Eating Out: Round 3

Alright, I know I already have two dining-related adventures up, but this one is a doozy. Let me set the scene for you: We had just left Taehwa River Park after an event called Sports Day. It was a fundraiser for a family that recently suffered a tragic loss.

My fine company included Monique, Kat, and Kat. (We will distinguish between Kats by referring to one of them as vegetarian Kat for the sake of clarity, and because it pertains to the story.) We were all rather hungry and in desperate search to feed the monsters that cried out from within our bellies. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody in the group was at all familiar with this part of the city, so we were sort of just wandering around, looking for a place to eat. For some reason, this task proved to be rather difficult on this particular night—which is weird, because typically, if you do a full 360 spin pretty much anywhere in the city, you will easily spot at least half a dozen restaurants in your immediate vicinity. We had not experienced this problem before, so being silly foreigners, we settled on the first place we finally found.

Oh, if only I could go back in time; if only I had a Delorian. Then I could drive by our group at extreme speeds at just the right moment so that we would turn our heads in the direction of the car as it passed by, and we would gaze down that brightly-lit road off to our left, the one filled with beautiful neon signs flashing the names of dozens of restaurants, which we somehow managed to miss entirely in our desperate search for food. We were blinded by hunger.

Alas, we sealed our fate and agreed to venture in. Our first sign should have been the fact that the place was almost empty, but once again, our hunger blinded us.

On the upside, this was a Korean restaurant with chairs and regular tables for sitting; I’m not crazy about sitting cross legged on the floor for an hour every time I want to eat out. I was born without nature's cushions, (read: an ass) so I have nothing to support me during such outings.

On the downside, the menu had no pictures. Warning sign #2.

When the time came to order, we were at a loss; we didn’t speak a lick of Korean, and the waitress didn’t speak a lick of English. These types of conversations can often be very frustrating. It also quickly became a small spectacle, as the 10 or so patrons in the restaurant all turned to look on in amusement at this exercise in futility.

Thankfully, a gentleman sitting in the back of the restaurant with his wife spoke a bit of English, and offered to come over and help. This was very important to us, as we needed to let the waitress know that Kat was a vegetarian.

As our luck would have it, this restaurant served nothing but pork. Had we listened to Monique when she apparently pointed out the large pig cartoon character by the entrance on our way into the restaurant, we could've averted this entire ordeal. Somehow, though, not only did we not hear her comment at the time, but three out of the four of us somehow managed to miss this giant Porky Pig lookalike because we were so insanely hungry!

(I would find out later that we had stumbled into a restaurant that specialized in what is called samgyeopsal. Look it up if you'd like, but it's essentially pork wrapped in lettuce.)

So in the end, we (tried) to order one soup, from which Kat would likely have to fish out the pork, and three orders of pork. What we got however, was four soups that we all agreed tasted like broth, a bunch of little sides, which I can't even remember anymore, because I was so utterly unimpressed with the entire meal, large pieces of lettuce, and a burner covered in what looked to us like poorly cooked pork with way too much fat for our liking.

Now look, I’m not one to harp on how exotic food looks--mainly because I never tried a nacatamal, my favourite Nicaraguan dish, until I was probably 20 or so, because I thought it looked gross. I’ve learned not to judge a food by its appearance. And like I said last week, I had squid for the first time, and it turned out to be 5 different flavours of awesome!

Having said that, something about the colour of the pork really made me uneasy. Cooked pork shouldn’t be that colour! So we turned the burner back on after the waitress turned it off, and that led to an annoying little back and forth game between us and the waitress that required us to act like stealthy ninjas. She would come around and turn the burner off, and when she wasn't looking, we would turn it back on and pretend like nothing happened. 

Now as I said, the meal in front of us consisted of a bowl of broth-ish soup, rice, loads of lettuce, a boatload of pork, and an assortment of small little accompaniments for the pork. Not sure how these pieces went together exactly, I dug into my soup and my rice. I could handle rice.

Kat, being the brave soul that she is, was the first to dig into the pork.

And that’s when shit got real, son. (Let me preface this, by the way, by saying that the events that are to follow, and our reaction to them, are not an example of a group of narrow-minded foreigners experiencing some sort of culture shock, but is in fact a case of a woman with no concept of personal space. I clarified this with my co-workers and my friend, Jay, afterwards.)

The man who had helped us out earlier was now leaving with his wife. Or so we thought. You see, the wife decided to be a Good Samaritan of sorts, and help us out with our meal. She wanted to show us how to properly enjoy this traditional Korean meal, which was very generous of her. Unfortunately, she went well beyond the call of duty. So far beyond the call of duty that 75% of those present at the table would leave the restaurant that night feeling violated.

First, she took a piece of lettuce and put a piece of pork in it, along with an assortment of other things, wrapped it all up, and handed it over to Kat. I expected her to smile, gaze at us until we returned a smile of understanding and appreciation for the help, and then head out on her merry way. But no, she really wanted to help out this lot of foreigners. Kat downed the little wrap, despite the fact that the pork contained an uncomfortable amount of fat.

Next, she made another little pork wrap concoction and (here’s where logic just peaced out the kitchen window) fed it to Monique. She wasn’t content with placing it in Monique’s hand, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Monique went to grab for it—oh no, she went as far as to yell “Aaaah!” to motion Monique to open wide. The look of surprise, confusion, and utter bewilderment on Monique’s face as this woman’s hand descended into her mouth is one that will stay with me forever. We were all dying of laughter, while poor Monique had tears streaming down her face as this woman wrestled to feed her the food.

Maybe we were just being close-minded foreigners, unable to appreciate the affection and generousity this woman was trying to show us, but I just don’t buy it. Like I said, other Koreans who I’ve told this story, all reacted with bulged eyes at that point in the story.

And then the woman capped off her performance with one hell of a grand finale of a gesture: She very casually scooped out a little bit of vegetarian Kat's soup, with Kat’s spoon, mind you, and proceeded to sample it for herself, put the spoon back in the bowl, presumably satisfied with the taste, and walked out the door.

Needless to say, she was the focal point of our conversation for the remainder of our overwhelmingly unsatisfactory dinner. We left, still unable to process what had just transpired, and headed for vegetarian Kat's  apartment with soju in hand, and in desperate need of a drink after that meal. I had to buy a Snickers bar just to wash the taste of the food out of my mouth. (Though at least I didn't have to wash the taste of a stranger's hand out of my mouth.)

I would like to point out at this time that, just by chance, our school cafeteria served Samgyeopsal that following Monday, and it did not taste like the food we had that night. So the moral of the story is: If the restaurant you’re walking into is empty, there’s probably a reason for that.