Their Way | What They Do
In a Korean household, the everyday meal is built around the concept of banchan (반찬) — small side dishes served alongside rice and soup that together form a complete table. We are not talking about a special occasion spread. We are talking about a Wednesday. The banchan might include kimchi (always kimchi, in at least one form), a seasoned spinach dish, braised tofu, fishcake, pickled radish, a small bowl of japchae, and several other things that each required their own preparation time, their own seasoning logic, their own place on the table.The dishes are communal. Nobody has their own plate of banchan — you eat from the shared bowls, in whatever order you like, alongside your individual bowl of rice. The table is not a sequence. It is a landscape. Everything arrives at once, and the meal is the act of moving through it at your own pace, returning to what you like, leaving what you don't.
This is not considered extravagant. This is considered feeding your family.