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.

First Few Tastes of Delicious Korean Foods

With Friday being the start of my first full weekend in Korea, I started in taking the opportunity to try out some popular foods of Gyeongju where fellow foreigners often hang out.

To start off my Friday evening, as I was walking toward the downtown area I met up with a fellow foreigner friend at Baskin Robbins

The popular the ice cream flavors you would find in any western culture baskin robbins they had (chocolate, strawberry, mint chocolate chip, etc.), but with a few extra flavors to accustom to the eastern cultures.  One of the very popular flavors of the area that I decided to try was green tea ice cream.  For anyone who has tried a green tea latte or green tea frappucino from Starbucks, this is very similar in taste.

The next stop was a popular restaurant down town.  In the common tradition with all Korean meals, we had some light meals as an appetizer prior to the larger meal.  The pink stuff in the bowl is water kimchi.  Kimchi is very popular in Korea and it is one of the healthiest foods in the world!  It is traditionally made with fermented cabbage, but there are dishes with the kimchi flavor in dishes such as this (with water and cabbage), radishes, or other vegetables.  The plate on the side gave us the option to add some garlic cloves or jalapenos to the chicken (which are VERY weak here - I can eat them straight no problem).



The main dish that is a common favorite is made of chicken and cabbage -- that they cook right in front of you!  There is also some rice cakes and other vegetables in the mix with, of course, a savory spicy sauce (as with nearly all korean dishes).

How did we eat the chicken?  Well, you either ate it straight (with chop sticks of course -- though they do hide a few forks if you need it) or you place it on a romaine lettuce leaf and eat it as a wrap.  Oh, and don't forget to break off the end piece of the lettuce leaf because (as Koreans believe) the end makes you tired so you shouldn't eat them unless you want to sleep.





**Note: I've also learned that this particular restaurant only serves this one chicken dish.  Apparently it is common in Korea to have a restaurant that only serves one main dish (that they focus on making very very well).