Food for Thought

I have successfully navigated through my first week in Seoul. Despite the fact that there are very few foreigners in Korea and that many people don't speak English, the week was relatively unstressful, thanks in big part to my employer who ensured that we were well taken of during the day. At night, however, we - the 10 MBA interns from US schools - were left to our own devices to feed ourselves. The logistics of satisfying desires and constraints of our somewhat opinionated group deserves its own post, but here I'll focus on my initial impressions of eating in Korea.

First, Korea is a meat lovers' haven. There are a ton of barbeque places serving delicious marinated beef. Most restaurants have a built-in grill at the table, so you can cook your own meat. So far we've tried:
*Kalbi: thin, marinated strips of beef cooked over coals. We went to a place that did not seem very expensive (BiBimBap cost $6 for example), and Kalbi was $13/strip, and I think the boys ate 2 strips each. Delicious!
*Bulgogi: also marinated beef. This one was cooked in a pan with seasoning that had soy sauce and sesame oil, and the restaurant staff added scallions and mushrooms, and then cellophane noodles at the end of the meal. It was also delicious.
*Samgyeopsal (pork belly): this one was not my favorite as it was very fatty. The strips of port belly are grilled on a pan, with a bowl underneath to collect fat. It tastes a lot like bacon. You can wrap the meat in lettuce, and add kimchee for an improvised sandwich.

A culinary highlight of the week for me was Samgyetang, a Chicken Ginseng soup. A classmate from Seoul kindly took us to a famous restaurant where we were seated on the floor, and were presented with a soup that had a whole baby chicken. The chicken is stuffed with rice, ginseng, chestnuts, and other things I could not identify that nevertheless tasted delicious. And the price was very reasonable at only $13/per person.

Vegetarians can always opt for BiBimBap - a healthy combination of rice, egg, veggies, and pepper sauce (which is more sweet than spicy). I actually had a raw meat BiBimBap this week as well, which I thoroughly enjoyed.