Fieldnotes: Korea and Japan: FOOD IN A NEW ALPHABET 2

Peter and Maureen learning a new alphabet ... (Photo: Nancy Kim)

Following our visit to the Berlin Café a week and a half ago, Nancy led us through the streets of Itaewon to The Foreign Food Mart where we bought our breakfast peanut butter. We dropped into the Foreign Book Shop next door for a few minutes, and of course each found something we wanted: Korean for Dummies (Peter) and Soul in Seoul (Maureen). Nancy had loaned us a copy of S in S, and we both enjoyed the writer’s tone: individual and opinionated!

Though we’d snacked at the café we were growing hungry. We walked a little further to Sigol Babsang, a country-style, or rustic, traditional restaurant, in a small building we’d never have realized was a restaurant without Nancy’s say-so. Stepping through a low door we found ourselves in a small room divided down the middle: to the left an area with about 3 tables and benches, to the right a raised platform for traditional (sit-on-the-floor) Korean eating.

The “menu” was a flat wooden spoon with rows of Korean characters on it. Nancy explained the selections, and we ordered steamed egg, rice cake and bulgogi cooked in an earthenware pot, and soybean stew. Almost immediately a young man began placing tray after tray of small side dishes in front of us till the table was nearly completely covered. We ordered chungha (rice wine) to accompany this feast (Peter also had his beer), then settled into talk and eating, eating, eating. Nancy told us there was no particular order or way in which the dishes were meant to be eaten, we could each browse as we pleased. What an array of tastes—some startling (those little anchovies, the chillies), all delicious! In the end we simply couldn’t consume it all, though we tried hard.