Bulgogi!

Yesterday, I finally had bulgogi! It's the most "famous" dish that Koreans have... it's their Korean BBQ. Marinated grilled beef. Yum!

I begged Jin to take me to get some real Korean food so he could explain things to me, so on Saturday we searched for an hour to find a place that had what we were looking for! We had to wander all around downtown (and almost gave up completely!) before we found a hole-in-the-wall place tucked into a back corner down an alley. It was definitely an experience.

This is almost the complete spread of what we had for lunch. It was pretty amazing too! You order one main dish and you get 15 side dishes "for free!" Which is how they do it here. In the middle you can see the bulgogi on the grill plate. Then in the little tins is the rice. Directly left of the rice is one kind of kimchi--we were served two different kinds. Neither of which I'd had before! But Jin couldn't tell me what plants they were made from. Apparently it wasn't the typical cabbage though.

Then there's the spicy tofu soup that is commonly served and which I never eat. haha. Jin tried it and even his mouth was on fire! --Which tells me that if I want to live, I will never eat that.

Next to the soup by the bulgogi is the dipping sauce, which is mainly onions and soy sauce. Other things in the picture that you can't really see are: diced mushrooms, spicy pickled radishes and spicy cucumbers (both of which Jin "gave a bath" for me so I could eat them! haha), and deep fried peppers...which are not spicy except if you eat the puffy end.

In the back of this picture is the cooked ham smothered in ketchup, then there's a better shot of the spicy cucumbers. There's also the different kind of kimchi along with some acorn noodles... which were slippery and slightly strange. Then on the bottom right is chopped up dried squid in red bean sauce, and that was actually good! Kinda difficult with the texture... but all in all not bad. But the red sauce with the jalepenoes floating around in it I definitely did not touch!

The meal was definitely an adventure in and of itself. And, again, it was perfect to have a friend there to help me out! I'm finding that I enjoy this culture so much more when I can learn what is going on!