Dakgalbi

So far my favorite Korean meal is Dakgalbi which was actually the first meal I had here with meat in it.

Basically the meal goes like this...

 While you’re waiting for your food to arrive, they bring out this a kind of cold pickled radish soup, which had an odd but not unpleasant taste. But it actually seems really common to get something like this while you’re waiting for your food, but the taste has definitely grown on me. With it as well you quite often get what looks like coslaw but is actually just shredded cabbage with a kind of kiwi fruit sauce on it.  And as you can see as well, they brought out the kimchi early. You pretty much get kimchi with every meal. I’m really glad that I got used to the taste before I came out here. It takes a while for the taste to grow on you, but now i love it ^^.

It's also really common for you to get so many side dishes at a meal that you could just eat the side dishes and be full, without ever touching the main dish.

Then they heat up the pan in the middle of your table, and once it’s hot they bring down the ingredients. To let it cook in front of you.

Note: never touch the food while it is cooking, they come round and make sure the food is cooking and is turned properly themselves. If you start messing with the food before it’s ready they get mad. Lol.

Then once it’s almost done they came with the noodles, a little water and some more gochujang and mix it all up. Then once it comes back up to temperature you’re good to go.

But that’s not all, once you’re done, and there’s the few bits left which would otherwise go to waist, they bring out more. They bring white rice and…other things and mix it all up, using all the left over parts from the first part of the meal to give flavour to the rice. Then once it’s all well mixed, they bring in cheese as well and mix that in, and flatten it all out so the cheese makes everything stick together. Then once that’s done, you’re good to go for part two.

This meal was more than enough for the 3 of us eating and it was so good! And so cheap for what you get as well.

One thing that I will add though, which I found out at later meals, is that Koreans eat really fast. It’s not really got the social attachment that it has in the west. They eat, often without speaking, and then just leave. So when you order food, and you sit there talking for a couple of minutes before you get stuck in, the staff assume you don’t know how to eat it, and will start trying to help you eat it. Whenever I eat out as well, we’re usually ¾ times longer eating than any Korean customer.