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Head to Seoul!
By Andrew Zimmern on April 21, 2009 9:00 PM | Permalink | 30 Comments
Korea ... torn between the tug of modernity and the tidal pull of their own traditionalism. Royal palaces and tombs still dot the city, traditional cultural performances and festivals are everywhere. And so are the Apple stores. Korea is a mind blower. Like Tokyo, Seoul is one of the most hoppin' happenin' cities in the world and without a doubt the most underrated food city in the world. Paris, Tokyo, NYC, San Fran, Sydney ... they get all the publicity, but Seoul is the real deal, too. Koreans love to eat and despite the OVERWHELMING dearth of restaurants serving anything other than Korean fare, you will never tire of the cuisine in Seoul because Korean food is so diverse it makes Dolly Parton's closet seem mundane by comparison.
Seoul's largest market is Noryangjin Fish Market, a 700,000 square foot facility that houses over 700 shops selling the most insanely diverse product from 15 fishing ports around Korea. The complex includes numerous restaurants, an auction floor, and an adjacent produce market but everyone comes for the fish. Octopus is a popular delicacy here and is eaten cooked or raw. If eaten raw, it is either eaten whole (and very much alive) or it is sliced up, its tentacles still wriggling as it goes into your mouth. You'll also find local flower crabs, prawns, abalone, clams, oysters, sea snails, sea cucumber, sea slugs, and sea squirts. And of course, live fish can be seen swimming in tanks all over the complex. You point at the fish of your choice and the seller weighs it and informs you of the price. You can take the fish home with you whole or have it gutted and cleaned. On the floor above the Fish Market, you'll find several seafood restaurants. You can buy your seafood from the market and bring it upstairs or have it delivered upstairs for your dining pleasure. Awesome. The restaurants will provide the side dishes, liquor and prepare hot soup from the carcass of the recently deboned fish. Of course, if you don't want the hassle of doing it yourself, you can just order at the restaurants and the ladies will yell your order downstairs and it'll be on your table in a couple of minutes. I love this place.
Koreans love spoiled and fermented foods, and have developed fermented food recipes in order to preserve foods that would provide essential nutrients throughout the lean winter months. Fermented foods are healthy (think sauerkraut!) and they show the wisdom of ancestors who sought the secret of longevity. Fermented sauces made of soybeans were created, kimchi was made and stored for winter when it was hard to grow vegetables, and fermented seafood was developed as a way to deal with the all the food that comes from the sea and couldn't' be consumed immediately. Now hong uh wae is fermented skate, left to rot at room temperature for several days before being eaten raw. Skate spoils faster than almost any other seafood and because the animal is loaded with uremic acid and pees through its skin the flavor the rotted skate flesh makes other rotted seafare taste like cotton candy. Yummy. But I loved the kimchi in Korea and got to eat plenty of it with every meal, as well as big piles of all my other fave fermented foods.
o Jangajjis - A dish of dried or salted vegetables and herbs pickled in bean sauce or bean paste or peppered bean paste.
o Ganjang - Korean soy sauce.
o Doenjang - Fermented soybean paste. Doenjang is made from the solids left over after Gangjang is drained from its fermentation vessel.
o Gochujang - a hot paste made from soybean powder fermented with boiled rice, flour, and sticky rice powder and seasoned with salt and spicy peppers.
o Cheonggukjang - a fermented soybean paste that contains whole as well as ground soy beans.
Everyone in Korea dines out and it is a common habit for people in Seoul, so there are thousands of restaurants scattered throughout every neighborhood. Unlike restaurants in the US where you pick a meal off a large menu with endless choices, restaurants in Seoul tend to specialize in one or two certain foods. Eating out is a group activity and you don't see many people dining alone. You want soup? Go to a soup restaurant. Want BBQ? Hit a BBQ joint, and Korean BBQ is superb.
