Kimchi in the UK?

June 22, 2024 8:53 AM

I recently watched an episode of QI from 2013 where the panelists were served small dishes of kimchi. None of them had heard of kimchi before. Was they saying this just for laughs, or was kimchi actually obscure in the UK ten years ago, or was it just an odd coincidence that these four people hadn't heard of kimchi? Is it widely available now?

I know the US has a stronger Korean culture than the UK does, and I'm on the West coast, for context. But kimchi isn't just on the "international" aisle of well stocked grocery stores. I can buy kimchi at Safeway and Fred Meyer, it shows up occasionally in non-Asian restaurants... it isn't as mainstream as sauerkraut yet, but it feels like it's on the way. The delicious, salty, crunchy way.

posted by The corpse in the library to Food & Drink (22 answers total)

Kimchi was basically unknown in the UK 10 years ago. Even now, I'd estimate that 95% of people haven't heard of it or eaten it. Availability is pretty limited - you can get small jars or cans (about one serving) in larger supermarkets, in the International section. If you want a 500g/1lb pouch or tub of kimchi, you'll need to go to one of the larger Chinese grocery stores that you'll find in some of the larger cities. My local Chinese/'Oriental' (as they brand themselves) supermarket has a few types of refrigerated kimchi (cabbage, radish etc.), usually Bibigo, and a small section with other Korean foods.

In terms of restaurants, I know of two in my nearest city (compared with something like 20 Japanese, 50 Thai, and 200 Chinese restaurants). London, Manchester, Birmingham etc. may well have a few more, or even a specialist Korean supermarket or two.
posted by pipeski at 9:15 AM on June 22 [4 favorites]

Yes, kimchi and Korean cooking in general was extremely obscure in the UK ten years ago. Twenty years ago, some Koreans came over to our office and were completely unable to find food they liked anywhere, until they discovered this one little Korean restaurant. Even then, they had to ask the restaurant to prepare them "real" Korean food off menu because they found the "Korean food for British people" to be unrecognisable. They ended up shipping giant boxes of pot noodles from Korea to eat the rest of the time.

You can get a few Korean grocery products in the regular supermarkets these days. All the major supermarkets stock kimchi, but it's expensive and sold in very small jars in the specialty section.

I'd guess more people will have been to a Korean restaurant than they might have ten years ago, but it's still extremely rare compared to Indian and Chinese food (which is everywhere) or other less common cuisines like Vietnamese or Japanese.
posted by quacks like a duck at 9:16 AM on June 22 [2 favorites]

I just looked on Deliveroo - I'm in London right now, and within delivery range of me are two Korean restaurants, compared to 25 sushi restaurants, 12 Vietnamese restaurants, about 30 Caribbean restaurants, and 20 South Indian restaurants. (For more popular cuisines it runs into the hundreds).
posted by quacks like a duck at 9:29 AM on June 22 [3 favorites]

Korean food (mostly Korean fried chicken) has only really got popular in the last ten years, yeah. Korean restaurants were around before then but definitely outnumbered by Japanese and (by a looong way) Chinese and Indian restaurants.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:31 AM on June 22

For what it's worth, kimchi in particular is available somewhat more broadly than just Korean restaurants here. The cafe around the corner from my house had a kimchi grilled cheese on the menu last year, and one of the more fancy local restaurants currently has a starter containing it. I'd say it's trendy but not super widespread yet
posted by Law of Demeter at 9:38 AM on June 22

Even now, outside of London, if you had four random people over and gave them kimchi, chances are that 3 out of 4 haven’t ever had it, and maybe one person might have had a close encounter with kimchi.
posted by moiraine at 10:54 AM on June 22

I think that’s equally true of large swathes of the US.
posted by bowbeacon at 11:14 AM on June 22 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: > I think that’s equally true of large swathes of the US

Oh, sure, but this was professional comedians and actors recording a TV show in London (Victoria Wood, Richard Osman, Jason Manford, and Alan Davies, for those who are curious) and Stephen Fry presented the question not expecting them to know what kimchi was.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:23 AM on June 22 [1 favorite]

Interest in Korean food is really recent, kimchi was basically unknown 10 years ago.

Don't forget, there isn't really much in the way of a Korean community in the UK.
posted by plonkee at 11:25 AM on June 22 [1 favorite]

I've been eating kimchi (usually piled up on top of ramen for lunch) several times a week for maybe 2 years now. Ten years ago I'm pretty sure I'd never heard the word.
posted by pipeski at 12:39 PM on June 22

Nowadays, you can get kimchi at Tesco (a major supermarket). Come to that, I'm in a small town in southeast England, well outside London, and there is a kimchi stall on the local market. Ten years ago, there wasn't, and I bought kimchi from specialist shops: but it wasn't any harder to lay hands on than, say, mirin or fish sauce (both of which are also now easy to find).

