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Senses And Seoul

2026-02-16 · 16:01 UTC ·The Browser ·3 min read

Brief

The Browser’s “Senses And Seoul” newsletter is a curated recommendation list rather than a reported article, pairing two essays linked by attention to cultural inheritance and the built environment. The first recommendation points readers to Ruby Tandoh’s profile of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, whose 1825 The Physiology of Taste remains a foundational text in food literature, notable not just for quotable lines but for its expansive and eccentric theorizing about taste. The second spotlights S.Y. Lee’s essay on Seoul, structured around a visit to two buildings that embody radically different eras: the 1396 Jongmyo Shrine and the modernist Sewoon Sangga commercial complex, which stretches four blocks and reportedly faces demolition. Taken together, the newsletter surfaces one piece about intellectual history and one about urban memory, with the Seoul essay carrying the stronger infrastructural angle because it treats demolition and preservation as a lens on how cities absorb and erase successive phases of development.

Cleaned source text

title: Senses And Seoul

author: The Browser

content_type: newsletter

publication: thebrowser.com

published: 2026-02-16T16:01:05+00:00

source_url: gmail://19c6732f1740e3a5

word_count: 685

Writing of lasting value

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Senses And Seoul

By Caroline Crampton • 16 Feb 2026 | View in browser

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The Professor Of The Lower Senses

Ruby Tandoh | Vittels | 9th February 2026 | UProfile of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who in 1825 published _The Physiology of Taste_ , "the most influential non-recipe book ever written about food". Best known for its highly quotable aphorisms, it's well worth reading in all its peculiar, digressionary glory. "It is gut-wrenching to think just how much bad food writing could have been averted if people had only read beyond the first two pages of his book" (4,000 words)

In Search Of The Soul Of Seoul

S.Y. Lee | S(ubstack)-Bahn | 13th February 2026 | U

Writer visits two favourite buildings that stand across the street from each other in Seoul: the Jongmyo Shrine, a Confucian complex founded in 1396, and the Sewoon Sangga, a brutalist complex of shopping malls that stretches for four blocks. They are polar opposites, but also embody Seoul's many evolutions. The mall is now heading for demolition. If it goes, so does a fascinating piece of urban history (4,600 words)

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