Korea and food

This is kimchi. Kimchi is served for every meal. I mean it... EVERY meal. It is a spicy fermented cabbage side dish that has been stewing in fish sauce, ginger, brine, radish and shrimp sauce fr a couple of months. It's not so bad but who really loves eating spicy, fishy cabbage at every meal?... except Koreans.

 This is a very typical lunch cafeteria meal. As you can see, you've got your kimchi and rice. God forbid if you went a day without rice and kimchi. You would most certainly suffer in some horrible way.. like fan death. (Remind me to tell you all about that if you haven't heard of it before). Moving on, you usually have some type of pork, chicken, fish, or if you are lucky like this guy, some quail eggs and beef. Then you have your standard spicy seaweed soup with some unknown seafood in it (may be octopus, mussels, clams.. who knows!)

 Now THIS. This is my love. This dish makes me love Koreans. It's bibimbap! Basically it is a bunch of vegetables on top of rice with spicy chili sauce and a raw egg. You get it in a hot stone pot and you mix it all together. The heat from the pot cooks the egg and the rest of the dish while you eat it. It is typically a vegetarian dish and is my go to in Kimbap nara restaurants (essentially a diner type restaurant for korean food) a dish like this will cost on average $3 to $7 at the most including tax.

The dish here is called ddukbokki which is a rice cake noodle. It is quite sweet and has some type of sweet chili sauce on it. They consider this kind of like "junk food" and they love this stuff. You can get a cup of it from street vendors like you would get a hotdog in Canada.

Considering how much extra sugar there is in the instant coffee, in the bread, and in their candy, it is surprising to find that desserts are not all that huge here. This is a traditional dessert though called songpyeon- it's a dumpling with black sesame paste that tastes a bit like peanuts in the middle.

 So you want a regular old night out for food the good old fashion Korean way? Korean BBQ or "bulgogi"  it is. They give you a ton of side dishes, a bunch of lettuce and leafs then you choose beef, pork or both. You throw it on a grill in the middle of the table, chuck those pieces of meat in a leaf with some bean paste or chili sauce, fold 'er up and shove it all in your mouth. Jamie and I aptly named it "meat and leaf restaurants". You really should have at least 3 people if you try to go to one of these places. My Canadian friend has told me of the one time she tried to eat at a meat and leaf by herself. They would not serve her and turned her away at the door. I couldn't imagine one person eating all that food, but c'mon.. let a person give it a try!