I made sure to check out a Sutcama, a sauna emporium where you bake in a hut heated by hundreds of pounds of wood and charcoal. Friends go here together for a sweat and then a shower. Afterwards, you eat the house specialty: 3-second pork belly. The pork is placed on a grate and put in the coals and cooks in seconds.
I also went to a BBQ restaurant in Seoul for intestine, ox-liver and omasum (pork stomach). All these extremely popular restaurants have grills set into the table and each specializes in a certain kind of meat. Typical choices are beef (bulgogi), beef ribs (galbi), pork (samgyeopsal), or chicken (dak) but there is a type of BBQ joint to suit every taste.
There are many unusual soups and stew eateries in Seoul. Since soups and stews are such a big part of everyday eating, and the majority of restaurants in Seoul specialize in amazing meals in a bowl. I even got to try a soup called Dead Body Soup ... dont ask!
I made sure to try as many other soups as I could and here is the list:
o Loach soup
o Sunji Haejangguk (clotted-blood soup)
o Potato with pig backbone stew
o Knuckle bone soup
o Ox tail soup
o Tripe soup
o Sea mustard soup
o Doganitang - soup made with jellified cow's knee cartilage
o Haejangguk -- a favorite hangover cure consisting usually of meaty pork spine, dried cabbage, coagulated ox blood, and vegetables in a hearty beef broth
o Seolleongtang -- ox leg bone soup simmered for more than 10 hours until the soup is milky-white. Usually served in a bowl containing glass noodles and pieces of beef.
o Maeuntang -- a refreshing, hot and spicy fish soup
o Gamjatang ("pork spine stew") -- a spicy soup made with pork spine, vegetables (especially potatoes) and hot peppers. The vertebrae are usually separated. This is often served as a late-night snack but may also be served for a lunch or dinner.
o Cheonggukjang jjigae: a soup made from strong-smelling thick soybean paste containing whole beans
o Samgyetang: a soup made with Cornish game hens that are stuffed with ginseng, a hedysarum, sweet rice, jujubes, garlic, and chestnuts
But here is the best advice I can give you. Head to Seoul, and see for yourself. You will love it. Especially the food.
30 Comments
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Funny you mention Dolly Parton in this blog lol you need to do a show here in Tennessee. Even though there arent that many bizarre foods in TN you should stop by...
love the show man keep it going.
Patrick
Loved the skit on The Soup the other night too I laughed my butt off...
Me and my mother died of watching you eat the live octopus. My favorite comment you made was about the Do ga ni tang "Freak show in a bowl".
If you go to Korea try sushi hyo (02) 521-3593
and email me my buddy wants to drink his romanee conti with you :) when you visit korea.
I missed the part how kimchi is made...Is it something I can do at home or any way to order some?
I loved the Korea episode. I am from Ecuador but thanks to my best friend Kyoung I crave Korean food more than anything. I see you trying all this food and I love your job. You should go to Ecuador again but you need at least two weeks to try it all. We have really bizzare but yummy food. I recommend Guatita (cow stomach on peanut sauce), Caldo de tronquito (bull penis soup), and caldo de 31 (an amazing soup that has everything from a cow abdomen). They are weird but delicious. If you go, I offer to be your guide and translator just for the fun of it.
I was hoping you would try the dog in this episode I would think that would be the most bizarre food in korea.
wow, you should go to China more , there are billions type of amazing food in China,i grow up in china and goodness...I've tasted so many.. Need some ideas?^=^
I am so honored that you went to Korea! Watching your show made me homesick AND hungry! I do hope you will return and explore the rest of the country. It is not big, but it is diverse.
Your missing the worm soup and the dog meat!!! I thought you gonna try those.
You should go for it and plus I never see you eat dog meat in your show ^^
i have a quite bizarre food place u should degfenotely visit - MACEDONIA!!!! all the weird stuff that you have tried in Russia, Morroco...just a mild version of what we have here! and tasty and healthy too but yet bizarre! just to give you a hint ( stew of all the insdes of a cow or ur meat of choice, pig's legs, filled intestins, gelatine food beyound your imagination, lamb's stomach filled with choped liver, kidnines, etc., choppd and fried pig's fat
(that's the bomb) and much more...
