Chicken McNuggets with instant ramen dipping sauce

food is stupid, but food can sometimes be sad too

Hi, clowns!

Hope you beautiful people have all been well. Before I jump into today’s edition of the newsletter, I’ll tell you about some fun stuff that’s happened. Because there’s lots.

First off, writer Carlie Hoke from the site Mashed (which is a sibling site to The Takeout, where I still work) interviewed me about my weirdly super-specific expertise on hot dogs. No, I did not talk about shoving them up my ass. I did not want her to lose her gig by associating herself with someone who constantly talks about ass-dogs.

In another hot dog announcement, my dear friend Allison Robicelli quoted me in The Washington Post, where I put up my dukes for Chicago’s style of hot dogs. (That’s Allison’s gift link, if you want to read it you just have to supply an email address.)

And finally, I made a podcast guest appearance, this time on TASTE’s. The episode title is incredible, because it’s called “This Is TASTE 423: Fart Sandwich Artist with Dennis Lee.”

Previous guests on this podcast series have included people like Giada De Laurentiis (yep, that Giada), Jamie Oliver, and Danny Trejo (holy shit). Then there’s Dannis Ree, the greatest self-proclaimed food writer in all of history, sticking out like an infected thumb. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right through your web browser.

But before I jump in to the rest of the newsletter, I am going to start with a little heads up: Today’s subject matter might be very difficult to read for some of you.

That’s because it involves some really tough subjects such as depression and suicide. If either of these things are hard for you to deal with, I recommend you stop reading right now, and don’t scroll beyond the image below.

Whether or not you stick around past this point, just know I love you.

There’s no easy way for me to say this, so I’ll just do it.

My father took his own life just a few days shy of what would have been his 77th birthday.

This was a few weeks ago now, which is why I’ve been absent. The days after he died involved a flurry of crushing emotions, horrible phone calls, multiple trips to the funeral home, a wake, and a burial. It’s weird how the unexpected can make the following days blend together.

“Unexpected” might not be the right word for it. My father had been struggling with crippling bouts of depression for as long as I can remember. This depression was a monster, one that would oftentimes rob him of his usual enthusiasm for everyday experiences.

Though his last act on this earth would be an irreversible one, it’s not what defined him, not by a long shot—Dad was weird and funny (he enthusiastically took pictures of alpaca poo when traveling), even if he acted gruff most of the time. He was also the hardest worker I’ve ever known, because as an immigrant to America in the mid-1970’s, he couldn’t afford not to be.

His and my mother’s hard work put us squarely in the middle class, where I didn’t have to experience any of the hardscrabble life he did back in South Korea. It’s through my parents that I was able to eventually pursue this career in food writing, which I’ve oftentimes regretted, because Dad wanted me to be a high-paid engineer.

One very specific thing my dad was really passionate about was investing his money in stocks and day trading.

He was methodical about studying which stocks were the most reliable ones, and on most weekdays he’d watch the market closely, find when a quietly valuable stock dipped, and snatch it up just like a hawk. He’d then sell it shortly after the price recovered. You know, the old buy low, sell high thing. But unlike many, he figured out how to make it work more often than not.

A few years ago, he wanted to teach me how to do this too, and I finally agreed to make it a regular thing. I’d come home on Saturday morning, we’d visit the library, and he’d point out his favorite financial resources. I read through them and learned exactly nothing, except for the fact that a lot of this trading stuff seems like educated guessing.

The truth was, I just wanted to spend more time with him. After a few hours at the library, it was time to head home and have lunch, but at some point during this period of tutelage, he started doing something unexpected.

He started insisting that we should go to McDonald’s, because he wanted to buy me Chicken McNuggets. The first time he did it, I thought it was just a one-off thing. Then he did it another week. And another.

Here I am, a grown-ass man in my 40’s, sitting in a booth as my dad stood in line to order the both of us Chicken McNuggets. I could not have felt more like a kid again. Why he thought I wanted Chicken McNuggets, I don’t know. It’s not that I dislike McNuggets, I just never get them. But the fact that he insisted on constantly buying me Chicken McNuggets started to get fucking hilarious.

My mom didn’t find this entertaining one bit. She couldn’t understand why her husband would buy their way-past-adult son Chicken McNuggets instead of some real food, which made me think the whole thing was even funnier.

At some point, he eased up on the whole McNugget thing, and we’d come home so he could fix me the only thing he knew how: instant ramen.

Seriously, if you left my dad alone, instant ramen would be the only thing he’d eat. He told me he could eat it every day. (Do not do this.)

When I was growing up, his usual go-to was Nongshim Shin ramen. If you’re a fan of spicy instant noodles, chances are you’ve either heard of these or had them, because they’re wildly popular and have been for decades.

