Silent Food

So it's been at times challenging for me to order food in restaurants... since I'm asian, people here automatically assume I speak Korean. Usually a bit of pointing, miming, grunting and sometimes a little basic Korean are able to get me a meal. However, when I'm feeling lazy, Seoul seems to be filled with gimbap restaurants that are effectively the equivalents of diners (most are open 24 hours). The main advantage here is that there's a pad of paper at each table with the menu printed on there, and all you have to do is mark down what you want and hand over the sheet of paper. Hot food in minutes when you don't want to play the language game! Of course you still have to decipher what's on the menu, but I'm starting to get the hang of that (or sometimes just select something at random).



This particular item was dolsot bulgogi dapbap. Dolsot refers to the big hot stone pot. Bulgogi is marinated meat. Not sure what dap means, and bap is rice. Anyway, for four or five bucks, it was a fine meal.

Quebecois... almost

I didn't expect to see this in the Hyundai Department Store food court. For those of you who don't know, poutine is an odd dish that comes from the province of Quebec. It consists of french fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy. This Korean version almost gets it right, except that they use mozzarella cheese instead of cheese curds (it's gotta squeak!). I also recently discovered that our favorite belgian fries joint in NYC now serves poutine as well (and they import their gravy and cheese curds directly from Quebec). I wonder if anyone sells poutine in Atlanta...

NamDaeMun Market

One of the many streets within the market. It was very crowded.



Split and roasted pig heads anyone?



Kimchi galore.



Top half: two baskets of peeled garlic and a giant bowl of minced garlic.
Bottom half: similar, but with ginger instead.



Got spicy?



There was also lots of fish (and other creatures of the sea). Some things were frozen, some were live in tanks/buckets.



Various mollusks (clams, oysters, baby octopus, ...)



Braided fish? I guess maybe for air drying?



There were a few stores that just specialized in ginsengs of all sorts.

Korean BBQ

Paul (the TA for Venkat's class) and I wandered around last night looking for a restaurant. While standing outside one, the waiter opened the door and invited us in so in we went. We ordered four different kinds of meat at random (turned out to be beef and pork). It was very tasty. One of the pork items was *very* spicy, but good. We'll have to visit this place again.

Food and Drinks

The second TA (Paul) showed up this week. The night after he got in, we went out to dinner with Younggyun and his parents.



Here we have the bulgogi (marinated beef) and various banchan. Quite tasty (mmm, raw garlic). Younggyun's dad wouldn't let me pay for dinner (Asian customs and whatnot), so I took Younggyun and Paul out for some drinks afterwards.



In Korea, you never just sit around and drink... you always eat something while you drink. That actually makes a lot of sense and is probably a lot safer (and tastier!). This was some sort of pork dish, kind of cartilage-y (but that's fine with me, I grew up eating pig ears so it was no big deal).

Younggyun introduced us quite a variety of Korean drinks. I don't have pictures of all of them, but they were:

• Baek-sae-ju (literal translation in hundred year wine - I think that's what's in the picture above)
  
• Dae-po
• Dong-dong-ju (milky in appearance, weak similarity to peruvian chicha, served in a tea pot - see below)
  
• Dae-tong-ju (not sure what it is, but it was served in a piece of bamboo - see below)
  
• Heuk-ju (literally black wine, but it really wasn't that dark in color)
  
• San-sa-choon (made from fermented berries, very sweet)
  

It sounds like we drank a lot, but you drink from these tiny sub-shot-glass sized cups most of the time so it's really not too bad.



Dong-dong-ju. I think this was the only case where we didn't drink from small glasses, but from metal bowls instead! Luckily, this stuff wasn't very strong so a bowlful isn't all that much.



Dae-tong-ju

Korean Products

This was pretty interesting... green tea breakfast cereal! The flakes are actually green. It smells like green tea ice cream, but when you eat it, the tea flavor is not particularly strong. It's pretty similar to Special K or similar flakey cereals.



I'm sure Alex would love this. Spaghetti ramen! I haven't tried it yet, but I have the feeling it will taste more like Ramen than Spaghetti. In the bottom left corner, the package says "Italian Type Spaghetti."

East Meets West

First sighting of Krispy Kreme doughnuts in Korea! I looked online and there's actually a pretty large number of Krispy Kreme stores in Seoul.




Not surprising at all is that there are Starbucks in Seoul. What was surprising to me was the sticker shock. If you click on the picture above, you can see the full version and read the prices. An example is a tall Americano costs 2,800W (approx. $2.98USD, and it only costs $1.90USD at the Starbucks in Tech Square in Atlanta). The worst one is the Grande Java Chip Frappuccino which weighs in at 6,400W or $6.82USD). I don't think I'll be visiting Starbucks anytime soon.