It Cannot Be Said

It cannot be said that I don't try new things. And because of that I bring you a list of unforgettable things I've 'tried' here in Korea:

선지해장국 – seonji haejangguk – Clotted blood of cattle soup usually to chase a hangover. Of course I didn't know I was eating cattle blood until after I got home and looked it up on the Internet. Meanwhile, I chomped away thinking ... hum, this looks like liver, has the consistency of tofu, but tastes like ... well, nothing ... I wonder what it could be? I guessed some sort of pureed/pressed bean. Anyway, I won't get it again. It wasn't sickening but it wasn't fantastic either.


순대국 – sundaeguk – Soup with pork slices. Each pork slice is a cross section displaying 4 layers of pig: layer of pork (yummy!), layer of fat (tasty but too fatty), layer of skin (getting a little turned off), and layer of hair protruding straight out of the skin layer (hurling now). The skin and hair are about the most disgusting thing you could see coming out of a bowl of soup. I swear it looks like a man's upper lip has fallen into the soup and been cooked into a whitish color of death but the short stubby hairs are black as night. GROSS! I've confirmed with a native Korean, this is gross and you don't have to eat it. Why the cooks don't do a spot check and cut off the hairy bits, I don't know because, again according my native Korean inside source, it shouldn't be in there. Anyway, having no Korean at my disposal at the time of consumption, I ate a 4-layered pig piece (when in Rome ...); after all, if I were blind and hungry I'd have no problem digging right in. But I am sighted and I felt like a contestant on Fear Factor. I don't know how I got it to go down. I was sure that the stubby hairs would do everything in their mighty power to tickle my throat and esophagus on their way down, which would surely send me into an explosion of vomit, but I guess I managed to block it out because I felt nothing ... and really didn't taste anything other than the pig fat. This I will never eat again; not because of the taste but on the horrid, wretched sight of it alone! (NOTE: We ordered this on two different occasions because we forgot to memorize and avoid the sound "sundaeguk"; both times we encountered hairy chunks; we know better now.)


곱창구이– kopchang kuwi – Grilled small intestines of cattle. When marinated and grilled and eaten with raw garlic and hot red pepper paste with rice and lettuce, pretty much anything will taste good, including cattle intestine which was long and tubular in shape (before being cut into bit-sized pieces) with a pasty, liver-tasting matter inside the intestine. Not bad but not on my re-order list.


냉면 – naeng myeon – Cold (iced) noodles. This is one of those dishes that you either love or hate, no in between. I hate this dish. Imagine eating thousands of cold, skinny, slimy (and sticky!), wormy, thin, never-ending noodles that don't crush or break with normal chewing action. What you have is a nice gagging kit, with no taste. Never again.


Anyway, my next posting on food will be a list of all the dishes that I LOVE ... starting with 삼계탕 – samgyetang – Ginseng chicken soup. I love this dish so much that I consider it-the actual dish in and of itself-my home away from home; i.e. when I eat it I'm automagically teleported to a space and time that feels like home. You can be sure I know how to order this in Korean!