Quality Korean Barbecue in Los Angeles

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I’m about to wax poetic about Korean barbecue, but first, I need to clear up a misconception. There is much, much more to Korean food than barbecue. The reason there are so many Korean barbecue restaurants in this country is that Americans, not Koreans, are obsessed with meat.    (IS0)

Those of you who have read my previous entries about food may be surprised to hear me complain about this, because I clearly love meat. True enough. But I love food in general, and I find this narrow view of this widely varied cuisine annoying. That said, I also know that Korean food is an acquired taste for most Americans — we eat lots of spicy, salty, fermented, fishy foods — and that when folks ask for restaurant recommendations, they usually want barbecue.    (IS1)

For the most part, I’m ambivalent about recommending Korean barbecue places. The meat quality at most places is about the same, so I tend to differentiate them by the marinade (which I find too sweet at most restaurants), the quality of the banchan (the small appetizer plates that come with the meal) and other items on the menu, and the service. I, like many others, enjoy Brother’s in San Francisco for its wood-fired grills and friendly service, but I’m not blown away by the food there.    (IS2)

When folks ask me to recommend good Korean restaurants in Los Angeles, my hometown, I’m usually stumped. Unlike the Bay Area, Korean restaurants abound down south. Nevertheless, the same thing holds true: The quality at most of these places is about the same.    (IS3)

Thankfully, I’m stumped no more. Last night, my parents took me to ChoSun Galbee, located in the heart of Korea Town in Los Angeles. The food there is good. Damn good.    (IS4)

I knew my experience there would be different as soon as they brought out the raw meat, which looked amazingly fresh and beautifully marbled. Most restaurants marinate their meat overnight, which is actually overkill, because the meat is sliced very thin. The chef at ChoSun Galbee marinates the meat immediately, which has the added benefit of showcasing the quality of the meat. This is only a good thing, of course, if the quality of the meat is worth showcasing, which is probably why most restaurants don’t do it.    (IS5)

The shorter marination time did nothing to decrease the melding of the flavors, which was less sweet and slightly more complex than most restaurants. I was especially impressed by the daeji bulgogi — spicy pork — where I detected strong hints of ginger and cinnamon, in addition to the usual garlic, soy sauce, and gochoo chang (hot pepper paste).    (IS6)

In addition to the daeji bulgogi, we had bulgogi (thinly sliced beef) and galbee (shortribs), both of which were excellent. I thought they skimped on the galbee portions, but “skimping” is relative. I was so full, I could barely walk out of the place.    (IS7)

We also had the mul naengmyun — chewy noodles in a cold broth — which was okay, but not overwhelmingly good. As with the meat, the quality of the ingredients tasted high, which is usually as much as I can ask for when ordering naengmyun. (I’m a naengmyun snob, so take my review with a grain of salt. If anyone knows of a good place to get bibim naengmyun in the Bay Area, let me know.) Same went for the banchan — good, obviously made with decent ingredients, but not extraordinary.    (IS8)

(One reason naengmyun tends to be mediocre at most places is that it’s actually a North Korean specialty. As you can imagine, the recipes and techniques for making it well have not been widely disseminated. That said, it’s not impossible to find a decent bowl in Los Angeles, which is more than I can say for the Bay Area. It’s an absolute travesty.)    (IS9)

Apparently, I’m not the first to sing ChoSun Galbee’s praises. It’s a big restaurant with a beautiful patio area, and the place was packed. If you find yourself in Los Angeles, and you’re looking for good Korean barbecue, ChoSun Galbee is the place to be. It’s slightly more expensive than your average Korean restaurant, but the quality makes it well worth it.    (ISA)

Collaboration Talk in Phoenix

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I’ll be giving a talk on Tuesday — “Collaboration: What the Heck Does It Mean?” — at the Portals, Collaboration and Content Management Conference at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Yes, the title is wrong in the program.) It’s a more refined version of the talk I gave late last year for the 2005 Reuters Digital Visions Fellows at Stanford. Fitting that I’ll be speaking in Phoenix, because the kernel of this talk emerged from my ChiliPLoP workshop in beautiful Carefree, Arizona almost exactly one year ago today. You can download the slides.    (ILQ)

In addition to meeting folks at the conference, I’m looking forward to catching up with Linda Rising, who’s recent book, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, is getting some excellent buzz, including from my former Dr. Dobb’s Journal colleague, Mike Swaine. My turnaround is pretty quick — I’m flying back to San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon — but if you’re in the area and would like to meet up, let me know.    (ILR)