Sorry Andrew but you let me down ol' buddy even tho it was another good show. Over a year ago I e-mailed you about eating live octopus in South Korea and you blew it off by saying you had eaten live lobster. So now you go to S. Korea, buy young octopus and pretend to eat them live after they've been cut to pieces in the kitchen. That does not count because there are cafes in S. Korea where they actually eat them live and intact. I was so excited at first when you were still at the market getting a bag of octopeds but hugely disappointed at seeing them butchered beforehand. You came so close only to wuss-out ... too bad but I'll get over it eventually and you're still the man when it comes to eating the weirdest of the weird stuff.
Andrew I am a 26 year old financial advisor from New Jersey who happens to be a huge Bizarre Foods fan. I watch your show all the time with my Girlfriend Reba and we can't help laughing at the faces you make when you first bite into some of your more unsavory food samples. Bizarre foods in Tanzania-yes Bizarre foods in Seol-yes...but have you ever eaten drunken College kids food late at night when the party's over? I would submit that some of the things I have eaten when the stobe lights dim are far more bizarre than some would even like to imagine. Just an FYI! Love the show, Love the faces, keep on keepin.
I really enjoyed your show last night! I am from Seoul and haven't been there for several years, and it was just great to see those streets filled with neon signs and restaurants! Tukpokki, the street vendor food, is the food that I miss the most! I will be visiting Seoul next month with my American husband, and watching your show really added to my excitement. (Although some of the food you tried, I've never seen/heard before!)
Can't wait to eat BBQ and drink Soju with my old friends.
Thanks for the great show and keep up the awesome work!
i thought you did a great job of showing korea and her food but i was kind of disappointed that you only stayed in seoul and didn't mention the fact that there are over 100 types of kimchi (if you did, sorry, i missed it). why did you stay only in seoul when you could've had more "bizarre foods" in the countryside or for fresh seafood, go to pusan and jeju island? we in america are so narrow minded and judgemental when it comes to food of other cultures that it's refreshing to see someone like you who can try them all and be appreciative of them. overall, your shows are great and you are one brave soul.
Thank you so much for doing a show on Korea! I was really surprised since a couple months back I was talking with a friend wondering if you were ever going to visit the country. A lot of the food you showed, such as the turtle soup was very surprising! I recognize the ox-bone tail soup and the fermented bean soup. I was hoping you would be able to travel around instead of staying in the capital and check out the regional cooking too. But you probably had a budget and limited time ^^;; I was wondering if you had links to the people who has the internet food blogs?
I'm soo glad you went to Korea!! If you go back you MUST go to every province including Jeju Island!! and you're right, Korea has the best of everything :)
Dear Andrew, I LOVE your show, but sometimes I admit it's too intense even for my twisted self. LOL Keep it up, stay safe, and bon appetit!
I don't understand why you didn't mention anything about eating dogs in Korea. I'm not saying I WANT to see you eat dog - in fact I think it's barbaric the way the poor things are tortured before they're killed, but why leave it out?? Why not show the world what Koreans really eat?...They'll be in for a shock if they actually go to korea.
i love that episode ^^ i wanna visit korea so bad!..lucky people haha
17 year old girl, it is true that Korea has eaten dog but it is also true that many people, especially the younger generations have never had dog before. Dog is sometimes seen as a health food in Korea that traditionally doctors might recommend if you are ill. But showing Koreans eating dogs would not be showing what Koreans really eat. It is like saying just because some people in new york eat bugs on a stick it does not mean we as americans all eat that.(maybe not the best example but you get my point). I have been Korea and I knew of no one who ate dog except for older people and it was not something they did occasionally, it was maybe once or very rare. I'm sure though you could find some people that would say it is part of their diet, but it is not something you should relate with "show the world what Koreans really eat?", I think Kimchi is something that is very different for most Americans and really does represent something Koreans eat every day.
