Coffee Helps

It’s been a while since I blogged about food. Expect it to be a recurring theme.

I’m slowly but surely getting the hang of what things are in the supermarket. The only way that I have been able to do this is by just taking a guess at what something is based on its packaging and its location in the store, and then buying it, eating it, and seeing how far wrong I was. Sometimes, I end up eating something delicious as a result. I have become a huge fan of ramen, for example. The closest thing we have to this in NI is probably instant noodles (“Supernoodles”), but ramen is so, so much better – close to the flavour and texture of noodles you’d get in a decent restaurant. A supermarket’s ramen selection takes up at least one whole aisle, with dozens of different flavours, multipacks, special individual “luxury” packs with added meats and vegetables… I’m cheerfully working my way through them all. I can’t tell you what eating ramen every night has done for my chopsticks abilities.

Sometimes, on the other hand, I end up eating something that bears no resemblance to my original guess. This can be a pleasant surprise, or a very, very bad thing. I found what I thought was a packet of cheese puff crisps (I was thinking Wotsits), and they turned out to be exactly what I thought, but with a strip of sugar icing on top of each one. I didn’t finish the packet!

The other morning, having overslept and not had time for breakfast, I grabbed what I thought was a bread roll on my way to work. On biting into it, I found this:

Who knows?

In restaurants, it’s not quite so bad, because I don’t go to them alone. And whoever I go with is always Korean, and able to pick something out for me, or Alex, who has been here for long enough to know what’s what. So far, every restaurant meal has been amazing – until tonight, that is. Tonight, I finally gave in to Alex’s request that we try some of Korea’s trademark fresh seafood. Seafood restaurants far outnumber all the other restaurants here, and they’re meant to be really good… if you like that sort of thing.

I don’t. The only seafood I really enjoy is sushi (and sashimi), because it’s completely different. It doesn’t have that ‘fishy’ taste that has never appealed to me, and its texture is very different from cooked fish. Still, I said when I came here that I was going to be adventurous and try every food I was offered as long as it was definitely dead, so into the nearest seafood restaurant we went.

We removed our shoes and sat down cross-legged on our floor cushions, and Alex ordered the mixed spicy seafood platter. As with most meals here, it arrived in a large dish which was set in the middle of the table for us to share. I looked dubiously at it.

In amongst all the beansprouts and lemongrass (those weren’t noodles, disappointingly) were all manner of things I would normally never consider calling dinner. Oysters, clams, hacked-up bits of crab and lobster, huge shrimps, and a whole octopus which the waitress cut into pieces for us using scissors just before I took the picture. It was all mixed up in a spicy tomato sauce. And it was horrible.

I tried everything, true to my word. I ate octopus tentactles, I ate things that I had to suck out of shells, I ate something that had an eye. What is this? I asked cautiously, holding up a curly mass of white flesh and tendons and inspecting it from all angles. Alex considered my question. I’ll tell you once you’ve eaten it, he said diplomatically. I ate it, but only on the condition that he never, ever tells me what it was. It was alright, by which I mean that it didn’t make me gag. That’s more than can be said for the small grey thing I ate. It looked a little bit like a brain, and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it actually was one. I put it in my mouth, bit into it, and discovered that it was filled with a vile-tasting liquid that oozed out like pus, filling my mouth and traumatising my tastebuds. With great concentration of the “this is a mushroom, just a mushroom” variety, I managed to chew frantically and swallow it, but even three shots of soju in rapid succession failed to take the taste out of my mouth.

Never again. I have tried, and I have failed. My stomach is still churning. Korean seafood is not for me.