J. Fairchild and Community Space

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Katrin Verclas, co-director of Aspiration and co-organizer of the FLOSS Usability Sprint, wrote a fantastic piece entitled, “Great Good Spaces for Community, Activism, and Better Software.” It’s no accident that we connected when we first met at the Advocacy Developer’s Convergence last June. Even though our missions are different, there’s great overlap in our thinking and philosophy. That holds true with the other organizations Blue Oxen Associates has partnered with as well.    (ID7)

A critical element in building strong community and in facilitating effective collaboration is having the right space. As Katrin points out, this holds true for both physical and metaphysical (or online) spaces. I had three intellectual inspirations in starting Blue Oxen: Doug Engelbart, Christopher Alexander, and George Lakoff. Christopher Alexander is an architect who wrote about Pattern Languages in the 1970s, which was all about designing great spaces, spaces that were alive, that had this Quality Without A Name. Blue Oxen is trying to understand and discover patterns of effective collaboration, which encompasses issues of space.    (ID8)

When Katrin wrote her piece, we were looking for a space to hold our sprint, and we weren’t finding a place that satisfied us. Luckily, I had a wildcard in my back pocket. Jeff Shults was the manager of the knOwhere Store in the late 1990s, which was MGTaylor‘s showcase for its collaborative environment and process. When the store closed, Jeff purchased all the furniture and bided his time until he could open his own space. That time came late last year, when he struck an agreement with SFIA to manage their new space on 10th and Mission in San Francisco.    (ID9)

I first met Jeff at Planetwork in 2003, but the first time we worked closely together was at the 7-Domains Workshop last July. Jeff is literally an environmental master. He has this sixth sense for configuring spaces to maximize collaboration. He has both thought deeply about the subject and has practiced it for some time. He’s also a fantastic listener, which is an attribute he shares with all the great facilitators I know.    (IDA)

I had seen the space last fall, and to say that it was in rough condition is an understatement. But in early January, when we still hadn’t found a good space, I decided to call Jeff anyway. The transformation the space had made in the course of two months was amazing. Although Jeff hasn’t officially opened his facility, he not only let us use his space, but he agreed to be one of our sponsors.    (IDB)

I can’t tell you how many people walked into our event last week, looked around, and said, “Wow, what a great space!” I’d hear this, laugh, and respond, “You don’t know the half of it.” All of us have an intuition that allows us to recognize a great space when we see one, an intuition that sadly doesn’t wake up often enough. But you have to discover the thinking and hard work that goes into creating such a space before you can truly appreciate it.    (IDC)

Jeff’s company and space is called J. Fairchild. If you need a great meeting space in San Francisco, talk to Jeff and let him know I sent you his way.    (IDD)

FLOSS Usability Sprint, Feb 18-20

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Blue Oxen Associates and the good folks at Aspiration are organizing a usability sprint for open source software. The sprint will be held at Jeff Shults‘s fantastic new facility in San Francisco, February 18-20. Those who should apply:    (HTW)

  • Developers who want to improve the usability of their Open Source projects.    (HTX)
  • Usability practitioners who want to help improve the usability of Open Source software.    (HTY)

I got the idea from a breakout session at the Advocacy Developer’s Convergence last June. A few months later, I accidentally ran into Zack Rosen on the CalTrain, and our conversation pumped me up about the idea. The next step was to find a partner in this endeavour, and Aspiration was the natural choice.    (HTZ)

This event is going to be very exciting. It will be the first gathering of developers, usability practitioners, and users devoted to improving the usability of Open Source software. It’s going to be high-energy and productive, as all Aspiration workshops are. And, it’s going to have a real and immediate impact on the quality of several applications.    (HU0)

Most importantly (from Blue Oxen‘s point of view), it will showcase outstanding collaborative processes and tools, both face-to-face and online. As always with Blue Oxen projects, the goal is for this kind of event to be replicable by anyone, and the expectation is that this sprint will be the first of many.    (HU1)

Go to the web site if you’re interested in participating. Contact me if you’re interested in sponsoring the event or if you have questions or thoughts.    (HU2)

Election Redux: A Call for Conversations

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Trudging through the surge of commentary in the blogosphere following the elections, Kellan Elliott-McCrea‘s post jumped out at me. He wrote:    (4Q2)