But I noticed that after some time, the red packaging of the Shin ramen was no longer to be found in my parents’ pantry. It had been replaced by a yellow one.

Dad had switched to a different brand called Jin. When I went to pick these up at the Korean grocery store the other day, I called my mom to ask which variety they were, because Jin had at least four or five types on the shelf.

She told me it was the mild kind, and I asked her why he’d eventually switched after eating Shin for so long. Apparently the Shin had become a little too spicy for him, plus he could taste the MSG in the Shin to the point where it became unappealing.

So that’s why he’d started fixing me Jin instead of his old standby after our library sessions. He did a fine job at making the ramen, and always asked me if I wanted an egg in it.

When I got off the phone with my mom, I suddenly felt very alone standing in the instant ramen aisle, wishing I could have been a better son. I kicked myself for failing physics, not having the six-figure salary that Dad thought I did for some reason (food writing’s rough, man), and was upset that I couldn’t ever find a way to make him seem like he was proud of me, because then he’d have been happier, right?

But I know that’s not how it works. That mantle of sadness my father felt so often is something I inherited too. It’s coded into my genes in the form of bipolar II disorder, which most people think is a better movie than the first one. Interestingly enough, I was diagnosed with this during the same neighborhood of time I started writing about food.

Bipolar II disorder involves troughs of depression that can sometimes last for weeks, though fortunately my episodes don’t usually last for that long. Occasionally hypomania is involved, where I’ll get irritable and jittery and have trouble sleeping for a few days. I take medication, watch my mood closely, and do my best to tell Davida when I’m stuck in a low.

Man, if I’d started crying at the store, I could have written a memoir and called it Crying at Joong Boo Market. At the very least, I could write an essay about McNuggets and instant ramen and win every single James Beard Award. Hmm. Maybe I’ll do that on this newsletter.

Despite how utterly crushing this year has been so far, I’m still up to my old horseshit, even after telling you my father committed suicide and that I have bipolar disorder and holy shit what did I just say.

Uh, so, today, I’m mixing ramen seasoning packets with sweet and sour sauce to eat with McNuggets, and all that stuff you just read is the header to my recipe!!!

First, I started with the Shin packet, which reminded me of the period when my dad was much more youthful. I tasted a little bit of the powder by itself, which completely obliterated my palate. Turns out obliteration tastes like MSG and pure spice, because my tongue felt like it had chemical burns on it.

Then I took some Jin seasoning and did the same with another tub of dipping sauce.

Jin’s powder is a little different; it’s definitely milder in terms of spice, but it also has some sort of burnt taste to it. I know this because I tasted it raw and blew out my tongue for a second time in a row. Dad, wherever you are, I hate to break it to you, but Jin still has a lot of MSG in it.

The gang sat and watched me mix these things together, peering suspiciously at the sodium-packed dipping sauce.

I could have sworn I saw Mr. Bee looking over at my blood pressure cuff for a second.

I’ll be honest and say that both versions of the sweet and sour sauce pretty much tasted about the same, sugary yet packed full of umami flavor.

What’s interesting is that the sauce stopped tasting like a generic corn syrup-forward sweet and sour, but it never quite achieved full-blown ramen status either. It hit this strange middle ground where both sides were a little lost in the other, a murky blend that was salty, sweet, and spicy all at the same time.

None of it quite made sense stirred together, but then again, nothing seemed to make sense when I was standing there in the kitchen doing it.

Though I am very much my father’s son in ways that are etched deeply into my blood, the road has been a lot more gentle to me than it ever was for him.

Every bit of me aches, because he’d been hurting so deeply for so long. Frankly, we’re lucky to have had him up until he almost made it to the age of 77, because he wrestled himself every single minute to get there. Sometimes I wonder if I am fighting the same battle, but it occurred to me that as similar as my father and I am, our paths have diverged quite a bit.

As to my taste in instant ramen, I’m neither a Shin nor Jin guy, which I noticed just now rhymes. Neoguri, which rhymes with neither, is my personal go-to, with a runny poached egg in it, along with some stretchy white cheese on top if we have any.

And somehow, my dad made a food I rarely reach for, McNuggets, suddenly a new point of nostalgia for me at the age of 43. I still find this extremely funny, and in fact, I’m sitting here smiling even now. Though I’m not big on tradition, I’m thinking that maybe I’ll start eating them on Father’s Day from here on out. Because even though I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that dad’s not here anymore, they’ll forever make me feel like his kid.

Because I am.

---

Janet, mom, and I miss you, Dad. We wish you were still here.

Thank you all for being here with me, clowns. I love you.

And I promise that even though this year has punted me in the spiritual balls over and over again, I’ll still do my best to bring the joy that you all deserve in this newsletter. That includes laughter and fucking around to the max. But this grief is something I'll have to contend with for a long, long, time.