Posted on 01/28/2004 4:00:52 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
SEOUL, South Korea - Many North Koreans barely get enough to eat. But the capital of the totalitarian state is awash in good restaurants for those who can afford it, according to a guide compiled by three foreign aid workers.
"Eating Out in Pyongyang" lists more than 50 restaurants where foreigners and the North Korean elite can sample a wide variety of Western and Asian fare: hamburgers, hotdogs, "American-style" pancakes, chicken a la Kiev, sushi, shark fin soup, flying fish egg salad and such Korean staples as kimchi, cold noodles and bibimbap, a rice and vegetable dish.
"Some of it was delicious," said Roberto Christen, a Peruvian co-author who left Pyongyang last year after a five-year stint. He worked on agricultural and environmental projects for the United Nations Development Programme and traveled widely in the secretive North, which restricts the movements of most foreigners as well as its own citizens.
The unpublished guide, distributed by the authors to hundreds of friends and colleagues, categorizes restaurant prices as cheap — an average-sized meal for under $6.20 per person; moderate — $6.20 to $12.40 per person; and expensive — over 12.40. The prices are well beyond the means of most people in North Korea, where natural disasters and economic mismanagement have devastated food production.
The World Food Programme has estimated that up to 3.8 million North Koreans — 17 percent of the country's population — could be deprived of critical international food aid by the end of the winter because of falling international donations. Top U.S. officials have accused North Korean leader Kim Jong Il of squandering the nation's resources on weapons programs and for his own personal gain.
The Pyongyang guide rates eateries with images of chopsticks, or choggarak: on a scale of one to five, one pair of chopsticks is below average and five signal excellence.
Christen and co-authors Olof Nunez, a colleague at UNDP, and Sofia Malmqvist wrote the guide after venturing beyond the dozen restaurants that the relatively few foreign residents and tourists always visit. Armed with a map, they found a host of options.
"There were loads of restaurants. You can access them easily, you can find a lot of good food. There's a lot more than you might believe," said Malmqvist, who worked for CESVI, an Italian non-governmental organization.
"For the people in the elite, they do have a lot of food. You don't notice that there is a shortage of food in the capital. We saw a lot of middle class people going out with the children to restaurants, on the weekends for lunch," Malmqvist said. She and Nunez have left North Korea.
The best of the lot include the Pirobong Restaurant in the Pyongyang Hotel, which serves an extensive buffet with seaweed salad, miso soup, desserts, fruit and cheese. "International hotel lobby ambience. Very clean and nice. Popular with the Pyongyang elite. Good service. So new it did not have a menu our first time there," the guide says.
Then there is the Moranbong Hotel, where diners peruse a pictorial menu in English, munch on complimentary peanuts and listen to "soft, non-revolutionary music" as they sit at tables divided by "classy" bamboo dividers. Try the tempura vegetables, clam soup or vegetable omelette, the guide suggests.
The Yanggkado Revolving Restaurant boasts a panoramic view of the city and does a full rotation in two hours and 56 minutes: "If you are alone, they will turn it on just for you!"
No such luck at the spinning restaurant at Ryangang Hotel: "It did not revolve! At least not for us. Empty at lunchtime, you will have the whole place for yourselves, if you manage to open the door, which you lift up and carry inside — with the help of the elevator staff."
Some places are cold in winter, a common problem in a country with a crumbling power grid. The Koryo is one of the city's largest hotels, and it's pleasant to sit in the Japanese landscaped garden of one of its restaurants, but "watch out for the rats!"
One restaurant served filthy, smelly napkins. They always found someone who spoke a little English and could help them choose.
North Korean diners included university students, family groups of eight or nine people, and the elite, whose expensive cars, parked outside, were an indicator of their status.
Outside Pyongyang, Christen recommends the fish restaurants on the east coast. In the port city of Wonsan, he enjoyed "the best crab I've ever eaten in my life."
,,, the truth is plain and simple - the crab had freedom to eat until it was caught for a meal. The people can only dream of being a crab and what a meal is. Communism - whether it's Harare or Pyongyang, it's all the same when the light goes out.
Deliver us from the useful idiots of the world.
If nothing else, those UN types sure know how to live the High Life.
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