Sometimes we don't remember a restaurant for what it serves, nor for the technique, nor even for the story that surrounds it. There are places that remain elsewhere, harder to pinpoint. Without realizing it, something has moved inside. Upon leaving, the recipes are no longer the protagonists. It is everything that is harder to say: the decisions we didn't make, what we left behind, the secret weight of some words.
Something like this happens at Kimchi Mama. The Korean spot is hidden in an alley in Hostafrancs, small and discreet. Inside, there are handmade drawings on the walls, kimchi jars lined up with domestic patience, cork stoppers to contain the echo, and photographs of visitors who have dared to ferment with the team. In a corner, the phrase on a hanging t-shirt reminds us to live with intention.
What captivates is not just the familiar space, nor that atmosphere that seems to revive Busan from a decade ago. What really hooks you is the conversation with Jinho Shin and Kyoung-ae Kwo, the couple behind the project, and their subtle way of taking the restaurant to another place, closer to language than to cuisine. This intuition is confirmed right at the entrance, with an interview with Shin hanging on the wall. When I ask why, the answer comes brief, direct, like a free verse: "Because I am a poet."
"By chance or not, some dishes on the Virens menu look towards Korea"The previous night I had seen something similar from another angle. At Virens, Jimmy Millán and Gio Esteve shared a bar and worked on a proposal where recipes, memory, and matter seemed to speak the same language. The artist and the chef have started organizing monthly dinners where the cuisine interprets Millán's artistic trajectory, who also designs the tableware. By chance or not, some dishes on the menu look towards Korea, like the fantastic chickpea stew with smoked eel, dark and deep.
The conversation with this creative tandem easily drifts towards creation and the need to give meaning to what we do. Millán speaks of a red dot that appears again and again in his works. For him, it marks the instant when the day ends and, at the same time, the possibility of starting anew. Then come AI, constant surveillance, that strange, very Black Mirror-like climate that seems to envelop everything. And yet, in the end, almost in a whisper, Millán drops a phrase that hangs in the air: "Don't worry. There are refuges."
"I ask Shin about his poems, but he tells me he hasn't written in years, even though he has five books and a best-seller in Korea"The next day, at Kimchi Mama, this same idea returns. I ask Shin about her poems, but she tells me she hasn't written in years, even though she has five books and a best-seller in Korea. "Why did you stop?" I ask her as I stir the bibimbap with some clumsiness. "I can only write if I'm sad," she says with an unsettling smile. "Now I have a restaurant and I'm happy. I no longer need to make poetry."
That makes me even more curious about his books, but he tells me he has never translated them because too much would be lost along the way. Then he gets up, looks for a paper on the wall and gestures for me to come closer. "This is a poem of mine, in Korean. Look here: it's the Spanish translation of the title of my most famous work." I lean forward imagining something about cherry blossoms or mountain wind. But I read something else: "When a friend goes to the toilet."
I don't quite understand it. Maybe it's not necessary. There are phrases that are not meant to be resolved, but to stay with you for a while and then disappear. I don't know who the friend is or what the toilet is, but something in that combination (a combination that no AI could dream up) opens a minimal space where nothing needs to fit perfectly. And there, in that margin, something happens.
I leave with a jar of kimchi in my hand, probably the best kimchi in Barcelona, and with the feeling of having been in a place that cannot be fully explained. I think of Jimmy and Gio, of that red dot that marks endings and beginnings, and I imagine them having dinner with Jinho, the Korean poet who stopped writing because he was happy. Perhaps great certainties are not necessary. Sometimes it's enough to know that there are still spaces to stay for a while. Small, discreet places. Refuges.