Sunday, March 28, 2010

Things I learned this weekend:

Octopus tastes relatively like chicken.

Galbi soup is delicious, even for breakfast...and there's a great restaurant not too far away from my apartment that is famous for it.

If you go to the temple by the sea and bathe the Buddha statue you get one wish, and there is also 'magic' water that can cure skin conditions if you drink it (which is made easy for you because they provide the customary germ infested community plastic drinking ladle). 

The temple was built by the sea because it honors the Korean Buddhist 'Goddess of Mercy'/water goddess who was said to ride a dragon around out over the ocean.

Butterfly pupae is not completely disgusting to eat like I thought it would be (but still kind of weird), and neither is sucking the little critters out of tiny cooked seashells (although it does taste a little sandy).

Riding in cars for a long time still gives me a bad tension headache.

I will always spend too much at Costco for rare items like Dr. Pepper and NutriGrain bars.

I may never kick this Scrubs addiction.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Oysters on the Half Shell

Last night we went out to dinner with our coworkers Kadie, Ryan aka "Rowdy", and Ryan, along with our Korean friends Eva and Roy.  Eva and Roy took us to their favorite restaurant for eating mussels, clams, and oysters cooked in butter.  Apparently the restaurant is very popular and well-known in Korea.

We took the subway to Jung-dong station (exit 7), which is the stop on the green line right after Haeundae.  Then we took a taxi to Chungsapo (정사보) beach, where there are several raw fish and buttered shellfish restaurants.  The restaurant that we went to was named Soo Min Ee Neh (수민이네) which is a Korean woman's name.  Eva thought that perhaps it was the name of the wife or daughter of the man who owns the restaurant.  I was expecting a building, but what we found was an open air concrete pavilion, surrounded with individual tents with tables in them.  The ambiance was a bit lacking by Western standards, but the freshness of the food keeps the crowds coming.  After a short wait, we were shown to a tent on the second floor.  The tables were the typical cheap metal barbecue type, with the hole in the middle for hot coals.

We were then left to ponder the menu, which Eva told us consisted of buttered shellfish of your choosing, eel, fish, live octopus, live sea squirt, and other such interesting fare.  Us foreigners decided to play it safe and stay away from live cuisine for the evening; we chose a sampler of shellfish and some eel, along with some soju and rice to round out the table.  Soon after ordering, out came two large platters of shellfish on the half shell, raw, seasoned, and waiting to be cooked.  Roy and Eva took over in this department, since us foreigners were pretty much clueless as to how to proceed.  The shells went directly on the grill, while in the meantime they were cut free from the shell itself and added to a tin filled with cooking onions in the middle of the grill.  The process was very labor intensive, but thanks to the expert cooks the tins were soon filled with juicy buttered shellfish and onion.  In the meantime, Erik (the only non-shellfish-eater of the bunch) munched on rice, tasty seaweed soup, and fermented bean paste soup that came with the meal.

When we finally worked our way through the shellfish, Roy and Eva started cooking the eel.  The edge or fin of the eel is considered very special in Korea.  It supposedly gives men 'stamina', so us ladies kindly reserved that part of the eel for the gentlemen present.  The eel is cooked directly on the grill after being dipped in spicy red pepper paste.  This was my first time trying eel, and I was surprised at how tender it was.  I did run into a few bones, but they were easily discarded.  It pretty much tasted like any other fish.  Now I can check that off of my list of exotic foods to try while I'm here.  We finished up the meal with a course of in-house specialty ramyan noodles that were perfectly spiced and tasty.

All in all, it was a fun night.  The soju flowed, and the good food kept coming.  Maybe next time I can be persuaded to try some of the live food....provided it's put out of it's misery before I actually eat it.  I've heard some places actually chop off the legs of the octopus one by one as you eat them.  Talk about cruel.  Why not kill it just before it gets to the table, so that it's not in agony while it watches you eat it's limbs.  I know Korean's are all about super fresh food, but that's too creepy for me to enjoy or watch.  I'll have to check into it more before I try it.  But who knows, maybe in time if the place and method are right...