We had been desperately craving Chinese, Korean and Japanese food for the past few weeks. The discovery of Maggi noodles in Jodhpur lifted our spirits for a few days and allowed us to prepare a few tasty meals. But what now?
I scoured through google maps and discovered a Korean restaurant in Old Jodhpur called Kim Mohan’s Restaurant. The name didn’t lend it much credibility. But, the reviews were consistently excellent. There were even a few Korean tourists who claimed it was authentic Korean food. We were skeptical for sure, but we were so desperate that we were willing to try anything. We were all hoping that an Indian man with the surname Mohan married a Korean lady with the surname Kim.
Kim Mohan’s Restaurant was in the old part of town. To reach it, we had to walk through a maze of narrow streets. There were moments when we weren’t sure if we were going the right way. We asked a local resident who was sitting on his door stoop if he knew where Kim Mohan’s Restaurant was. He pointed us in the right direction and asked us if we were Korean. Either the restaurant was well-known or all of the neighbors were in on the hoax.
We arrived at a hostel and there was a sign directing us to go upstairs to reach Kim Mohan’s Restaurant. The restaurant was on the rooftop of the hostel and it was tiny, just five or six tables. We sat down and looked through the menu. I wasn’t expecting to see beef like kalbi or bulgogi but no bibimbap, no jiggaes, no samgyeopsal. This was disconcerting. I looked around hoping to see a Korean somewhere in the restaurant, a cook, a chef, a boss, a customer, but there were no Koreans here. I was starting to lose hope.
We ordered Korean fried chicken, omelet rice and two bowls of chicken and vegetable soup noodles and a dish of kimchi. The kimchi wasn’t authentic, but it was homemade and tasted spicy and pickled. The fried chicken was delicious and the kids devoured it in seconds. I was happy to taste the dipping sauce that seemed to have a base of gochujang. Before we finished, we ordered a second plate that took a while to arrive. When it arrived, the kids ate happily until they discovered the center was undercooked. We had to send it back to the kitchen to be fried again.
The omelet rice and noodle soup finally arrived and they were not so much Korean, but at least had an East Asian taste. The noodle soup only had a few pieces of noodle so we told the waiter we wanted to order just a portion of noodle.
The waiter apologized about the wait for all of the food and explained that the restaurant was short-handed. We waited quite a while more. The kids got impatient and were left to their own devices to entertain themselves. Out of impatience and curiosity, the kids peeked through the swinging door that led to the kitchen to see what could be taking so long to boil some noodles. They saw the waiter hand-making fresh noodles out of flour and water. This explained the long wait.
When the waiter came to deliver the noodles, he apologized again and confessed that the noodle soup doesn’t usually taste this way but the kitchen helper put the egg in at the wrong time. We asked him how this restaurant came to be and we were shocked to find out that he was Kim Mohan! This was his restaurant! We were dying to find out how he learned to cook Korean food because he was certainly not Korean.
Kim Mohan is originally from Nepal. He does not speak Korean and has never visited Korea. Mohan was introduced to Korean culture and cuisine through K-dramas. He was inspired to learn how to cook Korean food so he did what millions of people do each day when they have a gnawing question or a desire to learn something – he searched on Youtube for Korean cooking videos.
Over the course of the next few years, he spent much of his free time learning the basics of Korean cuisine and expanding his repertoire of dishes. He got the idea to open his own restaurant in 2016 by entrusting his fate to the idea that not all tourists want to eat Indian food all the time. Bingo! The basis of his insight was exactly what led us to his restaurant today. Through his dedication and hard-work, his restaurant has earned praises from many tourists. He is most proud of the good reviews he has received from the many Koreans who have visited his restaurant.
After hearing Mohan’s story, I could not help but see his restaurant in a different light. The undercooked chicken and the long wait time for the food seemed insignificant in the bigger scheme of things. I admired his passion and spirit to pursue something that he loved despite obvious challenges. Mohan did not come from a well-off family yet somehow he mustered the courage to walk away from a reliable career in his field of study to pursue a fantastical dream. No, he would be opening a Korean restaurant in a foreign country that was largely vegetarian and he was qualified to do this because he learned how to cook Korean food from watching Youtube. And then to explain this to his family and friends back in Nepal… That takes real courage. Given where Mohan started his journey, he has come a long way. Mohan deserves every bit of success that comes his way.
