Many Koreans have gotten hooked on the mouth-numbing Chinese mala sauce, so much so that restaurants serving this dish have popped up all over Seoul. Pictured is a bowl of the Sichuan-style soup malatang.
China's mouth-numbing mala sauce has gained a massive following in Korea.
The word mala is a combination of the Chinese characters ma (麻), meaning "to numb," and la (辣), meaning "spicy." This "hot and numbing taste" is a flavor characteristic of Sichuan cuisine of southwestern China, a region whose food is known for being spicy. Mala sauce, made by adding Sichuan pepper (hua jiao) to chili oil, has a spicy aroma and a fiery taste.
Just a few years ago, restaurants in Korea specializing in mala dishes could only be found in Seoul's Daerim-dong, a neighborhood inhabited by a large ethnic Chinese community, and the alleyways of a small-scale Chinatown near Konkuk University. More recently, such restaurants have popped up all over Seoul, especially on the busy streets of Gwanghwamun, Yeouido and Gangnam Station. Around lunch hour, a steady stream of customers can be seen flowing into these establishments.
Korea's mala craze is trending on social media. A search for "malatang" on Instagram on July 16 showed some 258,000 posts featuring shots of the hot dish from every angle. With a growing number of hardcore mala fans, newly coined terms like "blood mala concentration" and masegwon, a portmanteau of the words mala restaurant and yeoksegwon (the value of real estate depending on proximity to a subway station) have entered the social media landscape.
The range of mala dishes available has grown more diversified as well. Diners can easily choose from malatang, a build-your-own-soup in mala broth, as well as mala xiang guo, a stir-fried dish with ingredients cooked in mala sauce, and mala long xia, or stir-fried mala crayfish. There's an entire buffet of ingredients to pick and choose from that come together in a variety of textures and flavors.
"They say you either love or hate malatang, and in my case, I've caught the love bug," said Koo Kyoungna, a 20-something office worker. "The malatang you get in Korea has just the right level of spiciness and matches well with Korean taste buds. I like that you can pick your own ingredients and how your self-served portion determines your bill."
With mala mania growing in Korea, distributors have released new products flavored with mala sauce such as cup noodles and a wide assortment of snacks. (CU)