South Korea: Follow the eater!

Korea, 25 October 2015

Every day spent here offers up treasures of sensation to my palate. It's funny, actually, because you should know that in all the places I went to there was no English menu, so I very often had to go purely by the pictures when choosing a meal. Fairly risky as an approach, no? :-D So I almost never knew what I was eating — but I can tell you that all of it was very good :-) . Korean food is amazing!!!! even if it can occasionally be a touch too spicy for my taste.

It's also very interesting to note (yes... all right, I know, it's mainly interesting to me :-D ) that I've barely cooked a single time since arriving here ... the prices really are well within my budget... or is it the post-New-York effect, where I couldn't afford to eat out two days running :-D ? So in Seoul I go to restaurants very often. I'm spoilt for choice on that front, particularly in Gangnam, the district I'm living in, which is full of them.

Otherwise there's also the option of eating street food — an even more economical solution, and not necessarily any worse. On average, in a restaurant I could get a very generous meal for 7,000 won; with street food I rarely paid more than 3,000 won.

Broadly, in Korea I mainly have the luck of tasting dishes very different from anything I'd been used to in my life up to now. So I really wanted to make the most of it, and as a result food became my biggest expense during this part of my trip... That decision, when I made it, did give me a lot to think about... Food is a great pleasure, but such a fleeting one, and a fat lot of good it would do me if all I could take away from this stage of my year were photos of meals :-D .

Then again, I chose not to see it that way. The sense of taste, used while properly connected to the moment (without wandering off onto the internet, reading, or getting too lost in your own thoughts), gave me great moments of delight.... I'd had experiences like that before, one of them very memorable, in a restaurant in Mendoza in Argentina — even though that was with food I already knew: wine, milanesa and chips. It was still quite an experience of being connected to the moment. Here I'm adding the element of surprise on top, sometimes in the texture as much as the taste. So I savour every mouthful even more, and I feel properly alive in those moments :-) . I should manage to keep that frame of mind all the time, as long as what I'm eating is good... In life, every mouthful is worth savouring :-) ....