Korean food (and drink)

A (hopefully) quick post about some of the food I've had since I got here. I've already mentioned the barbeque meat (samgyeopsal and galmaegi) in other posts... so I'll skip those.

I guess I should start out by saying that restaurants here are a little different than at home. I haven't seen many with drink options other than water (or alcohol), and every restaurant has its own self-serve water purifier where you can get yourself either cold or hot water, or they put a big container of refrigerated water down.


This is the water purifier in my building, but you get the idea.

You also either place your order to someone waiting as you walk in, sit down first and yell it out really loudly, or press a buzzer on the table and wait til someone comes to your table... it depends on how nice and how busy the place is. You also almost always get your check as your food comes, or if it's a smaller shop, you just walk up to the register (or cash bowl, in some cases) and the person knows what you ordered. Tax is already included in the price (making almost everything a nice, even number) and there's also no tipping at all in Korea. :)

Another unique feature of a Korean meal is side dishes (ban-chan)! Every meal so far has had at least one, some have had over half a dozen. What you get kind of depends on what you ordered. Generally, it seems like they try to balance the meal -- if you ordered something spicy, you'll get a bland soup. If you ordered something mild, you'll get something spicy. Kimchi (fermented vegetables, usually cabbage) is served at almost every meal. My favorite kimchi is made from string-cut radishes. Sadly, I haven't had that yet in Korea.

The first week I had a lot of ramyeon. There's a shop about a block away that serves huge bowls of it (with other ingredients besides noodles -- like seafood, rice cakes, kimchi) for ~$2. Alternatively, there are aisles of cup-o-noodles in the convenience stores for about 75 cents each.


Beef-filled dumpling soup. You can see the spicy kimchi and metal water cup.

There's a Paris Baguette right down the road as well. They have tons of different kinds of breads and cakes. I wish I had an occasion to buy a delicious-looking cake, but I did buy some of their Banana Caramel Twists:



One night, Izza and I went to the nearby Mr. Pizza. They had all sorts of crazy pizzas that were really expensive, but we managed to find a "normal" pizza called New York Special that was only ~$12. The pepperoni was really orange, though. At first I thought they were tomatoes...


Far to the left, you can see the bonus cup of pickles that came with the meal..

Right below the Mr. Pizza is a Lotteria -- a burger place similar to McDonalds (which they also have around). Single-patty burgers are about ~$3, but I got a "set" -- burger, fries, drink -- for $5. It's interesting that they only offer one size "set," which to me, seemed like a small. You also are rationed only one ketchup packet.. and though while its size is bigger than one from McD's, it only contains about half as much ketchup. :(


This particular burger had bulgogi sauce -- a Korean marinade, making it a little different than other burgers.
Also, it had tons of mayo. After scooping most of it off, I definitely had more mayo than ketchup on my tray.

A classmate and I decided to try to find some Korean food near her place by the subway station. As I wasn't familiar with the area, we ended up in a basement bar ordering anju (basically, bar food).


The pictures are kind of dark due to the bar atmosphere, but... Left: Risse's tofu kimchi.
Right: My kimchi jjigae (stew) -- it was actually pretty tasty, though a huge portion we could've easily split.
Between the two pictures you can also see the side dishes -- radish cube kimchi, what looked like fish
patty kimchi (think sausage slices, only with fish), and some coleslaw-type thing that we couldn't figure out.

Tonight for dinner I had $4 dolsot bibimbap (literally "stone-bowl mixed-rice"). Look at all the side dishes!


Left: Before mixing. There's a sunny-side up egg in under the lettuce and laver. Right: After mixing.
From what I could tell, the side dishes clockwise from bottom left: Pickled squid, pickled something fishy,
ham slices with egg, anchovies, black beans, cabbage kimchi, bean sprout kimchi, broth with scallions.
I had trouble eating from the anchovies leftward, though I did try...

One final thing -- drinking is big in Korea. They have all kinds of liquor at the store. Soju (20-26% ABV) is probably the most popular... you can get it in Virginia for $5 for a 750ml bottle. Here, it's ~$1. It tastes similar to vodka... and it's made with rice, potatoes, or sweet potatoes. There's also maekju (beer, 3-5% ABV), but the few brands I've tasted have been awful (mostly because they're made from rice and barley malt). There's also makgeolli (takju), or Korean rice wine (6-8% ABV). I bought some "saeng" (fresh) makgeolli the other day (see previous blog post). It was carbonated and slightly sour. Last night, I found a bottle of black raspberry non-carbonated makgeolli.


Much better. :) Though in my Hello Kitty bowl, it looks a little like blood.

There are also tons and tons of bottled drinks at the convenience store. I think I could buy one every day and not repeat one for several months. So far, I found a carbonated plum drink (I thought it was a lime...), banana milk (delicious!!), corn tea (that I had last year... it tastes like you're drinking corn flakes), vitamin water... I have another couple in my fridge that I haven't tried yet. I probably won't buy the plum drink again, but the banana milk was so tasty. They have a strawberry variety I'll also have to try.

Guess that's it for now. A new classmate, Hera, arrives tomorrow night, so hopefully we'll do something worth blogging about.