There are some varieties or recipes that, to me, smell overwhelmingly of soap and disposable baby diapers (unused :)). I haven’t liked these personally. There are others that are more pickly and sauerkrauty, with good spiciness, that are so wonderful I get Pavlovian drooling just thinking about them.
Oh, I’m not sure I agree with that. I really enjoy Korean food, especially the stews. Kimchi jjigae in particular. That one may be my favorite soup/stew in any cuisine, surpassing even pho and tom yum or tom kha. The barbecue items are all great, and I love the variety of banchan (little plates of appetizers that get served with your meal) that a good Korean restaurant serves. I still remember being overwhelmed the first time I went to a Korean restaurant (by myself, too) and getting something like a dozen to fifteen little plates of banchan, and thinking the waitress got my order wrong, as I ordered some bulgogi or something similar. 
I had no idea this was part of the Korean restaurant experience.
Korean food rocks. I love Thai and Indian, too, but Korean is great, as well.
It’s old and I prefer it approaching tingly, but not crazy tingly. It’s super fermented when you get it like that. When it is like that, make kimchi fried rice.
What’s the Americanized version?
Made with ketchup, bacon, and corn.
The most common type of kimchi is made from Nappa cabbage. When well-fermented it has a very cabbagey smell - much more so than sauerkraut. As others have noted, in addition to the red pepper flavoring it usually has other things like green onions and ginger, which add to the flavor and aroma. Kimchi made from chunks of radish is also common. I have also seen kimchi made from cucumbers. A local Korean market sells what they call “watery kimchi,” which is pickled vegetables in a brine with no chiles.
Kimchi is strong both in flavor and aroma. I wouldn’t expect it to appeal to people who like things on the bland side. You might enjoy it if you like bold flavors.
BTW, the sour flavor and aroma in kimchi come from lactic acid, which is a result of fermentation. Vinegar contains acetic acid, not lactic acid. This is probably why Isamu, who dislikes vinegar, doesn’t mind the smell of kimchi.
Korean food for me is on par with Russian food–mostly edible, rarely delicious. I find their soups very good, like Gamja tang or Doegi Guk Bap, and I really dig Andong jim dak–Sam gae tang is also good, but by and large, it’s fairly pedestrian and unappetizing. Ditto with Japanese food.
Chaque’un son gout, as they say.
I love Korean food! About ten years ago when I was in my 20s my dad married first generation Korean immigrant. She loves the fact that when I visit I’ll eat absolutely anything she makes, and share any dish with her at a Korean restaurant. I think Indian edges out Korean cuisine, but it beats Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese, all of which I love. (Except Vietnamese. Vietnamese is just ok IME.)
Oh my, that would be like choosing between my children. I think Thai would be my favorite of the bunch, but the rest. I couldn’t choose. I’d probably go Szechuan, Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, but, really, this is impossible to answer. Right now, I want nothing more than a bowl of kimchi jiggae or buddae jjigae.
The kimchi I’ve had mostly just had an extremely strong cabbage flavor, plus a bit of vinegar and a bit of spiciness. I like vinegar and spice, but I’m not overly fond of cabbage, so I usually order something else.
Now, I love bulgogi and bibimbob, thought that might just be that the Korean restaurant I used to go to just happened to be particularly good.
Yeah, kimchi doesn’t have any vinegar–at least not any kind of kimchi I’ve ever had. Vinegar and lactic acid are both sour, but they have distinct tastes. If you’ve had a New York half sour or full sour pickle, or got a pickle from an Eastern European grocery that sells them out of buckets, that’s what lactic acid fermentation tastes like. It’s not as sharp a sourness as vinegar.
Kimchi quality can vary so widely. Hawaii has a large ethnic-Korean population, so there was lots of it to be found in the stores. When living there, I tasted some really awful junk and some that was sublime.
I remember our most delicious meals coming from when he had our homestay and hung out with actual Korean teens. Most of the stuff then was like fried pork cutlets, amazing chicken wings, and more American-ish food. That was soooo yummy.
One of the “traditional” things we had though was like a whole fucking cornish hen filled with rice in a broth. No idea what it was called, but that shit was delicious.
sam gae tang. It is traditional, but it’s more of a special treat, rather than an everyday sort of thing. It’s basically a chicken soup, and like in the West, Koreans consider it to have health benefits.
Isn’t Kimchi by definition “old” ? I’ve always enjoyed opening a jar to find it somewhat carbonated and bubbly. That fades after a few openings anyway.
I love the stuff and rarely eat it. My Dearly Beloved™ does not like the scent of it on me, and lawdy it does cling for a while. When on the road, I’ll go to a Korean BBQ place if I know it’s got a decent rep with the local Koreans and indulge. Alternately, I’ll take out my South Korean adoptee daughter for dinner and we’ll dive in. Typical dinner would be the usual dizzying array of small dishes, kimchee, kalbe, bulgoki and perhaps a scallion pancake or two. Mmmmm… Korean food ! 
Kimchi is the food of the ghods.
It will come in a wide variety of flavors and spices, from sweet and mild to sour and burn-the-enamel-off-your-teeth. You have to be adventurous and find the ones that you like.
Some kimchi is older than others. You can eat when it’s new, or you can wait for three years, or eat it somewhere in between. 
Yes, chicken, not hen–basically ginseng chicken soup.
If you go to a place that has many types of kimchi or even specializes in kimchi (we have at least one here called New Chicago Kimchee), you should be able to find kimchi in various types and states of fermentation. The older types of kimchi, from my understanding, are generally used for stews like kimchi jjigae and not for straight-out-of-jar eating, although I’ll eat any kind of kimchi straight out of the jar. I buy the old, overfermented stuff, (since I use it mostly for jjigae) but I can’t remember if there’s a special name for it or not. I kind of pantomime for the guy, say “old” and “jjigae” and eventually he figures out what I want.
Time to resurrect this thread with my results. I finally looked in the right place and found some refrigerated jars of kimchi. I bought a 300g jar of Chongga Mat Kimchi.
I opened it this evening and tasted a little straight out of the jar - and found it very enjoyable - spicy, seasoned, tangy, crunchy vegetables in sauce. I cooked some noodles and a stir fry - I added some of the kimchi to this as an ingredient and served it up with some more on the side.
Altogether quite good. I don’t know how typical or westernised this brand might be, but I like it so far.
It’s probably “typical”, but you should realize that, to a large extent, lots of Korean cooking is still passed down among families, and each family’s kimchis may be subtly different from each other.
The best local stuff here in Houston (other than your own mother’s) is made by little old grandmothers who’ve been making it their entire lives and have their own little tweaks and ingredients to bring out flavors. I generally prefer that to the mass produced stuff you can get.
Also, the taste will differ depending on how fermented it gets. Since you’ve opened the jar, you can let it sit a couple days (in a refrigerator), and see if you prefer it as it sours even more. I personally like mine fairly well fermented, while other people like it as fresh as possible. That’s basic cabbage kimchi, of course. How you prefer other kinds of kimchi (cucumber, green onion, radish, etc) will also depend on personal taste.