Dunkin Donuts Korean Style

Korea certainly hasn't avoided in getting several popular western culture franchises. There are 7-Elevens, Baskin Robbins, and Dunkin Donuts everywhere throughout the country. I think I've been to more of these businesses in Korea than I have in the United States!

There is one thing about coffee in Korea that puzzles me a bit. Rather than have regular drip coffee, most places (with Dunkin Donuts being one of he few exceptions) serve Americano (espresso with water added). I guess
It is easier to make since you then only buy espresso beans? I'm not sure exactly but that is how
Korea does it.

Unexpected flavors of food

Today I came in for lunch and had two particular items that looked quite familiar to what I might have in a meal back home: What appeared to be some sort of meat or chicken fillet and a fruit salad.  What puzzled me, however, were the flavors and combinations of foods that I was not expecting.  For instance, in this fruit salad that appears to have apples, raisins, grapes, and marshmallows there are certainly no grapes in it but rather tomatoes.  The fruit salad itself is not very sweet either as one might be in the US.  I could only subtly taste the marshmallow.  The other was the little patties or fillets.  My initial guess is that it was chicken with a honey mustard (since I have had other dishes here with honey mustard).  However, this was a fish fillet and the sauce is mustard that seems to be mixed with some mayo so it isn't as strong.

Where is the tartar sauce you ask?  I don't think that exists here.

This is just one of the many food I've eaten here that had a flavor that I was not expecting.  The one that I noticed early on was garlic bread.  Naturally, as a westerner, you would expect garlic bread to taste garlic-y and a bit salty, perhaps.  However, in Korea it is sweet.  You still taste the garlic, but they seem to put some sort of syrup on it.

Teachers Meetings

I've noticed a bit of a trend with public school teachers meetings in Korea: They always have food and they commonly have drinks.  The food includes types like rice cakes, meat, fish, kimchi, fruits, and perhaps even some kimbop.  What I find amusing, however, is that though you may have some orange juice to drink, they do also have makkoli (rice wine).  Imagine bringing in bottles of Riesling or some other wine to a teachers meeting in the United States -- it would certainly be looked down upon in the conservative nature of American schools.

This is not to say that Korean schools are still not conservative in their own way (because in some regards they are seen as, perhaps, more conservative than schools in the US) but this is one example of something that is seen as perfectly fine in Korea but would never be thought of in the states.

Cheese-filled Pork Cutlet

Korea has many delicious meals. One that is great if your looking for a little cheese-fix (since there isn't much cheese here) is cheese pork cutlet. To order this in Korean you say "cheez-uh dun k-ah-s".

How Korea does Yogurt

In korea they do yogurt a little different than in the USA. They do have regular cups of yogurt as you buy in the states but they also have the kind of yogurt that you drink. The picture here is just the Korean-ized version of the common yogurt brand Activia.

Recipes of 2 new favorite foods

I've written a recent article of two recipes of my newly favorite foods (that are gluten-free!).  One recipe is for bibimbop (Korean) and the other is Pad Pak (Thai).  You can find the article: http://voices.yahoo.com/delicious-ethnic-recipes-gluten-free-10891729.html

Purple Sweet Potatoes

What I recently found at the grocery store that I didn't know existed: Purple Sweet Potatoes.  I must say, I do love the smell of them -- more than their orange cousins.

Other random trivia: Sweet potatoes are very popular in Korea, as you will find them in foods where they may not be found as commonly in the states.
For instance, there is a food here pronounced  "dun kaus", which translates to basically pork cutlet, or as many in the states would like to call a fried pork tenderloin.  Its similar, but a bit different (I actually think dun kaus is better now).  Anyway, there is an option to have sweet potato filled pork cutlet -- and it is really quite amazing!!
Another unique way of eating sweet potato (pronounced "gogok ma" in Korean) is in a latte... yes, I do mean at a coffee shop.  Right next to the green tea lattes, you will find sweet potato lattes and they are really quite good.  At most places they are a bit yellowish in color, but I did go to one place that used the purple sweet potatoes.

Foods that I didn't know existed until I came to Korea

During my time in Korea, I've discovered many foods that I either never realized existed or knew it was something people consumed.  These include:

- Black garlic (they'll sell it in a liquid - kind of like a soy sauce)

- Purple Sweet Potatoes

- Asian pears (round and bigger than apples)

- Red ginseng (its EVERYWHERE!!)

- Asian cabbage (used to make kimchi)

Also, there are a lot of eggplants here.  A lot more than you'll ever see in the states.

Ordering food

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.