It started out as any other normal night, 2 friends of mine (and Englishman and a South African) and I decided to grab dinner and drinks. Somehow or another one of the two gentlemen brilliantly (this is complete sarcasm) suggests that we "try something new." We headed in a direction that we have not ventured before to discover a new restaurant and came upon 2 neighboring places. One was a typical Galbi place that only had one table seated and the other was another meat (unknown to us at the time what kind of meat) restaurant that was quite busy. My English friend made the ultimate decision that it was in our best interest to eat at the more popular place, his first bad decision of the night and my South African friend and I willingly agreed, our first bad decision of the night.
Walking through the restaurant all of the tables are eating and enjoying the same unidentified dish. None of us have any idea what it is that they are eating but this doesn't stop us from allowing ourselves to be seated. The EM (Englishman) and myself were left to decide what to order, the SA (South African) left briefly and before he left he said (this is not a direct quote) "Go ahead and order, just no seafood" his second bad decision.
I read Hangeul (Korean) at about the same rate a Kindergartner does, as I am attempting to read the menu on the wall a lady comes over to take our order. She starts speaking in Korean, I assume giving us dinner choices. I was in over my head, I did not catch a single word she was saying so I let the EM deal with it, my second bad decision. The entire time she was speaking when she would pause the EM was reply with "ye" (means yes in Korean) so I assumed he knew what the heck was going on. Finally our order was complete and she left.
Me: "Did you understand all of that?"
EM: "Nope"
Me: "Do you know what you just ordered?"
EM: "Nope, but I am positive it wasn't seafood."
The SA returned and our adventure began.
First came the Soju and beer which were the only two things that would be served to us that we were familiar with. Two completely fine and consumable things.
Then, came the side dishes, our first clue that we had made a terrible dinner choice. The normal side of lettuce, dipping sauces and kimchi were served but then there was this plate of ....stuff. On the plate two different things were served. The first was what looked like snake skin. It was silvery/grey scaly strips of something. Next to it is what I would guess as some type of raw organ, maybe a heart or a chopped up liver. We all looked at each other asking one another if we knew what either of them were, none of us did, but we decided to give it a go anyways. When in Korea, why not does as the Koreans do right? I myself could only work up the guts to try the snake skin look alike, it was chewy and tasted what I imagine earth tastes like. The SA tasted the raw organ and I would bet quite a lot of money that he won't be eating it again.(Later he decided that it tasted better than our main course)
Our main dish came out and was set upon the grill in the center of the table. On it was onions, sweet potato slices and this unidentified meat. We all sat there trying to figure out what exactly it was as it cooked between us. The lady working would come by and flip our meat since none of us made the attempt to even touch it. Finally she gave us the go to eat it. All of us gathered the courage to try it.
Imagine eating the chewiest bubble gum, stuffed with chunky mashed potatoes. That was its consistency.
The flavor... I can't describe. It was, strange for a lack of a better word. For me, at first it was tasteless but as I continued to chew this thick, bland, moldy flavor coated my taste buds.. No matter the size of the gulp of soju/beer I couldn't get it out of my mouth.
We all were pretty horrified. We were fine with eating the onions and the sweet potatoes but after eating one piece of the meat like concoction each and realizing that it was disgusting we still had an ENTIRE grill filled with it.
The SA gf happens to be Korean and she informed us that it tasted good when crispy. This gave us some hope. We all used our chopsticks to hold down pieces of this meat to get them as crispy as possible with out burning them and then gave it another go...
Still disgusting.
We all picked at the vegetables a bit longer before deciding that we needed to finish our drinks and find real food. We left our table, grill still hardly touched and went to cash out. Food in Korea is very inexpensive, well most food. For our dinner if I had to guess the price BEFORE we paid, I would have guessed around 32,000 KRW, boy was i wrong. I handed over my debit card to pay (dinner wasn't on me they paid me their parts) and went to sign... 49,000 KRW. 49,000 KRW for some unidentifiable meat that we didn't even eat. We basically just paid to eat onions.. the most expensive damn onions I have ever eaten.
We eventually figured out that we had dined at an entrails restaurant. I told my COTeachers and other Co Workers about my experience and they all laughed hysterically at our surprise and reaction. I suppose this is something us westerners just do not understand.
#CHEERS2TRYINGEVERYTHINGONCE
Photos of the Meal:
 |
| Main Course |
 |
| Side Dishes |
I don't ever use people's names.. that is why I distinguished my two friends by their countries of origin.
No comments:
Post a Comment