Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

I should have worn nicer socks. Mortification struck me outside the bulgogi house in Ulsan as I stared down at my big, white, round toe. I still hadn’t caught on to all Korean social graces. Since you never wear shoes indoors, a hole in your sock is on par with an unzipped fly.

“What can I say? That wasn’t there this morning,” I lied with a wry smile. Here I was, trying to make a good impression on new friends, and my socks had gotten dinner off on the wrong foot.

Mercifully silent, Taesong led the way into the restaurant. Taesong Seong and I had shared a cubicle since my first day in Korea. We had become each other’s unofficial language tutors, and somewhere in that limbo of muddled Kor-english, we had formed a tentative friendship. When he invited my wife and I out to dinner with him and his fiancée, I jumped at the offer. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Once settled at a six-inch-high table, we began the pleasantly innocuous getting-to-know-you conversation: where are you from, what do you like to do? A young man filled the table’s grill with hot coals, and two older ladies presented us with a myriad of little plates containing food of every description: pork and beef for grilling over hot coals, white tubers in a blood red sauce, little stringy green weeds with diced red peppers, miniature dried shrimp, black globs of something indistinguishable, dark red lumpy paste, and a bowl of salad greens.

“Walk us through this,” I encouraged Taesong.

“You eat what you like,” he said with a broad sweep of his hand and a mischievous grin.

He picked a piece of garlic from the basket of greens, dipped it into the thick red paste and popped it in his mouth like popcorn. Then he innocently proffered the basket to me. Was this his strategy to find out how adventurous I was? With a nonchalant flick of the wrist, I tossed a clove into my mouth.

After the first few bites, I had to fight to keep my composure. That was GARLIC. It was stronger than any garlic I had ever had before. Later I learned that Korean garlic is two to three times stronger than its Western relatives. Taesong’s smile grew wider, as though thinking, Here was a brave one. He reached for the basket of greens, and came up with a long green pepper. Unblinking, he bit the whole thing off at the stem. He explained between chews, “Koreans like hot.”

I imagined that it couldn’t be too hot. After all, I grew up in Texas eating Cajun jambalaya and habanero pepper sauce. So I picked up a pepper and took a long, appraising look. This silly little thing couldn’t do me any harm. For the first few seconds, I enjoyed the innocuous pepper. Then it hit me. I was chewing a mouthful of molten hot needles.

I managed a smile and a cough as I sent the molten razor blades down my throat for my stomach to deal with. I was going to have to let the antihistamines fight this one, and until then I just wouldn’t breathe too hard. I managed a feeble, “Good.” I would show no weakness. I could take it.

As the burning behind my navel quieted to a pleasant heat, I started to relax into the meal. Taesong had put me to the test, and I came through relatively unscathed. Or so I thought.

Without warning, Taesong reached into the pile of plates and pulled up one that boasted a crab in a bright red sauce. He took half and passed it to me.

“Boiled crab?” I asked.

“No, fresh crab in kimchi,” he replied with a wry grin. He took a bite. “It’s good.”

Despite the fact that I was about to violate the greatest food taboo of the Western world—eating raw shellfish—I dug in. I could feel the cold, chewy crabmeat wriggling around in my mouth. I fought down a gag reflex and swallowed.

Taesong looked on with mild curiosity. He knew perfectly well what he was doing: He was playing “food chicken” with me to see when I would back down. This was a rite of passage for foreigners. I was being tested, and the result would determine my standing in his eyes.

“These are very good,” Taesong said, pushing a plate toward me. Six boiled sea snails stared up at me. There was no layer of butter or cream on these snails, just bare boiled crustaceans.

“How do you eat them?” I said, undaunted. I had eaten escargot before. I could eat these.

Taesong took one chopstick, inserted it under the large foot, and pried out the entire snail. Boiling had only cooked the outside of the snail, and a good half of it emerged in a long, green trail of mucus. Catching the dangling line of ooze on his tongue, he chewed and swallowed.

I looked down at my snail. I could handle fire, I could handle raw, but I just couldn’t handle that trail of translucent slime. Just the sight of it made my stomach quiver in rebellion. It told me that I’d punished it enough. It begged me: Please don’t send that down here.

Slowly I pried my snail out of its shell. It came out absolutely dripping with every globule of mucus it could hold on to. I didn’t pause to consider whether or not to eat it; I just put it in my mouth.

Against every protest my body could conjure up, I had eaten everything. But would it all stay down? I twisted my face into a grimace that I hoped would be mistaken for a smile.

Taesong grinned broadly, slapped me on the shoulder and asked, “You want bap? Rice is dessert.” Unspoken approval shined in his eyes. Somehow I had crossed the invisible barrier that barred Westerners from eating in true Korean-style.

Even his fiancée produced her first full sentence in English: “You like Korean food?”

“Not bad,” I chuckled. Especially if I never have to do it again.

The next day at work, Taesong made it clear to everyone that I could eat like a Korean. My coworkers looked at me with newfound respect.

As we left the office that night, Taesong put his arm around my shoulder. He smiled a winning smile and said, “Next, we eat dog soup.”