaurant, and I have most of my Woorijip meals there rather than taking it back to the office. Often, I’m meeting Nathalie, but even if I’m not, eating there has become part of the routine. If I’m walking to Koreatown for lunch, rather than resigning myself to the myriad of fast casual salads that surround my office, I’ve already made a commitment to spice up my lunch in one way. Why not spend a little more time away from the office and spare my laptop from the risk of spilled soup? (So if you’re my coworker and I disappear from the office during lunchtime for longer than usual… mind your own business!)
Bite It!
Woorijip is open every day except Sundays from morning until night. Go!