the crispiest roast pork ever, a true melting pot, and a huge announcement
melbourne diversity vibes
Moving to Melbourne, Australia has had some pretty significant cultural effects on what I eat, but definitely not in the way I expected. Actually, I had no idea what to expect.
Fish and chips? That was about it.
I didn’t know what the food culture would be like here. To my surprise, Melbourne has an incredibly diverse population. This city, from the little I’ve seen, is heavily influenced by its populations of Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, English, Italian, and probably many more ethnicities. It’s probably the most diverse city I’ve ever lived in in my life.
This is coming from someone who has lived in the greater Los Angeles area for the first 20 years of my life, which many consider a melting pot of sorts. But after living here, the “diversity” in my hometown feels much more segregated, to be honest.
Koreans have their general, walled-off area, Mexican people have their own neighborhoods, and white people stick to their areas, etc. You’d always cross paths with others, of course, but to get to the really good food, you’d have to venture into what felt like other “countries” that had their own borders.
Ironically, my family chose to live in one of the “white” areas, even though Orange County and Los Angeles have some of the biggest Korean populations in the United States — possibly outside of Korea in general. When I meet other OC Koreans abroad (there are a lot of them), they’re always really excited to connect on our shared home neighborhoods, until I tell them I lived in Villa Park/Orange — which is answered with, “Oh…why?” Then I then have to explain why I didn’t live in Fullerton, Buena Park, Garden Grove, etc…
Melbourne, however, feels legit like a melting pot. Walk down the street and you’ll pass people of all ethnicities, eating at restaurants of all ethnicities. And we’re not talking about inauthentic, fast-chain versions of the food — we’re talking, incredibly authentic, Vietnamese grandma yelling at you in a different language authentic. The “you-can’t-read-the-menu-unless-you-go-with-a-friend” authentic.
It’s incredibly refreshing, how gastronomically literate (just made that phrase up) people are about other ethnicity’s cuisines here. And what makes it even cooler for me is that I’m not “literate” about these cuisines at all.
I didn’t grow up with legit Chinese food whatsoever — only the Korean-Chinese hybrid we got takeout from my dad’s favorite place. I’d only ever eaten Malaysian food in the one week I spent in Malaysia, and all I could remember was that it was the best thing I’d ever put in my mouth-hole — even the actual taste begins to fade from memory. I’d never even really eaten at legit Italian spots — because what Korean immigrant family goes out to eat at legit Italian spots? Our Vietnamese food in the OC was pretty good, but I had only ever scratched the surface of the deep, intricate cuisine.
Living in Melbourne, from a food angle, has felt like traveling to several new countries on its own.
This has subconsciously affected my cooking as well. I started “craving” things I’d never even had before. Take…eggplant parmigiano. Never had it in my life. But I decided to make it.
But the biggest thing I notice when I walk down the streets of Melbourne are those huge, roasted pigs and ducks sitting in the windows of the Chinese shops, glistening with moisture. You can watch through the window the chefs with the big-ass cleaver aggressively cutting through the crispy skin of the pork.
Even without trying it, I can imagine what the pork belly tasted like. The layer of crispy chicharron or geopdaegi (that’s what I know it as) followed by the juicy layers of fat and meat.
One day, I decided…I’m making that. So I pulled up the first link on Google. And made it. And it was glorious.
It was so damn good. Like having pork candy sitting on my kitchen counter at all times. Naturally, I couldn’t help myself and ended up finishing the entire crispy slab of meat within a day. Jihyun and I made banh mis with the initial cuts, but I demolished the rest by simply walking back and forth past it.
I guess the main point of all of this is that moving to a new country really has opened my eyes to new cuisines and styles of cooking, albeit in unexpected ways.
It’s been awesome.
I’m not really going to walk through the cooking process, because…more on that below.
A Medium-Sized Announcement
TL;DR — Less recipes. More cool and interesting history and stories about food. Publishing on Twitter more.
Maybe I was exaggerating the size of this announcement in the subject line.
You might’ve noticed I haven’t been as active on Tangy Language — it’s been for several reasons, including:
Moving to a new country
Publishing a 600-page English-learning E-Book with my partner
Writing for work clients like Mashed and others
Writing for my other newsletter
Being a lazy p.o.s.
Recently, I’ve been searching deeply for the direction I want to take in my career, my writing, and life in general. After (lots) of searching, I’ve found a general north star to take my digital writing in while I continue to work and build my business. I’ve recently joined an online writing cohort/course to continue building my writing skills.
If you’re anywhere near the digital writing or marketing space, you might’ve heard of it: Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole’s Ship 30 for 30.
Why am I even mentioning this?
Well, a big part of the cohort is publishing short stories daily on a social platform. Starting a week from now, I’m going to be publishing short articles every single day for 30 days in public on Twitter.
If you’re active on Twitter and would like to join me on my little journey — I’d love to have you! You can join my other 13 followers. 😄 Find me @elliottpak.
This also leads to a bit of a shift in what I’ll be writing about. I’ve been thinking really hard about what to niche down to for my writing. If you know me at all, you know I’ve been all over the place, from personal development to travel to food to marketing to whatever comes farting out on that particular day.
What I’ve realized is, I still absolutely love writing about food — but not really recipes, per se (which is what Tangy Language has pretty much been up to this point).
I'm going to be shifting a lot of what I write about from general recipes and travel to:
Food culture and history (for example, how different ethnicities have integrated into new societies and changed food history)
Our emotional connections with food (i.e. that feeling you get when you bite into your favorite childhood dish)
Our scientific connections with food (i.e. the things you crave the most when you’re hungover and why)
Possibly other subjects — this is all very new and I might pivot again.
That stuff really excites me. Maybe it’s because of my Korean-American heritage growing up in a totally White/Mexican area. Maybe it’s from living in other countries and being absolutely enamored with the stories people have of how their immigrant families ended up there — and how they brought their food techniques with them. Maybe because I’m hungover too often.
When I started writing Tangy Language — I knew I was obsessed with food, but wasn’t totally sure how to write about it. So I just wrote what I was cooking, how I made my girlfriend fall in love with me through food, and the recipes that came with them.
But to be honest, I don’t even really follow recipes when I cook — so why am I writing about recipes?
I think I have a bit of a different calling when it comes to food — so I’m going to dig down this new rabbit hole and see where it goes.
TL;DR?! — Less recipes. More cool and interesting history and stories about food. Publishing on Twitter more.
Again, I’ll be starting this new adventure on Twitter, so come join me on this little adventure if you’re on Twitter.
Sidenote: I’m not leaving Tangy Language! Just going to be launching short-form stuff on Twitter, while keeping long-form content here.
I’d love to hear your opinion. Did you actually enjoy the recipes and little travel stories I wrote about before? Do the new subjects I’m going to cover seem interesting to you? Let me know below in the comments. Cheers
Hey Elliott,
Your new direction sounds interesting and I am interested to read about it. However, I have also enjoyed your personal stories evolving into recipes. Although I am vegetarian, I can't relate to the "meat recipes," but I like your seasoning and sauces and usually find ways to change the ingredients to suit my plant-based diet. It challenges me to change my cooking and try something new.
Like Morgan, I am not on Twitter either and have read about the new Instagram app, Threads which seems to have attracted alot of new followers.
Good to hear that Melbourne is turning out to be a source of inspiration for you and your girlfriend!
Not personally active on Twitter, but Instagram just launched their competitor Threads yesterday that has the option to automatically port your existing follows, and the community aspect seems great so far. Might be worth checking out to cross post and get in early!