I smartened up and bought a bowl of ramen (just add water!) before heading into work today, in an effort stave off the inevitable hunger that would hit me in the middle of the day. Before I started eating it, I asked an Asian reporter sitting nearby if she could tell from the label whether it was spicy. She said she thought it was (which indicated to me that she was not Korean but from another Asian country) but that it doesn't matter because even if something does not explicitly say "spicy," you should just assume it is because...everything in Korea is spicy.
In the U.S., when you get food that can come in varying levels of spiciness, the scale usually starts at "mild." In Korea, "hot" is the default setting.
(For the record, the ramen was spicy, but not overly so.)
I had an interesting experience at dinner tonight. I went to what was basically an American fast food restaurant (it has a sign that says "Western Restaurant" on the outside, to let foreigners know they can come in and eat food that is recognizable to them). I ordered a garlic burger combo...or so I thought.
Apparently, when you order a garlic burger in Korea, you get a friend chicken sandwich with a piece of ham on it...
I went back and looked at the menu, and I still have no idea where I went wrong.
(I still ate it, of course, and it was fine, just not what I was expecting.)
Alleviating my concern over the food was the fact that they had bendy straws at this place...
Am I wrong that this is not a thing in the U.S. or do I just not eat at fast food restaurants often enough back home? If I'm not wrong, this is something I'd very much like to see American restaurants adopt. Bendy straws should become the norm, no question about it. They just make drinking more fun.
One final observation. The napkin situation here in Korea is -- there's only one way to say it -- abysmal. Observe...
This problem is not just limited to this one restaurant: Every single place I've eaten at in Korea, they give you what basically amounts to cocktail napkins. And Korean food isn't exactly neat to eat. I do not know what it is with the size of the napkins here, but something needs to be done about it, and fast.
Finally, I'm going to introduce a new feature on the blog. Koreans, I've found, love their crunchy snacks, and when adding flavoring to these foods, they tend to think very outside the box (think animals from the crustacean and cephalopod classes).
Case in point...
These are shrimp-flavored Bugles. This is not unusual in Korea. If you can think of a sea creature, Koreans have tried to make a chip taste like it.
Upon my first bite, I thought it was too sweet, and had only a hint of shrimp flavor (maybe not a bad thing). But the more I ate, the more I liked it. The sweetness evened out, and I was left with a very mild seafood-y flavor, which was quite pleasant (and addictive).
My rating (out of 10): 8.8
Tomorrow is an off day (for the skaters). I'm going to head over to the Main Press Center and maybe try to check out some competition in a sport other than figure skating. Ski jumping? Skeleton? Who knows. Stay tuned.
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