Our exploration into Korean food began with Samgye-tang, or Ginseng Chicken Soup.  After our exhausted arrival following the very rocky jetfoil, we located a venue blurringly geared toward tourists, and this was at the top of the menu.  A whole chicken thigh came to be served in a little boiling pot with enoki mushrooms, short-grain white rice, a small amount of ramen noodles, and green onion. This was supplemented by a myriad of little plates holding side dishes like kimchi cabbage and daikon radish, a spicy soybean paste, plain daikon, and string vegetables.

First meal: Samgye-tang (Ginseng Chicken Soup)

One spoons the chicken, broth, and other ingredients into this dining bowl.

We just happened to stumble upon this rather traditional food the night we arrived, scouting around for a good place to eat around the fashion street of Gwangbok-ro. It played host to a few other foreigners, those around us most likely Japanese, as we weren’t the only ones with no clue at first about what to do with everything set in front of us.  The middle-aged server ladies came to help us out, and no, all those individual plates were for distinct sampling and not for putting in the soup.

As we left, a customer there on his own and Japanese by our guess was signalling frantically for water after he chomped on an entire spicy pepper.  They actually have spicy food in Korea!

One pre-dinner snack and another night’s dinner consisted of extremely cheap street food in the form of jiaozi, Korea’s version of gyoza, mochi and vegetables in a mildly spicy red sauce, and for dessert thick, fried pancakes stuffed with some powdery form of sugar and small nuts.  A particularly famous vendor of these hand-held pancakes constantly had a line of tourists throughout the day, and wasn’t even there through the night.

One of the street food vendors near Jalgachi Market.

Mochi and cabbage(?) in a mildly spicy red sauce.

Close-up of the jiaozi (gyoza) - Chinese dumplings.

A hedonic dessert of fried pancake with sugar.

Squid and more, from another street vendor.

Dried squid & compressed fish

Other street vendors had dried squid on display and flat, dried fish cakes the size of tortillas that you see above.

Another night we managed to find Korean yakiniku (grilled meat) at one of the places that our information booth guide circled for us, and the place wasn’t actually all that difficult to find – I’m just terrible with maps and needed to get used to the lay of the land first.  It’s on the alley across from the escalator up to the monument tourist trap park, which is set in the middle of the expensive shopping street.

Korean yakiniku (grilled meat) was quite different than Japanese yakiniku, and strikingly so in the fact that meat was less so the centre of the meal.  Again we had a large assortment of little plates with side dishes, some to be consumed in the same bite as the meat, which by itself lacked much flavour.

Duncan’s friend Cathy, a local teacher of English, met up with us and walked us through the dinner whilst the owner actually grilled the meat right in front of us.  The restaurant had floor seating on wood and tables with built-in grills, and we were seated between a group of Korean women and on the other side, two touristing Japanese women. When the time came, our personal cook proceeded to quite literally cut up the meat, with a new vocabulary term for me: meat scissors, which appear just the same as other kitchen scissors.

Korean yakiniku table grill

Side dishes and seasoning for the meat.

Pickled daikon radish and more side dishes.

Meat scissors, as the owner cooked for us!

Our modest amount of pork, plethora of side dishes and seasoning, and beer came to all of 30,000 KRW (US$25 or 2,282 yen) for the three of us.

One of the days we vowed to get lunch at the huge Jalgachi Fish Market, but it was to no avail.  We got lost in the midst of the tightly packed lanes of small fish vendors, selling schools upon schools of tasty looking swimmers, plus juicy octopi and other sea life.  Inside a warehouse building there were a bunch of tables and live fish to be cut up for sashimi or fried flavours, and this was to be our restaurant of choice, but it was incredibly overpriced.  For a fraction of the price just for sashimi and some side dishes, we could have gotten something probably more fresh on Tsushima – Who knows when the fish were actually brought there, even if they were still swimming around.

Octopus and fish at one of the many vendors at Jalgachi Fish Market

Schlepping the octopi.

A photo-oppy, friendly fish vendor.

So instead, we had a huge lunch of KFC — Korean Fried Chicken, that is — at a chain restaurant not far away from the market.  A huge dish of this chicken plus little mochi “dogs” sat between Duncan and I, and we weren’t even able to devour the whole thing between the two of us.  There were chopsticks and western utensils provided, but we were at odds to figure out what the etiquette was for consuming said dish, since most of it seemed to be wings. Attempts to use chopsticks failed, and I was the first to give in to chowing down ribs-style.

Hand-washing was certainly required afterward to remove all the stickiness, so we discovered the somewhat awkward washroom with no door or separation between the sink and urinal.  Luckily it wasn’t so busy.

For our breakfasts we stopped by the two cafés just outside our hotel: Holly’s and the one I can’t recall.  Holly’s had a very sterilised appearance that seemed out of place with the rest of the area, much like the frozen yogurt café in Ho Chi Minh City.  One of the days I still had leftover pastries from Tsushima so I subsided on those and a coffee, but the second day I had a lovely waffle with maple syrup that really hit the spot with an iced mocha.  Comparing the size and calories with the price, this was proportionally by far the most expensive meal at 7,000 KRW (US$8).

Breakfast waffle at Holly's.

Missing it on my island, I never give up a chance for Starbucks.

On the morning of our return, I was foolish enough to order an apple-cinnamon pretzel from the other café, thinking they’d have them for take-away. Instead, it took maybe over ten minutes to get the order, as it was freshly made, and it turned into a sticky and over-sugary mess as I walked with it to the subway station.  Avoid pretzel orders!

Another of my favourite Korean foods I didn’t try until after I returned.  For a souvenir my supervisor, who also visited Korea that weekend, got me a pack of dried seaweed — But no ordinary seaweed.  This stuff seems to have been fried, or is at least doused with oil, but more importantly seems to be lined with some form of spicy chili.  It’s actually one of the spiciest Southeast Asian foods I’ve had since for the most part the food I ate in Thailand, for one reason or another, wasn’t actually very hot.