Hit or Miss

By Karl


So in my previous post I indicated the adventurousness of eating in Korea. Up to that point, my lunches had been great. Until Monday.

I would never have thought that I would describe any Korean food as bland. Disgusting looking, maybe. But certainly not bland or tasteless. Monday's lunch was all of those things. Never have I been served anything that looked or tasted so unappetizing as I was served on Monday. I will do my best here to describe to you the slop I was forced to endure.

First of all, the rice was plain. No biggy. Rice generally is plain and it's only a pleasant surprise when it isn't. The rest of the meal goes downhill from there. The soup was some kind of shrimpy broth....I think. Shrimp was the closest thing to a flavor I could detect. The rest of the soup was kombu (that seaweed stuff) and a few small bits of potato. That's it. And there was way too much kombu. And it was over cooked. And not tastey. Moving on.

The side dishes were...actually I'm not sure I remember what the side dishes were. The whole damn meal was really so forgettable that I'm not sure what one of the sides was.

.....

Oh yes I do. It was that grey slop! Oh god what were they thinking!? OK, so here is this grey sludge (no kidding, think of the consistency of sludge and that's what this was) with pieces of rice cake in it. It's like Japanese mochi but firmer. I think it's called Tokbogi or something like that. Usually it's made spicy and delicious but instead, there it was in the sludge and the ONLY thing you could taste was ground black pepper! I like black pepper but if that's the only thing I want to taste I'll just pour it in my mouth. Why disguise it as something that should taste good but instead is suspended in grey goo?

I think the other side dish was just normal kimchi but it was very sour. I don't like it sour.

There was something else but I truly can't remember what it was. The main dish, though, is something that will haunt me for a while.

The color was the color of....of...well it was the color of Swamp Thing. In fact, now that I think about it, if Swamp Thing were hunted down, killed, and chopped up and made into a stew, I think that would be a close approximation of what the main dish was like. Swamp Thing might have more flavor, though. This stuff was just a pile of over cooked greens that were then stewed and finally simmered down to it's final state. As added insult they threw in little tiny shrimp which went through the same overcooking process. So instead of being crispy and pink and yummy, they were soft and pale and, frankly, quite disgusting. Their disgusting-ness was the strongest flavor in the whole dish and you could barely even taste that. I tried eating it with rice but it just ruined the rice.

I don't think I ate even half my lunch. I just couldn't do it. What's more, I noticed most of the adults did not finish their lunch or eat much of the Swamp Thing entrée. If the Koreans won't eat it,  you know it's just plain wrong.

Yesterday's lunch was pretty good but it was today's lunch that really got me excited. They served chicken curry! Oh it was wonderful. The soup was a clear broth soup of inoki mushrooms with white and green onions and egg. Yummy! And there was this wonderful side dish of flat rice noodles with shredded carrots, cucumbers, and sesame leaves. It was served cold and tossed in a delicious vinegary, slightly spicy, red sauce. I didn't eat the radish (daikon) kimchi but I certainly devoured the watermelon! The whole lunch was great. In fact, it was also so filling that I couldn't make it through all the curry. I tried my best but I just couldn't bring myself to over do it. Today's lunch certainly more than made up for Monday.

I'm learning that lunch here is hit or miss. Kind of like classes, but more on that later.