Crash-landing on our plates

Bulgogi or baked bread? Kimchi or corn dogs? India serves two distinct types of Korean food. Which one is better? That depends on which Korea you know

- Shirin Mehrotra

Gung The Palace, the three-storeyed Korean restaurant in Delhi's Green Park, has traditional seating - low tables (with a pit to dangle the legs), curtained dining booths, subdued colours, low music, and a 21-page menu featuring meaty barbecue, seafood stews and octopus casserole. At Mr K Ramyun Café, also in Green Park, the colours are more vivid, mukbang videos play on screens, the menu is only six pages long, the shelves are stocked with packets of Buldak Ramyun. How did we get to a point where Korean dining in India can mean such vastly different things?

The answer is a little complicated. It draws on history, geography and a bit of economics. And restaurants of both kinds are popping up across India Chennai has 30, Pune has pre-order dining rooms, Mumbai has dedicated cafés. It's a distinction that says as much about India as the Asian nation, far, far away.

First, the history

Of course, the K-Pop and K-drama craze of the last decade has something to do with it. But India had a handful of Korean restaurants that were thriving much before we got hooked on to BTS. They operated quietly in cities and business districts that had a significant Korean expat population.