There is a political theory that says that people who disagree with you aren’t fundamentally bad people, but misguided, or perhaps coming from different backgrounds. Having just spent a couple of hours talking to someone who voted for Bush I’d have to say I disagree. He is superficially a good person, but deep down firmly believes that might is right, American lives are more important then any other lives, that policies which discriminate on race make statistical sense, human rights are a privilege but capital rights are inalienable. How do you answer that? We can quite civilly agree to disagree, and go back to our regular neutral pleasant conversations not to mention a few moments of uneasy solidarity making fun of Christian fundamentalists, but the chasm of understanding is so vast I can’t imagine what crossing it would look like.    (4Q3)

I know many people who feel the same way as Kellan, and I find this troubling. Is intelligent discourse truly a lost cause? Are we as polarized as those red and blue maps make it seem? Is conversation pointless?    (4Q4)

No, no, and no!    (4Q5)

Lakoff on Framing    (4Q6)

I’m a huge admirer of George Lakoff‘s work. He’s part of the canon of thinkers who strongly influenced The Blue Oxen Way (along with Doug Engelbart, Christopher Alexander, and Richard Gabriel). So when I saw that Lakoff was speaking the same day I was at last weekend’s Green Festival in San Francisco, I decided to show up five hours earlier than scheduled so I could hear what he had to say.    (4Q7)

In a nutshell, Lakoff’s thesis (detailed in his books, Don’t Think of an Elephant! and Moral Politics) is that conservatives have effectively hijacked the language of public policy. When we use terms like “tax relief” and “pro-life,” we are implicitly framing the debate from a conservative standpoint (e.g. “Taxes are an affliction,” and “Pro-abortion implies anti-life”). Progressives, he argues, must learn to reframe issues if they’re to have a chance at swaying the so-called swing-voters.    (4Q8)

I’ve read Lakoff’s thesis many times, but this was the first time I heard him talk about it in person, and what I heard troubled me. Obviously, he was not speaking to a bunch of cognitive scientists. He was speaking to a bunch of fired-up activists looking for something to cheer about, and he did a good job playing to that crowd. But heard live (and obviously simplified), his thesis seemed to suggest that we were on the road to further polarization, a zero-sum game where a small minority of the country would determine which extreme would win.    (4Q9)

If you read Moral Politics, it’s clear that Lakoff’s thinking is not that simplistic. But I couldn’t help calling him on it anyway. After his talk, I asked him, “What about framing the issues so that the two sides can talk to each other rather to their own constituents?” Lakoff’s response was that a progressive framing would do just that by balancing the language of public policy, which is heavily slanted towards conservatives right now.    (4QA)

A Diverse Community of Deep Thinkers    (4QB)

Okay, I can buy that. Lakoff is positioning framing as a winning strategy for progressive politicians, but it can also be seen as leveling the playing field for intelligent, balanced discourse. The problem is that it’s not enough to facilitate the latter. In the first place, we need to talk to people who think differently from ourselves. In the second place, we need to be deeper thinkers.    (4QC)

The latter is the harder problem. For starters, we have to know the facts, regardless of how they are spun. Whether or not you believe that the Bush administration knew there were no weapons of mass destruction prior to invading Iraq, or whether or not you care, the fact was that they weren’t there. Yet a large percentage of Americans still don’t realize this. If so many people can’t get these facts straight, how can we even talk to them about deeper issues, such as whether or not Bush is a good conservative, or why so many conservative publications (The Economist, The New Republic, The Financial Times, The American Conservative) endorsed Kerry?    (4QD)

Well, my answer isn’t going to satisfy most people, but it’s the best that I can offer: The road to deeper thinking starts by talking to folks who are different from ourselves. Talk is not cheap. We can’t and shouldn’t expect to persuade everyone, at least not easily, but what we can do is encourage people to think differently. If we start there, bigger things will follow.    (4QE)

Start with your immediate friends and families. Diversify your blogrolls and reading lists. Travel. Watch old episodes of Firing Line. (You read that right. I consider William Buckley, Jr.‘s old show television’s highest and brightest beacon of intelligent discourse in my lifetime. As right-wing and as forcefully opinionated as Buckley is, he always made it a point to interview people with very different views, which he did with respect and wit.)    (4QF)

Let’s break the divide and talk to each other more, and then let’s see what happens.    (4QG)