I love pho, except for the cilantro that always comes with it. When it appears in my bowl, uninvited, I remove every piece before taking my first bite. Every green fragment, picked out one by one, with the precision of decades-long chopstick skills.

To me, it tastes like soap.

Some explain this as genetic — a smell receptor that detects certain compounds in cilantro, the same compounds found in soap. But genetics alone doesn't explain why my mother loves it and I don't.

Cilantro is not alone on my list. There is also cumin, with its warm, dusty aroma that clings to meat. Used lightly, it deepens flavor without announcing itself. I love tacos and curries, and I know cumin is there, somewhere beneath the surface. It belongs there.

But sometimes it takes over. The first time I bit into lamb chuanr (串儿) at a Chinese restaurant, the smell reached me before the taste did. Earthy, heavy, almost bodily. The meat was coated in it. I didn't know then what it was called. I only knew that it overwhelmed everything else.

For a long time, I assumed complexity came from spices — that the more spices a cuisine used, the more sophisticated it was. Korean food challenged that assumption. Where some cuisines layer dried spices, Korean cooking builds depth through fermentation and time.

Garlic, ginger, and chili provide sharpness and heat. But the deeper structure comes from doenjang (된장), gochujang (고추장), and the slow work of fermentation. Kimchi brine becomes seasoning. A spoonful of kimchi liquid can define an entire dish. Dongchimi (동치미), a mild water kimchi, produces a broth that stands on its own — cold, clean, and bright, without bones or spice blends.

These are flavors Koreans learn early, before questioning them. They are familiar but not mild. To someone encountering them for the first time, the smell can feel excessive, even unsettling.

That's when I realized: what I felt about cumin, someone else might feel about jeotgal or mukeunji. What I experienced as intrusion, they might experience as home.

I heard this firsthand in Chile. A tour guide told me that many Chileans dislike garlic. I struggled to understand. Garlic forms the backbone of Korean cooking. It's not something I notice. It is simply there, inseparable from the food itself.

Yet Chilean cuisine follows a different logic. The flavors felt quieter, less aggressive, more restrained. What feels essential in one country can feel excessive in another.

In Vietnam and Thailand, intensity comes from freshness. Herbs like cilantro, Thai basil, and sawtooth herb are used in handfuls, not sparingly. They are not garnish but structure. What feels overwhelming to me feels necessary to them.

An Indian friend once told me about her first trip to an American grocery store. She bought what she thought was cilantro, only to realize after tasting it that it was parsley. Confused, she wondered what kind of cilantro it was, because it tasted wrong. She had grown up with cilantro as a constant presence. Parsley, though visually similar, belonged to a different flavor system entirely.

I still remove cilantro from my food. That hasn't changed. But I no longer see it as a flaw in the dish or a mistake.

It is simply not mine. It belongs to a different kitchen, a different memory, a different mouth. And that is enough to respect it.