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Exotic Korean

November 29, 2015

After discovering a story from the Korean Herald concerning the 7 gross foods of Korea ( as chosen by their foreign staff) I read the article (which can be found here) and was surprised to find that I’ve tasted 5 of the 7 chosen dishes. After feeling a nice sense of accomplishment and reminiscence of the actual experiences of eating these foods I decided to document the story’s behind the dishes themselves; from my point of view.

Once again many thanks to the Korean Herald and their foreign staff for inspiring me to write/re-write this interesting take on the foods of Korea.

1st Silkworm larva (번데기)

This was one of the worst foods I’ve ever had. It’s a big hit with the older crowd, and sold on the streets in many places in Seoul. My school obviously convinced me to try it. I think they had good intentions because they seem to love that stuff, but I almost threw up.

2nd Chicken feet (닭발)

Rachel (my GLS friend from Cyprus & best 친구 here in Korea) and I accidentally had this one night in Seoul. Back before my Korean reading ability was good, I convinced her to randomly point to something on the menu and have sort of a “Korean roulette dinner”. What we pointed to unknowingly, was this…. Now, to be honest It wasn’t bad, but that’s because we thought it was fried squid/octopus tentacles, after about 5 minutes of us chomping on the unfamiliar texture, I realized that what I was chewing was cartilage and what we had ordered was chicken feet. After figuring this out I couldn’t eat anymore. Looking back I can’t believe it took us this long to figure it out. I mean after all they are covered in an orange sauce and once you really pick one up, it look exactly like a chicken’s foot.

#3 Live octopus (산낙지)

I thought about writing this yesterday because I just had this dish again last night. The staff at my school had a huge celebration last night, and for dinner one of the main courses was live octopus. (the other main dish was live shrimp). I’ve only had this 3 other times in Korea and each time its been with a large group of people. It’s a fairly expensive dish, and one that many people in Korea believe is a delicacy. True story: last night I almost died from eating this. You see, the hardest part about eating this is that fact that they are always moving and wiggling around. Whether its crawling off the plate, or inside your mouth. Last night I ate a pretty big piece and tried to wash it down with some beer; However it suctioned part of itself to the roof of my mouth. This made for a very strange scene. I had half of it down my throat but the rest was stuck to the top of my mouth, add to the fact that my mouth was full of beer and I couldn’t open it or beer would come spewing out. After panicking and gagging but not trying to draw to much attention to myself, I spit the beer into my cup, and had to quickly reach into my mouth and pull the thing off, then drag it out from down in my throat.( think of how a clown or magician pulls out some string or cloth) Pretty gross right? Well,that’s the story of how I almost died yesterday from eating a live octopus.

Here is a video of us eating live octopus from last thanksgiving

(thanks to Mark & Andie for providing the video)

# 4 Sundae (순대)

I was presented with this dish during the “ceremony” where I decided to re-sign my contract for a 2nd year. This dish is also another big favorite with the older crowd. A co- worker told me that it was big honor to be presented with this from my principal. We had some drinks and ate this as a way of my school saying thank you for staying in Korea again. This wasn’t too bad, but If they are going to try to get me to stay a third year, they are going to need to chose something else besides pig intestines.

# 5 Bosintang (보신탕)

Last but not least, Bosintang. (aka dog soup). Now in all honestly I was curious about trying it. There was something about being in a 1st world country like Korea and eating something that is usually (these days) only found in 3rd world places that fascinated me. One of my drinking buddy’s at my school is an older Korean man. He was a big fan of this stuff. One night over many drinks he promised to take me out to a place nearby that has this dish let me experience it. Well weeks went by and I forgot about his promise, until a random weekday when he came into my classroom and reminded me. Contrary to my assumption,the restaurant was not a sketchy hole in a wall. In fact it was a very famous and nice looking place that I always pass by on the way to work. My friend told me how this place was one of the few places our area that had bosintang. The weird part is that it’s not advertised on the menu, and there was a bit of hesitation from the waitress when me friend asked for it. (mostly because he was with a “waygook“ aka foreigner aka me) After some more dialogue between the two, the lady put us in a separate room, away from the public eating space, and served it up to us. I was sketched out of my mind about the whole process, and couldn’t help think of my own dog Max. It was really sad, and strange. I’ve never been that emotionally involved about a meal in my entire life. On the bright side this dish cost around 50 US dollars (for 2 people). I was happy about that because I feel like the high price may deter many of the other people away from this dish. Also I felt more comfortable eating it for such a high price.. as opposed to 3 dollar dog night in the back of some Korean alley.