Uiinhwa

I've spent the last three months collecting the pictures for this post, and it's finally ready.

There is an extraordinarily high density of restaurants in Seoul. I'm told that many residents eat nearly all of their meals outside the home. All those restaurants make for plenty of restaurant signs, all vying for attention on the crowded streets.

There are several recurring themes in restaurant signs. Not surprisingly, the most common approach is to show a picture of the food that is served inside, like this:


Unlike in the US, however, the foods are often shown in their raw rather than prepared state. In the case of soups, the raw ingredients are usually shown piled up in a pot, without any liquid. You can see an example of this in the sign on the left side of the above photograph. Here's a closeup of the picture on the right, showing the raw ingredients for grilled galbi.


Another fairly common technique is to feature an image of the restaurant's owner, founder, or chef, as in this sign:


I don't know about you, but I find the austerity of this picture rather off-putting:


I've eaten here, and it was pretty good and inexpensive, so perhaps Ms. Park is sufficiently terrorizing her employees to produce a decent product at low wages.

But by far the most amusing restaurant signs are those that feature anthropomorphized foods. For reasons that remain mysterious, humans seem to enjoy images of the animals they are about to eat, especially when those animals appear to be ecstatic at either the prospect of being eaten or of eating their own kind. A particular style of cartoony anthropomorphized food creatures is prevalent in Korea. I've assembled a number of examples to show you.

The first two photos were actually taken last autumn in Shinchon, and have been featured over at Pangea's blog. This mushroom is exhibiting a very common trait found among cartoon anthropomorphized foods: the "I'm delicious!" thumbs-up.


In this case, the thumbs-up is accompanied by two more extended fingers, illustrating the restaurant's name of "Three Birds with One Stone".


Our friend the jjukkumi 쭈꾸미, a tiny species of octopus sometimes eaten live, marries a playful wink to his thumbs-up.


Of course, that's not actually a thumb, but a skillfully manipulated--oops, I mean tenticulated!-- tentacular pseudo-thumb.


Below is another jjukkumi restaurant going for a different feel. These thumbs-up octopuses are dynamic, athletic dudes just back from, or about to head off on, an action-packed adventure.



The pig below looks too punch-drunk to realize he's about to be devoured.



The Chinese character on his cap means 'suckling pig'. (It's pronounced ton とん in Japanese and is the first syllable of tonkatsu, Japanese fried pork cutlets.)

[The paragraph below updated May 5, 2008 thanks to Seonsaengnim.]
How about this traditionally-dressed nobleman silkworm, slurping up the bed of greens on which he's being served? He's pretty good with the chopsticks. (Based on the name of the restaurant, Ppungnip Sarang 뿡잎사랑 "Mulberry Leaf Love", and on the gustatory habits of silkworms, the greens must be mulberry leaves. I've eaten here. They serve spicy hot-pot with lots of vegetables, but I don't think humans eat mulberry leaves. And as far as I know silkworms aren't on the menu either, though fried up they are a snack commonly sold by street vendors. So this bit of anthropomorphy may not be directly related to the food sold by the restaurant.)


But getting back to baby octopuses, here's a restaurant that serves both grilled meat and jjukkumi. The sign hits two themes, with a plate of grilled baby octopuses on the right, and a masked snorkeling cartoon octopus on the left. [This paragraph corrected May 5, 2008, thanks to Seonsaengnim.]



The octopus is wearing one glove and shoes, and sports a Dragon Ball Z-type Japanese anime haircut.


There really are a lot of octopuses, aren't there? I've never had jjukkumi myself. The restaurant on the left below has Japanese-style takoyaki -- fried octopus balls.


He's got the glove, the thumbs-up, the Japanese chef's hat-band ... and a delicious steaming-hot fried octopus ball about to suffer a cannibalistic fate, as we can infer from the anticipatory lip-licking.


We'll return to the other sign in the above photograph later. But first, can somebody tell me what's happening in the picture below?


The pig, apparently named Dr. (as in Ph.D.) Go, is wearing an angry octopus bonnet. But despite the distress of the octopus struggling atop his head, Dr. Go seems to be stifling a yawn--or is it a giggle?

While we are on the subject of opaquely behaving anthropomorphized pigs:



I must confess: this is a cultural reference that escapes me. I believe that behind the pig's head is the flaming grill-plate on which she is being serenely cooked. But why is she wearing a Fred-Flintstone-type skirt and holding some sort of stone tool? Is she a refugee from the stone age? Maybe back then, when pigs were killed, skinned, and cut up with stone axes, they tasted more delicious.

From serene we move to downright Dionysian porcine behavior:


This pig, wearing a chef's hat and gloves, is having the time of its life as it prepares to be steamed inside a bamboo tube. The large glass of red wine can't be hurting.


Enough pigs. Let's get back to the fellow I skipped earlier:


Yes, he's a gimbap. Sticking out from his dried-seaweed enclosed body are some spinach, some yellow pickled daikon, orange carrot, and pink processed meat. Actual gimbap looks like this:


My favorite gimbap sign is the one on the shop around the corner from where I live.

Yes, I'm thinking the same thing you are. Why is that gimbap wearing a bandana?


[The following two pictures were added May 4, 2008, 9:35 pm:]



This cow is one of the least anthropomorphized animals I've seen on a sign. Yet there's something irresistible about his big snorty toothy guffaw.


Maybe part of the appeal is the way his cowbell dangles nonchalantly outside the bounds of the circle.


This picture doesn't strictly fit the theme, but it's so doggone cute I just can't not put it in here.

These two little South-Parky kids seems to be wearing their bowls of noodles upside-down on their heads, and they couldn't be happier about it. The one on the left is holding a big slice of pickled daikon, but I don't know what's in the box the other kid is holding. There appear to be chopsticks sticking up behind one of the bowls, and maybe a squid behind the other?

The wording beneath them says "Wanna eat ... wanna wrap and go ..." (??).

Anthropomorphism isn't strictly limited to edibles. This is a computer shop:


I can't quite figure out why this fellow seems so likable, when he has no facial features at all. Maybe it's the energetic angle at which he is grasping his umbrella, or the careless insouciance with which he disregards the hatband dangling in front of his face.