The Studio
Four stars
Something is cooking in Jaha Koo’s culinary dissection of exile, and it smells very much like home. For Koo, this means South Korea by way of Berlin, Brussels and beyond. Scenes of dancing neon on the roads and in the skyscrapers are projected on to a triangular tent construction that Koo eventually unfolds to build a pojangmacha, a portable street food stand that becomes Koo’s stage, kitchen and sanctuary.
Grabbing a couple of audience members from the front row à la 1970s TV cookery show The Galloping Gourmet, Koo proceeds to cook and feed them several courses of Korean delicacies. As he does so, a memoir of Koo’s very personal journey unfolds, taking in conflicts local and global en route to finding his way back to a very different South Korea.
In what is already a bittersweet taster, Koo’s story is helped along, first by a snail, then by a gummy bear, and finally by an electric eel. These all appear in animated form on screens either side of the food truck lip-synching to Koo’s melancholy electronic soundtrack.
With the story that unfolds told partly in surtitled voiceover as he keeps things bubbling in the kitchen, Koo makes a charming host. Beyond his hospitality, there is also a much more serious meditation on migration and how the world evolves just as a menu does. In this way, the international language of eating together becomes a marker of criss-crossing cultures. As Koo’s delivery makes clear, the global village he continues to explore is one great big giant pojangmacha, open to all.
Until Aug 24.
The Herald, August 23, 2026
ends
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