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LOS ANGELES — David Kim insists it tastes like his mom’s. He says despite machines that rumble as they chop, wash, mix and label, his factory-produced kimchi can compete with what appeared on the table after his mother spent hours laboring over wilted cabbage and anchovy-laden pepper paste in her kitchen in Seoul.
His mother doesn’t make kimchi anymore, now that her son owns Cosmos Food Co., which every day bottles 8,000 pounds of the spicy side dish that accompanies Korean meals.
Perhaps it’s kimchi’s turn to become ubiquitous in U.S. groceries, just as salsa has. And its future may lie in fusion food where the processed stuff is good enough when merged with other ingredients to create concoctions such as kimchi tacos and burgers.
