I'm sure many people that haven't gone over the seas asks the question: How do you order food? So I thought I'd make a post to answer.
In all honesty, the majority of the time that I eat out its with a friend or group of people where someone who has been here for quite a while orders the food. However, I have ordered on my own or with a friend before and I do not know Hangul (Korean text) yet. In areas of Seoul, its easier to order without knowing any Korean since most people speak English, but in the smaller cities like Gyeongju you have to know some Korean.
This is how I've managed to order food (so far)...
- Most of the time if it is a typical small Korean restaurant I just ask for one of the most common Korean foods, such as Kimbop (basically a Korean sushi minus the raw fish - they can be filled with tuna, beef, veggies, etc.) or Bibimbop (rice with veggies and red pepper paste) along with a few others. More often than not they have one of the two.
- At places where you get Shabu Shabu or some big meal of food they often times have pictures with the Korean name, so I can simply just look at the picture and point and say "juseyo" (please).
- The reason I'm holding off on learning Hangul yet is because I'm trying to learn the names of things first so I know what it is. Think of it like this: What is the point of being able to read Korean if you read "Kimbop" on the menu but you have no idea what kimbop is? The only thing (so far) where I have felt compelled to really learn Hangul is at coffee shops when I want a different type of tea or coffee other than my often typical nok-cha (green tea). If I knew Hangul, I'd actually know if they had "peppermint" tea on the menu or not because even in reading Hangul it will still be pronounced as "peppermint". I suppose I can still always just say "peppermint", "chamomile" or "rooibos" to see if they tell me "a'nyo" (no) or "nae" (yes), but it is still nice to know beforehand.
The other day I also had a foreigner friend make the comment about how in Korean everybody eats from multiple dishes. I suppose while living here I never really thought of it this way until now -- but you hardly EVER have your own dish to eat. Instead you order one meal as a group or order a couple dishes between two people and share.
It seems that the reasoning for this would correlate back to the whole strong community-focus of Korean culture (I'll likely get into that in a later post once I know more).
What some foreigners are amazed about is how Koreans stay so skinny despite the amount of food they eat. Which, this is true, but I think we also forget that Koreans always eat in groups so this makes a huge difference. Why? If you have one big plate of food in front of you, your brain automatically thinks "I need to eat all of this", so you eat what is on your plate rather than only eat the amount of food that your stomach tells you. When eating a group Korean meal, I feel full afterward but never REALLY full as I would eating my own individual meal -- it does seem to make a difference.
