Lunch & Shopping: Korea vs. the US

Three American women and I had a lunch date yesterday, and I realized how used to Korean I have become in just a year. Thus, here's my version of our four hours together, trying to highlight the ways in which a basic shopping/lunch date in Korea differs from one in the US (well, Iowa, as I really can't speak for the whole darn country).

Dramatis personæ:

Grace (Korean-American; lived in Korea for last 12 years) (speaks Korean fluently)
Charlene (Korean-American, in Korea for last 1.5 years) (speaks conversational Korean)
Sherri (American mixed breed; in Korea for 1.2 years) (understands super basic Korean)
Elizabeth (Dutch-American, frequent visitor to Korea) (knows many Korean food-words)

We're all middle-aged-ish (no surprise to those who know me, but every time I look in the mirror, I am surprised at the old-looking 32-year-old I think I am), we all have professional/graduate degrees, and we've all taught college/university at some point.  Grace and I met Elizabeth for the first time today; Charlene met her last week while she and her daughter are visiting Korea this month.

The Plan:

We wanted to visit a pottery shop that Grace found last week, which was having a going-out-of-business sale, and we wanted to have lunch together.  We left at 10:45am and planned to be back around 2.

The Story:

(1) Grace drives because (a) she knows where things are and (b) doesn't have to consult the map/GPS constantly while (c) dodging scooters, taxis, buses, ajummas, parked cars, and crazy drivers.  More importantly, Grace is an experienced rural Korean driver and thus knows that red lights serve only an advisory function. (For readers who enjoy foreshadowing but just might have missed it here, reread the previous sentence.  There shall be other hints, but I shall not annoy my dear readers by pointing them out).

(2) We arrive at the pottery shop, which is named something happily still in business (30% off!) but no lights are on even though 11am seems to be a reasonable business hour, even by Korean standards (coffee shops here rarely open before 9). As with most Korean businesses, the owner's cell phone (pronounced "han-deh-pone-eh") is posted, so Grace calls and the owner arrives soon to open the shop for us.


(3)We delightedly wander the shop, picking up and touching the bowls, plates, tea sets, etc., exclaiming to each other over the lovely glazes and designs. (Our touchy-feely approach is definitely American: Koreans don't touch the goods). The owner asks Grace where we are all from, as we laugh a lot (not a Korean trait, apparently) and Grace and Charlene's Korean sound foreign (ooh... a little foreshad-).  "You have so much joy!" she exclaim, and I wonder whether government funding is available for spreading American cheer. I digress. We gradually gather best-loved pieces to our respective bosoms (ok, we put them on the front table, but that's not poetic) and justify our growing piles by appealing to Father's Day and gifts for family and friends back home (dear US readers: assume nothing). Happily, the owner gives us a deal even beyond her 30% sale. While waiting to pay (assisted by the ever-present shop calculator) we notice a golf club in one corner, which really seems out of place in a pottery shop, and a roll of toilet paper on the counter, which does not seem out of place at all (Koreans commonly use this instead of Kleenex).  The two Caucasians in our group receive small presents from the owner: leather cord necklaces with hand-made clay pendants; it's not uncommon to receive a "service" if you spend a certain amount of money at a Korean store, but it's at the discretion of the owner. (Today, though, the gifts weren't related to how much we'd spent, as Charlene spent more than Elizabeth. Maybe it's because the owner assumed the white folks were just visiting and the Koreans would visit her other store?  I don't know.  Sorry, Grace and Charlene.)

(4) We next drive to a Korean restaurant Grace knew about. After parking down the very narrow street (lined with cars, bars, weeds, and piles of small garbage bags), we pick our way to the restaurant.  Before anything else, we first take off our shoes and put them on the restaurant's entryway shelves, making sure to then stand only on the provided board path instead of on the cement floor (which is considered unclean as it touched our shoes which touched the ground which is more unclean than a gentile lobster). We walk in sock-feet to a table (even in summer, one must bring along some sort of socks), distribute the (very flat) floor pillows, and sit on those. Grace orders for us from the menu on the wall (which only lists 6 items), and we wipe our hands with the wet rolled towels (about the size of a postcard, which is not much smaller than an Korean shower towel.  I kid you not.).

Using the table's rubbermaid-style water bottle, Charlene nicely fills our tiny metal cups; she also opens the box in the table's center to distribute spoons and chopsticks (there are no forks or knives at traditional Korean restaurants - sometimes scissors are provided for cutting).

Typical container for
Korean restaurant water.

The complimentary plate of hot green peppers and dipping sauce arrives, Elizabeth takes a daringly large bite, and though she declares them "not too hot" I notice that no more of that dish is eaten by any of us. (I have seen Nick blanch, flush, and tear up over those innocent-looking green lovelies. No way is my tender tongue trying them). Our order soon arrives. Jjin-mandu (찐만두) is a steamed, bite-sized dumpling with a rice-paper wrapping and filled with minced pork, green onions and I don't know what else. Our 10 jjin-mandu arrive on a platter; we pick them up with chopsticks, dip into the soy/sesame sauce, and eat. I, being less gustatorily less adventurous than your average bear, did not expect to like these weird-looking things.  But I was wrong - they're a bit sticky but certainly inoffensive in flavor.

food photo credits: The Web.  See postscript, below, for an explanation.

