In Writing about Korean Food, Su Scott Also Created Guides to Navigating a New Life

Leaving Korea just shy of turning 20. Settling in Britain, where the language was not hers. Becoming part of that new society and trying to maintain an identity, but which one? Getting married. Having a child. And writing two cookbooks, published within 18 months of each other.

If you stumbled on the word “cookbooks” and decided to move on, please don’t. Because Su Scott’s books are much more than just directions. There are those, of course, but her tomes are also grappling with culture, identity and finding peace in a journey that took her from Seoul to London, from singlehood to marriage and motherhood. In her books, readers learn how to navigate a cuisine that may be unfamiliar to them, but they also serve as guidebooks to understanding a country that has changed and grown at a dizzying pace.

“Rice Table,” Scott’s book published in 2023, “was kind of me talking to my daughter,” Scott says in the first of two interviews about 18 months apart. Scott wanted to be ready for the day her daughter calls from college and says, “Mom, I don’t know how to make this dish.” Writing the book was the answer to that inevitable question.

“Pocha: Simple Korean Food from the Streets of Seoul,” published in 2024, returns Scott to her homeland, where pojangmacha, the ubiquitous food carts and market stalls, mirror, in some ways, Korea’s story, a land that emerged from war and, in half a century or so, transitioned to a world power.

As all travelers know, monuments and places are the foundation of understanding a new world they don’t yet know, but insight into and understanding of a culture are perhaps the most important ingredients of travel. Scott’s is a fascinating journey in many senses of the word.

A new language, a new life, a few thousand surprises

Eager to experience a world different from her own, Scott left Korea just shy of her 20th birthday. “I read ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a child, and there was this fascination [with Britain],” she says, explaining her choice. “It always looked more beautiful, and it always…looked magical.”

Although “all Korean students learn to speak English,” she says, “now, looking back, I think I didn’t speak a word of English, to be honest.”

She stayed with a family her mother knew, but those first steps were difficult. “Still remember feeling very alone and very lonely and watching TV, trying to get the grasp of English,” Scott says. “I think I cried day and night. I just didn’t know what I was letting myself into.” Small things, such as opening a bank account, were “mortifying,” she says, because she lacked the language skills to maneuver through such transactions.

“I think that was the beginning of the fire in the belly,” she says. “I actively tried to immerse myself into the U.K. culture and also very voluntarily removed myself from my own community.”

She didn’t feel part of her new community, though, until at least a decade later, she says.

People still asked her where she was “really from.” That hurt, “because, in a sense, I was so desperate to be accepted. “Now, if somebody asked me that question, I would say, ‘I’m from Seoul, but my home is London.’”

She married a native Londoner, and they had a baby girl, but Scott’s identity was still an issue for her. Was she Korean? Was she British? It was unclear to her, but she soon realized she wanted to share her Korean culture with her daughter, Kiki. The question was how.

“Food was one thing that was immediate and was most tangible,” she says. “And I loved cooking already.” At some point, “I started to realize, oh, actually, I think there is an importance in writing about this….I decided maybe I need to think about putting this together into something that is a bit more physical, something that I can give to my daughter.”

She started cooking. Not all dishes were Korean, but on those that were, “muscle memory” from her upbringing, kicked in. “It’s like speaking a second language,” she says. “You might forget [a bit], but once you throw yourself into that situation…you get those muscles back quite quickly.”

Now she had a “passage to these memories that I wanted to remember and treasure.”

In April 2019, she submitted a recipe for the “Observer Food Monthly Awards.” Industry experts reviewed the submissions, and her country-style kimchi stew took top honors.

That began was her quest “to champion that daily cooking that gets done in Korea home kitchens.” The appetite for Korean cuisine also was increasing, she says, based on the number of Korean restaurants that had sprung up in greater London and the newfound ease with which one could find Korean staples.

The result of this harmonious convergence helped give rise to “Rice Table,” whose recipes Nigella Lawson, author and well-known chef, called “gorgeous.”

Finding the words while finding her voice

Scott says the publication of her “Rice Table” persuaded her that “there is a place for my voice.”

Her confidence in that voice led her back to Korea with her daughter for exploration and research for “Pocha,” the second book. Being in Seoul “was like falling in love again with my hometown and sharing that beautiful culture.”

She reveals that culture through pocha, short for pojangmacha, the ubiquitous street food stalls and markets that have become what Scott calls an “equalizer.” The food is comforting and cheap, and the experience is communal. Captains of industry bump elbows with the humblest of workers.

That sparked Scott’s interest in finding out how pocha changed Seoul. “The beginning of pocha culture starts from the peddlers running around towns selling small goods, but they also sold simple dishes,” she says. “Then it moved to a hand cart going from one place to the other, selling soju shots and small snacks.” (Bon Appétit calls soju “Korea’s most iconic and consumed alcohol.”)

“The dishes are very seasonal, based on what’s available and cheap, but done very well,” Scott told Saveur in an August story. “It happens in front of you, and there’s an immediate connection that you have with the vendor,” she says in that article. “For the cooks, while they have years of experience, their food doesn’t have ego. But there is a sense of pride.’

“This is their life, and they want to feed you well and for you to like it. And I think that’s quite special.”

The experience of partaking pocha nourished the body as well as the soul, she notes in our second interview. “People with dreams, who had to work hard…gathered to be comforted by this cheap food that they can afford,” she says. “It was a place for therapy. It was a place for meeting friends.

“I absolutely fell in love with this whole journey of pocha.

“When you go to street food markets, there’s no difference,” she says. “We are all the same. And I think that’s such an incredibly important thing that we need to preserve and carry with us because it’s so easy to forget.

“We know the value of food. We believe to eat well is to live well. When you go to pocha, you can still eat really well for not much.”

She wants visitors to Korea to explore such culinary possibilities: “I want peoples’ experiences of Korea…to be less touristy. I want them to wander around the back streets. With ‘Pocha,’ I really want to lend them a tool to become a local.

“There might be a little gem, a little experience that is so unique to you,” she says, “that you’ll cherish forever.”

Now, Book No. 3 is in the offing, and of it, Scott says, “I want to celebrate…what Korean food means to me now and to my family,” where roots in both worlds have grown into a new, sweeter whole.

This story was created in partnership with Korea Tourism Organization