여기오! part 1

녹차떡

"nok cha dduk"

("nok cha" = green tea. "dduk" = the kind of donut it is. Thus, this is a green tea donut-ish deliciousness filled with melty sugary yum.)

전주 반찬

"Jeonju banchan"

(banchan = side dishes. Jeonju = the city where my host family lives, totally famous for food. This is a quarter of the number of plates there were at a meal for four adults. They cleared the table three times before this.)

김밥

"kim bap"

("kim" = salty, dried seaweed. "bap" = rice. There's some other stuff in there too, veggies and crab meat and egg, etc. The yellow stuff on the side is 단무지 ["danmooji," or pickled radish.] This is the best kimbap I ever had, in a street booth across the street from the Nanta theater.)

This post is called "yo-gi-o!" ~ the word you are completely allowed to yell in a restaurant to get a waiter's attention. At the top of your lungs, if the place is crowded. For all things; water, adding more food to your order, to ask for the check.... I'm just getting the hang of this, it seems completely rude by American standards but hey, when in Rome.

Food culture is huge everywhere, right, but it seems particularly important in Korea, and it's one of the things I like the best about this place. Coming home, the first thing I miss is the food and upon arrival, the first thing I always want to do is eat.

I. Hasukjip eats.

So... my rent is about $400 a month and I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner included. The food is made fresh every meal,  by a really sweet ajumma who's worried I'm going to starve if I don't eat two helpings of everything. Possibly she thinks foreigners need to eat more than Koreans because I don't hear her pushing my housemates the way she pushes me, but either way she's very concerned about my nutrition, and it's nice.

The food's a little bit monotonous, but always good - rice, kim, kimchee, a rotating assortment of veggie side dishes, some kind of soup (usually sundubu jjigae, or tofu stew with kimchee and beef. a big fave.) Eggs in the morning, some kind of entree like curry rice or fried something or other to go with dinner. 

For the most part, it's overwhelmingly nutritious and wholesome, besides the fried stuff. I've already lost about five pounds, just from eating habit changes. I like eating in the house because a) it's essentially free and b) I feel like I can actually eat a ton of food, be full, and not feel bad about it.

This is really important to me, because I've struggled with eating issues and disordered eating thought for a long time. To feel full and not guilty is so refreshing and different than the way I usually feel at home. I'll say more about this later.

II. Street food.

Street food is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Forget your shitty NY hotdogs that cost two dollars and taste like poop, forget the stale ass pretzels that never have enough salt. Korean street food is ubiquitous, mad delicious, and super cheep. 

Mostly I am obsessed with 떡볶이. ("ddukboki" - big fat rice noodles with a spicy red sauce, accompanied sometimes by fish cakeish things soaking in broth, or pig intestine, or some other weird grey meat I ate once, and have no interest in ever tasting again. Though, covered in ddukboki sauce, pretty much anything is a lot more delicious than it was before.)

If I can make up an excuse to have ddukboki for dinner, I do. I've been better about it this time because the hasuk food is so good, but over the summer I became a regular at a few tents by the 24 hour coffee shop I lived in.

III. Sweets, etc.

I have a love-hate relationship with this category. Love because it's my favorite, hate because it undoes all the healthy stuff I was talking about before. There are an incredibly diverse number of options here for mad delicious sweets that I really, really like. At home, I enjoy chocolate, but I don't like... fantasize about buying candy bars. I definitely zone out it class thinking about sweet breads, or dduk, or waffles. Another sneaky thing about this is that it overlaps with street food - meaning its everywhere, in front of me as I walk down the street, and so cheep its practically being given away.

밭, or "pat" is a Korean specialty that I often get down with. It's going to sound weird, but pat is sweet red bean paste, used for loads of delicious things like patbingsoo (icrecream, fruit, cornflakes, and pat...zomg summer means patbingsoo in my mind.) pastries, and breads. Apparently it's an acquired taste (I have a western friend who hates the stuff) but I think it's the bomb. Anything with pat in it I'm probably going to buy, and eat.

There are a million delicious snacks too, available at the jillion convenience stores studding every street for less than a dollar each. choco-nut pretzel sticks, tiny cookies, chocopie!, snack bars, little mushroom shaped crackers dipped in chocolate... I don't even know, tons of stuff. I'm more into the hot sweets from the street vendors, but yeah. I can get down with these too.

 IV. Restaurants

Eating out is super easy here, and everyone seems to do it quite often. If Seoul is an expensive city, the one thing that's cheep is the food. I'm going to write about restaurants more in part 2, but I just want to talk about 고기집's for a second. 

A gogijip is a meat restaurant. There is a grill set in the middle of the table. You order a type of meat and a number of servings, and the waiter brings a plate full of raw meat the the table, along with a bunch of random banchan, as well as lettuce, sesame oil and salt, a red paste called gochujang, big chunks of garlic, and some onions soaking in marinade, etc.  

He lights the grill, and then (depending on the place) you're on your own. One person (I'm not sure who it's supposed to be age- or gender-wise, culturally, but every group of friends seems to have it's own grill master/mistress who really likes to be the one who tends the meat.) You flip it over until its done, and then, using tongs, you hold the strip of grilled meat up and cut it into manageable squares that can be picked up using chopsticks.

Tyler, demonstrating tong-technique over the summer ㅋㅋㅋ

Now it's time to make lettuce packets. Put a leaf of lettuce in one hand, then using the chopsticks make a little pile on the lettuce of meat (possibly dipped in the sesame salt, I don't get down like that but everyone else seems to) gochujang, garlic, etc... fold up the pile using the lettuce as a little envelope and pop that in your mouth, whole. 

Chew for a long time. Repeat. Yes. This is how meat was meant to be eaten. I don't even like meat but I love this. More than the food I like the process, I like the procedure and the friendship and the sharing out of banchan dishes and not caring about double dipping or anything of the short.

I'll get more into this, and my feelings in general about eating culture in Korea, in part 2.

V. Gross things.

번데기

"beondegi"

("beondegi" - boiled silkworm larvae. Never eat this. Not that you were thinking about it... I'm just saying. Grossest thing I've eaten in Korea.)

개

"kae"

("kae" - dog. Don't eat it, mannnn. I haven't (yet?!) and I would really like to try not to. It's not very popular at all so it's not like it's hard to avoid... I don't know I don't know. Dog?! I can eat raw, wriggling squid, still sort of alive... but I can't get down like that.)