Banchan

I didn’t know what banchan was when I first arrived in Korea. No one explained it to me. There was no introduction, no moment where someone sat me down and said, this is how it works. It was something I had to figure out the way you figure out most things in a new country—by sitting there, slightly confused, and paying attention.

The first time, I thought there had been a mistake. I had gone into a small place near where I was living—one of those narrow restaurants tucked just off the street, easy to miss unless you were looking for it, which I wasn’t. I was just hungry. I pointed at something on the wall. The woman nodded and disappeared into the back. A few minutes later, she came out with a bowl of rice and a soup I didn’t recognize. That part made sense.

Then she came back again. And again.

Small dishes this time.

Kimchi. Something green. Thin slices of radish. A few anchovies, maybe.

She set them down one by one without saying anything, like she was just finishing the table. I remember looking at it and thinking—this can’t all be mine. I waited. No one came back to take anything away.

That was my introduction to banchan.

In Korean, banchan refers to the small side dishes that accompany a meal—served in little portions, meant to be shared, and almost always placed on the table without being ordered. But that definition doesn’t quite capture what it feels like the first time you experience it. It’s not just food. It’s something that arrives quietly, as if it had always been part of the meal, whether you understood it or not.

It took time.

In the beginning, I ate carefully, unsure of what belonged to me and what didn’t. I would leave some of it untouched, thinking I hadn’t ordered it, thinking it wasn’t really part of the meal. But it was. All of it was.

That’s what I came to understand.

Banchan isn’t extra. It’s not a side in the way we think of sides. It’s part of the whole thing.

Back then, in the early 90s, places like that were everywhere—small, family-run restaurants, a little worn, the kind of places where the tables had seen years of use and the walls carried the faint memory of smoke and steam. You didn’t go there for variety. You went because it was there. Because it was open. Because you knew, without thinking about it, that you would sit down and the table would take care of itself.

That’s how it felt.

You didn’t build the meal.

You arrived, and it was already waiting for you.

Rice. Soup. And then the banchan.

Always kimchi. Then whatever else the day decided. Spinach. Bean sprouts. Potatoes. Fish. Something you liked. Something you weren’t sure about. It didn’t matter. You ate what you wanted, left what you didn’t, and somehow it all made sense.

I used to go to one place more than the others. I wish I could remember the name, but I never knew it to begin with. It was just there, part of my routine without ever being planned. I’d go in, sit down, nod. The woman who ran it didn’t ask questions. She didn’t need to. After a while, she knew.

Or maybe she didn’t.

Maybe it was just the same for everyone.

The food would come out the same way each time. The same quiet rhythm. The same soft placement of dishes. The same sense that nothing needed to be said.

I don’t remember ever having a real conversation there.

But I remember the banchan.

The way the table slowly filled. The way it looked before I started eating—complete in a way I didn’t have a word for at the time.

And maybe that’s what stays with me now.

Not the main dish.

Not the place.

But those small dishes that came without asking.

These days, things are different. You can still find banchan, of course. It’s everywhere. But it doesn’t always feel the same. Maybe it’s the pace. Maybe it’s me. Back then, it felt like something you stepped into without effort. Now, it feels like something you notice when you slow down enough.

Every once in a while, I still do.

I’ll sit down somewhere—nothing special, just a place I happened to walk into—and it starts again. Rice. Soup. And then, one by one, the small dishes appear. No explanation. No announcement. Just the quiet understanding that this is how the meal begins.

And for a moment, I’m back there. Not in the same place. Not at the same table. But in that same feeling.That quiet, unexpected completeness.

All because of a few small dishes

I didn’t order—but somehow needed.