It's not an everyday staple, many people will never have tried it, and I certainly wouldn't expect everyone to be familiar with it, but I've not had any trouble finding it in the last 10-15 years. I would have expected foodies in 2013 at least to have heard of it.

But... Comparing my experience with the other answers, perhaps I've been living in a kimchi bubble. You have to know about something in order to seek it out. I knew about kimchi; my friends knew about kimchi... but I guess we're not very typical.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:49 PM on June 22

There's an English guy who's made an entire Youtube channel out of introducing Korean food to people; he's been at it for ten years, and ten years ago his first video saw him offering people a taste of kimchi and most had no idea what it was.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:35 PM on June 22 [5 favorites]

I lived in London in the mid 2010s and the relative absence of Korean food in such a cosmopolitan city was noticeable enough (compared to where I’d lived previously in NYC and the Midwest US) that it came up in conversations. At the time, you could find some things — including kimchi — in certain markets but there were hardly any Korean restaurants in London.

Of course, there were other cuisines I was introduced to in the UK that I hadn’t ever had before.
posted by theory at 4:34 PM on June 22

I live in a small remote town in the SW UK. I also don't think I would have heard of kimchi ten years ago, now we get tubs of it delivered by Sainsbury's (another major supermarket chain) and there is a local specialist artisanal supplier who charges through the nose for it too. I have seen several articles in the national press playing up it's value as a prebiotic/probiotic and they seem to assume reasonable access.
posted by biffa at 11:33 PM on June 22

Yes, UK here and a bit surprised that none of those people had heard of it in 2013, perhaps it was a bit for the show?

I'm not a massive foodie, but I specifically remember a very tasty bulgogi with kimchi dish in 2003-04 in a Leeds restaurant, and you could order it separately as a side too. Leeds is a fairly big city but not especially cutting edge. This wasn't a specialist Korean spot, just a large and popular general east and south-east asian cuisine place. Maybe they just happened to be ahead of the curve.

I think some of the above assessments of UK kimchi awareness are a bit conservative, it's been in the normal dips-and-salads bit of my medium sized local Co-op since the mid-2010s, and my not very adventurous septuagenarian parents have definitely heard of it. I even had some "home-made kimchi" on a toasted sandwich in a very white, very normal cafe the other month (it was disappointing but at least they tried).
posted by tomsk at 12:11 AM on June 23

I'm inclined to agree with the folks who are saying it's more mainstream in the UK now, rather than still relatively unknown, but I realise I run in comparatively bougie, foodie circles.
posted by terretu at 12:51 AM on June 23

I used to live in the UK in that time period and while I regularly had Korean food, it didn't escape me that unless a cuisine acquired some kind of white British upper class cachet that would leave you gauche if you're culturally illiterate about it, the relative availability even in the urban areas mattered fuck all with regards if that meant a relatively well known item in the cuisine is actually known or not. That's just "ethnic" food. In some ways, it shows how authentic you are if you don't put on airs like knowing specific "foreign" food items. So the behaviour you saw in the show is common, almost expected, and likely unchanged even now (ok maybe the pockets of being not culturally illiterate is slightly bigger now).

(Hey, remember when there was some UK cooking competition show that was being extremely British in not knowing how to handle Mexican food and the amount of distress when the North American fans got to the episode? It's like that.)
posted by cendawanita at 5:31 AM on June 23 [2 favorites]

(it's one of those little things that honestly made Brexit inevitable, once you know how to look for it)
posted by cendawanita at 5:35 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]

Slight aside about “unknown in UK”; we couldn’t find anyone in any stores who had heard of kombucha. That surprised us.
posted by terrapin at 7:53 AM on June 23

I think you could actually credit that specific QI episode with having introduced kimchi to a significant fraction of the population.
posted by automatronic at 8:39 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]

I actually found a video of that episode now (on Dailymotion, apologies). The Kimchi part is at 27 minutes.

And after watching, I have to question the premise that "people" didn't know about kimchi; because if you watch it, the panelists may not know what it is, but when Stephen Fry then asks the audience if they know what it is, what sounds like a decent-sized chunk of the audience all hollers "kimchi!" So clearly some people knew what it was.

Alan Davies also really gets into his (and then a few moments later lapses into a rather unfortunate mock accent, fair warning; fortunately Stephen Fry chides him a bit.).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:16 PM on June 23

I'm in the UK and until this question I hadn't heard of it and it's 2024. I'm not a foodie and I don't live in a big city. It's totally believable that lots of/most people here wouldn't have heard of it in 2013.
posted by underclocked at 5:07 AM on June 24 [3 favorites]