It would have been interesting for him to eat dog but maybe it was something he was against like Anthony Bourdain who says he would never eat dog and was thankful to never been asked.
Another reason he might have not ate dog could be he did not want to make it a controversy for his audience. Many people in America as do Koreans see dogs as pets and even part of the family but Americans might have a hard time understanding some cultural differences with food.
I think he could do another episode in Korea in a later date which maybe he will touch on some of these other issues. If he does I hope he clears up any misconceptions about what everyday Koreans eat.
" The Travel Channel execs from the beginning of the series stated a list of foods that they felt were over the line for American audiences. Dog meat was on the list. So that was out." This is what I found over at ZenKimchi (http://www.zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal/?p=1182), they recommended a few dishes to the show some of which were used but many including "Budae Jjigae 보대 찌개 (basically Spam and hot dog soup) " that were not used are because of what travel channel believes is not appropriate for American audiences. Which I can understand but it is some disappointing to know that this issue will probably never be discussed. Hopefully they do address it some day.
"We got in the bus for one more stop–a dog soup restaurant. A last minute approval had Raymond scrambling to find a dog soup shop open on a Sunday night. We stopped by a restaurant that looked like a converted house. They went inside. After a while, they exited. It was too empty, and it just looked creepy to have Andrew sit there by himself eating dog soup. So in the end, the whole dog thing was a no-go.
I should address this now that I have your attention. Really, dog meat is hardly popular in South Korea, especially these days. It’s more commonly consumed in China and northern Vietnam. So all those dog meat jokes–aim them at China from now on."
Another quote from ZenKimchi (http://www.zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal/?p=1241)
It seems they did attempt to eat dog but it just did not work out for the reasons said. I wonder though if they could have asked if Andrew had ever ate dog in the past?
Andrew, loved your episode regarding Seoul. However, not many Koreans eat turtle soup (yuck), dog is pretty much a no-no for young generation. However, you should have tried black goat soup (heuk yeom so tang) instead of the turtle. Also, you could have tried other places in Seoul where it is more trendy and fun. If you happen to visit Seoul again, do let your Korean audience know. Last, love your show, man. Envy your job a lot!
BTW, unlike what Justin says,"Budae Jjigae 보대 찌개 (basically Spam and hot dog soup)" DOES NOT include any dog meat. Hell man, where did you get that false info? Hot dog ain't literally dog: it is hotdog, the frankfurter, the HOTDOG you eat at stands here at baseball events. Jesus, Korean love budae jjigae. It has SPAM, ramen noodles, and all kinds of nice food but no gross stuff like a real, poor dog. No no no.
Oxtail soup is quite normal winter food in Denmark
Anyone knows where the "loach soup" where Andrew had his stew is????
I can see Maya's comment on this page and althought I watch your channel on my cable TV, I haven't seen anything about Macedonia.
Your team must visit Macedonia, try Macedonian food and drinks and get to know Macedonian culture, history etc...
Macedonia is still undiscovered by tourists.
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A reply to 17 year old girl: Your comment about eating dog in Korea is complety naive/ignorant/daft. Yes, SOME koreans eat dog soup, many I KNOW do not choose to eat it. Don't generalize, you silly person. There's something called, "cultural differences", and you are ridiculous to think that your judgments, of a nation you know nothing about, are relevant in the least bit.
Nothing is wrong in eating bizarre food. What's important is the process of making it, the nutrients it gives to the body and the humane way of preparing in case of animal meat. In general, toxic-free and preservative-free food only.
Hot dog ain't literally dog: it is hotdog, the frankfurter, the HOTDOG you eat at stands here at baseball events. Jesus, Korean love budae jjigae. It has SPAM, ramen noodles, and all kinds of nice food but no gross stuff like a real, poor dog. No no no.