KOREA FOUNDATION

Have you ever heard of the Korean dish called dakhanmari (literally “one chicken”)? I heard about it for the first time this past summer, but after trying it a couple of times it became one of my favorite meals. When I told a Korean friend of mine about my topic for this article, she was very surprised by my choice. “You have really become Korean at heart,” she told me. I will explain the reason why I’ve come to love this dish.
 It was on a rainy day last summer when I decided to meet up with a friend at Sinchon Station. Since she was about to go back to her hometown on the other side of the world, we wanted to spend some time together eating tasty food. The only problem was that I had developed a food allergy and couldn’t eat many things in Korea. This is why she suggested we eat dakhanmari.
  The dish consists of a small whole chicken cooked in a clear broth with potatoes, spring onions, and Korean rice cake. If you want to enhance its flavor, you can add crushed garlic to the big pot where the broth slowly boils. At the restaurant, a waitress cut the chicken for us with scissors and explained that we needed to wait 10 minutes before eating. When we finally started eating, the tender chicken melted in our mouths. We savored every spoonful, enjoying the harmony of the chicken dipped in the slightly spicy sauce it was accompanied with. What left me speechless, though, was the porridge that was cooked with the leftover broth. There is a saying in Korean to explain such a flavour: “So good that if two people were eat-ing together and one of them died, the other would not notice (being too engrossed in eating).” I really enjoyed the time we spent together that day, talking about our Korean lives and enjoying Korean food.
 Even now, when I want to have a wonderful time with my friends, we often go to dakhanmari restaurants. While living in Seoul and experiencing the busy life of the capital, it is important to remind yourself from time to time that you need to slow down and enjoy the little things in life, such as a meal shared with your friends.

Giorgia Giuliani
2014 KF Korean Language Fellow