Our noodle soup arrives in giant bowls for each of us (I can imagine serving one bowl to a husky family of four). This soup, called kalguksu (칼국수) has wheat noodles in a pork-based broth with scallions, zucchini, and a dried seaweed garnish.  Korean noodle soups are supposed to be eaten with chopsticks; the spoon is only for sipping the broth or supporting dangling noodles. Now I am a slob under the best of dining conditions, and my skill with chopsticks makes 2-year-olds laugh.  Thus, today I mostly stick to surreptitiously cutting the noodles with the side of my spoon and eating them that way.  My friends politely say nothing about my gauche behavior as they gracefully wield their shiny silver utensils (Korean chopsticks are metal; Japanese ones are wooden).  I (to my internal censor's great surprise) really like the soup, which is similar to potato soup (though I do pick around the dried seaweed garnish, which flavor I can only compare to dry, salty pond scum).

Of course, no Korean meal (including breakfast) is complete without kimchi (김치), a side dish of fermented cabbage (or sometimes Korean-style radish) heavily seasoned with hot pepper flakes and a variety of salty/fishy flavorings (e.g., soy sauce, anchovies, oysters).  This is also to be eaten with chopsticks, but when one is faced with great flaps of dripping red saucy cabbage and one has poor chopstick etiquette, one doesn't eat much cabbage kimchi.  The one tiny piece I risk eating today was pretty tasty, though.  (See here for a great article on learning to eat/like kimchi and a short review of Nothing to Envy, an excellent book about conditions in North Korea.)

So, very pleased with my own culinary sophistication (if not my utensil usage), we end our meal (picture these creaky ladies trying to stand without too much awkward groaning), pad over to the register where Elizabeth snags the bill from Charlene, collect our shoes, and return to the car. (The observant non-Korean reader might infer we'd cheated these poor restaurateurs out of a generous tip.  Nope: Koreans don't tip at restaurants, in taxis, at the hair salon, nowhere.  No sales tax, either; the listed price is what you pay.  It's so, so nice for math morons like me.)

(5) Reluctant to part ways just yet, we decide that dessert is in order (note: Korean restaurants don't serve dessert. Coffee shops do.  And waffle stands, because waffles are dessert here, which is a truly fantastic idea.). We decide where to go, and Grace turns left from the narrow street onto the main road.  Uh oh...: a cop car signals her to pull over. None of us has ever been pulled over in Korea or even known someone who has been pulled over in Korea: traffic policing is done almost entirely with cameras so there is none of the paranoid fear of cops that we learn in the U.S. (I shall not mention here how many camera-based speeding tickets Nick has gotten in the last year but the number might possibly rhyme with "heaven").  Confused, Grace pulls over, the young cop with sticky-up hair comes to her window, and he speaks rapid Korean.  She cannot understand his thick Pohang accent (maybe comparable to a deep Southern accent in the US, incomprehensible to anyone outside Jasper, Alabama), and she asks him three times what he's saying.  He gets more and more frustrated (his hair swishing around faster), Charlene jumps in to help figure out what's going on, and finally after yet more vigorousmuch hair swishing we learn that Grace has illegally crossed a double-yellow line (she should KNOW that is illegal, he sputters, maybe not realizing that even though Korean and US road rules are different, we're allowed to just trade in our US license for a Korean one, no test needed).  He demands her license.  She obeys, talking all the while (I love Grace - she's not afraid of anything), and he tries to enter her license on his hand-held computer.  But it won't compute because she's not a Korean citizen (and I think oh, the hair is really going to go wild now) and suddenly he pauses, his hair still, and looks into the car.  He sees two Caucasian women in the back and the two Korean-looking women in front with foreign accents, and he appears to just give up.  He returns Grace's license and mumbles that she should not cross double-yellow lines anymore.  Poor Grace was a little angry and a little embarrassed, but we were secretly delighted by this virtually painless peek into Korean culture.

The Double Yellow Line that Grace Illegally Crossed;
the location where we got pulled over;
the Korean mascot for police (which, to me, looks like a defective cross between Porky the Pig and a rat).

(6) At last we arrive at the coffee shop that serves bingsu (빙수): this wondrous miracle is a shaved-frozen-yogurt dessert with all kinds of sweet topping options. We order two bowls (again: these are huge, for maximum sharing or serious binging), one with cheesecake chunks and almonds and one with strawberries. Oh, my. There is no better summer dessert anywhere outside of heaven. As with any Korean coffee shop, we order and pay at the counter (not actually signing the debit card machine thing as English signatures apparently take way too long - just a line or a scribble or even a smiley face will do), receive a pager/buzzer, and relax at the table.  Charlene graciously gets us water (from a central keg) and retrieves our order when we get buzzed (so to speak).

This isn't the EXACT bingu we ate today - it's a picture from a few weeks ago, with strawberries and blueberries and a little pot of condensed milk to pour over it.  Are you drooling yet?  :)

You know, for an introvert I had a fantastic time getting to know these women and Korea a little better.  I could get used to hanging out with people more often.  Especially if they are willing to drive.  :)


P.S. Why did I use some web photos (or a few after-the-fact ones) instead of taking my own?  Mostly because I didn't want my camera to get in the way of our interactions. And because I only had my telephoto lens along, which is no good when sitting nose-to-nose with your food or friends.  Or a wild-haired cop.