A couple of weeks ago (the night I bailed on the expat plans and hung out locally - I blogged about wanting to "yogi-yo" rather than be in an English bubble), Tom and I met these great great Korean folks, who invited us to join them at their table for drinks. Turns out they recognized me, I had been to their restaurant for lunch earlier that week, with teachers from my school. The lunch was dolsot bap, one of the traditional and more bland Korean dishes.
These guys invited us to come back to their restaurant, and dreading the dolsot bap, it took us about two weeks to actually get around to going. We went last night. Turned out to be fantastic samgibsal (korean barbeque). We ordered 3 orders of beef, one for each of us (Chris was with us too). Then, deciding that wasn't enough, we got some pork. And they decided to bring us free dolsot bap, too. No word of a lie, there were actually about 25 side dishes laid out on our table, plus the meat and the actual dolsot bap. I do not know how we actually consumed so much food, but we did make a dent, because we didn't want to be rude. Dolsot bap is literally "stone bowl rice". You take the rice out of the stone bowl, and with whatever rice is left in the bowl (burned to the sides of the bowl) you pour some steaming rice water in, put the lid back on and let it steam. This becomes the soup that you finish your meal off with. Interesting, and a taste that I am slowly acquiring... still bordering on very very very bland.
We had the best service ever, they were so happy we came to their restaurant! The owner and his wife looked after us themselves :-) They barely speak any English, but are so so kind. We plan to go back soon - they've told us we will eat for free if we help them with their English! Regardless, the beef barbeque was AMAZING. Reason enough to return, even if the owners hadn't been so sweet!
Have I mentioned that Koreans are the kindest people ever?
I took pictures with my phone, but they got messed up, didn't save properly. Sorry! Next time...
Tomorrow is a "school festival" so I've spent the last 6 hours preparing posters and such "all about Canada". Amazing, getting all "Canadian" has not made me homesick at all... just excited to share this stuff with the students and with my colleagues.
And a side note about the photocopy guy at school - he is totally my new best friend! We now have a secret language that involves a lot of signals, gestures, smiles and bowing. Woooo!
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3 comments:
You have mentioned the kindness of Koreans - I'm not really picturing anyone here being so generous at their restaurant with people they don't know!
How was the "school festival"? How did your posters turn out?
I agree - if we hadn't met them before, there's no way that the owner and his wife (especially the owner) would have been giving us service himself - nor is it likely that they would have given us an entirely separate meal! That said, the entire "meeting them" and then how they reacted when we came to their restaurant was kind of what I meant - more the "everything" of interactions with them :-)
Yeah, definitely more "everything"..meeting up with a restaurant owner might maybe end up in a free drink at their place. Hardly serving on you and shoving free food in your face all night!
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