On our third night in Korea we went to a fish restaurant. At least it was called a fish restaurant by our Korean coworkers. The meal was traditional Korean style with many different small bowls each containing something different. The bowls contain different vegetables from sea weed, to the green part of a garlic plant, to kimchi. All of these small bowls were already set out the table when we arrived at the restaurant. We sat down and started eating. One of the small dishes new to me was a deep fried green chili. It was not greasy and was basically a husk and was not spicy but had a mild flavor of chili.
During the meal there were different main dishes brought out and placed on the table at intervals. These included some new dishes that I have not had previously. One was described to us as snails and the internet translation was “whelk”. I have never heard of whelk but as it turns out it is a common name for some sea snails. The snail was pretty good. It had a consistency of octopus, slightly chewy but it was good.
Another main dish that came out had a crab cake and two different types of rice cakes. I’m not sure about the accuracy of the translation of rice cake. They were chewy, more solid than flan, type cakes. The crab cake and the rice cakes were very good in spite of the rice cakes having a gooey texture.
The dish that is the most memorable is a sandwich or grouping of three things. There are three items on the plate in sections. The first morsel is a small piece of roast pork. The second thing is a Korean standard, kimchi with red pepper paste (this is present at every meal in Korea). The third dish was fish, skate to be exact. I have never had skate before and I certainly have not had this particular method of preparing it. The skate is not cooked but it is marinated. I did not receive a good translation of the marinade, but what I could gather is: the digestive juices of some animal. So this fish is marinated in stomach acid from an animal, could be a cow or a pig but my guess is it was the stomach acid of a dead feces eating chicken. The skate had the aroma of ammonia. Also there were some rougher textured pieces of the fish that made me think of gristle. Maybe it was slightly digested bone fragments. Now, kimchi is pretty strong but it is nowhere near strong enough to cover up the ammonia taste of the fish. It took 2 glasses of beer and about 15 minutes before the smell left my sinuses.
Here is a list of popular Korean foods. You will notice this dish is nowhere on this list. I did not take a picture of it but I found one on flickr here. Searching on the internet tells me it is fermented skate. The kimchi and pork portions are not bad, but I would pass on the fish.
My colleague having never traveled to Korea before ate another dish for the first time. I ate this particular dish on another occasion and decided to pass this time. It looks very appetizing. It is crab legs. The difference between this dish and American crab legs is simple. American crab legs are cooked. My colleague grabbed one and asked how to eat it since it would be very difficult to crack open crab legs with chop sticks. He used his hands and a fork to break open the legs and ate a small piece of the slimy meat. He said later it was not good.
When my colleague was trying the fish from the stomach of a dead feces eating chicken, he decided mid chew that he did not want to keep the gristle piece in his mouth, let alone swallow it. So he reached into his mouth and took it out and placed it in an empty bowl.
When we were walking to our respective rooms he said to me, “I have to go wash the fish smell off my hands. I guess I should not tell my girlfriend that…”
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