Spotlight on Korean Food: Seafood
Written by Kyle on Saturday, June 06, 2009 in Korea, Republic of
Feelin' scared
Welcome to the first of hopefully many posts on Korean food! We've found that one of the joys of living in Korea has, surprisingly, been the awesome and usually cheap food. So, with that in mind, we are going to start with one that we don't normally eat that much: seafood.Feelin' scared
It is also no secret that Koreans and a lot of the peoples in Asia like to have their seafood fresh. I don't mean like, oh, it just came out of the freezer today. Fresh here means that it was swimming happily until 2 minutes after you ordered it. In other words, if it's on your plate, there's a good chance that it was killed minutes ago. I remember hearing that in Hong Kong there is actually a dish that you can order where it is cut in such a way so that you can still see the heart of the fish beating in front of you. I haven't heard of anything like that here, but if you walk down any street with seafood restaurants, your likely to see tanks of fish, squid, and octopus spilling out into the streets.
I'll have the..umm...spikey ball thingy.
I'll take the one that looks like a zebra, please.
We normally shy away from eating seafood because, truthfully, we're a little afraid of what we're going to get. When we traveled to Gangneung, though, there really is no other option for food. Either we were going to eat fish or we were going to starve. You know there is an abundance of sea food restaurants, when there's a whole "Sliced Raw Fish Town".
Yes, but does it have its own zip code?
So, we wandered in what looked like the busiest restaurant in town and gave it a shot. As it turns out, not only did we give it a shot, we accidentally ordered just about everything on the menu. To understand this, let me first explain that a lot of foreign speakers of English really have a hard time distinguishing between 16 and 60, 17 and 70, 18 and 10, etc. The restaurant was kind enough to have their "English speaking" employee help us out a bit with the ordering. Unfortunately, he really only knew the words "rock fish", "flat fish", and "beer", but, whatever...at least he could say some things in English. So, as we talk/mime our way through the menu, we point to what looks like a large sampler platter. We try to tell him that we are only 2 people, so we would only like enough food for 2 people. "Yes, ok. 17 thousand won." (around 15 dollars) he tells us. That sounded good, so we went with it.
Unfortunately, what he really meant was 70 dollars. In the end, we ended up getting about a table and a half's worth of food that ranged in everything from sushi to peanuts in honey to not-quite-dead octopus. Here's what it looked like before all of the food had arrived:
Comments on "Spotlight on Korean Food: Seafood"
I don't think our lens was wide enough to capture all of the food. That, and we were quite embarrassed when the food just wouldn't stop coming.
Kyle, you are one brave guy eating that octopus! Thanks for sharing the "meal for two" photo. I hope you both enjoyed it.
i love sushi... but that's a disgusting amount of food.
and you eating the octopus almost made me throw up a little in my mouth. it's one thing for it to be fresh... but still moving is a little too fresh for me.
You're such a wimp.
still moving is way to fresh for me. Other kyle, I was about to throw up on all the raw stuff just so we didn't have to eat it. ick.
Thanks for the view of Korean food! I'm a pastry chef and all that was pretty educational.
Hello out there in seafood land! What an amazing selection of foods. I can't believe you actually paid $70.00 + beer for the meal. Did you negotiate the price afterward due to the language problems? Why would they keep bringing way more food than two people can eat? Did they offer you a Hefty plastic doggie bag the size of your backpacks? You could probably eat the leftovers for a week. So are you totally sick of seafood now and longing for some Costa Rican bean and rice combos with meat in tomato sauce dishes?!!! I'll bet you needed to run a couple miles after eating all of that! Hope you got enough fiber in the miso soup and seaweed. Wow what an experience................
We basically ate fish until we couldn't take any more. It was absurd. There was actually a table of 3 people next to us that ordered about the same thing, and they managed to eat most of it. Made me feel even sicker really...
4 days later when we were editing the pictures it still made me feel sick just looking at them...
its okay to play with your food as long as its playing back......the octopus looked like it was having fun riding up and down on the spoon!
Ya, until I crushed him with my molars.
isn't it so creepy nasty!!
What you needed was a photo of the table AFTER you had finished to see what Korean delicacies still remained on the table. You certainly are brave souls. Being a picky fish eater, liking it COOKED, the only thing that looked consumable to me was the red leaf lettuce, the fried thingys, and what appeared to be vegetables...or at least they were orange or greenish. The grey gelatinous globs--good grief! "Doggie bags" did not appear to be a desired option.
Awesome!!
This is what your wedding food looked like, right :)
Wow, you should show a picture of what your table looked like after the food arrived! Me thinks you be getting very smart with all that lovely brain food. Looks wonderful. Smiles and Chuckles.
by Jane Slark-Perez at June 16, 2009 08:29 AM