Bad Indian Food > The Best Korean Food
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Haemul pajeon
There was a school wide dinner last night to celebrate all of the hard work that the teachers put into last Friday’s sports day and Saturday’s festival. Of course I had nothing to do with any of those preparations, but they are nice and invited me. There must have been thirty teachers at dinner. We went to a pajeon restaurant at a nearby university. It was in an area of town I’d never seen. I probably had at least ten helpful teachers and the principal inform me that pajeon is Korean pizza, though honestly it is more like a fried pancake. It’s also made with green onions and, much to my chagrin, sea creatures with tentacles. I’m quite familiar with the dish. Don’t they know I’ve lived here two years? It’s regularly served in the teacher’s cafeteria, where I eat. I had pajeon in my first two weeks here.
Pajeon is generally served with makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. It’s pretty tasty. Probably comparable to sake, but it’s served cool. It also goes down easy, though I only intended on drinking it when an older male teacher wanted to cheers. There were so many bottles of makgeolli on our table! I was seated across from some of my co-teachers, who are so wonderful in the classroom, but didn’t seem so wonderful as conversational partners right then. Every topic I broached just fell flat, from the mundane to the more interesting. The restaurant was decorated in a charmingly cheap style. Like a bar in some poor, tropical country. The walls were hung with reed mats, there were christmas lights strung up everywhere and an array of plastic flowers and foliage. I felt terribly sad. I miss my family, my friends from home, and I have recently understood that I may very well spend this Christmas by myself. I also think I’ve got a cavity in one of my molars. It’s somewhere on my lower jaw on the right side. I tried not to cry. I succeeded.
The waitresses were curt and fast. So much food. Like I said, I kind of turned my nose up to the pajeon because of the purple tentacled beasties, but they also served fried peppers stuffed with meat, which, when my co-teacher described it to me, I thought she said mint instead of meat. It was certainly a meat which I would never be able to place. Korea does love its mystery meat.
The Christmas lights looked pretty reflected in my milky liquor. That made me feel better. I also began to consume bowls of it (it’s served in little bowls) and that also made me feel better. Ah, a bracing drink. The principal sat at our table (there were four or five tables) and cheersed us and told stories that I didn’t understand, but which someone translated for me. A beggar woman came by selling gum and he bought all of it and gave it to us. He’s a nice man. The teachers are quite happy with him from what they tell me. I snuck out for some fresh air, as goes the dubious euphemism, and when I came back I had to change seats and I sat next to the principle. I was having a nice time. He knocked over his glass of makgoelli. It spilled into half eaten dishes and onto his seat and on the art teacher. He left, red faced, and joined another table. We cleaned it up.
After dinner I went with ten or so teachers for a coffee. Mrs. Kwan sat next to me and I was so happy that she was talking to me, initiating most of the topics. I felt like much less of an alien. She told me the tentative dates for the English winter camp, so I also have a good idea of when I’ll be free for winter vacation, which I intend to spend in Thailand with Maria, a dear friend from home, and that I’ll have even more time off than I thought.
They dropped me off in my neighborhood. The history teacher with the wig drove. I’m so used to riding in the car with taxi drivers that riding in the car with someone normal driving feels positively too cautious and slow. Though I hadn’t drank in an hour and certainly wasn’t drunk (not drunk drunk) I had a sour stomach. I read for two hours with a vague feeling of nausea, and no idea why I had it. At 10:45 pm some bastards came knocking on my door. How rude! I think it had something to do with finding out the number of people living in the apartment building. They had clipboards. I wasn’t prepared to answer the door, but I thought they deserved to be yelled at for disturbing people so late in the evening. I was sick, as I said, and feeling uncomfortable, so I opened the door with a comforter rapped around me and yelled at them in English. They didn’t seem as offended as I desired.
I finished my book (The Secret History, by Donna Tartt) I don’t know how many times I’ve read it now. I love that book. Well I finished it and fell asleep and nothing ever became of my nausea.
During my first two weeks in Seoul I predominantly ate cafeteria food. There were two tastes: kind of spicy and bean sprout. I was not impressed.
I’ve never been a slouch at eating foreign food in America. I loved everything. Indian, Thai, Cuban, Vietnamese. I’d try anything I could find in my little college town. On the less exotic side there was a fast food Chinese restaurant that I patronized a lot. I liked the fried dumplings. They weren’t special, I just really liked fast food Chinese fried dumplings. My friends repeatedly warned me against the dire consequences my digestive tract could face from that place. The only thing I tired of was Mexican food (how did we have so many Mexican restaurants in such a small town?), a cuisine which I can’t get enough of now.
Way back when, after my second day of teaching, I was very stressed out and wanted a drink. I met a girl, a friend of a friend, and we got inappropriately drunk for a Tuesday night. These two unmemorable Korean dudes tried to pick us up, an endeavor which ultimately brought them disappointment, but which did garner me my first Korean BBQ. It was delicious, I was drunk on soju, they gave us several pounds of homemade kimchi. Korean cuisine was reprieved in my eyes.
I do love kimchi. I see it and I salivate. Pavlov’s Spicy Pickled Cabbage. But I don’t think Korean food will ever get big in the West. Not Korean food as I know it. But honestly, do purveyors of delicious foreign food generally hold to their culture’s exact standards? No way. So maybe it will.
Apparently a blend of Korean and Mexican (though it sounds mostly Artsy Mexican) is catching on in the West coast. The only thing that sounds Korean about the food they are describing are a few of the names of the people who make it.
Korean tacos? Sign me up when they get to Korea.
I’m sitting on the ninth floor of a building in Sungshin. The clouds have broken up for a little while and the sun is setting. There is an incredible view of some mountains above the city.
I think it’s like Blade Runner. You have to live in a high rise building if you want to see the sun and the sky. (Oh, I’m so melodramatic.)
